Ron Unz More Falsehoods of World War II

6/18/23, 2:12 AM More Falsehoods of World War II, by Ron Unz - The Unz Review
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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The Many Falsehoods of the Second World War

World War II ranks as the greatest military conflict in human history
and became the shaping event of our modern world, with the account
told in many tens of thousands of books[1]. But over the last five years
I’ve published a long series of articles providing elements of the story
that are sharply—sometimes even shockingly—at odds with the
standard narrative.
About a year ago, I’d produced print collections of my writings and

made them available on Amazon, with one of those volumes including
most of my World War II essays.
Even if someone had previously looked at a few of my articles when they’d originally appeared
four or five years ago, the impact of reading them together in a physical book was far greater.
Mike Whitney told me that he’d found the historical material in my World War II collection so
astonishing that he’d read the entire volume three separate times, so he suggested that he
interview me on some of the major topics.
He sent me eight open-ended questions, and prompted by these I distilled and summarized the
material I’d previously published. The resulting text ran over 12,000 words but was merely a
tenth of the total original length.
https://www.unz.com/runz/more-falsehoods-of-world-war-ii/?display=footnoted 1/22
Although the Second World War ended more than three generations
ago, I had argued that it still retained enormous present-day
relevance and he appropriately selected one of my sentences as a
framing quote for the entire interview:
Much of the current political legitimacy of today’s American

government and its various European vassal-states is founded
upon a particular narrative history of World War II, and
challenging that account might have dire political consequences.
My reconstruction of the true wartime history was exceptionally provocative and controversial,
as indicated by my closing paragraphs:
In the wake of the 9/11 Attacks, the Jewish Neocons stampeded America towards
the disastrous Iraq War and the resulting destruction of the Middle East, with the
talking heads on our television sets endlessly claiming that “Saddam Hussein is
another Hitler.” Since then, we have regularly heard the same tag-line repeated in
various modified versions, being told that “Muammar Gaddafi is another Hitler” or
“Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is another Hitler” or “Vladimir Putin is another Hitler” or
even “Hugo Chavez is another Hitler.” For the last couple of years, our American
media has been relentlessly filled with the claim that “Donald Trump is another
Hitler.”
During the early 2000s, I obviously recognized that Iraq’s ruler was a harsh tyrant,
but snickered at the absurd media propaganda, knowing perfectly well that Saddam
Hussein was no Adolf Hitler. But with the steady growth of the Internet and the
availability of the millions of pages of periodicals provided by my digitization
project, I’ve been quite surprised to gradually also discover that Adolf Hitler was no
Adolf Hitler.
It might not be entirely correct to claim that the story of World War II was that
Franklin Roosevelt sought to escape his domestic difficulties by orchestrating a
major European war against the prosperous, peace-loving Nazi Germany of Adolf
Hitler. But I do think that picture is probably somewhat closer to the actual
historical reality than the inverted image more commonly found in our textbooks.
I had thought that this long piece would do well, but it easily exceeded all my expectations,
with the early traffic being far greater than anything I’d published in many years. Within the
first six days, the interview had attracted more readership than any other article on our website
had accumulated over the previous six months. And although my long piece seemed to boldly
cross every forbidden red line in mainstream history, the reaction was also surprisingly
favorable, including far less angry criticism than I had expected to encounter.
Indeed, some of the responses were remarkably heartening. For example, I received a plaintive
and sympathetic note from an eminent international academic scholar, an elderly, fully
mainstream figure who had specialized in human rights issues and was the author of many
excellent books, several of which I had read.
He explained that during 1972-1975 he had done extensive archival research on the war and
had also interviewed dozens of the key surviving figures on both sides, including many of the
highest rank, discovering that the official story we had all been taught was merely a pack of
lies. But
“…never published my research, because it is useless in a world that wants to be

lied to. Mainstream history is a disgrace — contrary to the testimony of eye
witnesses, contrary to the documents in the archives…”
“I feel like you do there is not only fake news but fake history fake law fake
diplomacy and fake democracy…the level of falsification of history is appalling”
My presentation of the true history of World War II was organized by the eight separate
interview questions and can be explored in that way:
Question 1: Hitler[2]
Question 2: The London “Blitz”[3]
Question 3: The Purge of Antiwar Intellectuals[4]
Question 4: Postwar Germany[5]
Question 5: The Pearl Harbor Attack[6]
Question 6: Operation Pike[7]
Question 7: The Holocaust[8]
Question 8: Our Understanding of the War[9]
Or the entire article can be read as a whole:
Why Everything You Know About World War II Is Wrong[10]

Mike Whitney Interview with Ron Unz
Ron Unz and Mike Whitney • The Unz Review • June 12, 2023 • 12,600 Words
But although my responses ran a very long 12,000 words, even that was insufficient to include
several of the most important “hidden histories” of the Second World War. Therefore, I’m now
providing these in this follow-up piece.
The Suvorov Hypothesis

In 1990 the prestigious Times Literary Supplement had carried a long review of Icebreaker[11],
a newly published book boldly seeking to overturn our entire settled history of the Second
World War:
[Suvorov] is arguing with every book, every article, every film, every NATO
directive, every Downing Street assumption, every Pentagon clerk, every academic,
every Communist and anti-Communist, every neoconservative intellectual, every
Soviet song, poem, novel and piece of music ever heard, written, made, sung,
issued, produced, or born during the last 50 years. For this reason, Icebreaker is
the most original work of history it has been my privilege to read.
As I explained[12] in my 2018 article:
Icebreaker‘s author, writing under the pen-name Viktor

