Welcome to the libertarian Institute Channel, and Keith Knight. Don't tread on anyone today. I'm joined by Thaddeus Russell, the founder of unregistered Productions, Renegade University, the host of the unregistered podcast and author of a renegade History of the United States today. We'll be discussing World War Two. The great blowback. This is a class. Mr. Russell will be doing June 6, 13 20th, and 27th link will be in the Scription below.
Dr. Russell. Thank you so much for your time. Oh Keith. Thanks so much for having me on. I love talking about this. Dr. Russell, why is history important? You know, I dislike so many things about my profession which is the historical profession. I'm a Columbia PhD in history and I have been our history. Professor for almost three decades.
Now, I I dislike so much of it, mostly the content, the politics of it, the narrowness of the ideology that's represented in the historical profession on. And on, however, there's certain things that I really love about. My profession and the study of history and for us or historians, I think this is almost Universal Among Us. You know, we we believe that
nothing is trans historical. Meaning that nothing is eternal and permanent and never unchanging, we believe that everything is historical in that sense. Meaning that it is contingent upon real people and events and ideas in history, changing over time. We believe that change is constant that there's never been been anything that is static, certainly not in the realm of ideas or culture politics or economics. And so that's what. So, there is always more to look
at because there is nothing. But dynamism in the past, there is nothing but constant change in every quarter of society. And even outside of society, things are always changing. And so, our jobs are never done, but that's what makes it beautiful. That's one reason. I love history. The other is that I actually psychologically, I get transported into the past by doing it and it's almost like it's in a form of escapism for me. I really love it.
I really feel better when I'm studying and researching his green reading it. I feel like I'm not quite in that place in the past, but I certainly don't feel like I'm in this place anymore. And that's nice.
It's nice to be thinking about people who were so long dead that there's no sort of feelings about them dying or about, you know, any of the tragedies, you know, Necessarily the third reason and this is why I started with not why I became a historian is that I was interested in politics like you and like many of our friends people in our world as a very young person and I pretty soon saw that the people who knew history won all the arguments that if you knew history you
could win virtually any political argument and that's true. It's really, it's very difficult. It's actually quite annoying to As someone who knows a lot of history. And when you don't understand that as well because it's impossible. Right? If they have this old Trove of information that you're simply, don't have access to. It's impossible to really engage with them on any serious way, in any serious way. So historians those of us who actually do, spend the time,
doing the research on the stuff. We always have an upper hand on the argument. Doesn't mean we're right. It just means we have a big advantage and so I can't there is no political question to me. That isn't best answered by looking at. History. Imagine you have to hire a soul historian for Renegade University. They're in charge of all the history when looking for when looking at potential historians, what would you say differentiates a good historian
from a bad historian just quick. Correction. I am no longer with Renegade University. So it's my all my courses are at the unregistered Academy on my patreon, but just so, you know, it's a brand-new thing. I don't blame you. I was with, are you for a long time? Time I did found it but we just I went in another Direction just recently. So you can go to patreon.com/scishow unregistered for all the things that I'm now offering. So what, what kind of historian would I not hire?
Well, I just hired David Beto, who's a very important libertarian historian at the University of Alabama, who's written four or five, very important books that have been almost completely ignored by the historical establishment because he's got the wrong politics. David's books are immensely important their unique and they add tons.
Understanding of mutual Aid among poor and Working Class People. The history of armed self-defense by African-Americans self-help by African Americans under Jim Crow. He's now got a new book. He's working on on Franklin, Roosevelt's full-on assault on civil liberties.
These are the things that you're not allowed to really talk about, you know, in the left liberal establishment, which is Academia and David's, managed to carve out a little corner and have a job and Alabama, but no one ever pays attention to his book. So that's why he's on my podcast right now. This week. He's a new episode and he and I will be teaching a big course, five-part course, June and July and June and July on the JFK
assassination. Very various theories about it and both David. And I were not that interested in it before, but there's a lot of brand new workout, that makes it much more interesting and suggest that there was a lot more to it than than standard historians like us have been led to believe the reason I hire a historian like David Beto. Is the David asks he asks questions that no one else is
asking. He has he's curious about things that other historians are not curious about He's not afraid of making any argument. He's not afraid of letting the evidence, determine what the argument will be. He wants to just tell a different story and he sees a different. He just sees a different history than typical historian. So the kind of story and I wouldn't ever hire as someone who simply in curious. I mean, that's but that goes for anyone.
I don't like to have friends who were in curious. I don't want to have anybody teaching me or anybody else who's in curious, and that is most of the academic profession. And my, my opinion, they are actually in Curious people. They're not curious about ideas that are contrary to their own. They're mostly propagandists. Not all. There are some there are some professors I've known.
Who are genuine authentic intellectuals, who really love ideas and themselves, but for the most part, they're not they're interested in advancing a particular politics. And so they're not really curious or not interested in really listening to ideas that are fundamentally different than
their own. They don't mind Dickering around the edges, but they will not ever go at the big questions about the welfare state or about the Empire or about capitalism or about socialism, you know, on those big questions, they all agree and there's Has no point discussing it. So yeah, other than that, I don't care. I want someone, who's who's very curious who's relentlessly curious and wants to know about everything in the past and is not afraid to follow the evidence evidence where it
leads. It's so interesting because all arguments that I had heard for World War. Two were bad history arguments in the sense of they were just boring predictable narratives. So instead of, you know, citing primary documents or anything. It was always well, you don't want to go into Syria. Well, you know who else didn't want to fight? Neville Chamberlain, so you're
kind of an idiot in a coward. Assad is like Hitler, but if you want to go to war with Assad and maybe even Russia and Iran, you're like Winston, Churchill, the greatest of the great. The greatest breadth that ever lived. What is why our historical narratives so important as opposed to just laying out facts? What, why do narratives matter to people? Well, because narratives become the truth, right?
