ZGram - June 15, 2004 - "American-British landing in Normandy, France: Revising History"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

June 15, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Like most people in America, I would assume, I bought into the idea 
that the 60th anniversaray of D-Day was somehow a turning point for 
Germany in World War II.  I learned something from the interview 
below and pass it on to you - I found it interesting:

[START]

An interview with Mark Weber / Director of the Institute for Historical Review

by Kevin Alfred Strom
American Dissident Voices broadcast of June 12, 2004
listen to the broadcast (mp3)

THE MYTHS that helped propel America on her D-Day crusade are in 
large part the same myths that sustained and elected Ronald Reagan. 
They are myths which appeal to many good White Americans: the myth 
that we still possess freedom and independence, that there has been a 
continuity of our government with that of the founding fathers, and 
that supporting the current regime is synonymous with patriotism, 
among others. But, appealing as they are, belief in these myths is 
leading directly to the death of America and our civilization itself. 
Will the myths that he embodied be laid to rest with Ronald Reagan, 
or will Americans continue to believe in the trappings and symbols of 
a long-lost America?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kevin Alfred Strom: This week marks two milestones in American 
history: the 60th anniversary of D-Day and the death of Ronald 
Reagan. With us to discuss these issues today is one of the most 
incisive historical minds our nation has produced, the courageous 
researcher, scholar, and publisher, the Director of the Institute for 
Historical Review, Mr. Mark Weber. Welcome, Mark.

Mark Weber: Thank you very much, Kevin. That's very generous. It's a 
pleasure being on the show again.

KAS: Mark, not far from where I sit, in Bedford, Virginia, is the 
National D-Day Memorial, where wreath-laying ceremonies took place a 
few days ago commemorating the 60th anniversary of D-Day. Americans 
of the World War II generation, and their children, remember that 
day, I think, as a milestone in the fight to preserve American 
freedom. And some of my younger listeners may only have a vague idea 
of what it was all about. What was D-Day, Mark -- and was it a 
milestone in history as it's presented?

MW: D-Day, of course, was the American-British landing in Normandy, 
France, on June 6th, 1944. As a purely historical event it was 
important because it was the largest naval operation in history. But 
it's presented in our media -- and quite a lot in just the last few 
days -- as a kind of central turning point of World War II. There's a 
natural tendency among everyone and every society to project the 
present back onto the past, and that's nowhere more evident than in 
how we look at D-Day, because it was the very important great 
military operation by the United States in the Second World War in 
Europe. But the way that landing is presented is very misleading.

For one thing, the D-Day invasion did not decisively change the 
outcome of the Second World War. Now I know that sounds incredible, 
given all that we've heard about that, but the D-Day landing took 
place less than a year before the end of the war in Europe. The war 
ended in Europe in May, 1945; the D-Day landing was in June, 1944. 
The decisive battles of the Second World War had already been fought, 
on the Eastern Front. And in the emphasis on D-Day is a kind of 
playing down of the much more important military role that the Soviet 
forces played in World War II. Very few people realize that 80% -- 
four fifths -- of the German forces in World War II were defeated not 
on the Western Front, but on the Eastern Front by the Soviet forces. 
Germany's decisive battles had already been fought -- and lost -- on 
the Eastern Front, such as in Stalingrad, which ended in early 1943. 
And then the final major German offensive of the Second World War was 
the Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle in history, about which 
we hear very little in America; and that was in the summer of 1943. 
So when the American, British, and Canadian forces landed on Normandy 
in June 1944, German forces were already largely destroyed. And 
Germany was fighting a very, very desperate defensive war. That's 
why, when the American forces landed on D-Day, I think there were 
only two German airplanes that could take to the air to fight off the 
landing armada. The German Air Force was very, very hard-pressed, 
what was left of it, to even defend the German homeland, which was 
under intense Allied bombardment from the air at that time, and of 
course on the Eastern Front.

