Many conservative commentators have speculated on how today's newspaper and television reporters would have reported World War Two, taking into consideration the large number of intelligence flops, flaws in equipment, instances of abuse, battles with extraordinarily high casualties, and overall poor planning that occurred during that war.
But when a historian and accomplished writer like Victor Davis Hanson gives it a try, the results are well worth reading. Here is how Hanson imagines that an editorial, written by today's media, would read if it had been written in May 1945, just after the fall of Berlin and five months before the surrender of Japan:
May 1, 1945—After the debacles of February and March at Iwo Jima, and now the ongoing quagmire on Okinawa, we are asked to accept recent losses that are reaching 20,000 dead brave American soldiers and yet another 50,000 wounded in these near criminally incompetent campaigns euphemistically dubbed “island hopping.”
Meanwhile, we are no closer to victory over Japan. Instead, we are hearing of secret plans of invasion of the Japanese mainland slated for 1946 or even 1947 that may well make Okinawa seem like a cake walk and cost us a million casualties and perhaps involve a half-century of occupation. The extent of the current Kamikaze threat, once written off as the work of a “bunch of dead-enders,” was totally unforeseen, even though such suicidal zealots are in the process of inflicting the worst casualties on the U.S. Navy in its entire history.
... A number of issues arise. Why is Henry Stimson (“Gentlemen do not read each other's mail”) still Secretary of War? After the debacles at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines tragedy, the Kasserine Pass disaster, the unforeseen bocage in Normandy, the Falaise Gap escape, the Anzio mess, the fatal detour to Rome, the surprise at the Bulge, the bloodbath at Tarawa, and now the Iwo Jima and Okinawa nightmares, is not five years of his incompetence and arrogance enough? A number of our retired generals seems to agree, who have recently bravely come forward to remind us that Sec. Stimson long ago tried to dismantle key elements of our intelligence services, attempted to curtail the operational command of our Army Air Corps generals in conducting bombings of Europe, and has on more than one occasion intervened to remove targets from Gen. LeMay’s campaign over Japan.
As we see thousands of Americans dying and our enemies still in power after four years of war, it is also legitimate to question the stewardship of Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall. The Sherman tank tragedy, the daylight bombing fiasco, the absence of even minimally suitable anti-tank weapons and torpedoes—all these lapses came on his watch, and the man at the top must take full responsibility for mistakes that have now cost thousands of American lives. Indeed, it is not just that America has worse tanks and guns than our German enemies, but they are inferior even to the rockets and armor of our Soviet allies. The recent publication of “The Sherman Tank Scandal” follows other revelations published in “Asleep at the Philippines,” “The Flight of Gen. MacArthur,” “Gen. Patton and the Atrocities on Sicily,” “Do Americans Execute POWs?” “Torture on Guadalcanal,” “Incinerating Women and Children?” and “Civilian Massacres in Germany”—publications in their totality that suggest a military out of control as often as it is incompetent.
Make sure you read it all.
Thanks for pointing to this. I have often speculated how we might have fared in Britain had the BBC of the time been similar to its current counterpart. Anyhow, a while back I came across the following blogpost at Jessica's Well. It details an article written by John Dos Passos in Life Magazine, published in 1946. It is the first article I ever came across that indicates the driection media reporting would take. For what it's worth, I have lived in Holland for many years and I am married to a Dutchwoman whose family suffered the German occupation. I showed them the article and, needless to say, their mouths fell open with disbelief at the scale of misrepresentation towards the USA of the period.
http://www.kultursmog.com/Life-Page01.htm
Posted by: William | May 15, 2006 at 02:34 PM