Customer Reviews

Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of "The Good War"

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The author really hasn't exposed that much any well informed person wouldn't already know. This may, however, be the first time all of this "other" history of WWII has been put into a compehensive volume and made availabe in retail book stores coast to coast. It's long overdue. Like a lot of people, I thought the opening sequence of "Saving Private Ryan" was terrifying in the extreme, and one cannot help but feel a sense of awe and profound respect for aged veterans who experienced this. But was establishing concentration camps for Japanese-Americans in an already racially and economicaly segregated nation really the right thing to do? Having done it can we really claim the moral high-ground with any credibility when we combat Nazism? Is a nuclear weapon used against a largley CIVILIAN population (already conventionaly bombed around the clock) really an appropriate response to a nation that launched a preemptive strike against US MILITARY targets? Did our beloved FDR knowingly invite such a preemptive strike as a means of galvanizing an otherwise isolationist and economically crippled nation? Did US diplomacy really try to avert war with Imperial Japan? Did Americas barons of capitalism make faustian deals with the Nazis in order to please shareholders and line their own pockets in the process? Did a United States Army court authorize the firing squad execution of Pvt. Eddie Slovak for "cowardice"? Or what of the betrayal of thousands of Canadian troops sacrificed at Dieppe? Before this book one could only read such alternative view points in novels like "Slaughterhouse 5", "Catch 22", "A Midnight Clear" or non-fiction works like John Hersey's "Hiroshima". These books did not necessarily toe the line that "Saving Private Power" does but they were the first to enlighten me beyond the conventional, sterile, censored, patriotic histories of WWII. One could read Stephen Ambrose forever and come away feeling damn good to be American but where the hell is the challenge in that? The Author will undoubtedly be attacked for his blasphemy, and outrageously and irrationaly accused of excusing the likes of Aushwitz and Nanking, but it's crap and don't let those "keepers of the flame" control the debate. They have done it far too long. My only complaint is the author's obvious reverence for the Soviets. They made their own faustian bargains with Hitler and Stalin's Red Army as "liberators" is analageous to...say....the United States as an innocent victim of Japanese agression.

From its Hitler-satire book cover to the book jacket photos of Mr. Zezima in his bandana, the Gex-X nature of his book is evident. However, as to serving its stated purpose - an antidote to the flag-waving exercise of Saving Private Ryan - the books works admirably. As Howard Zinn and others have made clear, nearly all war movies are anti-war movies, but though Spielberg brought gore to the big screen as never before, it was ultimately a pro-war movie. Being an American Jew, we must consider Speilberg's bias. Historian David Wyman would not share Spielberg's enthusiasm for America's noble war.

Zezima's book is not a thorough historian's effort, but it does what virtually no American historian has developed the courage to do: challenge all the self-serving myths that Americans believe about World War II. On that score, Zezima is to be commended for standing up to the propaganda barrage, a situation that has become much worse during the post 9/11 era. As a single-volume work, it succeeds as no other book I have seen on the subject, and that includes the work of Fussell, Adams, Zinn and other professional iconoclasts.

Works such as Zezima's predictably earn one star reviews from people who rarely offer any substantive criticism, but write witty ad hominem attacks. The one-star reviews he has garnered say a lot more about the sorry state of the American political scene than they do about Zezima's book.

Saving Private Power tackles many specific myths surrounding World War II, including the "necessity" of bombing Japan, the "anti-fascism" of the US in the 1920s and 1930s, and the "inevitability" of Hitler's rise to power. The reviews that whine about Zezima's left politics or falsely claim that he equates the petty theft of American GIs with the horrors of the SS are either missing the point or just don't care. Zezima isn't claiming that the US was as bad as Hitler (indeed, he explicitly denies it) he is simply pointing out that World War II, like any other war, isn't about good vs, evil, it is about power vs. power. He is glad that the US power won and Hitler and the Axis was defeated, but US power helped build up the Cold War,the "age of the atom" and other things which disqualify the US from simply being the "good" in a right-wing blowhard's simplistic fairy tale.