Suvorov, was a veteran Soviet military intelligence officer
who had defected to the West in 1978 and subsequently
published a number of well-regarded books on the Soviet
military and intelligence services. But here he advanced a
far more radical thesis.
The “Suvorov Hypothesis” claimed that during the summer

of 1941 Stalin was on the very verge of mounting a massive
invasion and conquest of Europe, while Hitler’s sudden
attack on June 22nd of that year was intended to forestall
that looming blow.
Since 1990, Suvorov’s works have been translated into at least 18 languages and an
international storm of scholarly controversy has swirled around the Suvorov
Hypothesis in Russia, Germany, Israel, and elsewhere. Numerous other authors
have published books in support or more often strong opposition, and even
international academic conferences have been held to debate the theory. But our
own English-language media has almost entirely blacklisted and ignored this
ongoing international debate, to such an extent that the name of the most widely-
read military historian who ever lived had remained totally unknown to me.
Finally in 2008, the prestigious Naval Academy Press of Annapolis decided to break
this 18 year intellectual embargo and published an updated English edition[13] of
Suvorov’s work. But once again, our media outlets almost entirely averted their
eyes, and only a single review appeared in an obscure

ideological publication, where I chanced to encounter it.
This conclusively demonstrates that throughout most of
the twentieth century a united front of English-language
publishers and media organs could easily maintain a
boycott of any important topic, ensuring that almost no
one in America or the rest of the Anglosphere would ever
hear of it. Only with the recent rise of the Internet has this
disheartening situation begun to change.
The Eastern Front was the decisive theater of World War II, involving military
forces vastly larger than those deployed in the West or the Pacific, and the standard
narrative always emphasizes the ineptitude and weakness of the Soviets. On June
22, 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, a sudden, massive surprise attack
on the USSR, which caught the Red Army completely unaware. Stalin has been
regularly ridiculed for his total lack of preparedness, with Hitler often described as
the only man the paranoid dictator had ever fully trusted. Although the defending
Soviet forces were enormous in size, they were poorly led, with their officer corps
still not recovered from the crippling purges of the late 1930s, and their obsolete
equipment and poor tactics were absolutely no match for the modern panzer
divisions of Germany’s hitherto undefeated Wehrmacht. The Russians initially
suffered gigantic losses, and only the onset of winter and the vast spaces of their
territory saved them from a quick defeat. After this, the war seesawed back-and-
forth for four more years, until superior numbers and improved tactics finally
carried the Soviets to the streets of a destroyed Berlin in 1945.
Such is the traditional understanding of the titanic Russo-German struggle that we

see endlessly echoed in every newspaper, book, television documentary, and film
around us.
But Suvorov’s seminal research argued that the reality was entirely different.
First, although there has been a widespread belief in the superiority of Germany’s
military technology, its tanks and its planes, this is almost entirely mythological. In
actual fact, Soviet tanks were far superior in main armament, armor, and
maneuverability to their German counterparts, so much so that the overwhelming
majority of panzers were almost obsolescent by comparison. And the Soviet
superiority in numbers was even more extreme, with Stalin deploying many times
more tanks than the combined total of those held by Germany and every other
nation in the world: 27,000 against just 4,000 in Hitler’s forces. Even during
peacetime, a single Soviet factory in Kharkov produced more tanks in every six
month period than the entire Third Reich had built prior to 1940. The Soviets held
a similar superiority, though somewhat less extreme, in their ground-attack
bombers. The totally closed nature of the USSR meant that such vast military forces
remained entirely hidden from outside observers.
There is also little evidence that the quality of Soviet officers or military doctrine
fell short. Indeed, we often forget that history’s first successful example of a
“blitzkrieg” in modern warfare was the crushing August 1939 defeat that Stalin
inflicted upon the Japanese 6th Army in Outer Mongolia, relying upon a massive
surprise attack of tanks, bombers, and mobile infantry.
Certainly, many aspects of the Soviet military machine were primitive, but exactly
the same was true of their Nazi opponents. Perhaps the most surprising detail
about the technology of the invading Wehrmacht in 1941 was that its transportation
system was still almost entirely pre-modern, relying upon wagons and carts drawn
by 750,000 horses to maintain the vital flow of ammunition and replacements to its
advancing armies.
During Spring 1941 the Soviets had assembled a gigantic armored force on Germany’s border,
one that even contained enormous numbers of specialized tanks whose unusual characteristics
clearly demonstrated Stalin’s purely offensive aims. For example, the Soviet juggernaut
included 6,500 high-speed autobahn tanks, almost useless within Soviet territory but ideally
suited for deployment on Germany’s network of highways and 4,000 amphibious tanks, able to
navigate the English Channel and conquer Britain.
The Soviets also fielded many thousands of heavy tanks, intended to engage and
defeat enemy armor, while the Germans had none at all. In direct combat, a Soviet
KV-1 or KV-2 could easily destroy four or five of the best German tanks, while
remaining almost invulnerable to enemy shells. Suvorov recounts the example of a
KV which took 43 direct hits before finally becoming incapacitated, surrounded by
the hulks of the ten German tanks it had first managed to destroy.
Suvorov’s reconstruction of the weeks directly preceding the outbreak of combat is