So once once people buy into a narrative, once they believe in narrative, they then internalized it and then the culture, internalizes it, and then it becomes catechism. It becomes religious religious, you know, I mean that and that's true for any society. America is not alone. Loan By Any Means in this. So the narratives that are established about history over time. What's great about them. Is that and this is this is where Michelle Foucault comes in.
He's the he and the French post-structuralist and postmodernist identified. This, they noticed that the the narratives about history change over time that you know, the ruling Elites change, their view of what happened in the past constantly, they're always revising, you know, what actually happened in the past which leads us to believe that maybe there isn't one single true. Narrative write one single truth about the past.
But yeah, so if you control, this is not the first person to say this, if you control history, you control everything. If you control The Narrative of what happened in the past, you control Society because you can fashion that story to fit your own particular requirements for power.
So for instance, you know, in the United States in the last 50 or 60 years, one of the ways in which the Democratic party has maintained, its control has been to To use this mythology, mythological sort of redneck right-wing figure. This usually southern white man who has a Confederate flag somewhere in his house, or on his truck and owns guns, and
he's racist etcetera. And he votes for Trump, and because of date because they exist and because of the long lineage of racist white men like that. The Ku Klux Klan the Confederacy and slavery. Yada yada. We must have the following 29 programs to help African-Americans and nowadays to keep down the Trump. Is, so that's the narrative. I mean, the Democratic party, what would the Democratic party be without that Narrative of of racist US history.
I mean they have nothing. That's almost every single policy has to be filtered through that narrative for them, you know, to get it passed. And so that's just one example, you know, I mean Trump, make America great again.
Well, okay. So there's a lot of talk among Trump stirs about how great America was in like the 40s and 50s, you know, World War Two. To and, you know, the great Prosperity after World War 2, when there was people made enough money that Mom could stay at home and be a housewife, and it's this nostalgic thing and the Trump movement again, you know, they control, they control their own narrative or they have their own narrative that's different.
Again, the virtually the entire troop movement is dependent upon that narrative. Without that Nostalgia. What are they? What are they fighting for mean? That's what it says. On the have make America great again. So it's a nostalgic movement from the beginning. The requires on a particular.
Oracle narrative to me, both narratives, the Trump narrative about America being a wonderful Paradise, 50, or 60 years ago, and the liberal left Democrat Democratic narrative, that the United States has always just been a racist country bent on killing black people. They are equally true to me. They're equally true equally untrue. They really are just narratives. Now, there's and there's evidence. There's lots and lots, and lots of evidence. There's books and books, and
books, and stacks. Worth of evidence to support either narrative. You can in fact look at the 1950s America and say yes, in fact, you know much of the working class was getting paid better than ever before and Working Class People for the first time in human history owned houses. And this is this was really good. We also know that this was the during Jim Crow and not everybody was wealthy and not all of the working class was so wonderful.
And by the way, the jobs that that made them wealthy or relatively wealthy as working class. They were in factories, like, steel factories, and automobile factories, or 8 10, 12 hours a day basically, as machine. So, you know, anyway, you get my point here, then controlling the narrative establishing, controlling, and disseminating a narrative effectively is the surest path to power.
Great points. Because of course, they never Embrace any humility or any complexity, when pushing such a narratives, they don't say, well, or the example, I'd uses the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Richard Haas. He doesn't even say, you know, in my opinion, I think the benefits of the invasion of Afghanistan outweighed. The cause he just says, well, we know that we had to go into Afghanistan.
Our hands were tied. We had no choice but a rack is where there might be a gray area. Notice how they've sold you. Already on the main bill of goods. That whenever there's a problem. We need major major State intervention and we're going to have to kill tons of people. Look, you don't like it go away and live in Fairyland. This is the reality. Moving on, they never even questioned it. So that's the power, they did the power of the narrative.
They don't even see that. Here is an opinion on putting forward. They just see it as a absolute reality, that can go unquestioned and that's why I love places that are able to bring. Us courses, like World War Two, the, the great blowback. What is blowback? Well, I mean, it's so, this is a concept that was invented by Chalmers Johnson. Who's a scholar mostly East Asian politics and US porn for foreign policy. He was not a Libertarian. He wasn't an anarchist. He was a pretty Normie.
I think liberal ish his scholar, but he saw Especially in US policy in the in East Asia over the last 50 to 100 years policies. That produced a lot of anti-americanism Dollar Diplomacy rigging the rigging, the system writing deals, you know, under the threat of bombardment, with these, with gum with governments in in Asia, you know, that basically allowed us corporations us business interest in the government itself, to rip people off.
Laughs, you know, that kind of thing, losing sovereignty. How many how many nations essentially lost their sovereignty to the United States. Japan is just one of them when Admiral Perry, you know, sailed into Tokyo bay and said, hey sign is Trade Agreement or else they sign the trade agreement, you know, and a lot of people in Japan after that. We're anti-American.
How strange? And then they were anti-western how strange and by 1900 guess what 41 They were really anti-American, you know, so there's your blowback are just in that case, Pearl Harbor was blowback for decades and Decades of severe mistreatment of Japanese people. We haven't even talked about what Americans did to what the United States I should say, did to Japanese in America in the 20s and 30s. Everybody knows about the internment. Okay, everybody knows about that
atrocity. They don't know that every Japanese person in California was, was had their their land and property seized by the state of California. And then, given over to White farmers in the In 20 is called the alien land laws, right? They don't know that the San Francisco Public Schools were segregated between Japanese and white students. They don't know that there were pogroms, essentially lynchings of Japanese people in the streets here, where I live in California, in the 20s and 30s
long before the internment. So Japanese people had a lot of reason to hate the United States, by the time Pearl Harbor came around. So that's just one example of blowback, but World War Two in general for me. He is not all of it, but I would say most of it, most of the deaths in World War, two were caused by the US entry into it. I, my estimate is about two-thirds of the 65 million. The current, the current best estimate is about 65 million.