If you believe Tom Brokaw's propaganda about "The Greatest Generation," this book will be a wake-up call of epic proportions. An annotated, yet highly accessible expose of America's role in WWII, Saving Private Power is a big first step towards understanding how myths are created and a major move to reclaim history from the corporate and academic domains. Read this book and share the news with everyone you know.

It is very unfortunate, but not a bit surprising that some people would rather ignore or forget about the gruesome deeds of some of America's most celebrated images. Do these people ever ask that we "get over it" or "forget about" Hitler and the holocaust? I think we all know what kind of people would say such things. However, when it comes to American's such as Henry Ford--who kept a framed photo of his hero, Hitler, in his office and funded a virulently anti-semetic newspaper which Hitler himself praised in the highest terms, or Charles Lindberg who eagerly gave profacist radio speeches throughout the 30's and Prescott Bush--father of Prez George Bush--who raised over $50 million for the Nazi war effort, we are supposed to ignore it and pretend that it didn't happen. Are we also supposed to pretend that over 100 million people didn't die during the Good War, while were at it let's just pretend that there was no war at all.

Fortunately, there are people like Michael Zezima and Howard Zinn who will not allow what has been called the "murdering of history" simply because it is inconsistent with great myth of America as the tireless defender of freedom and justice in the world. Obviously, contrary to what some would say, these facts have not been exposed enough, if so why are so many Americans in the dark about the true events of history? Books like this are not produced with the purpose of "trashing America", but in order to make America a better place. For as long as war criminals, traitors, and racists are immortalized as American heroes, the true facts of American history will need to be brought to the attention of the public, which is the valuable purpose that this book is intended to serve.

Finally, by exposing the inhumanity of war, this work represents a strong condemnation of military acts of agression and the logic of total war, which since WWII, has become an all too common tactic of modern war, resulting in the deaths of untold millions of innocent civilians. For as a Judge presiding over the Nurenberg trials so aptly observed it is not the act that determines what a war crime is, it is simply a matter of which side one happens to be on. The Losers are war criminals and the winners are heros. Until people begin to see beyond this kind of grossly simplistic opposition, writings such as these will continue to serve an essential purpose in the service of democracy, justice and freedom. Reading "Saving Private Power" will introduce you to the dark side of history that many would like to keep hidden and in the end you will never be able to see the World in the same way again.

I am using a letter that I wrote to a Harvard author as the basis of my unequivocal support and applause to Zezima for his non-Orwellian summation of the history of World War II. I base my 5 star rating on this letter as it includes many of the best sources of information upon which I base this outstanding rating. These sources can serve as a guide to anyone who wishes to do the background research of Zezima's conclusions themselves (along with Zezima's references in the back of his book).
MY LETTER TO HARVARD AUTHOR WHO ATTRIBUTES 9/11 TO THE BUSH JUNTA AND it's
crytpocracy backers.

Dear Mr Shivani,
I agree with your assessment that 9/11 is the equivalent of Germany's Reichstag fire with the perpetrators being the unelected Bush Junta. The book "The War on Freedom" by Nafeez Ahmed, "Value Wars" by John McMurtry, and "War and Globalisation, and the Truth behind 9/11" by Michel Chossudovsky are scholarly works which devastatingly support your position as well. I Noticed however, that you completely ignored the history of the formation of European Fascist and Nazi Regimes
in your article "Is America Becoming Fascist? Alle Recht alles".

European and American Corporations and associated plutocrats installed the European Fascists
and Nazis into power. The population was turning to socialism, land reform, and unionization etc. in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s as they had been looted into serfdom by the corporate plutocracy (example the Great Depression). The plutocrats funded the fascist terror and wars to overthrow the democracies before they went socialist. No high ideals here other than the almight buck. Orwellian history books concentrate on Jews being the victims of the fascists. Per Father Niemoller's accurate statement: First they came for the socialists, then the democrats, then the union leaders and then the Jews . The Fascist regimes are a war against workers installed by the parasitical plutocracy when the workers are about to rebell such as after an especially intense period of looting by the parasites.

