The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War

J.L. Granatstein, Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus,
York University, served as Director of the Canadian War Museum from 1998
to 2000. He is the author of Who Killed Canadian History? and coauthor
of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Influ

Historians are prone to be icon smashers. If there is a public verity
out there, you can count on an academic to take a crack at it,
marshalling evidence to argue that black is white or at least grey. What
better subject, then, than “the last good war,” the Second World War
fought against fascism?

What makes this book more interesting than the usual revisionist tract
is its author. Jacques Pauwels is a Canadian-trained historian of France
and his book was initially published in Flemish in Belgium. It had
success there, presumably benefiting from the new anti-Americanism that
has allowed Belgians—and others—to forget that they are free because
other countries, not least the United States, liberated them from the
Nazis.

Pauwels’s argument essentially is that the Americans had their own
selfish interests in fighting World War II. Corporations wanted to make
money, politicians had designs, and the elites hoped for their ends to
be achieved. So? When has this not been true? Are Americans alone
expected to be idealists as white as the driven snow? Nations have
interests (all except Canada, of course, which is uniquely pure!), and
they strive to achieve them, but the United States did not replace the
Nazi yoke with an American one. Revisionism is a useful historical tool,
but sometimes it’s simply silly. There are some useful nuggets here,
but most of the book is fool’s gold.