RFK family members on GREEN BOOK and civil rights

[James DiEugenio]

More or less.

Just recall what the Dulles brothers did for those German corporations during World War II.

[Rob Couteau]

Excellent example. It doesn't get any more extreme than that. Thanks for this clarification. It makes perfect sense. And places into even more of a stark contrast what Kennedy was trying to do as an alternative to the status quo. And explains why he had to be eliminated, as he was standing in the way of billions and billions of dollars - because of his innovative anticolonialist foreign policy.

 

Edited February 18, 2019 by Rob Couteau

[Joseph McBride]

Eisenhower certainly did not treat Patton badly. If anything, he could be criticized

for overindulging Patton when he went off the handle, or should I say off the rails. Ike did so because Patton

was such a successful general and the Allies needed his talents.  Eisenhower admired his

generalship and daring, which historians have praised. But Ike hated having to keep him on after such

episodes as the slapping of the shellshocked soldier and various forms of insubordination.

Patton's admiration for the Nazis was so scandalous that Eisenhower

had to warn him in August 1945 to "get off your bloody ass and carry out the denazification program

instead of mollycoddling the goddamn Nazis." Patton's death in a car accident in Heidelberg that

December after his car was hit by a slow-moving Army truck is seen by some as suspicious.

Edited February 18, 2019 by Joseph McBride

[Cory Santos]

When he was put in as a regional governor of Bavaria, he was criticized for hiring nazi administrators.  Of course these were the people with the education and knowledge of the area.  Some historians have also noted that he did not admire them but merely recognized the need to use them.  Ike time after time denied Patton the ability to move forward simply so that other less qualified generals like Montgomery could achieve recognition.  How many people died because Ike stopped his progress while the red army marched west killing and assaulting civilians on Stalin's orders?  All those sad victims owe these war crimes to Ike's failure to confront the red army.  

"Berlin also was given to Stalin’s Army as red meat to feed the dictator’s appetite for killing Germans. To some, including Patton, this was an unnecessary and devastating concession. In late April 1945, Patton claimed he could take Berlin in just “two days,” an assessment shared by the commander of the 9th Army, General William H. Simpson. As with Prague, Patton’s request to secure Berlin was denied. Sadly, after Patton finally reached the ravaged city, he wrote his wife on July 21, 1945, “for the first week after they took it (Berlin), all women who ran were shot and those who did not were raped. I could have taken it (instead of the Soviets) had I been allowed".

Clearly, this disgustingly weak inaction was on Ike not Patton.

Edited February 18, 2019 by Cory Santos

[James DiEugenio]

Well, someone call up Coppola to settle this dispute.

[Cory Santos]

Basically, FDR , Truman and Ike were fighting a war, which resulted somewhat due to appeasement, while appeasing another-possibly worse (I think historians feel this is a fair debate)-  dictator.  How many lives were lost because of this?  Patton strongly pushed to actually keep going and confront the Red Army.  The OSS and army intelligence (Dulles and friends) clearly were correctly thinking of this future chess move and utilized Operation Paperclip to bring Nazi's over who could help us achieve military superiority over the Russians.  Apparently some even got jobs at Disneyland and in Hollywood.  So, while some were dragging their feet in politics (Ike, FDR, Truman)- I recall Churchill once said that Stalin and FDR seemed to be closer than he and FDR at the later part of WWII- some elements of our intelligence and military apparatus were aware of the need to prepare for the upcoming Cold War.  Sadly, by Ike's inactions as commander, the Russians had a foothold in Europe.   Patton was right.

 

[Paul Brancato]

26 minutes ago, Cory Santos said:

Basically, FDR , Truman and Ike were fighting a war, which resulted somewhat due to appeasement, while appeasing another-possibly worse (I think historians feel this is a fair debate)-  dictator.  How many lives were lost because of this?  Patton strongly pushed to actually keep going and confront the Red Army.  The OSS and army intelligence (Dulles and friends) clearly were correctly thinking of this future chess move and utilized Operation Paperclip to bring Nazi's over who could help us achieve military superiority over the Russians.  Apparently some even got jobs at Disneyland and in Hollywood.  So, while some were dragging their feet in politics (Ike, FDR, Truman)- I recall Churchill once said that Stalin and FDR seemed to be closer than he and FDR at the later part of WWII- some elements of our intelligence and military apparatus were aware of the need to prepare for the upcoming Cold War.  Sadly, by Ike's inactions as commander, the Russians had a foothold in Europe.   Patton was right.

 

I really see this differently. So did JFK. So does Oliver Stone. We are still stuck in the Cold War paradigm. It was in my opinion a huge blunder for the people of the world, and a huge gift for the ‘masters of war’.