People were killed, as a result of World War Two. And my estimate is that something about something like two thirds of, that would not have happened. Two-thirds of those. People would not have died. If the US had not entered the war in the way that it did. So that's blowback, you know, something like 40 million people, I think dead the way that Europe was divided. After the war where the Soviet Union controlled half of it and
the United States controlled. The other half was not ideal for the United States or the world. Certainly not for the people living there. That's below back. Half a million American men. Dead fighting, that's blowback. You know, it goes on and on, I mean, the you established, after World War Two, they gave Independence, they gave Independence to Vietnam, and then took it away.
And then the people in Vietnam became nationalists, and Ho Chi Minh a rose, and there's your blowback, their anti-americanism in Vietnam, became the Vietnam War, same, and same in Korea, tons of anti-americanism in Korea, largely as a result of what the United States did after the war and during it.
Yeah, but the biggest blow back the biggest blow back of all Is the Holocaust. So I am the first American historian to make this argument explicit, but there are many British and German historians who have been making it for many years and some ways. I'm borrowing from their work. The Holocaust was not caused by the United States ending the war but its fulfillment was guaranteed by the United States
entering the war. What people don't know is that every year from the time Hitler took power in 1933 until the final solution began in late 1941. Every year Hitler gave a public speech in the reichstag intended for Western governments to here in which he said the following. I have the Jews that you love so much.
I will deliver them to you on our boats on luxury liners if you want it. Will you take them West, if you don't take them and you stop us from retaking the land that was stolen from us in the Versailles, treaty after World War one, which included pieces of Poland. And then also, he had designs on Western Russia, which was not part of that. But anyway, he wanted to take those areas it of you. Stop us from taking that land. We will then kill the Jews so you can take him now.
I'll give him to you. But if you intervene militarily to stop us from getting what is our ancestral land, we will then kill them. He was using them as hostages. Well, the West every single year from 1933 to 1941 the United States state department, France Britain, every single one of them refused to take any significant number of Jewish refugees from the Third Reich over and over and over again.
You had Jewish organizations begging Roosevelt, daily daily, you'd rabbis going to the White House. Daily begging them to let Jewish refugees from Nazi. Germany, come into the United States. No denied The only Jews were allowed into the United States from the Third Reich or people like Albert, Einstein, who were scientists, who were useful in building building bombs.
So there's that. And then Hitler kept saying, we are going to take Poland much of which did absolutely belong to Germany. Most almost everyone agrees. I mean, even the left wing and Germany agreed with Hitler on much of his territorial designs ambitions. And he launched the invasion of Poland in September 1939. The United States, of course, and the Allies intervene militarily, the United States through Aid to the Allies Etc.
And then Hitler eventually did enact the final solution in 1941, but the thing is the plan for the for the Nazis and Hitler from the 19 teens until late. The one was to expel Jews. They did not want to exterminate them, the final solution for Hitler, and the Nazi leadership was always to move them out, forced forced migration, move them out of Germany, and out of the Third Reich, when they took over Austria. That's what they want to because they wanted to keep them as
hostages. They wanted to keep that power. Right? And when the unite, when the United States ultimately intervened and the west intervened, then Hitler no longer had used for these Jews and that's when he gave the order for the final solution. So this is in the late fall or early winter of 1941. This is after Pearl Harbor. This is after the declaration of war by the United States on Germany.
And the first gassing of Jews, the first killing of Jews in an extermination camp at Camp. That was designed for this was in Chelm. No Poland. The day after the day after the United States, declared war on Germany. Now, people will say, and people often do say that there was mass killings of Jews before then,
and that is absolutely correct. It happened during Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Russia of the Soviet Union, which began in June of 41. This is when the German He just went hog-wild, rushing through Poland taking as much as possible, and killing as many people as they could. But this was not the, the, the, the killings of Jews that happened at that time. We're actually against against the direct orders of Berlin that Hitler and the leadership of the
Nazi party did not want that. They wanted to kill a lot of them. They wanted to kill all of the Polish leadership, and they wanted to kill all the Polish intellectuals. The Jews were just, they were not. Important in this campaign. And so and and Hitler didn't want. He didn't want his soldiers spending their time running around sadistically shooting Jews in the head which many of
them did. He wanted them to focus on the job at hand which was to seize this country and get rid of the political leadership of Poland was not Jewish. So we know this, we know this was policy. We know that Berlin did not order the killings of Jews, not in the way that was done that. They were interested in taking Poland and eliminate liquidating, the ruling class of Poland and taking it over, but that was not.