a fascinating one, emphasizing the mirror-image actions taken by both the Soviet
and German armies. Each side moved its best striking units, airfields, and
ammunition dumps close to the border, ideal for an attack but very vulnerable in
defense. Each side carefully deactivated any residual minefields and ripped out any
barbed wire obstacles, lest these hinder the forthcoming attack. Each side did its
best to camouflage their preparations, talking loudly about peace while preparing
for imminent war. The Soviet deployment had begun much earlier, but since their
forces were so much larger and had far greater distances to cross, they were not yet
quite ready for their attack when the Germans struck, and thereby shattered
Stalin’s planned conquest of Europe.
All of the above examples of Soviet weapons systems and strategic decisions seem
very difficult to explain under the conventional defensive narrative, but make
perfect sense if Stalin’s orientation from 1939 onward had always been an offensive
one, and he had decided that summer 1941 was the time to strike and enlarge his
Soviet Union to include all the European states, just as Lenin had originally
intended. And Suvorov provides many dozens of additional examples, building
brick by brick a very compelling case for this theory.
Given the long years of trench warfare on the Western front during the First World
War, almost all outside observers expected the new round of the conflict to follow a
very similar static pattern, gradually exhausting all sides, and the world was
shocked when Germany’s innovative tactics allowed it to achieve a lightening defeat
of the allied armies in France during 1940. At that point, Hitler regarded the war as
essentially over, and was confident that the extremely generous peace terms he
immediately offered the British would soon lead to a final settlement. As a
consequence, he returned Germany to a regular peacetime economy, choosing
butter over guns in order to maintain his high domestic popularity
Stalin, however, was under no such political constraints, and from the moment he
had signed his long-term peace agreement with Hitler in 1939 and divided Poland,
he ramped up his total-war economy to an even higher notch. Embarking upon an
unprecedented military buildup, he focused his production almost entirely upon
purely offensive weapons systems, while even discontinuing those armaments
better suited for defense and dismantling his previous lines of fortifications. By
1941, his production cycle was complete, and he made his plans accordingly.
And so, just as in our traditional narrative, we see that in the weeks and months
leading up to Barbarossa, the most powerful offensive military force in the history
of the world was quietly assembled in secret along the German-Russian border,
preparing for the order that would unleash its surprise attack. The enemy’s
unprepared airforce was to be destroyed on the ground in the first days of the
battle, and enormous tank columns would begin deep penetration thrusts,
surrounding and trapping the opposing forces, achieving a classic blitzkrieg victory,
and ensuring the rapid occupation of vast territories. But the forces preparing this
unprecedented war of conquest were Stalin’s, and his military juggernaut would
surely have seized all of Europe, probably soon followed by the remainder of the
Eurasian landmass.
Then at almost the last moment, Hitler suddenly realized the strategic trap into
which he had fallen, and ordered his heavily outnumbered and outgunned troops
into a desperate surprise attack of their own on the assembling Soviets, fortuitously
catching them at the very point at which their own final preparations for sudden
attack had left them most vulnerable, and thereby snatching a major initial victory
from the jaws of certain defeat. Huge stockpiles of Soviet ammunition and
weaponry had been positioned close to the border to supply the army of invasion
into Germany, and these quickly fell into German hands, providing an important
addition to their own woefully inadequate resources.
For those who prefer to absorb Suvorov’s information in a different format, his October 2009
public lecture at the U.S. Naval Academy is available on Youtube:
Earlier that same year his lecture at the Woodrow Wilson Center had been broadcast on C-
SPAN Book TV.[14]
I naturally read some of the books purportedly claiming to refute Suvorov’s thesis, such as
those by historians David M. Glantz[15] and Gabriel Gorodetsky[16], but found them rather
unpersuasive.
A far superior book, generally supportive of Suvorov’s

framework, was Stalin’s War of Annihilation[17], by prize-
winning German military historian Joachim Hoffmann,
originally commissioned by the German Armed Forces and
published in 1995 with an English revised edition
appearing in 2001. The cover carries a notice that the text
was cleared by German government censors, and the
author’s introduction recounts the repeated threats of
prosecution he endured from elected officials and the other
legal obstacles he faced, while elsewhere he directly
addresses himself to the unseen government authorities
whom he knows are reading over his shoulder. When
stepping too far outside the bounds of accepted history carries the serious risk that
a book’s entire print-run will be burned and the author imprisoned, a reader must
necessarily be cautious at evaluating the text since important sections have been
skewed or preemptively excised in the interests of self-preservation. Scholarly
debates on historical issues become difficult when one side faces incarceration if
their arguments are too bold.
American Pravda: When Stalin Almost Conquered Europe[18]

Ron Unz • The Unz Review • June 4, 2018 • 4,200 Words
Most recently, Sean McMeekin’s outstanding 2021 history Stalin’s

War[19] has provided a wealth of additional evidence strongly
supporting the theory that the Soviet dictator had massed his
enormous offensive forces on the German border and was probably
preparing to invade and conquer Europe when Hitler struck first.
The original 1990 Times of London review of Icebreaker had been

written by Andrei Navrozov, a Soviet emigre long resident in Britain.
As a Russian Slav, he was hardly favorable to the German dictator,
but he accepted Suvorov’s remarkable theory that only Hitler’s
Barbarossa attack had forestalled Stalin’s conquest of all Europe and
he closed his twentieth anniversary discussion with a powerful
declaration:
Therefore, if any of us is free to write, publish, and read this today, it follows that
in some not inconsequential part our gratitude for this must go to Hitler. And if
someone wants to arrest me for saying what I have just said, I make no secret of
where I live.
The Nazi-Zionist Economic Partnership

Forty years ago the New York Times and other mainstream newspapers published some
astonishing revelations regarding the wartime activities of Yitzhak Shamir, who was then
serving as Israel’s Prime Minister. I discussed[20] these in a 2018 article:
Apparently, during the late 1930s, Shamir and his small Zionist faction had become
great admirers of the Italian Fascists and German Nazis, and after World War II
broke out, they had made repeated attempts to contact Mussolini and the German
leadership in 1940 and 1941, hoping to enlist in the Axis Powers as their Palestine
affiliate, and undertake a campaign of attacks and espionage against the local
British forces, then share in the political booty after Hitler’s inevitable triumph.
Among other things, there were long excerpts from the official letters sent to
Mussolini ferociously denouncing the “decadent” democratic systems of Britain and
France that he was opposing, and assuring Il Duce that such ridiculous political
notions would have no future place in the totalitarian Jewish client state they
hoped to establish under his auspices in Palestine.
As it happens, both Germany and Italy were preoccupied

with larger geopolitical issues at the time, and given the
small size of Shamir’s Zionist faction, not much seems to
have ever come of those efforts. But the idea of the sitting
Prime Minister of the Jewish State having spent his early
wartime years as an unrequited Nazi ally was certainly
something that sticks in one’s mind, not quite conforming
to the traditional narrative of that era which I had always
accepted.
Most remarkably, the

