30-05-2013, 09:56 PM
I wonder if people here have opinions or thoughts on a phenomenon that has intrigued me of late, namely the Great Conjuring Trick played by the ruling elites on the people of the West at the end of the Second World War. Picture the scene. Many men and women in Britain in 1945 knew personally soldiers who had been tortured by the Japanese or suffered dreadful privation at their hands. This inspired a hatred so deep and visceral that I still know people today who haven't forgiven. The Germans were perhaps not so viscerally hated but everyone had seen the Pathe newsreels of the Concentration camps, and, of course, had witnessed the Blitz. Set alongside these two nations were the Russians, the brave Ivans who fought like lions to defeat the Nazi war machine and suffered terrible losses in the process. They were the ones who fought alongside the Allies, shoulder to shoulder. So that was the scenario. And then what happened? Somehow the shadowy cabal told the peoples of the West that the Ivans were now our enemies and our new friends were the Japanese and Germans whose shattered economies it was now our duty to rebuild. How on earth did they pull that off? Didn't anyone express bafflement? It seems to me from this historical vantage point that the trick had been completed by the beginning of the 50s. And no one, as far as I'm aware, ever talks about it. I first became aware of this when reading Fletcher Prouty's account of standing at the dockside in Okinawa in 1945 when a huge consignment of War materiel from the U.S. was being returned as no longer needed. But, according to Prouty, it wasn't being returned to sender, it was being shipped to a place most people hadn't even heard of, Vietnam. The point being that the Cold War was being manufactured even before the Second World War had ended. Anyone have any thoughts on this, or recommendations for further reading? My old school history books are strangely silent on this topic.