Edited February 18, 2019 by Paul Brancato

[James DiEugenio]

The Nazis were clearly bent on dominating Eurasia, and with Italy and Japan, probably the world, although I would not include Western Hemisphere there.

I do not think you could say that about the USSR.

[Cory Santos]

Paul, can you clarify your comment?

Are you suggesting allowing the Russians to take as much as they did was a good thing?  Had Patton been allowed to move forward, hundreds of thousands of people would have been spared immediately.  Are you suggesting all those victims would not have been saved if Ike would have let Patton do his job?

I am just asking for clarification in case I misunderstood.

[Cory Santos]

2 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

The Nazis were clearly bent on dominating Eurasia, and with Italy and Japan, probably the world, although I would not include Western Hemisphere there.

I do not think you could say that about the USSR.

Forget Italy.  They were minor in the USSR plan overall.

Japan really did not want complete control of Asia-they knew that controlling large amounts of land and people was difficult as history had proven.  Japan wanted control of their immediate area with a strong safety zone of influence.

USSR, you are probably right, they did not want world control.  But clearly did want complete European control, with the exception of the British isles.  

[Andrew Prutsok]

1 hour ago, Cory Santos said:

Basically, FDR , Truman and Ike were fighting a war, which resulted somewhat due to appeasement, while appeasing another-possibly worse (I think historians feel this is a fair debate)-  dictator.  How many lives were lost because of this?  Patton strongly pushed to actually keep going and confront the Red Army.  The OSS and army intelligence (Dulles and friends) clearly were correctly thinking of this future chess move and utilized Operation Paperclip to bring Nazi's over who could help us achieve military superiority over the Russians.  Apparently some even got jobs at Disneyland and in Hollywood.  So, while some were dragging their feet in politics (Ike, FDR, Truman)- I recall Churchill once said that Stalin and FDR seemed to be closer than he and FDR at the later part of WWII- some elements of our intelligence and military apparatus were aware of the need to prepare for the upcoming Cold War.  Sadly, by Ike's inactions as commander, the Russians had a foothold in Europe.   Patton was right.

 

How many lives in Europe were saved due the Soviets stepping up to take the lead role in defeating Hitler (and suffering most of the casualties)?

[Cory Santos]

Just now, Andrew Prutsok said:

How many lives in Europe were saved due the Soviets stepping up to take the lead role in defeating Hitler (and suffering most of the casualties)?

What makes you say Russia took the lead?  I disagree.  They did not liberate any country.  France was the turning point and truly put Hitler on his heels.  The countries they took over were subjected to more atrocities.  Freedom became a thing of the past. 

[Andrew Prutsok]

There were between 8 and 12.5 million Soviet military deaths World War II. That's compared to 210,000 French, United Kingdom and U.S. had around 400,000 deaths each. Germany and Japan combined had between 25 and 50 percent fewer combat deaths than the Soviets.

I'd posit that the Soviets endured most of the fighting, death and destruction,  and that deaths in the West would have been far higher without their victory over the Nazis in the east.

[Andrew Prutsok]

We also have Patton's diaries for reference, which may shed light on why he was cool with having Nazis run post-war Germany and why he felt we should have joined with the Germans to fight the Soviets.

 

 

General George S. Patton’s diaries, which were published after his death, reveal that Patton was an anti-Semite, and not just akin to the garden-variety, country club anti-Semite that was common in America up to and through the Second World War. According to Leonard Dinnerstein in his book Antisemitism in America, (Oxford Univ. Press, 1995) Patton would not allow Jewish chaplains at his headquarters. (p.139). In light of the fact that the U.S. was engaged in unconditional warfare with the genocidal Nazi regime that had singled out “World Jewry” for liquidation, and the fact that as a commander of a corps and later an army, Patton had many Jewish soldiers, including staff officers, under his command, such as refusal is unconscionable. Raised in a family with a pronounced belief in the paranormal, Patton was one of those WASPs who believed in the superiority of the “Nordic” race, which was encapsulated in the theory of the “Aryan” by Madame Blavatsky of Theosophy fame. The concept heavily influenced Herr Hitler.

 

His son believed him to suffer from bipolar disorder.

[Andrew Prutsok]

Here's the great warrior-prophet explaining his decision to keep Jewish displaced persons who had survived the Nazi death camps, in camps under armed American guard:

 

 "If they [the Jewish DPs] were not kept under guard they would not stay in the camps, would spread over the country like locusts, and would eventually have to be rounded up after quite a few of them had been shot and quite a few Germans murdered and pillaged." At least twice in his diary, Patton referred to the Jewish DPs as "animals."