War and Myth IV

Twentieth Century history, uniquely for Americans, is shrouded in myth. (Europeans and Asians tend to be more realistic.) Walk into an American Legion bar on a Saturday night and try to disabuse a former GI of his most precious myths—and you take your life in your hands.
However, working exclusively from myths is a lousy way to make foreign policy. We’ve done it for decades—and our track record is getting to be about as good as General Motor’s over the same period of time.
We’ve gone from absolute market dominance (in 1945—when we controlled over half the world’s resources and surface) to a point where militarily, politically and economically the prospect of future bankruptcy is no longer unthinkable.
Blinding ourselves with our own myths has been part of the reason. We began the century with the myth that we entered World War I to save democracy and end war. Phooey.
The ultimate reality of the first half of the Twentieth Century was summed up by German Chancellor von Bismarck in the 1880s. Britain and America, he said, speak the same language. Bitter as our rivalry with England always was, we fundamentally had the same interests. Two points:
In 1820, the British fleet defended us from the “Holy Alliance” (Spain, Russia, France and Prussia) who planned to invade us and destroy the democracy they regarded as a disease. In 1898, when we grabbed Manila Bay, the British navy swung into line and protected us from the German fleet that was on its way to take over the Philippines.
American and British mutual interests would dominate the entire Twentieth Century. After World War II, we stepped in and took over the Cold War Britain had been waging against Russia since 1815. Seamlessly—our troops for British troops, our ships for British ships. Look at the 19th Century lines; look at the 20th Century lines. Just a different uniform.
Let’s go back to World War I. We hold a lot of mini-myths about that war—the Germans did NOT sink the Lusitania, willy-nilly, just for the joy of killing American civilians. It was a British munitions ship with passengers loaded on top as human shields.
The German consulate published warnings in American papers that it would be fired upon as any other munitions ship. The British, on the other hand, worked feverishly to load the boat with American passengers for shock value. It worked. The myth goes on.
A relevant figure—by 1917, the Allies were in hock to us for over three billion dollars. That was serious money in those days, more than our whole national debt had been seven years earlier. If the Allies lost we were in big trouble.
The Central Powers (Germany, Austria and Turkey) only owed us thirty million. Figure out which we could afford to lose more. At the end of the war, we jumped in—sent two million men to Europe, launched the final offensive that broke the back of the exhausted German army, and “won” the war.
We did not save democracy; we did not end war. In fact, with our ignorant meddling at Versailles, we helped create all the conditions that led to the next big war. Who, us?
At the end we were the only uninjured modern economy in the world; everyone owed us money—and our horrifying mismanagement of our creditor status led to an international collapse of the planetary economy in the 1920s.
We are not taught to look at the Great Depression (and the rise of both Communism and Nazism) in that light. Nor are we taught to look at our relations with Japan outside of the realm of myth.
Next time let’s take a look at the myths surrounding the last “Good War”, World War II.