Stewart Halsey Ross – författare

The United States relied heavily on bombing to defeat the Germans and the Japanese in World War II, and air raids were touted as "precision" bombing in American propaganda. But was precision possible over cloud-covered Europe or a darkened Japanese countryside? Could the vaunted Norden optical bombsight in fact "drop bombs into pickle barrels" as advertised? Were the American aircrews well trained and well protected? How good were their airplanes? What were the results of the costly raids?This work sets suppositions against facts surrounding the United States' use of strategic bombing in World War II. Chapters cover the events leading up to World War II; the start of the war; the seers and the planners; the airplanes, bombs, bombsights, and aircrews; the planes Germany used to defend itself against American planes; the five cities (Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki) that experienced the most destruction; and the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey of the damage done by aerial bombing.The book also probes the government's myth-building statements that supported America's view of itself as a uniquely humanitarian nation, and analyzes the role played by interservice rivalry--"battleship admirals" against "bomber generals."

Reeling from the devastation of World War I, many Americans vowed never again to become involved in European conflicts. This stance was formalized in 1935 when Congress passed the first Neutrality Act, which was not only designed to keep America out of foreign wars but also called for the president to declare an immediate embargo of arms and munitions to all belligerent countries. As war loomed and eventually erupted in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted several policies that aided the Allies, and American neutrality was questionable many months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.This work examines how Roosevelt navigated prewar neutrality to push the United States toward intervention on the side of the Allies in World War II, and considers critically his wartime policy of unconditional surrender and his unprecedented acceptance of a fourth term. It covers his prewar policies that sidestepped neutrality, including covert submarine warfare, air patrol of the North Atlantic, the Lend Lease Act and coordination between the American and British navies, and critiques his plans for rebuilding postwar Europe. Thirteen appendices parallel prewar planning by Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and reproduce such key documents as the Atlantic Charter and the Potsdam Declaration.

"THE VERDICT OF THE VERSAILLES TREATY that Germany and her allies were responsible for the War, in view of the evidence now available, is historically unsound. It should therefore be revised." These are the words of Sidney Bradshaw Fay, noted revisionist historian, on the concluding page of his magisterial Origins of the World War, published in 1928. We now know more about the Great War than merely its origins. We now know that Great Britain's first act of war on August 4, 1914 was to cut the two trans-Atlantic cables that connected Berlin to New York City. We now know that America's professed neutrality in the early years of the conflict was a hoax. We now know that the Cunard passenger liner RMS Lusitania doubled as a munitions ship, and purposefully steamed into harm's way in May 1915. We now know that the alleged atrocities by the German army in Belgium were all lies. We now know that the British organized a massive, covert propaganda apparatus with the goal of dragging America into the war on the side of the Allies. And we now also know that America's involvement in 1917 as a belligerent in Europe was a tragic misstep by anglophile Woodrow Wilson, that had profound implications not only for the United States but for Europe as well, ensuring an even more catastrophic reprise in 1939. Wilson himself declared, "We all know that this was a commercial war," in September 1919. In April 1937, on the 20th anniversary of America's entry into the war, a Gallup Poll found that 70 percent of respondents thought "it was a mistake for the United States to have entered the Great War." Dr. George Gallup himself declared that "this conviction has been the great master principle of the post-war period in the United States." The lesson is forgotten, propaganda for war repeats, and history repeats. The majorities supporting an invasion of Iraq in 2003 turned two years later to 60 percent opposition to the war... a lesson learned too late again.