revelation of Shamir’s pro-Axis
past seems to have had only a
relatively minor impact upon
his political standing within
Israeli society. I would think
that any American political
figure found to have supported
a military alliance with Nazi
Germany during the Second
World War would have had a
very difficult time surviving the
resulting political scandal, and
the same would surely be true for politicians in Britain, France, or most other
western nations. But although there was certainly some embarrassment in the
Israeli press, especially after the shocking story reached the international headlines,
apparently most Israelis took the whole matter in stride, and Shamir stayed in
office for another year, then later served a second, much longer term as Prime
Minister during 1986-1992. The Jews of Israel apparently regarded Nazi Germany
quite differently than did most Americans, let alone most American Jews.
These remarkable historical disclosures were the product of extensive research by Lenni
Brenner, an anti-Zionist of the Trotskyite persuasion and Jewish origins, which he had
published in his 1983 book Zionism in the Age of the Dictators[21], as well as his later
companion volume, 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis[22].
The cover of the 2014 paperback edition of Brenner’s

book displays the commemorative medal struck by
Nazi Germany to mark its Zionist alliance, with a
Star-of-David on the front face and a Swastika on the
obverse. But oddly enough, this symbolic medallion
actually had absolutely no connection with the
unsuccessful attempts by Shamir’s small faction to arrange a Nazi military alliance

during World War II.
Although the Germans paid little attention to the entreaties of that minor
organization, the far larger and more influential mainstream Zionist movement of
Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion was something else entirely. And during
most of the 1930s, these other Zionists had formed an important economic
partnership with Nazi Germany, based upon an obvious commonality of interests.
After all, Hitler regarded Germany’s one percent Jewish population as a disruptive
and potentially dangerous element which he wanted gone, and the Middle East
seemed as good a destination for them as any other. Meanwhile, the Zionists had
very similar objectives, and the creation of their new national homeland in
Palestine obviously required both Jewish immigrants and Jewish financial
investment.
After Hitler had been named Chancellor in 1933,

outraged Jews worldwide had quickly launched an
economic boycott, hoping to bring Germany to its
knees, with London’s Daily Express famously running
the banner headline “Judea Declares War on
Germany.” Jewish political and economic influence, then just like now, was very
considerable, and in the depths of the Great Depression, impoverished Germany
needed to export or die, so a large scale boycott in major German markets posed a
potentially serious threat. But this exact situation provided Zionist groups with an
excellent opportunity to offer the Germans a means of breaking that trade embargo,
and they demanded favorable terms for the export of high-quality German
manufactured goods to Palestine, together with accompanying German Jews. Once
word of this major Ha’avara or “Transfer Agreement” with the Nazis came out at a
1933 Zionist Convention, many Jews and Zionists were outraged, and it led to
various splits and controversies. But the economic deal was too good to resist, and
it went forward and quickly grew.
The importance of the Nazi-Zionist pact for Israel’s establishment is difficult to

overstate. According to a 1974 analysis in Jewish Frontier cited by Brenner,
between 1933 and 1939 over 60% of all the investment in Jewish Palestine came
from Nazi Germany. The worldwide impoverishment of the Great Depression had
drastically reduced ongoing Jewish financial support from all other sources, and
Brenner reasonably suggests that without Hitler’s financial backing, the nascent
Jewish colony, so tiny and fragile, might easily have shriveled up and died during
that difficult period.
Such a conclusion leads to fascinating hypotheticals. When I first stumbled across

references to the Ha’avara Agreement on websites here and there, one of the
commenters mentioning the issue half-jokingly suggested that if Hitler had won the
war, statues would surely have been built to him throughout Israel and he would
today be recognized by Jews everywhere as the heroic Gentile leader who had
played the central role in reestablishing a national homeland for the Jewish people
in Palestine after almost 2000 years of bitter exile.
This sort of astonishing counter-factual possibility is not nearly as totally absurd as

it might sound to our present-day ears. We must recognize that our historical
understanding of reality is shaped by the media, and media organs are controlled
by the winners of major wars and their allies, with inconvenient details often
excluded to avoid confusing the public. It is undeniably true that in his 1924 book
Mein Kampf, Hitler had written all sorts of hostile and nasty things about Jews,
especially those who were recent immigrants from Eastern Europe, but when I read
the book back in high school, I was a little surprised to discover that these anti-
Jewish sentiments hardly seemed central to his text. Furthermore, just a couple of
years earlier, a vastly more prominent public figure such as British Minister
Winston Churchill had published sentiments nearly as hostile and nasty[23],
focusing on the monstrous crimes being committed by Bolshevik Jews. In Albert
Lindemann’s Esau’s Tears, I was surprised to discover that the author of the
famous Balfour Declaration, the foundation of the Zionist project, was apparently
also quite hostile to Jews, with an element of his motivation probably being his
desire to exclude them from Britain.
Once Hitler consolidated power in Germany, he quickly outlawed all other political
organizations for the German people, with only the Nazi Party and Nazi political
symbols being legally permitted. But a special exception was made for German
Jews, and Germany’s local Zionist Party was accorded complete legal status, with
Zionist marches, Zionist uniforms, and Zionist flags all fully permitted. Under
Hitler, there was strict censorship of all German publications, but the weekly
Zionist newspaper was freely sold at all newsstands and street corners. The clear
notion seemed to be that a German National Socialist Party was the proper political
home for the country’s 99% German majority, while Zionist National Socialism
would fill the same role for the tiny Jewish minority.
In 1934, Zionist leaders invited an important SS official to spend six months

