Two weeks ago at The Free Press (TFP), Rebeccah L. Heinrichs of the Hudson Institute wrote a 3,000-word article critiquing conservative disapproval of President Donald Trump’s bombing of Iran last month. Heinrichs linked this conservative denunciation of Trump’s recent military escapade to more comprehensive criticism on the right of America’s post-World War II foreign policy, generally, and America’s involvement in World War II, specifically.
Within the last year, podcasters Tucker Carlson, Darryl Cooper, and Dave Smith—all with at least tangential ties to the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement—have questioned the conventional narrative surrounding America’s entrance and participation in World War II and the eighty year postwar international order which ensued.
In her TFP essay, Heinrichs labels this recent conservative questioning of America’s role in World War II as the 1939 Project, comparing it to the 1619 Project of The New York Times, which places slavery at the center of America’s Founding.
In defining the 1939 Project, Heinrichs notes that “the year 1939 is meant to replace the national identity marked by 1945, the year the United States, with its allies, liberated Europe from Nazi tyranny, dropped the atomic bombs to end Japanese imperialism, ended the war, stopped the genocide of the Jewish people, and saved the free world.”
Heinrichs contrasts the views of Carlson, Cooper, and Smith—who she labels adherents of the 1939 Project—to scholars such as herself who believe that American and British participation in World War II is beyond reproach. These academics—who have the overwhelming majority opinion among today’s international relations higher education programs—can be categorized as advocates of the 1945 Project. These 1945 Project intellectuals also defend, in varying degrees, the postwar international order.
Contrary to what the 1945 Project holds, Carlson, Cooper, and Smith are morally correct to question both American involvement in World War II as well as the highly interventionist U.S. foreign policy that the war engendered. Although the United States is the most existentially secure nation in world history, it spends more on defense than the next nine countries combined.
Heinrichs argues that today’s 1939 Project supporters “need to retcon the past in order to loosen the affection and support Americans feel for and have for our allies in Europe and Israel.” But it is the adherents of the 1945 Project like Heinrichs who have successfully retconned the past in order to create their benign narrative of the post-World War II international order. In fact, there have been almost no major accomplishments in U.S. foreign policy in the eighty years since World War II.
If the Korean War was at best a draw, the United States definitely lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The Gulf War and later the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent twenty years of military involvement ended with a Shi’ite-controlled government aligned with Iran, which was the opposite of Washington’s goal in overthrowing Saddam Hussein. As of 2021, the Global War on Terror has cost between 905,000-940,000 civilian and military lives and $8 trillion, according to Brown University’s Cost of War project.
Even if it’s almost impossible to find any major achievements in U.S. foreign policy over the last eighty years, wasn’t American and British involvement in World War II itself a certified success? Didn’t American and British participation in World War II win the war? Although the historical evidence suggests otherwise, this hasn’t stopped 1945 Project scholars like Heinrichs from greatly embellishing the role of the United States and Great Britain in winning the war, saving the “Free World,” and ending the Nazi Holocaust.
The 1945 Project’s defense of the U.S. and Britain’s entry and involvement in World War II is based on six primary assumptions:
- World War II was a war of necessity—not a war of choice—for the United States and Great Britain.
- The United States and Great Britain, not the Soviet Union, contributed the most to the defeat of Nazi Germany.
- The United States and Great Britain, not the Nationalist Chinese and the Chinese Communists, contributed the most to the defeat of Imperial Japan.
- In World War II, the “Free World” defeated German Nazism, Italian fascism, and Japanese Imperialism.
- The two atomic bombs dropped on Japan by the United States in early August 1945 led Japan to surrender.
- The United States and Great Britain entered the war in part to end the Nazi Holocaust of Europe’s Jews.
All six of these premises are false. First, for both Britain and the U.S., World War II was a war of choice, not of necessity. Both countries could have avoided entering the war. Had Britain and France not given war guarantees to Poland, Greece, and Romania in the spring of 1939, they would not have been obligated to declare war on Germany after its invasion of Poland that September. In fact, Britain and France’s war guarantee to Poland had the completely unintended consequence of leading to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, a non-aggression treaty between two natural enemies: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. And contrary to the conventional wisdom, Adolf Hitler presented at least two serious peace offers to Britain: one in October 1939; the other in July 1940. Great Britain turned down both German peace proposals.
And from 1940-1941, had the United States not embargoed steel and oil to Japan, frozen Japanese assets in American banks, and moved its Pacific Fleet from California to Hawaii, the U.S. almost certainly would not have been attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Also, contrary to popular knowledge, before it attacked Pearl Harbor, Japan offered two bona fide peace agreements to Washington: Proposal A on November 6, 1941 and Proposal B on November 20, 1941. The first involved a partial withdrawal of Japanese forces from China; the second proposed that Japan would withdraw its forces from Vietnam in exchange for the U.S. ending its military support of the Chinese Nationalist forces. Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned down both proposals, creating some context for Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7.