The plan was to put the Jews in ghettos, which they did and then in an orderly way, March them out or train them out of third of the Third Reich to any country that would take them. And here's the thing that many people don't know Hitler and the Nazi party of Germany. In the 1930s co-founded, essentially, the state of Israel because there was a program by which the the Nazi government gave gave material assistance and training to any Jew in Germany who was willing to move
to Palestine and settle there. So, that was just an agricultural area. So they were, they had farming programs for Jews. The Nazis ran programs that train Jews. How to run Farms so that they could move to Palestine. It paid some of them Cash Money, it provided them with the transportation Palestine, many, many thousands of Jews with the direct assistance of the Nazi government. Moved to Palestine and helped found the state of Israel. Because this is what they
wanted. They wanted the Jews to get out. They were not interested. Din, Mass extermination. Why? Not mass extermination? Mass extermination was what was done or attempted by Russian, anti-semites famously before Hitler, was anything important, right? Is the famed, the infamous pogroms in Russia, which had been going on for centuries and where the specially common in the late 19th century and early 20th century Hitler looked down on that, you know, he didn't
like slobs. You thought Slavs were racially, inferior people, Russians were inferior. And he saw that as irrational. He called it irrational. Emotional anti-Semitism. He said what we do, the German the Nazis us we are rational anti-semites. We don't run around, cutting off people's heads and shooting him. Dead in the street. We line them up. Put them in cattle cars, and move them out of the country forever. So they spent did not see leadership spent seven eight years in the 1930s.
After taking power. Looking for places to put the Jews. They sent many of them to Palestine. Winston, Churchill, stop that. By he started bombing the ships that were taking the Jews to Palestine. By the way, once that ended, then they look to Madagascar. The Nazis spent a lot of time investigating Madagascar. They sent missions down there to investigated. They were going, they were getting ready to send Jews on ships, to Madagascar.
They kept begging the United States, and France, and Britain, and all the Allies to take the Jews. They kept saying, no, so they had nowhere to go. The Jews were trapped there, and then Winston Churchill in 1939 after the Invasion of Poland. He established a naval blockade of Germany. No one. No person could go in or out of Germany. After that time. Winston, Churchill trap, those people in Hitler's house. They refused to take the refugees and then he trapped them inside the house.
As Hitler was burning it down. Oh, and then they started dropping bombs. The British RAF starts bombing the cities. During this time, the German civilians, all that happens. This is blowback. Of course, when you start bombing people The civilians in that country tend to tend to gather Ken to tend to Rally around the leader in that country during wartime. That's all it. Did. It helped Hitler's. Cause, and it did nothing except ensure that the Jews and that country would die.
And we have just some of the most heart-wrenching Memoirs and letters from Jews, living in Berlin, and other cities. During that time who said they said at the time that especially that, the United States in 41 was going into the was coming into the war. They said, now that the United States is coming to the war. We are dead. We are dead because Hitler has no reason to keep us around anymore. And that's exactly what happened the day after the United States. Declared war on Germany.
They started gassing Jews in the final solution began. Niall Ferguson has attempted to summarize the response by Henry Kissinger to the concept of blowback. So he said, in his book as Kissinger pointed out to Ariana felici, the history of things that didn't happen needs to be considered before. We may pass any judgment on the history of things that did happen. We need to consider not only the consequences of what American governments did during say the Cold War.
But also The probable consequences of the different foreign policies that might have been adopted looking at it that way. Is there anything that might come to mind and say, well, yes, technically, if the US doesn't go in but then again. What if Germany? Took basically from France to Russia, with Franco running Spain, Salazar later in Portugal and Mussolini in Italy and Hirohito in Japan, how would the look?
The world look thin. Yeah, all of those guys would be dead and the regimes would be long dead. So I spent a lot of time in the book that I'm working on examining the political economy of Nazi Germany, people. Don't do this nearly enough, it is it's if it weren't so horrific. It would actually be comical. So Nazism as a governing ideology is a snake eating its tail. There is Virtually no way for it
to sustain itself. So the anti-Semitism alone was nearly lethal for the entire German population. Why? Well, what's the first thing that Nazis did? When they came to power in 33, they removed all the Jews from the professions, all the professions. Okay. So Germany in 1932 1932 33 Jews in Germany. Any occupied, which professions? Well, let's start with the medical profession. So, something like half of all the doctors in Berlin were Jewish and overnight.
They were removed from their jobs. So there were half as many doctors now in Berlin. Oh gosh. Okay. Jews were also very prominent in the food industry. Not the agriculture production side, but at the retail side and the warehousing side, They removed all of them from the food industry in Germany. Okay, so, Was the consequence of that starvation. The average height of the German child declined during the Nazi rule in the 1930s, the average height of every other European country went up.
During that time people couldn't get enough food. They couldn't get enough medicine because they remove the people who are providing those things. Oh, here's a good one. German Jewish doctors pioneered, the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. They were the first ones to do this. Really heroic people, actually saving people from awful diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea.
Almost all the research and all the treatment for that in the world at the time was going on in Berlin by Jewish doctors 90-plus, percent of the doctors in Germany who were treating sexually. Transmitted diseases were Jewish. Well, they got removed to guess what happened, Keith the rates of syphilis and gonorrhea, I mean, these are things that cause blindness they are. Debilitating, they can kill you. Stay skyrocketed. So the German people are suffering tremendously from the
lat. Of Jews, their society. I mean, people who were providing essential Services essential essential Services. We haven't even talked about the intellectuals and the banking sector, the financial sector, removing the Jews from from German society. That point was kotak catastrophic in itself. But then then the logic of Nazism is, we must have living space laban's realm. Everyone knows this, right? That was that was the justification.
Partial, justification for taking Poland and West, Germany. Hitler believed that the cities were too crowded yada yada. So we've got to go east and get new land, right? So we can put our people in places where they have more Breathing Room. Living space. Okay. Well that requires a very large military. Okay. Well, the thing is you've got to stop that military and the thing is the military requires things like copper for its bullets. Bullets had copper in them, right?
You don't have a bullet. If you don't have copper. Well, promise, Germany had no copper. The other thing, the Germany insisted on at this time Nazi. Germany was to be completely self-sufficient. Autarky was what it was called. So they cut off Imports. They didn't want imports from any foreign corrupting influence. Right? Well, they stopped and they no longer were important copper now, so that meant they had to invade furthermore countries.