visiting the Jewish settlement in Palestine, and upon his return, his very favorable
impressions of the growing Zionist enterprise were published as a massive 12-part
series in Joseph Goebbel’s Der Angriff, the flagship media organ of the Nazi Party,
bearing the descriptive title “A Nazi Goes to Palestine.” In his very angry 1920
critique of Jewish Bolshevik activity, Churchill had argued that Zionism was locked
in a fierce battle with Bolshevism for the soul of European Jewry, and only its
victory might ensure amicable future relations between Jew and Gentile. Based on
available evidence, Hitler and many of the other Nazi leaders seemed to have
reached a somewhat similar conclusion by the mid-1930s.
The very uncomfortable truth is that the harsh characterizations of Diaspora Jewry
found in the pages of Mein Kampf were not all that different from what was voiced
by Zionism’s founding fathers and its subsequent leaders, so the cooperation of

those two ideological movements was not really so totally surprising.
Also quite ironic was the role of Adolf Eichmann, whose name today probably ranks
as one of the most famous half-dozen Nazis in history, due to his postwar 1960
kidnapping by Israeli agents, followed by his public show-trial and execution as a
war-criminal. As it happens, Eichmann had been a central Nazi figure in the Zionist
alliance, even studying Hebrew and apparently becoming something of a philo-
Semite during the years of his close collaboration with top Zionist leaders.
Brenner is a captive of his ideology and his beliefs, accepting without question the
historical narrative with which he was raised. He seems to find nothing so strange
about Eichmann being a philo-Semitic partner of the Jewish Zionists during the
late 1930s and then suddenly being transformed into a mass-murderer of the
European Jews in the early 1940s, willingly committing the monstrous crimes for
which the Israelis later justly put him to death.
This is certainly possible, but I really wonder. A more cynical observer might find it
a very odd coincidence that the first prominent Nazi the Israelis made such an
effort to track down and kill had been their closest former political ally and
collaborator. After Germany’s defeat, Eichmann had fled to Argentina and lived
there quietly for a number of years until his name resurfaced in a celebrated mid-
1950s controversy surrounding one of his leading Zionist partners, then living in
Israel as a respected government official, who was denounced as a Nazi
collaborator, eventually ruled innocent after a celebrated trial, but later
assassinated by former members of Shamir’s faction.
Following that controversy in Israel, Eichmann supposedly gave a long personal

interview to a Dutch Nazi journalist, and although it wasn’t published at the time,
perhaps word of its existence may have gotten into circulation. The new state of
Israel was just a few years old at that time, and very politically and economically
fragile, desperately dependent upon the goodwill and support of America and
Jewish donors worldwide. Their remarkable former Nazi alliance was a deeply-
suppressed secret, whose public release might have had absolutely disastrous
consequences.
According to the version of the interview later published as a two-part story in Life
Magazine, Eichmann’s statements seemingly did not touch upon the deadly topic of
the 1930s Nazi-Zionist partnership. But surely Israeli leaders must have been
terrified that they might not be so lucky the next time, so we may speculate that
Eichmann’s elimination suddenly became a top national priority, and he was
tracked down and captured in 1960. Presumably, harsh means were employed to
persuade him not to reveal any of these dangerous pre-war secrets at his Jerusalem
trial, and one might wonder if the reason he was famously kept in an enclosed glass
booth was to ensure that the sound could quickly be cut off if he started to stray
from the agreed upon script. All of this analysis is purely speculative, but
Eichmann’s role as a central figure in the 1930s Nazi-Zionist partnership is
undeniable historical fact.
American Pravda: Jews and Nazis[24]

Ron Unz • The Unz Review • August 6, 2018 • 6,800 Words
Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers
Once World War II began, this Nazi-Zionist partnership quickly lapsed for obvious
reasons. Germany was now at war with the British Empire, and financial transfers
to British-run Palestine were no longer possible. Furthermore, the Arab
Palestinians had grown quite hostile to the Jewish immigrants whom they rightfully
feared might eventually displace them, and once the Germans were forced to
choose between maintaining their relationship with a relatively small Zionist
movement or winning the political sympathy of a vast sea of Middle Eastern Arabs
and Muslims, their decision was a natural one. The Zionists faced a similar choice,
and especially once wartime propaganda began so heavily blackening the German
and Italian governments, their long previous partnership was not something they
wanted widely known.
However, at exactly this same moment a somewhat different and equally long-
forgotten connection between Jews and Nazi Germany suddenly moved to the fore.
Like most people everywhere, the average German, whether Jewish or Gentile, was
probably not all that political, and although Zionism had for years been accorded a
privileged place in German society, it is not entirely clear how many ordinary
German Jews paid much attention to it. The tens of thousands who emigrated to
Palestine during that period were probably motivated as much by economic
pressures as by ideological commitment. But wartime changed matters in other
ways.
This was even more true for the German government. The outbreak of a world war
against a powerful coalition of the British and French empires, later augmented by
both Soviet Russia and the United States, imposed the sorts of enormous pressures
that could often overcome ideological scruples. A few years ago, I discovered a
fascinating 2002 book by Bryan Mark Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers[25], a
scholarly treatment of exactly what the title implies. The quality of this
controversial historical analysis is indicated by the glowing jacket-blurbs from
numerous academic experts and an extremely favorable treatment by an eminent
scholar in The American Historical Review.
Obviously, Nazi ideology was overwhelmingly centered

upon race and considered racial purity a crucial factor in
national cohesion. Individuals possessing substantial non-
German ancestry were regarded with considerable
suspicion, and this concern was greatly amplified if that
admixture was Jewish. But in a military struggle against an
opposing coalition possessing many times Germany’s
population and industrial resources, such ideological
factors might be overcome by practical considerations, and
Rigg persuasively argues that some 150,000 half-Jews or
quarter-Jews served in the armed forces of the Third
Reich, a percentage probably not much different than their
share of the general military-age population.
Germany’s long-integrated and assimilated Jewish population had always been