So the battle of D-Day is important in our media, in large measure, 
because it comports with a kind of American-centric view of the 
Second World War. But in fact the role of the Soviet Union is one 
that many Americans, and especially American leaders, would like to 
forget.

And that brings us to Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan is remembered, in 
terms of foreign policy achievements, largely as a man who opposed 
Communism. But during the Second World War, the most important 
American ally in that conflict was in fact the Soviet Union. To put 
it another way, no country did more to defend the Soviet Union, to 
help the Soviet Union, than did the United States during World War 
II. And Ronald Reagan spent World War II as a propagandist for the 
American military. That is, in his actual deeds as a man working in 
Hollywood, he helped the American war effort which was at that time 
in alliance and concert with the Soviet Union.

But that's forgotten a lot today because we want to uphold, and 
American leaders want to uphold, this kind of myth that one the one 
side of the Second World War were the 'bad guys,' the tyrants -- that 
is, the Germans and the Japanese; and that on the other side, the 
Allied side, were the 'good guys.' But that in fact is not only 
simplistic, it's just simply wrong. During the Second World War, the 
most tyrannical regime in the world at that time -- the Soviet Union 
-- was on the Allied side. And the most imperialistic regime in the 
world at that time -- that is, the British Empire -- was also on the 
Allied side in that conflict. While looking at history in simplistic 
terms of 'good guys' and 'bad guys' may make people feel good, and it 
comports with how we like to have our motion pictures end and our 
books and so forth, it doesn't correspond with reality in real 
historical terms.

KAS: The legacy of D-Day, in broad terms, is the legacy of the Second 
World War. That's how we see it from our media-saturated, from our -- 
as you say -- American-centric view. Maybe D-Day wasn't a watershed 
in the conduct of the war, but that war was a watershed in 
diminishing traditional Americans' power over our own country, in 
increasing globalism, and in increasing Jewish power. And it was a 
watershed in breaking down the old order in Europe, destroying not 
only German power, but French and British power as well. And it 
brought about the complete collapse of Eastern Europe, which was 
swallowed up by Communism for almost half a century.

MW: Right. There are several points to be made in that regard, I 
think. And it again, I think, relates to Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan 
is remembered as the great American conservative president. But his 
idea of conservatism was really just to present the best view of 
American history during the Second World War.

The greatest and most decisive conflict of the twentieth century was 
the Second World War, in which the United States fought openly for a 
'New World Order' in which the United States and the Soviet Union, 
above all, would rule the entire world. When Roosevelt, Churchill, 
and Stalin met at Teheran, Iran in 1943, and then at Yalta in 1945, 
the three men did what they accused the Axis leaders of wanting to 
do: That is, they decided the fate of the entire planet. And, in 
that, the United States regarded the Soviet Union as not only a 
worthy ally, but a trustworthy ally, an ally with which Roosevelt and 
the United States were willing and even eager to cooperate in ruling 
the entire world.

You know, the wrongness of the simplistic view of how the Second 
World War was fought is pointed up in the tragedy of Poland. In 1939, 
Britain and France declared war on Germany because Germany had 
attacked Poland. And, supposedly, British and French concern for the 
sovereignty of Poland was the reason for the declarations of war 
against Germany. (By the way, this was a war that Germany and Hitler 
wanted at all costs to avoid. They didn't want war with Britain and 
France.) At the end of that terrible conflict, six years later, in 
1945, Poland was no more free than it was in 1939. It was swallowed 
up and brutally occupied by the Soviet Union. So the principles that 
Britain and France proclaimed when they declared war on Germany in 
1939 -- and which America proclaimed in fighting the Second World War 
-- were betrayed by the Allied leaders in how they actually conducted 
the war. They not only permitted but they actively cooperated with 
the Soviet Union in expanding its tyranny over half of Europe -- 
including Poland, which was the first victim of the Second World War.

KAS: How does Jewish power fit into all of that?