The agricultural sector in Germany to define the copper in the natural resources. The agricultural sector in, in Germany was denuded of Labor, to build the bombs and tanks to invade Poland with. So, that's another reason people are going hungry in Germany. There weren't agricultural workers. They were being used for military production. So starvation's happening in Germany. We have to invade More Country. We have to invade more of pull and more of Western Russia.
More of other places to get the agricultural Goods to get the produce to feed our people, right. It's an impossible, and impossible task, and so Hitler, so Nazi, Germany was collapsing. Internally. It was imploding from the moment of its Inception from 1933 on, for many reasons. It could not sustain itself. It was doomed to fail doomed to its demise. In fact, I'm quite Sure that have the United States and the Allies. Not intervened. It all it would have died long before 1941.
When someone looks at the second world war. As I said earlier, the common thing is it they always say WWII teaches us that appeasement never works. How do you respond to that mindset? Yeah, appeasement. Yes. I mean, so this is what they always use against us, right. Every time we oppose a war. We are we are Chamberlain will? Yeah, and, and also, whenever the police tell you to do anything, you have to obey immediately, you can never not appease the police or else they can.
You everyone else. You have to vigorously stand up to for every single one of your rights, except the people that violate them the most good point. Yes, indeed. Yeah. Well, I mean, so, it's so what we had circa 1940 one was basically to very vicious Regional Wars going on very vicious. The one in the East between Germany and Russia Operation, Barbarossa that war is that alone? Just that piece of World War Two? Ooh is still the most lethal catastrophic war in human history?
So I'm not minimizing it and then Japan and China, you know? And and then of ultimately Japan invading other countries as well, but mostly China, brutal Invasion, the Rape of Nanking. We know about the enslavement of countless people, awful terrible Wars going on, but these were Regional Wars. They were limited in scope. And Historians are virtually unanimous in agreeing that Hitler's Ambitions were never Global. They weren't even european-wide.
He didn't even want to control Western Europe. As I said, he wanted Poland and he wanted Western Russia, which he considered to be Teutonic territory. Meaning the ancestral home of his people. You know, all racialist nonsense, and of course, I would have been thousand percent opposed him doing any of that too. But that's all he wanted for people who living in Poland and Western Russia. This is not a small matter. But that is all he wanted.
He did not want Western Europe. He went into Western Europe as a defensive ploy to shore up his western front so that he could go east. He was trying to he was trying to stop the Allies in the west so that he could push Eastward. That's why he took Western Europe. He had no intention of keeping France. He never wanted London. Couldn't take London. He had no landing craft. People don't know the ver mocked, the British, the German Navy had not a single landing
craft. How on Earth were they going to invade England and then the United States without landing craft. They have no troop transport ships. They couldn't transport any number of troops across the ocean anywhere. Not even the English Channel. This is how we know. He had no intentions of going outside of his domain. In Japan and China. We've all I mean, it's clear as day. Japan, never had any designs on
any other part of the world. They certainly want to China because they were dependent on the resources. And China. Japan is a volcanic rock. It has no natural resources. They have to go outward to get their stuff, especially agriculture stuff and labor. That's why they were in China. That's why they were brutally controlling and dominating China, but that's all they
wanted. They did not want to control the United States. They didn't want to invade South America. They Want anything other than that, they were going to become a strong power, just in their sphere. They would never be able to be dominated Again by the West as they had been. If they could maintain, if they can maintain their control of China with the natural resources and build their military and
Industry in that way. So again, both regimes, horrible murderous brutal and imperialist, of course, but they're imperialism. All I'm saying is much more limited than what WWII became what the United States. Entry into World War Two did, was it converted Regional to Regional Wars into a global war? And that's why I say of the 65 million or so, who died? As a result of the war, roughly two-thirds of those were outside those spheres.
The other reason, the United States entry into the war was so lethal and accounted for so many deaths. Is that many, many of the weapons that were used to kill people in this war, on all sides on all sides were produced in the Good Ol USA. In places, like Detroit and Long Beach, even the Germans, you know, they used they would capture American weapons and use them to kill people with same with the Japanese. But, you know, they were flooding. The United States was flooding,
the world with weapons. All of the Allies, all of the allies and are many allies were using u.s. Made weapons. The Soviet Union was using u.s. Made weapons, by the end of the war. They were killing lots of people. So, just the death count, the body count. The United States is responsible in some way or another directly or indirectly, I believe for about two-thirds, but certainly a major part of it. Another one of the primary things that someone will say is well look the u.s.
Didn't want the war, but our hands were tied after Pearl Harbor. This is another result of isolationism as Ben Shapiro loves to remind us, here is a book published in 1947 the story of the secret War Pearl Harbor by George Morgenstern in his diary entry of November 25th, 13 days before the Pearl Harbor attack Stimson. Secretary of War, expressed the Lemma in its broadest. Terms describing the war cabinet meeting in the white house.
He stated there the president brought up entirely, the relations with the Japanese. He brought up the event that they were likely to be attacked possibly, as soon as next Monday. For the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning and the question was what we should do. The question was, how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much Danger. ER, to our selves. What do people need to know about Pearl Harbor?
What people need to know about Pearl. Harbor was that it is what Franklin Roosevelt? And mr. Stimson and many others who ended up in Roosevelt's cabinet. Had been wishing for Keith. I kid you not since they were teenagers. So I devote a significant portion of the book to a biographical study of Roosevelt and his crew. And he was reading about thinking about talking about and writing about war with Japan, when he was in high school.
He was reading a man named Admiral, mahan's books, Admiral Mahan. Is a very famous military theorist of the 19th century, who wanted the United States to be the global hegemon. He was unabashed about it. But the thing about my hand was he was mostly concerned about Japan. He said over and over in his books that Japan must be confronted and defeated for the United States to control the Pacific. Roosevelt was a huge fan of his books.