disproportionately urban, affluent, and well-educated. As a consequence it is not
entirely surprising that a large proportion of these part-Jewish soldiers who served
Hitler were actually combat officers rather than merely rank-and-file conscripts,
and they included at least 15 half-Jewish generals and admirals, and another dozen
quarter-Jews holding those same high ranks. The most notable example was Field
Marshal Erhard Milch, Hermann Goering’s powerful second-in-command, who
played such an important operational role in creating the Luftwaffe. Milch certainly
had a Jewish father, and according to some much less substantiated claims,
perhaps even a Jewish mother as well, while his sister was married to an SS
general.
Admittedly, the racially-elite SS itself generally had far stricter ancestry standards,
with even a trace of non-Aryan parentage normally seen as disqualifying an
individual from membership. But even here, the situation was sometimes
complicated, since there were widespread rumors that Reinhard Heydrich, the
second-ranking figure in that very powerful organization, actually had considerable
Jewish ancestry. Rigg investigates that claim without coming to any clear
conclusions, though he does seem to think that the circumstantial evidence
involved may have been used by other high-ranking Nazi figures as a point of
leverage or blackmail against Heydrich, who stood as one of the most important
figures in the Third Reich.
As a further irony, most of these individuals traced their Jewish ancestry through
their father rather than their mother, so although they were not Jewish according
to rabbinical law, their family names often reflected their partly Semitic origins,
though in many cases Nazi authorities attempted to studiously overlook this
glaringly obvious situation. As an extreme example noted by an academic reviewer
of the book, a half-Jew bearing the distinctly non-Aryan name of Werner Goldberg
actually had his photograph prominently featured in a 1939 Nazi propaganda
newspaper, with the caption describing him as the “The Ideal German Soldier.”
The author conducted more than 400 personal interviews of the surviving part-
Jews and their relatives, and these painted a very mixed picture of the difficulties
they had encountered under the Nazi regime, which varied enormously depending
upon particular circumstances and the personalities of those in authority over
them. One important source of complaint was that because of their status, part-
Jews were often denied the military honors or promotions they had rightfully
earned. However, under especially favorable conditions, they might also be legally
reclassified as being of “German Blood,” which officially eliminated any taint on
their status.
Even official policy seems to have been quite contradictory and vacillating. For
example, when the civilian humiliations sometimes inflicted upon the fully Jewish
parents of serving half-Jews were brought to Hitler’s attention, he regarded that
situation as intolerable, declaring that either such parents must be fully protected
against those indignities or all the half-Jews must be discharged, and eventually in
April 1940 he issued a decree requiring the latter. However, this order was largely
ignored by many commanders, or implemented through a honor-system that
almost amounted to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” so a considerable fraction of half-Jews
remained in the military if they so wished. And then in July 1941, Hitler somewhat
reversed himself, issuing a new decree that allowed “worthy” half-Jews who had
been discharged to return to the military as officers, while also announcing that
after the war, all quarter-Jews would be reclassified as fully “German Blood” Aryan
citizens.
It has been said that after questions were raised about the Jewish ancestry of some
of his subordinates, Goering once angrily responded “I will decide who is a Jew!”
and that attitude seems to reasonably capture some of the complexity and
subjective nature of the social situation.
Interestingly enough, many of part-Jews interviewed by Rigg recalled that prior to

Hitler’s rise to power, the intermarriage of their parents had often provoked much
greater hostility from the Jewish rather than the Gentile side of their families,
suggesting that even in heavily-assimilated Germany, the traditional Jewish
tendency toward ethnic exclusivity had still remained a powerful factor in that
community.
Although the part-Jews in German military service were certainly subject to various
forms of mistreatment and discrimination, perhaps we should compare this against
the analogous situation in our own military in those same years with regard to
America’s Japanese or black minorities. During that era, racial intermarriage was
legally prohibited across a large portion of the US, so the mixed-race population of
those groups was either almost non-existent or very different in origin. And when
Japanese-Americans were allowed to leave their wartime concentration camps and
enlist in the military, they were entirely restricted to segregated all-Japanese units,
but with the officers generally being white. Meanwhile, blacks were almost entirely
barred from combat service, though they sometimes served in strictly-segregated
support roles. The notion that an American with any appreciable trace of African,
Japanese, or for that matter Chinese ancestry might serve as a general or even an
officer in the U.S. military and thereby exercise command authority over white
American troops would have been almost unthinkable. The contrast with the
practice in Hitler’s own military is quite different than what Americans might
naively believe.
This paradox is not nearly as surprising as one might assume. The non-economic
divisions in European societies had almost always been along lines of religion,
language, and culture rather than racial ancestry, and the social tradition of more
than a millennium could not easily be swept away by merely a half-dozen years of
National Socialist ideology. During all those earlier centuries, a sincerely-baptized
Jew, whether in Germany or elsewhere, was usually considered just as good a
Christian as any other. For example, Tomas de Torquemada, the most fearsome
figure of the dreaded Spanish Inquisition, actually came from a family of Jewish
converts.
Even wider racial differences were hardly considered of crucial importance. Some
of the greatest heroes of particular national cultures, such as Russia’s Alexander
Pushkin and France’s Alexandre Dumas, had been individuals with significant black
African ancestry, and this was certainly not considered any sort of disqualifying
characteristic.
By contrast, American society from its inception had always been sharply divided
by race, with other differences generally constituting far smaller impediments to
intermarriage and amalgamation. I’ve seen widespread claims that when the Third
Reich devised its 1935 Nuremberg Laws restricting marriage and other social
arrangements between Aryans, non-Aryans, and part-Aryans, its experts drew upon
some of America’s long legal experience in similar matters, and this seems quite
plausible. Under that new Nazi statute, pre-existing mixed-marriages received some
legal protection, but henceforth Jews and half-Jews could only marry each other,
while quarter-Jews could only marry regular Aryans. The obvious intent was to
absorb that latter group into mainstream German society, while isolating the more
heavily-Jewish population.
Over the last few years, many outside observers have noted a seemingly very odd
political situation in Ukraine. That unfortunate country possesses powerful militant
groups, whose public symbols, stated ideology, and political ancestry all
unmistakably mark them as Neo-Nazis. Yet those violent Neo-Nazi elements are all
being bankrolled and controlled[26] by a Jewish Oligarch[27] who holds dual
Israeli citizenship. Furthermore, that peculiar alliance had been mid-wifed and
blessed by some of America’s leading Jewish Neocon figures, such as Victoria
Nuland, who have successfully used their media influence to keep such explosive
facts away from the American public.
At first glance, a close relationship between Jewish Israelis and European Neo-
Nazis[28] seems as grotesque and bizarre a misalliance as one could imagine, but
after recently reading Brenner’s fascinating book, my perspective substantially
shifted. Indeed, the main difference between then and now is that during the 1930s,
Zionist factions represented a very insignificant junior partner to a powerful Third
Reich, while these days it is the Nazis who occupy the role of eager suppliants to
the formidable power of International Zionism, which now so heavily dominates the
American political system and through it, much of the world.

