This discussion has taken a whole lot of interesting turns. A few comments...

The Axis Alliance - the Japanese did not do Hitler the favor of making their specific war plans known to him as far as I know. The smart thing for Hitler to do, the astute political move, would have been to say..."We agreed to help Japan if anyone attacked them, but no one has. They have not helped us fight Russia for the same reason. Therefore Germany is under no obligation to declare war on the USA and has no reason to seek such a conflict with the USA." His people would have accepted that with the greatest relief, I'm sure, and America probably would have taken another 6 months or a year to get around to declaring war on Germany...maybe longer. However, Hitler did not do the smart thing. He did the emotional thing.

Doug R - If a book has been withdrawn or banned...I would generally suspect that it is because it states a really unpleasant truth that certain very powerful players want to keep under wraps...rather than because it tells lies. Lies, after all, can usually be exposed as such without too much difficulty...but whaddya do about the truth???? Ban it.

It doesn't look like this particularly applies one way or the other to "Bankrolling The Enemy", however, as it does not appear to have been banned in the first place. I'm not even slightly surprised that some American banks and corporations helped finance the Nazis. Those guys follow the money trail wherever it leads them. There have been plenty of cases in history of big financial houses funding both sides of a war from beginning to end. Anyone want to sing "Masters of War" at this point?

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If I were to swing way back to the very beginning of this thread, I think it's vital for populations everywhere to lose faith in the whole process and mechanism of war. There has already been much progress in that regard in the more developed world. The two world wars helped to destroy the romantic mythology of war to a great extent in the minds of the ordinary public. The horror of WWI trench warfare, and WWII bombing of civilian centers really brought home to ordinary people that war is a miserable business.

And then the atomic bombs underlined it. When you live in constant fear of being fried in your own back yard at a moment's notice, it's hard to feel an excited sense of anticipation at the thought of war breaking out.

My grandparents were in Vienna, Austria, when the 1st World War began, and they said the streets were filled with crowds of jubilant people, in an ecstatic mood, throwing flowers at the marching soldier boys who were heading off to fight the Russians and Serbs. Everyone was sure it would all be over in 6 weeks. 4 years later they were scavenging the city for rats and potato peels to eat. There wasn't bloody much else to be had. Their romantic illusions were over, and their empire was falling to pieces.

The Germans and Japanese definitely learned their lesson by the end of WWII, and resolutely turned their backs on militarism, and it payed off bigtime for them in the next few decades.

During that same period, the USA and Russia, still very much attached to militarism, wasted collossal amounts of money and resources on the Cold War, which was so expensive that it finally bankrupted the Soviets. It also did a lot of harm to the whole world, and caused many smaller wars. Both sides will swear that it was the other guy who was to blame for that. (It's always the other guy.)

Perhaps the most seductive and misleading thing that can happen is for a country to win a really big war. It keeps the military mythology alive that much longer, and we all pay an ongoing price for that.

To provide for a viable defence force, by the way, costs a lot less than to prepare for attack. I have no objection to any country maintaining an adequate defence force. That's not what America and Russia were up to at all between 1945 and 1989. They were each, in their own fashion, seeking world domination.

Ask me who I (as a Canadian) want to be dominated by? Neither. I would prefer America, but my answer is still: neither. Ask a Gaul if he had wanted to be dominated by Rome or Carthage, and his answer would have been the same. Neither one of them.

What worries me now is countries like India, Pakistan, and China. They are playing with new military toys, and they may get around to using them one of these days. I hope not.

And the Middle East. That always worries me. Who will have the wisdom to break the cycle of vengeance? Who will have the courage to see the "other guy" as equal...or even as (GASP!) the same?

- LH