The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, Revised Edition by Jacques R. Pauwels

Author:Jacques R. Pauwels [Pauwels, Jacques R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Germany, Military, World War II, United States, 20th Century, Modern
ISBN: 9781459408722
Google: WyLDBwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1459408721
Publisher: James Lorimer & Company
Published: 2015-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

An anti-Soviet crusade?

The Western Allies were mesmerized for a while by the seductive possibility of a separate armistice with Germany. Such an arrangement offered the prospect of British-American cooperation with the Germans for the purpose of chasing the Red Army out of Eastern Europe, and possibly even of wiping out the Soviet state, a thorn in the side of the capitalist world order, or at least of its leaders, since 1917. Even in mere theory, the possibility of such a reversal of alliances was useful for the Americans and the British, because it provided Stalin with some food for thought, just as the Dresden demonstration of British-American air superiority had done, and thus kept him accommodating even at the time of the greatest successes of the Red Army. The so-called German Option, the possibility of an alliance between the Americans and the British on the one side and the Germans on the other, thus constituted an important element of the hard line vis-à-vis the USSR, the “stick” for which the Americans and British increasingly opted in the spring and early summer of 1945. Furthermore, such a scenario paradoxically became more realistic during the final days of the war in Europe.

That Washington and London might make a deal with the Nazis was simply unthinkable. On the other hand, the American secret service, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency or CIA) had already for some time considered the possibility that in Berlin men might come to power who, in contrast to the Nazis, would in fact be acceptable partners for the Americans and the British. This might happen by means of a coup d’etat, perhaps engineered by Wehrmacht generals. With such interlocutors, then, the Americans could hope to talk about things such as a German capitulation at least on the Western Front; the rapid occupation of German territory by the Western Allies after such a capitulation; the possibility that the Wehrmacht might continue to fight on the Eastern Front; and eventually also a common undertaking against the Soviets.

It was not a coincidence that the OSS was interested in such a scenario. According to the German historian Jürgen Bruhn, this secret organization was

socially speaking, a mixture of top managers of US industry, Wall Street brokers and lawyers, scientists, high-ranking military men, politicians, and socalled “defence intellectuals.” The OSS obviously represented the ruling circles of America . . . The men of the OSS were still preoccupied with the job of defeating National Socialism, but they were already planning to “liquidate” the Soviet Union as a political entity or at least to reduce its influence in postwar Europe to a minimum. 1

The policy of the OSS was greatly influenced by a group of American businessmen, lawyers, and politicians who had already been known for their anti-Bolshevik and pro-fascist attitude long before the outbreak of the Second World War, and who continued throughout this war to cultivate close connections with “respectable” Germans via neutral countries. The OSS had

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.