Ron Unz • The Unz Review • August 6, 2018 • 6,800 Words
A couple of years ago I encountered another strikingly ironic vignette, almost totally excluded
from our mainstream histories.
In reading wartime accounts of Britain’s government I came across Leo Amery[29], a

prominent British political figure and one of Churchill’s closest lifelong friends, who eventually
served as a member of the British Cabinet. He was also secretly of Jewish ancestry and
according to some accounts was the individual who had actually drafted the Balfour
Declaration, which was the basis for the creation of the State of Israel.
But oddly enough, in my other readings I had also discovered that during World War II,
Amery’s eldest son John had become a great supporter of Adolf Hitler[30]. As a result, he
defected to Nazi Germany and served as a leading wartime propaganda broadcaster for the
Third Reich, afterwards hanged as a traitor by the British.
All our standard history books always mention the postwar execution of British Nazi
broadcaster “Lord Haw-Haw,” a total obscure individual, but strangely omit the similar fate of
John Amery, the son of Churchill’s closest friend, a Jewish member of Britain’s Cabinet, whose
wartime efforts on behalf of Nazi Germany seem far more noteworthy.
The Continuing Importance of World War II

The Second World War ended nearly eighty years ago and despite the enormous role it played
in shaping our modern world, many might argue that revisiting the factual details of that
conflict would merely be an intellectual exercise, devoid of relevance to our present-day
situation. But I think otherwise.
Our relentlessly aggressive foreign policy towards Russia and China today constitutes an
enormous threat to world peace, and as I suggested last year[31], uncovering the true history of
World War II might have an important impact upon our current debate.
Consider our Secretary of State Antony Blinken[32], one of the key figures
formulating our current policies. Prior to his appointment, I’d never heard of him,
but I soon discovered that he’d attended the same college that I did, graduating one
year later. We may have even shared some classes, though since my major was
Theoretical Physics and his was Social Studies, probably not. But I do think that I
have a very good understanding of his view of the world and the history of the
twentieth century since until the last decade or so mine was probably not too
different. Most of the other senior figures in the Biden Administration seem to fall
into that same category.
These individuals have a fixed set of particular beliefs regarding America’s role in
the world, beliefs shared by their entire ideological circle, and I’m sure that they
would immediately reject any challenges to that framework with regard to Russia or
China. Such challenges are probably not uncommon, but are regularly dismissed
and ignored.
However, I suspect that none of them have ever imagined that the deepest
foundations of their belief-system—their assumed history of World War II—is
actually false and rotten to the core. They have probably never encountered such
ideas in their entire lives, and as a consequence, their psychological defenses might
be much weaker. And if any of them begins to even consider the slightest possibility
that every source of information they have absorbed since elementary school has
been based upon the same underlying set of falsehoods, that realization might
shake their confidence in contemporary matters, including the circumstances
surrounding the current war in Ukraine.
Mules are stubborn animals. But there’s a classic joke[33] that they can be
persuaded to follow directions if you first get their attention by hitting them on the
head with a two-by-four. For most American policy-experts discovering that their
entire accepted history of World War II is upside-down and backwards amounts to
being hit on the head with a two-by-four.
Related Reading:
Why Everything You Know About World War II Is Wrong[34]

American Pravda: When Stalin Almost Conquered Europe[18]
American Pravda: Understanding World War II[35]
American Pravda: How Hitler Saved the Allies[36]
American Pravda: World War III and World War II?[37]
Source References
[1] many tens of thousands of books => https://malwarwickonbooks.com/short-history-

of-world-war-ii/
[2] Question 1: Hitler => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-everything-you-know-

about-world-war-ii-is-wrong/#question-1-hitler
[3] Question 2: The London “Blitz” => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-everything-you-

know-about-world-war-ii-is-wrong/#question-2-the-london-blitz
[4] Question 3: The Purge of Antiwar Intellectuals => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-

everything-you-know-about-world-war-ii-is-wrong/#question-3-the-purge-of-
antiwar-intellectuals
[5] Question 4: Postwar Germany => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-everything-you-

know-about-world-war-ii-is-wrong/#question-4-postwar-germany
[6] Question 5: The Pearl Harbor Attack => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-everything-

you-know-about-world-war-ii-is-wrong/#question-5-the-pearl-harbor-attack
[7] Question 6: Operation Pike => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-everything-you-

know-about-world-war-ii-is-wrong/#question-6-operation-pike
[8] Question 7: The Holocaust => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-everything-you-

know-about-world-war-ii-is-wrong/#question-7-the-holocaust
[9] Question 8: Our Understanding of the War => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-

everything-you-know-about-world-war-ii-is-wrong/#question-8-our-
understanding-of-the-war
[10] Why Everything You Know About World War II Is Wrong =>
https://www.unz.com/runz/why-everything-you-know-about-world-war-ii-is-
wrong/
[11] Icebreaker => https://www.amazon.com/dp/0241126223/
[12] I explained => https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-when-stalin-

almost-conquered-europe/
[13] an updated English edition => https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591148065/
[14] C-SPAN Book TV. => https://www.c-span.org/video/?283856-1/the-chief-culprit
[15] David M. Glantz => https://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Colossus-World-