MW: Ronald Reagan, throughout his presidency, was very pro-Israel and 
very pro-Jewish. He's not alone, of course. Every American president 
since Harry Truman has been committed to supporting the state of 
Israel and its policies. Now fortunately for Reagan, there was no 
great war in the Middle East as there was in 1967 or 1973. And, also 
fortunately for Reagan's legacy, there was no conflict like the 
current situation in Iraq. Nevertheless, Ronald Reagan was entirely 
subordinate to and supportive of Israel and its policies, even though 
this meant supporting Israel in actions which were violations not 
only of the principles that we as Americans try to uphold, but even 
of American law.

Specifically, in 1982, when Reagan was President, Israel invaded 
Lebanon. It invaded Lebanon on the deceitful basis of a pretext that 
the Israeli ambassador in London had been shot by a member of the 
PLO. In fact, the person who shot the Israeli ambassador in London 
was not even with the PLO. But on the basis of that pretext, Israel 
invaded Lebanon, costing thousands of lives and creating hundreds of 
thousands of refugees. Enormous destruction was the result. And 
Ronald Reagan supported Israel in this.

One of the speakers several years ago at an IHR conference was US 
Congressman Pete McCloskey. And he spoke out at the time on the floor 
of the House about Israel's violation even of American law in that 
conflict. But Ronald Reagan put America's 'special relationship' with 
Israel above even his oath as President to uphold American law. This 
was pointed up in the case of that conflict, in which America helped 
and cooperated with Israel in this completely illegal, horrible, 
destructive invasion of Lebanon.

And this is a parallel with the present. In the aftermath of the 
Lebanese fiasco, the United States sent military troops to Lebanon. 
And Reagan made a big issue at the time about 'staying the course' 
and how we were 'going to have troops there until Lebanon was a free 
and democratic country,' and how this was part of a big campaign to 
bring 'democracy' and 'stability' to that part of the world -- 
pre-echoes of exactly the same kind of rhetoric we've heard from the 
White House during the past year with regard to the war in Iraq.

But in 1983, when a Marine barracks was blown up, and 240 some 
American Marines were killed, Reagan cut his losses, abandoned all 
his rhetoric, and just simply pulled the American troops out. For all 
his rhetoric, Reagan was a very pragmatic man. He was not one to let 
principles stand in the way of political expediency. And he was 
willing to cut his losses when things went wrong or things went bad. 
And if he was President, and had engaged in a fiasco like the one 
we're dealing with now in Iraq, he would have long ago cut his losses 
and pulled out, and saved face in the best possible way -- whereas 
George W. Bush seems incapable emotionally of admitting a mistake.

To go back to the legacy of D-Day: Especially for Americans, it is 
simply the legacy of World War II. And it wasn't simply a defeat for 
Germany in World War II; it was, in a sense, the defeat of Europe -- 
because the great victorious powers of the Second World War were the 
Soviet Union and the United States, which together imposed a hegemony 
and occupation over Europe. And the European homeland, the European 
heart, ceased to have any independent political power or even 
cultural vitality of its own, and was subordinate to the United 
States in the West and the Soviet Union in the East.

Now the legacy of that whole period is receding into the past, 
because the Soviet Union has disappeared as a power and a force -- 
but the cultural and intellectual legacy persists, because Europeans 
have been browbeaten by decades of propaganda.

The Second World War was the triumph in 1945 of the principles of 
egalitarianism and universalism -- and those principles are 
fundamentally at odds with any kind of patriotic or conservative 
principles.

And that's part of the paradox or contradiction of the Reagan legacy. 
He's remembered as a conservative -- but what did he actually 
conserve?

KAS: Good question.

MW: What did he actually conserve? This morning on the radio, in a 
tribute to Ronald Reagan, one commentator said "He was a president 
who made us feel good about ourselves." Well, that's true. But that's 
about all he did. He made us feel good.