As were many people in what was, then the foreign policy establishment and he started reading them when I was in high school when he was in boarding school, 16 years old. He was writing home about it and talking about the Japs and how we needed to do something about the Japs etcetera, Etc. When he was assistant Secretary of, Navy, the Navy under the Wilson Administration and the 1910s.
He was calling for war against Japan and Wilson and Wilson's cabinet who are Arch and interventionist as well were horrified by this guy. This young Lincoln Roosevelt guy. They try to kept trying to calm him down. We don't need war with Japan. So he was going for war with Japan. As I said, since he was a child literally, the very first cabinet meeting of the Roosevelt administration.
The Franklin Roosevelt administration, the very first cabinet meeting Franklin. Lays out maps and plans for what a war with Japan would look like. And we have Diaries of his cabinet members saying, what the hell was this? We weren't expecting this at all. That was his first. This is the height. This is the height of the Great Depression. He had a lot of stuff to do, right? His first thing was, we got to go to war with Japan and how here's how it's gonna go.
It was going to be launched from the Aleutian Islands and Alaska and certain islands in the Pacific. And he knew how to wear the Navy was going to be stationed. And where the Air Force is gonna be stationed and how they had to have particular, airfields, built-in islands in the Pacific so that the launch attacks directly into, I mean, he had it all planned out before he became president and he had been dreaming dreaming of a war. Japan, as I said, since he was
about 16 years old. Unbelievable stuff. I have just two more pieces of evidence here cuz you would not believe the emails. I get every time I mentioned, Pearl Harbor. This is really difficult for a lot of people to accept here. Here is the New York Times. An article titled War entry plans. Later Roosevelt published, January 2nd, 1972. Here is Churchill's own Diaries. The president's orders to these US. Navy, escorts were to attack any German U-Boat, which showed itself.
If it were 200 or 300 miles away from the Convoy, everything was to be done to force an incident. The president had taken this very well and made it clear that he would look for an incident which would justify him opening hostilities. Churchill told his War cabinet. And then finally, there was a document titled. The McCullen memo which lists about eight things that the US should do in relation to Japan.
The document Ends by saying if by these He's means Japan could be led to commit an overt Act of War. So much the better at all events. We must be fully prepared to accept the threat of War. So this was obviously intentionally provoked. So with what we've dealt with Pearl Harbor, but unfortunately, we're in the war. And what are you going to do
now? We had to drop to nukes on Japan, just to end this hell on Earth that killed 65 million people after the nukes, the war ended, therefore nuking, Anne was justified. What's saying? Dr. Russell? I have talked to many World War Two veterans, who are very, very happy about the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Because if they hadn't been dropped on Hiroshima, Nagasaki those guys might have been sent in into a Mainland invasion of Japan. Okay.
Now, what would they have been met with if they had gotten to Japan because by that point every city in Japan and people don't know this every single City and I'm talking about 52. 60 major cities including Tokyo had that point by 1945 had been burned flat to the ground. Tokyo was a tabletop. They had firebomb firebomb, firebomb campaign after one, after the other. There you go. There were many of them throughout the years of the war and Tokyo was didn't exist anymore.
As did most of the Japanese military, but 1945, but 19 1945. The Japanese military was depending on teenage boys. The defense. Production factories where they were building the bombs and the tanks again staffed by teenagers during this time in 1945. So, a Mainland invasion of Japan would not have been fun. I'm sure there have been many, many casualties, but would there have been fewer casualties than in her ocean and Nagasaki? I don't know. Would they would Japan have surrendered?
Avenge eventually, if they were surrounded because by that point, Mainland Japan was surrounded by the US Navy. Bye. 1945 the US Navy has taken all the all the islands around Japan and all that was left was the mainland. So, you know, and we know that there was a lot of talk of surrender in the Japanese High command. By that point. I think it's quite likely that there would have been a surrender and if not, they would have been much less resistance at that point from the Japanese
military. Then, there have been on all those islands, all those awful, you know, brutal battles, on all those islands in the Pacific. By that point because it's simply they were operating. Really the dependent on children the military that point to make their stuff and to fight and you know, the US Military and the Allies are not going to have too much trouble with that. So I as as I'm not going to ever say to a veteran u.s. Veteran, who would have gone to
the mainline. I'm not going to say to him, you're better off, you know, you would have been better off if we hadn't dropped the nukes but from a macro level society-wide level. I do believe that fewer people would have died. I wish you would have met my uncle. I think he passed away at 100 years old. He finally opened up about his WWII experience. He was conscripted and he's sitting there. Gosh land, his late nineties talking to me about this and I asked him.
Did you kill anyone in the war and his you know, his face goes blank and he goes, well, he explained that he was part of the Air Force and while he was flying, He attacked a Japanese fighter pilot and unfortunately was able to see his face just before he killed a guy. And here he is decades later, talking to me about it. Half a century later. Crying about it against the Japanese, who with all the propaganda. The average person is still able
to feel this compassion. He starts crying and said he was drafted, probably just like, I was he should have had kids just like I did. Why did you know his face? His firing, miss me, a little, and mine hit his. It's just unbelievable stuff. So I'm yeah, Keith.
I'm really glad you brought up conscription and this is another thing that people don't understand every single military that was in World War Two, every single one, majority conscript Army, every single one, the United States with 2/3. Conscripts what are conscripts their slaves? We need to get over this. I mean, problem with calling it slavery at mean if Not slavery. I don't know. It is not only is it slavery? It's the worst form of slavery. Is it? Not?
