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'Hell on Earth'
Last uploaded : Sunday 25th Jun 2017 at 20:30
Contributed by : Carol Gould

 

The USA was not the villain in World War II
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In June I attended a screening at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts of the new Goldcrest documentary, 'Hell on Earth,' funded by National Geographic. It is an excellent film about the Syrian civil war. One small segment, however, got my blood boiling. The narrator -- oddly enough American - said all nations engage in murder and showed the US bombing of Japan, the Allied bombing of Germany and American napalming of Vietnam. To my utter disbelief he used the US-British example as evidence of 'actions all have consequences.'

After the screening I confronted the British producer about this. I said 'Are you engaging in revisionist history? How can you omit the 50 million who died in World War 2 including 20 million Russians at the hands of the Nazis, 6 million Jews and more in Nazi concentration cams, civilians across Europe and Japanese atrocities?' To my astonishment he said 'Dresden....' and before he could finish I shouted 'AND WHAT ABOUT COVENTRY? HULL? The misery of the Blitz across Britain?' He seemed to have no answer.

The audience was young and I lamented the fact that millions across the globe seeing this film will be made to think - with funding from of all things usually patriotic National Geographic! - that Britain and the US are to blame for world violence? Unbelievable.

I felt it my duty as a journalist and historian to put into perspective for younger readers the disgraceful National Geographic and Goldcrest error. There is no way, by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, that the United States and Great Britain ‘caused consequences for the world ‘ by bombing Germany and Japan near the end of World War 2. For years Britain had suffered carnage during the relentless bombing of its cities by the Luftwaffe. (After World War 1 pilots were not allowed to learn to fly combat aircraft but Germany circumvented this by training thousands of men at recreational air clubs. ) Britain stood alone against Germany from 1939 to 1942 and miraculously won The Battle of Britain; the women pilots – including twelve Americans – who figure in my book ‘Spitfire Girls’ along with the men of Air Transport Auxiliary ferried thousands of aircraft from factories to airfields and helped win this crucial battle.

When the United States joined the war after the brutal attack by the Empire of Japan on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941great destruction and cruelty had already been wrought by Japan upon the Philippines and China, not to mention the torture inflicted upon British prisoners of war in the Far East. The campaign to bring down Japanese tyranny lasted for another three and a half years, with scores of American and allied troops being brutalised and killed. On June 6, 1944 thousands of American and Allied troops lost their lives (there are 9,400 graves at Omaha Beach in Normandy) in the invasion of France – the Battle of the Bulge and Hertgen Forest followed resulting in many more casualties.

The brave men and women of the combined Allied forces who fought against German, Italian and Japanese fascism in World War II saved mankind from the Thousand Year Reich and the darkness of a worldwide Holocaust that would have seen world Jewry, Slavic races and people of colour exterminated. When President Truman oversaw the use of the atom bomb upon Hiroshima and a second bomb upon Nagasaki in August, 1945 he knew this would prevent a forty-year land war in the Far East. That National Geographic and Goldcrest could suggest that the bombing of Germany was some sort of unprovoked cruelty by the Allies – their narration singles out the USA - is a calumny. Let no-one believe for one blessed moment that the destruction wreaked upon Britain in the years of the Blitz and V1 and V2 attacks, and the massive cruelty of the Japanese Empire did not deserve to go unpunished.

The ‘consequences?’ of which Goldcrest and National Geographic accuse the USA? Japan and Germany are today prosperous and peaceful nations rebuilt by the Allies – and yes, the napalming of Vietnam was a dreadful aspect of that war but why does this film suggest it had lasting consequences that eventually led to the bloodletting in Syria, Iraq and Libya? Vietnam survived and is now a tourist destination!

I worry that a film like this receiving wide distribution will poison the minds of millions of young people – how sad that American National Geographic and British Goldcrest have allowed this to happen.

Carol Gould is the UK-based, Philadelphia-born author of ‘Spitfire Girls’ and ‘Don’t tread on me – anti-Americanism Abroad’ and is a regular broadcaster on BBC, LBC, Sky News and Islam Channel. She has written for the Guardian, Telegraph, Forward and Jewish Chronicle.


     

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