Second, Nazi Germany was primarily defeated by the Soviet Union, not the United States or Great Britain. About 80% of the German Wehrmacht’s casualties in World War II were inflicted by Moscow. The U.S. and Britain won major victories in North Africa, Italy, France, and the Low Countries, but during these military campaigns, the majority of Germany’s Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe units were on the Eastern Front, arrayed against the Red Army.
Third, Imperial Japan was primarily defeated by China, not the United States or Great Britain. The vast majority of Japan’s 2.1 million military casualties occurred in China, not in the Philippines, Malaya/Singapore, Burma, or the Pacific Island chains, where the Americans and British were militarily engaged. Additionally, Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack failed completely in its goal to force the U.S. to immediately sue for peace and end its economic war against Japan. In the long naval war of attrition which ensued, the U.S. economy produced almost six times as much naval tonnage as Japan’s. The Imperial Japanese Navy couldn’t replace its heavy losses. Also, China’s total military and civilian deaths from the war, about twenty million persons, were about 4% of its total population. On the other hand, the U.S. and Britain each lost less than 1% of their populations. Consequently, China paid a far higher price in defeating Japan than did the western powers.
Fourth, although believers in the 1945 Project like Heinrichs argue that the “Free World,” led by the United States and Great Britain, defeated Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan in World War II, the evidence above suggests that German Nazism was defeated predominantly by the Soviet Union, and Imperial Japan was defeated principally by the Nationalist Chinese and Chinese Communists. The “Free World” only helped one set of totalitarians defeat another set of totalitarians.
Fifth, Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945 primarily because of the Soviet Union’s entrance into the Pacific War on August 8, and secondarily because of the United States’ atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9. The Soviets invaded Manchuria on August 8, made steady progress against the once-elite Japanese Kwantung Army, and had plans to invade Japan by the end of August. The Soviet invasion took Japan by surprise and eliminated the Japanese hope that the Soviet Union could help broker a peace agreement between Japan and the U.S. that would be more favorable than unconditional surrender. Consequently, because of the Soviet invasion, the United States didn’t need to drop either atomic bomb and would not have needed to invade Japan in late 1945 as popularly speculated. The Soviets could have begun an invasion of Japan as early as late August 1945.
Sixth, the Nazi Holocaust of Europe’s Jews had little to nothing to do with why the United States and Great Britain entered World War II. If the American and British governments had cared about European refugees from Nazism generally, and Jewish refugees specifically, they would have significantly increased their immigration quotas from Germany, Austria, and Nazi-occupied countries. Neither nation did. From 1933-1939, Britain allowed in only 80,000 Jews from the continent and after the war began in September 1939, Britain ended all immigration of Jews from Nazi-controlled countries. And many of these 80,000 Jews were issued transit visas (good for only one month) or were interned as “enemy aliens.” Although at the time it controlled Mandatory Palestine, Britain did not allow any European Jewish refugees to emigrate to the Middle East during World War II.
In the United States, between 1933 and 1945, only 125,000 Jewish refugees were allowed in. Most of those years, waiting lists numbered ten times the amount of people granted immigration visas. Although six million European Jews died in the Holocaust, millions could have been saved if the U.S. and Britain had significantly increased their immigration quotas from Europe, even if both nations had stayed out of World War II.
The historical evidence suggests that 1945 Project scholars like Heinrichs are wrong about each of their assumptions concerning the participation of Britain and the U.S. in World War II.
And there were enormous costs of the war to both countries in blood and treasure and in loss of freedoms. These costs are catalogued in part both in Ludwig von Mises’ Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War and in Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. Both books were published in 1944, toward the end of the war.
To finance the war effort, Britain borrowed heavily, mostly from the United States, and ended World War II with a national debt that exceeded 200% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). They didn’t pay off their last war loan to the U.S. until December 2006.
The United States ended World War II with a national debt of 106% of its GDP. Also, the war saw the domesitc imposition of wage-and-price controls in the United States, third-party pay for health care, and the first peacetime draft in American history, which began in early 1941, almost a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. During the war, ten million American males were drafted.
Consequently, Tucker Carlson, Daryl Cooper, and Dave Smith are on solid ground in questioning the morality of the current U.S.-led, international order and in recognizing the role that American and British participation in World War II had in creating it. It is 1945 Project scholars like Heinrichs who should be forced to morally defend the largest war in history and the last eighty years of U.S. foreign policy.