Because you are not being forced to pick cotton, you're being forced to fight, and die for a cause you may not care about it is the worst form of slavery. And that's exactly. It was 2/3 of Americans in the war were conscripts in places. Like Germany. The Vermont was 90%. The German military was 90%. Conscripts. This is why I get furious when people describe all Germans as not sick. Not Aziz during that time, or
they say the Nazi army, or Nazi Soldier. 90% of those guys were not Nazis, and a lot of them were anti-nazi. Same with all of them, British. They all relied on the Soviets. They all relied on conscripts. Absolutely slavery. So tells you tells you the support for the war, fighting this war on all sides on all sides, was not so great.
Yeah, it's not exactly. France and Germany went to war know, a few Elites enslaved, some people in their jurisdiction, same thing happened on the other side and a bunch of people got killed. Yes, sir. Exactly. Ok, ok perfectly. So it's amazing. This by the way is referred to as the good War. You would think that the good War would be like, I don't know, Serbia 1999 or sore like Iraq war one. Something that had like, very few casual. I shouldn't say.
Serbia had very few. Something you would think that just had so few. Little T's and the costs were so small. And the benefits were so big, but 65 million deaths. You can't question this. It's inherently good. Here is tell me if I'm reading this incorrectly. I want to know what you hear in this statement. Here is Churchill in March of 1948 in a book, titled the Gathering Storm Volume.
One of his Memoirs one day. President Roosevelt told me he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said it once the unnecessary War, there never was a war one. Easy to stop then that which has just wrecked. What was left of the world?
From the previous struggle, the human tragedy reaches its climax in the fact that after all, the exertions and sacrifices of hundreds of millions of people and the victories of the righteous, cause we have still not found peace or security and that we lie in the grip of even worse, perils than those, we have surmounted. That's that's the that's one of the greatest mass murderers and history saying that too.
By the way Winston Churchill. As I said, as I said, he trapped the Jews inside of Germany. He refused to take the refugees and then he put a blockade around Germany. I mean just think about that. He's soda, pop Tate around Germany in the first world war as first Lord of the admiralty. That's right. A starvation block. So he's starving everyone and trapping the Jews inside as well. Yeah, and hit the thing about Churchill was he boy, he was absolutely ruthless.
He just did not care much. All about killing lots of civilians. To achieve a particular War and the costs of the of the second world war besides the Holocaust and everything else you've mentioned. But what else do you say to get people to say that this isn't the Great War? There were a ton of unintended consequences. What would you say? Those were if you had to lay them out? Yeah, well, I mean, the, you know, the tens of millions of people as I said, you know, who died.
I think I think because either directly or indirectly, because of us entry into the war. The planet was reshaped. I mean countries were were created, other countries were dissolved. People found themselves, overnight being citizens of a new country that they previously didn't belong to or didn't want to belong to. You have half the Half of Europe, half of Eurasia now, behind an iron curtain under communism under a brutal stalinist dictatorship. You know in Russia alone.
So I went to the Soviet Union. I was in the Soviet Union in 1987 that's in its last year's and they took us to a military cemetery. Just WWII it was a WWII Cemetery. This is in Moscow. And it was so big. You couldn't see the edges of it when you were standing in it and went off to the Horizon in every direction, and it was one Mass grave. After another each Mass grave was the size of a football
field. So just a raised sort of rectangle of dirt about 100 yards long and maybe, you know, whatever that is 50 30, 40 yards wide and there's just one after the other, after the other of those going off into the Horizon that many mass Graves, each Mass grave. Contained ten thousand bodies in it, ten thousand each one. So we know that more than 20 million people in Russia were killed in that war. Would Hitler have invaded.
Western Russia, the Soviet Union the way that he did and the way that he did and would as many people have died, if the US have not been involved, he would have invaded, he probably would have lost, their probably would have been fewer casualties, but Again, it became a World War, as a result of us intervention.
The war, the war shape, the world in all sorts of ways that I mean, in a lot of positive ways, you know, a whole lot of Technology came out of it that we still use today with and that's something that sort of Libertarians need to Grapple with. You know, Wars are very modernizing phenomena. They accelerate Innovation and production and Technology. Technological advances. You know, can we could we have achieved all those things without killing 65 million? 65 million people.
I don't know. The other result of the war. Of course, is what Liberals are very proud of and happy about and they're defending every single day which is the establishment of the post-war liberal order. We call it which is dominated by the United States. So, you know, NATO and the UN and Gat and the World Bank and the IMF, and all the thing, all the ways in which the United States, upholds, its Empire. Was a result of the world of World War Two, and that was all planned in advance.
This Council on Foreign Relations began making plans in Earnest in 1939. They entered into an agreement with the state department. Shortly thereafter to make secret plans, for how the United States would emerge from the World War Two, as the dominant superpower on the globe and they got it. They got all the all that they wanted. Now you could say that was a good thing because there have in fact been fewer deaths by War
since Five in the world. It's been a relatively peaceful time at least in modern the modern era. But you know, we do have Korea. We do a Vietnam. We do have Iraq and Afghanistan. And that's just American wars. I'm talking about. It's been quite a bit of killing was the Cold War, a good thing for the world, seems hard to maintain that, you know, half the world under communism and half the world. Under a u.s.
Puppet regime. Is some sort often dictators who were as brutal as any communist ever was. You had Cold War? He's across the country across the world that became often hot Wars across the third world, vicious, vicious Wars and Africa. Latin America. They were fought around this because of it communism was doomed to fail. We now know that communism as a system is not sustainable. It was just like Nazi Germany, Nazism.