Read George Seldes. He wrote the truth of the period 1917 to 1980 and was taken before the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) for it. He covered the censored news of the supporters and installers of Fascism. His works are gems of gold in an Orwellian history matrix. His books are available at bookfinder.com. (Best one is "Facts and Fascism" but all are exceptional). I also recommend that you read Clement Liebovitz's book "The Chamberlain-Hitler Deal" and Charles Higham's "Trading With the Enemy" which
details allied plutocrat instalation and support for Hitler's clearing out of socialists, unionists, democrats from Europe to remove the threat to capitalists of socialism (the threat resulting from the absoluter tyrrany and enslavement of the workers by plutocrats). This is the real history of WWII and fills in all the holes. Read who supported these regimes then read of their actions
and statements.
Add to this evidence the overthrow of 55 real democratic/populist movements around the globe by the US and the installation of Fascist regimes with death squads (William Blum's book "Killing Hope" John
Stockwell, Penny Lenoreux, and many Noam Chomsky books etc). Further evidence is that our "enemies": the Nazis; were brought into the US Military and the CIA when Germany "lost". This official pact between the Nazis and the US Military Industrial Complex (The Shadow=real Government) was called "Operation PaperClip". Do a search for it on the internet.
A recap is: The US Military Complex installed and funded the fascists and Nazis for the coommon purpose of a war on workers movements (all labeled "communist"), the Nazis were brought into the US military after the war, and the US has continued the fascist terror against workers movements and true democracy and has installe fascist regimes with death squads all over the globe.
The lie of US Orwellian indoctrination that does not list the motivations and funding of plutocrats....only that these people "hated Jews" as their motivation never made any sense to me my whole life...now I know why they lied. Can't alert the serfs....

Forget what you learned in school, Saving Private Power will rock your world. From WWI right up to today, this book takes on all the icons: FDR, Churchill, Dalai Lama, Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur, and more. An easy read that will change the way you look at the world.

If you think you know the truth about WWII, U.S. military, and life in a corporate state, think again. Saving Private Power will introduce a dose of reality into your life.

A must-read as the US begins yet another "good war" in Iraq.

This book attempts to expose the hidden history of the "Good War" however it fails to do this in multiple ways. First it pretends to present new data, yet most of the information that Mickey Z uses has been in the public domain for 20-30 years, anybody with access to a public library could have read about it.

Instead of getting rid of the myths he is guilt of repeating them instead whenever they agree with his political angle. His first point is that people think that America entered the war to stop the Holocaust, yet I have never heard anybody suggest this, people think America entered the war because of Pearl Harbor.

Talking of Pearl Harbor, he repeats the myth that the US knew that the attack was about to happen without explaining why? He tries to use an incident 4 years earlier in China to explain that the attack was going to happen yet does not address the view of the US military at the time that Pearl would only be attacked after the Philippines and/or Hong Kong.

Which brings up an important point, Mickey uses a considerable amount of information that was not available to the decision makers of the day to criticise their choices. They knew they were going up against the Japanese empire someday but not when or where.

Another piece of new information that he spends some pages on is that during the war that US did some things to Asian us citizens that to modern eyes are appalling yet he does not say why it was out of context for the time and how this is new information? Taking decisions taken many years ago and critising them on the basis of current morality is not the sign of a good historian.

Mickey also lets his arguments wander about the time line, it's supposed to be 1939-1945 yet actually his essays cover 1919 to the current time. He repeats the old myths about Dresden, they only made china dolls etc etc etc, and here he finally has his chance to introduce new data, the Dresden city records for the era became open for the first time after the fall of the Berlin wall. But he doesn't he just repeats the old myths '100,000" dead, nobody knows etc.

Later he repeats the myth that 900,000 died in US POW camps, yet that figures from one source (Bacque) have been compressively shown to be false.

This is just the myths in the first half of the book; the second half is just more of the same. Strangely this book tends to support the idea that the war was a "good war' by showing that though many "bad' things happened they were reasonable within the context of a global war. Some GI's raped, some killed prisoners but in general neither of these things happened.

So the book fails in its aim, the back cover says Mickey Z is a self-educated historian, on the basis of this book, he has a long way to go before he is a good self-educated historian.