But in terms of conserving or preserving anything of real substance, 
Ronald Reagan presided over America's forward advance -- or, should I 
say, backward advance -- in the same direction she had been going 
since the 1940s and has been going ever since. When Ronald Reagan was 
elected, many conservatives thought that Reagan was going to make 
good on his rhetoric and dismantle, for example, the unconstitutional 
portions of the federal government such as the Department of 
Education, which had no constitutional validity. There's nothing in 
the Constitution to permit the federal government to be involved in 
education.

KAS: Yes, I can remember all of that. In 1980, Mark, it was almost a 
sense of euphoria -- he was going to reclaim America, he was going to 
remake America back into the Old America that people felt had been 
betrayed and abandoned.

MW: Exactly. But, to the amazement of many of his conservative 
followers, he did none of that. He didn't dismantle the federal 
government; he expanded it. The irony is that his actual policies 
were in contradiction to his supposed principles as a conservative 
and to his rhetoric. But most Americans didn't really care. The hard 
core of his supporters, those patriotic Americans, were satisfied 
with the mere trappings and symbols and mythology of America rather 
than the reality.

KAS: We've seen that in the celebrations of his life that we've 
witnessed since he died. For many people, I think he still embodies 
the Old America -- the America he helped destroy while he was paying 
lip service to it. Do you think that, now that he's gone, Americans 
are going to wake up from their illusion that we've really had a 
continuity of government?

MW: Whatever the harmful effects of his policies, it's hard to 
dislike Reagan, because he was such an affable guy. Apparently, in 
his private life, he was kind, courteous to people, and wasn't 
deceitful; that is, really, he believed the things that he said.

What Americans are mourning, I think, this week with the death of 
Ronald Reagan is not merely a man, but an America that's past and 
which he personified. The America that Ronald Reagan believed in, 
that he came out of, is an America that's gone. It's an America of 
Norman Rockwell paintings. It's an America of 'Leave it to Beaver' 
television. It's an America of 'It's a Wonderful Life.' It's an 
America that really existed to some degree before the Second World 
War, up until the 1940s or 50s. But it's an America that just doesn't 
exist any more. The Los Angeles that Ronald Reagan lived in in the 
1940s or 50s -- that Los Angeles is gone forever. California itself 
is changing dramatically. And what many Americans are mourning with 
his passing, I think, is that America that's gone.

Now will Americans wake up? I think a number of commentators have 
made this point: the President that we now have, who also calls 
himself a conservative, isn't able to pull it off the way that Ronald 
Reagan could, not merely because he's not as smooth as Ronald Reagan, 
but because the reality is now harder and harder to avoid -- the 
reality that the America that so many Americans nostalgically look 
back upon is really gone.

Having said that, though, I think that the majority of George Bush's 
hardcore supporters are still impressed by -- and loyal to -- the 
mythology or the trappings of America, which are very different from 
the reality.

KAS: I remember Ronald Reagan signing the 'Martin Luther King' 
holiday bill. I remember his unkept promises to roll back the 
intrusive judicial and other federal power over us. I remember his 
giving an award to Elie Wiesel; his continuation -- and expansion -- 
of the anti-European-American policies of all the previous 
administrations going back to the Roosevelt administration. It's hard 
not to see Reagan, from my point of view, as man who -- perhaps -- 
did believe in the Old America, but who just wasn't quite bright 
enough to understand that his employers, those who 'handled' him, who 
organized his campaigns, who were behind him all the time, were 
destroying that Old America.

MW: Ronald Reagan personifies that contradiction, that paradox -- the 
belief that, somehow, the Old America that he believed in and was 
part of could be kept in place and preserved while at the same time 
supporting and promoting policies that inevitably must destroy that 
very America. That's the tragedy of it all -- presuming he was 
sincere.

I saw Ronald Reagan speak in person only once, and that was at a 
large gathering of 'Holocaust survivors,' of all places, in 
Washington, DC. And, as he usually was, he was very eloquent on that 
occasion. But what he did was give a tremendous boost during his 
administration to Jewish power, a power that was working and has been 
working feverishly to tear down and corrode the very America that 
Ronald Reagan loved and represented. As you say: Was he stupid? -- or 
just ignorant, or whatever?