It couldn't be sustained on its own and that's all we needed to do. Leave it alone. George Kennan said this. George Kennan said in his in his famous tell along. 1947 basically, they're crazy. They don't know how to run anything. Talking about the Soviets. They're paranoid. Delusional. Their system is falling apart all the time. All we got to do is contain them, keep them from moving outward and it'll fall apart on its own. That didn't happen.
So three years later, the NSC National Security, Council rights NSC, 68 saying, no. As a matter of fact, we've got to do everything. We can to roll back.
The Communists, take an aggressive position to invest heavily in the military to build a lot of tanks and bombs, and airplanes, and to go hard and to actually do everything we can to foment Revolution within the Soviet Union regime change is what we need and that was the policy and has been the policy still to this day since 18:50 NSE 68 I think is still in effect. They are trying to roll back Russia still. It's just now it's Putin. It's not communism but it is still Russia.
The Russian Bear which has been getting in the way of America's globalist Ambitions for more than 100 years now. And that's why the Russia has always been an art sites for, you know, many decades because of that. They wouldn't play ball with the American global, managed capitalist regime. Thank you so much for your time.
Have two more questions for you. Every time there is a war, the intellectual class will tell you that the other side just can't be reasoned with Saddam. Can't be reasoned with you can't negotiate with Putin, can't negotiate with Hitler. You could not have negotiated with the Soviets except during WWII at Yalta and Tehran, but after that, they couldn't be reasoned with here is a summary of how a Oswald Garrison, Bollard the editor of the nation.
Wrote in the great armaments were the road to Fascism. He says, they bring with them. Increased worship of the state increased nationalism, increased State service, and therefore, play into the hands of those like Hitler and Mussolini who declare that the citizen is made for the state and not the state for the citizen. He said, July 2nd 1938 when you're dealing with this fascist mindset, is there a way to reason with in? Enemy, so to speak, that does not involve going to war. Hmm.
You mean when when the enemy is fascist get there a way to deal with them as if the u.s. Regime isn't fascist, but you get what I'm saying? Okay, so half of my book is about an alternative to military intervention and the alternative in the United States has been to let Hollywood continue making movies to let to let the music industry in this country. Continue making Music and sending it abroad. Sending it to other countries, to let Levi Strauss.
Continue making blue jeans and sending them to other countries to let American Media be broadcast through satellite dishes. Now, previously through radios and TVs, you know everywhere so that they can see how we live and how they could live whether by moving here or by adopting some of our own practices and it turns out that American popular
culture. ER American material culture, not the culture produced by the government not or the military, but American pop culture, the stuff that we all like to do and buy and play with has been really really really popular all over the world for more than a century. And in fact, it turns out that things like real housewives is more much more influential among Iranian women these women these
days. Then Sharia law, then the Quran is There's a westernization going on at a rapid Pace in places, like Iran, and that's largely, because people can watch our TV shows and listen to our music and wear our clothes.
So you just let the beauty the glory, The Liberation, the freedom, the pleasure of American popular culture, go out there and that will subvert any authoritarian ascetic regime instantly because a Muslim regime, a Communist Regime, a fascist regime, any kind of regime requires the discipline of its subjects of the citizens of the people living in that
place. It requires, most importantly that they subsume their individual interest and identity to what the interest and identity of the nation states. Well good ol American popular culture. Whether it was jazz or rock and roll or Kim Kardashian has always been about your individual pleasure and Fun and Freedom. Not about some collective obligation. So, that's why American pop culture has been the great anti-authoritarian solvent in modern world history. And that's the main theme of my
book. That's the argument of it. So years ago you correctly said shame is the health of the state and with this topic World War Two, it's always shame. Anytime you go to question. Oh, you're a Nazi sympathizer, what you think we should just appease Japan after they unprovoked kingly kill. So Soldiers at Pearl Harbor. Could you be any more evil? It's all of this guilt and
shame. What do you mean the in a at a meta level when you say shame is the health of the state, shame is what's used to keep people in order to discipline them to make them go to war. To make or at least support a war. Oh, you don't want it. You don't support the war in Ukraine your pro-putin, you're a bad person. And people clearly many of them think that and they feel bad and then they wear the blue and yellow flag and then they vote to send 40 billion dollars to Ukraine. Boom.
There you go. That's from shame. That's from shame. That's what all the blue and yellow flags are about, right. It's to shame. Those of us who don't want to do this, who are not interested in. Like we're like, wait, what? Where's Ukraine? What why is this important to us? How much money? Going and where is it going up? Yeah, that's those are bad people. Bad people ask questions about that. We know that Ukraine is a victim and Putin is the villain.
And so what's the point of talking about it? We just have to do it but it is. It is shame. Makes the world go around four states states, love shame. That's how they get people to put on uniforms and March, and fight and die. Unfortunately, there's a as more to it to, I mean, they they are also offered them belonging, you know, it's not just shaming, but you you're dying for. Or your family, you know, they they create they present the
nation-state as your family. There's no difference between you and United States. You are America. America, is you So that gives people has given people cause to die and fight, you know that they really believe in and I think that's actually genuine and authentic. I just would rather see less of it among people, right? I don't think it's imposed on them.
I think people really buy into that genuinely and I really want to be part of this thing, and many of them have been willing to kill and die for it. And I would just like to give them other alternatives. The course is World War 2 with the great blowback by dr. Thadeus Russell appears to be a guy for part live webinar. Monday's, June 6, 13 20th, and 27th link will be in the description below. Anything I missed on that. Know. So the main course description is Thaddeus Russell.com courses,
but also go to my patreon. If you become a patron at the fifty dollar level, you can take this course and all the courses for free. So that's it. Patreon.com slash on registered. Thank you everyone for watching Keith and I don't try it on anyone any libertarian Institute. Dr. Russell. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Keith. This is fun.