Modern-Studies/dp/0700617892/
[16] Gabriel Gorodetsky => https://www.amazon.com/Grand-Delusion-Stalin-

German-Invasion/dp/0300084595/
[17] Stalin’s War of Annihilation => https://www.amazon.com/dp/0967985684/
[18] American Pravda: When Stalin Almost Conquered Europe =>

https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-when-stalin-almost-conquered-
europe/
[19] Stalin’s War => https://www.amazon.com/Stalins-War-New-History-

World/dp/1541672798/
[20] discussed => https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-jews-and-nazis/
[21] Zionism in the Age of the Dictators => https://www.amazon.com/dp/0985890991/
[22] 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis =>

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1569804338/
[23] published sentiments nearly as hostile and nasty =>

http://www.fpp.co.uk/bookchapters/WSC/WSCwrote1920.html
[24] American Pravda: Jews and Nazis => https://www.unz.com/runz/american-

pravda-jews-and-nazis/
[25] Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers => https://www.amazon.com/dp/0700613587/
[26] violent Neo-Nazi elements are all being bankrolled and controlled =>
https://www.newsweek.com/evidence-war-crimes-committed-ukrainian-
nationalist-volunteers-grows-269604
[27] a Jewish Oligarch => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihor_Kolomoyskyi
[28] a close relationship between Jewish Israelis and European Neo-Nazis =>
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/rights-groups-demand-israel-stop-arming-
neo-nazis-in-the-ukraine-1.6248727
[29] Leo Amery => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Amery
[30] eldest son John had become a great supporter of Adolf Hitler =>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Amery#Personal_life
[31] I suggested last year => https://www.unz.com/runz/world-war-iii-and-world-war-

ii/
[32] Secretary of State Antony Blinken =>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Blinken
[33] a classic joke => https://www.mikelockett.com/storytelling?rec_id=158
[34] Why Everything You Know About World War II Is Wrong =>
https://www.unz.com/runz/why-everything-you-know-about-world-war-ii-is-
wrong
[35] American Pravda: Understanding World War II =>

https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-understanding-world-war-ii/
[36] American Pravda: How Hitler Saved the Allies =>

https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-how-hitler-saved-the-allies/
[37] American Pravda: World War III and World War II? =>
https://www.unz.com/runz/world-war-iii-and-world-war-ii/

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6/18/23, 2:12 AM More Falsehoods of World War II, by Ron Unz - The Unz Review

The Unz Review • An Alternative Media Selection

More Falsehoods of World War II • 57m

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Many Falsehoods of the Second World War

About a year ago, I’d produced print collections of my writings and

Much of the current political legitimacy of today’s American

“…never published my research, because it is useless in a world that wants to be

Or the entire article can be read as a whole:

Why Everything You Know About World War II Is Wrong[10]

The Suvorov Hypothesis

As I explained[12] in my 2018 article:

Icebreaker‘s author, writing under the pen-name Viktor

The “Suvorov Hypothesis” claimed that during the summer

eyes, and only a single review appeared in an obscure

Such is the traditional understanding of the titanic Russo-German struggle that we

Suvorov’s reconstruction of the weeks directly preceding the outbreak of combat is

A far superior book, generally supportive of Suvorov’s

American Pravda: When Stalin Almost Conquered Europe[18]

Most recently, Sean McMeekin’s outstanding 2021 history Stalin’s

The original 1990 Times of London review of Icebreaker had been

The Nazi-Zionist Economic Partnership

As it happens, both Germany and Italy were preoccupied

Most remarkably, the

The cover of the 2014 paperback edition of Brenner’s

unsuccessful attempts by Shamir’s small faction to arrange a Nazi military alliance

After Hitler had been named Chancellor in 1933,

The importance of the Nazi-Zionist pact for Israel’s establishment is difficult to

Such a conclusion leads to fascinating hypotheticals. When I first stumbled across

This sort of astonishing counter-factual possibility is not nearly as totally absurd as

In 1934, Zionist leaders invited an important SS official to spend six months

by Zionism’s founding fathers and its subsequent leaders, so the cooperation of

Following that controversy in Israel, Eichmann supposedly gave a long personal

American Pravda: Jews and Nazis[24]

Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers

Obviously, Nazi ideology was overwhelmingly centered

Germany’s long-integrated and assimilated Jewish population had always been

Interestingly enough, many of part-Jews interviewed by Rigg recalled that prior to

American Pravda: Jews and Nazis[24]

In reading wartime accounts of Britain’s government I came across Leo Amery[29], a

The Continuing Importance of World War II

Why Everything You Know About World War II Is Wrong[34]

[1] many tens of thousands of books => https://malwarwickonbooks.com/short-history-

[2] Question 1: Hitler => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-everything-you-know-

[3] Question 2: The London “Blitz” => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-everything-you-

[4] Question 3: The Purge of Antiwar Intellectuals => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-

[5] Question 4: Postwar Germany => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-everything-you-

[6] Question 5: The Pearl Harbor Attack => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-everything-

[7] Question 6: Operation Pike => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-everything-you-

[8] Question 7: The Holocaust => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-everything-you-

[9] Question 8: Our Understanding of the War => https://www.unz.com/runz/why-

[11] Icebreaker => https://www.amazon.com/dp/0241126223/

[12] I explained => https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-when-stalin-

[13] an updated English edition => https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591148065/

[14] C-SPAN Book TV. => https://www.c-span.org/video/?283856-1/the-chief-culprit

[15] David M. Glantz => https://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Colossus-World-

[16] Gabriel Gorodetsky => https://www.amazon.com/Grand-Delusion-Stalin-

[17] Stalin’s War of Annihilation => https://www.amazon.com/dp/0967985684/

[18] American Pravda: When Stalin Almost Conquered Europe =>