I think it's part of the mythology of America that people of whatever 
background can come to this country and through some kind of magic 
can be made into part of the America of motion pictures and Norman 
Rockwell paintings.

KAS: Well, some ethnicities melt better than othersŠ.

MW: Well, of course (laughter). No group -- no ethnic group, no 
religious group -- in America is so determined to preserve and hold 
onto its identity and further the interests of its own group as are 
Jews. No group is as self-aware, as focused, as determined as are 
Jews in America. And that's not surprising, because Jews have been 
focused, determined, and have had a very high sense of purpose and 
identity for centuries. In fact, if Jews didn't have such a very very 
strong sense of self -- of peoplehood -- they would have long ago 
disappeared as a people, under the pressures of assimilation and so 
forth. In America, as in every other country where Jews have settled 
in large numbers, they persist in -- and insist on -- furthering 
their own interests, even as those interests clash and compete with 
the interests of the people among whom they live, here in this 
country and elsewhere.

KAS: Well, if Ronald Reagan understood that about his employers, then 
he was a much more subtle person than I took him to be. I tend to 
think that he was a man with a magnetic personality but a nearly 
empty mind. That made him a perfect 'leader'-type for those who 
surrounded him. After all, did he not take Jewish direction in 
Hollywood, and in his radio network jobs; and all through his career 
as a politician, was he not surrounded by powerful Jews?

MW: Margaret Thatcher, who of course is going to be here in the 
United States for the Reagan funeral, and who was an ally of Ronald 
Reagan when she was Prime Minister of Britain, said privately on one 
occasion that he was a great guy, but there was very little between 
his ears. I don't think Reagan did understand these larger things. 
But what drove him, what kept him going, was a kind of mythology 
about America. And it's a kind of attractive mythology. In life, I 
think that most people -- certainly most people in any kind of 
electorate or collective -- prefer a pleasant lie to an unpleasant 
truth. And Ronald Reagan was a master at telling people the pleasant 
untruth that they wanted to hear.

KAS: You at the Institute are trying in some sense to give people 
enough perspective to see some of those dangers ahead. Can you tell 
us what lesson you'd like to leave my listeners with on these 
subjects?

MW: The best guide to the future is an understanding of the past. And 
that means not just American history, but world history. This is very 
difficult here in the United States, in many ways, because this is a 
country in which there's a kind of national mythology that America is 
an exception from history. The idea that we can be an exception from 
history is childish. And it's only through an understanding of 
history, of the past, that we can have a real understanding of our 
present plight and think wisely and intelligently about the future.

The power of historical consciousness is an immensely important one. 
It's one of the reasons Jews are as successful as they are. In fact, 
their entire religion underscores and emphasizes their sense of 
history -- of Jewish peoplehood. It's a distorted, kind of 
mythologized history -- but nonetheless, it's a sense of history.

Americans, as a people, have a great deal of difficulty with that, 
because we are encouraged in this country to think of ourselves as 
individuals. And people who think of themselves as individuals are 
not going to think much about history, because as individuals, we 
simply die. A historical consciousness also carries with it an 
awareness of the continuity of history -- that we are part of 
something larger than ourselves. That's one of the reasons history is 
so important, and why the work of the IHR http://www.ihr.org is so 
important. Fostering historical awareness and historical 
consciousness is a task of very very high importance.

KAS: Mark, I want to thank you for the work you're doing for Ernst 
Zundel http://www.zundelsite.org, of course; I also want to thank you 
for what is always a bracing intellectual adventure being on the show 
and talking with me; and I want to thank you for the work you're 
doing to bring the truth to light through the Institute for 
Historical Review.

MW: Thank you very much, Kevin, and it's always a pleasure to be on 
your show and I admire your work as well.

KAS: Thank you.

Source: National Alliance

[END]