Greatest Generation = Typical Male Violence | Mickey Z

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia CommonsMickey Z. -- World News Trust

May 8, 2017

Perhaps the most common perception of the recent “Make America Great Again” motif involves the so-called “Greatest Generation.”

You know, the now-obsolete heroes who saved the world by winning the original “Good War”? More than just a good war, in fact, corporate media shill Tom Brokaw deemed WWII "the greatest war the world has seen." 

But did you know America the Great fought that war against racism with a segregated army? 

The Greatest (sic) Generation fought that war to end atrocities by participating in the shooting of surrendering soldiers, the starvation of POWs, the deliberate bombing of civilians, wiping out hospitals, strafing lifeboats, and (in the Pacific) boiling flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts back home. 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the leader of this legendary anti-racist, anti-atrocity force, signed Executive Order 9066, interning more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans without due process. Thus, in the name of taking on the architects of German prison camps, the sainted FDR became the architect of American prison camps. 

Before, during, and after the Good (sic) War, the American business class traded with the enemy. Among the U.S. corporations that invested in the Nazis were Ford, GE, Standard Oil, Texaco, ITT, IBM, and General Motors (top man William Knudsen called Nazi Germany "the miracle of the 20th century"). 

And while the U.S. regularly turned away Jewish refugees to face certain death in Europe, another group of refugees was welcomed with open arms after the war: fleeing Nazi war criminals who were used to help create the CIA and advance America's burgeoning nuclear program. 

U.S. General Curtis LeMay, commander of the 1945 fire bombing operations that killed 672,000 Japanese civilians, summed it up succinctly: "I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. Fortunately, we were on the winning side." 

The enduring Good (sic) War fable goes well beyond Memorial Day barbecues and flickering black-and-white movies on late night TV. WWII is when America was “great.” According to accepted history, it was an inevitable war forced upon a peaceful people thanks to a surprise attack by a sneaky enemy. This war, then and now, has been carefully and consciously sold to us as a life-and-death battle of pure good against pure evil. 

What we're taught about the Good (sic) War buttresses the following historical façade: After whipping the original axis of evil in a noble and popular war, the United States can now wave the banner of humanitarianism and intervene with impunity across the globe without their motivations being severely questioned… especially when every enemy is likened to Hitler. 

Reality: American lives weren't sacrificed in a holy war to avenge Pearl Harbor nor to end the Nazi Holocaust. WWII was about territory, power, control, money, imperialism, and most of all: large-scale patriarchal violence. 

The Second World War was just another example of necrophilic male supremacy in action.

VD more deadly than V-2
"At the core," writes U.S. apologist, Stephen E. Ambrose, "the American citizen soldiers (of WWII) knew the difference between right and wrong, and they didn't want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed.” 

To believe this and further perpetrate the "Good War" myth, the venerated Ambrose had to ignore, among many other things, the issue of AWOL American soldiers running wild in Europe.

"Paris was full of them," remarks historian Michael C.C. Adams. 

“Them” = valiant males from the “greatest generation.”

The United States compiled a list of "Continental AWOLs" that included as many as 50,000 men. Many of them turned to the black market. Journalist Chet Antonine has written of U.S. troops "looting the German city of Jena where the famous Zeiss company made the best cameras in the world."  

Adam adds: "Allied soldiers in Italy stole from the populace and the government, and once stole a trainload of sugar, complete with the engine.”

V.S. Pritchett, in the April 7, 1945 New Statesman and Nation, wrote about male GIs stealing cameras, motorbikes, wine glasses, and books. In the New York Herald Tribune, the legendary John Steinbeck reported on U.S. soldiers arrested for selling stolen watches. In October 1945 alone, “our boys” sent home $5,470,777 more than they were paid. 

One illegal form of currency for GIs -- AWOL or otherwise -- was whiskey. As alcohol dependency rose, desperate soldiers resorted to such homegrown brews as Aqua Velva and grapefruit juice or medical alcohol blended with torpedo fluid. 

Of course, the criminality wasn't limited to moonshine. Throughout the European theater of operations, the brave and noble Allied soldiers did their best to prey on females of all ages.

"In a ruined world where a pack of cigarettes sold for $100 American, GIs were millionaires," explains Antonine. "A candy bar bought sex from nearly any starving German girl." 

Surely, what Antonine meant to write was: “As we’ve come to expect, male predators exploited the dire conditions and their privilege to rape women and girls with impunity.”

Adams was a little more forthcoming: "Seventy-five percent of GIs overseas, whether married or not, admitted to having intercourse. Unchanneled sexual need produced rape, occasionally even murder. Away from home, where nobody knew them, some GIs forced themselves on women." 

(As if men don’t force themselves on women in places where everyone knows them.)

In northern Europe, venereal disease (VD) caused more U.S. casualties than the German V-2 rocket. In France, the VD rate rose 600 percent after the liberation of Paris.

Selective outrage
And where did those 50,000 AWOL GIs go after doing their part to in such a good war? Nearly 3,000 were court-martialed and one was executed, Private Eddie Slovik of G Company, 109th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division. 

The Detroit native deserted in August 1944, surrendered in October of that same year, and was put on trial a month later. General Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the execution order of Dec. 23, 1944, and Slovik faced a 12-man firing squad at St. Marie aux Mines in eastern France shortly thereafter. None of the 11 bullets (one is always a blank) struck the intended target (Slovik's heart) and it was a full three minutes before he died. Outrage spread quickly and there were no further executions.

I could find no record of “outrage” about the rapes and murders of women and girls.

Name the problem
Niall Ferguson writes in the Times of London that, during the last days of the Good (sic) War, one member of the Greatest (sic) Generation used his authority as a U.S. staff sergeant to anoint himself absolute lord of the German town of Bensheim during those black market days: future Nobel Peace Prize winner, Henry Kissinger.

After evicting the owners from their villa, Kissinger anointed himself “Mr. Henry” and moved in with his German girlfriend, maid, housekeeper, and secretary and began to throw fancy parties.

These extravagant parties were not the norm in Bensheim, an area where the average German made due on a daily food intake of fewer than 850 calories; that's less food than was given to prisoners at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Reminder: In the world of phallocentric hierarchies, some purveyors of male pattern violence are ranked higher than others. 

“The problem after war is with the victor” wrote revolutionary pacifist A.J. Muste. “He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?”

Precisely how and when such a lesson will be taught is not known, but the past seven decades have proven that without such a lesson, there will be many more male wars and many more male lies told to obscure the truth about them. 

Much-needed first step: NAME THE PROBLEM.

Mickey Z. is the founder of Helping Homeless Women - NYC, offering direct relief to women on the streets of New York City. To help him grow this project, CLICK HERE and make a donation right now. And please spread the word!

Greatest Generation = Typical Male Violence | by Mickey Z is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://worldnewstrust.com/greatest-generation-typical-male-violence-mickey-z.