‘The truth eventually does come out’

The Daily News
May 17,2005

Scripps Howard News Service The gunfire ended 60 years ago, but the
powerful myths borne out of World War II rage on, leading historians
through tons of dusty documents to unravel.

The BBC recently detailed how wartime spinners hid the debacle of
Germany’s 1940 blitzkrieg into France by highlighting the heroic
stories of an armada of small British ships crossing the British
channel to rescue 300,000 stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 shattered the myth the
Soviets peddled that Russian troops were stationed in Central Europe to
protect the region. It also gave Poles, Czechs and others in Central
Europe their first look at a more accurate history of their two-front
wars against the Nazis and the Soviets. After decades of Communist
dissembling, Russian officials now acknowledge that 27 million Soviets
died – a figure the Soviet regime refused to disclose.

Some myths were woven during the war to hide secrets. The “wizard war”
of electronics and radar was not disclosed until long after the war
ended, and the United States only recently declassified the Venona
papers detailing how code breakers monitored the activities of Soviet
rings stealing America’s nuclear secrets during the war. Details of how
the U.S. Navy used code breaking to monitor the whereabouts of Japanese
forces in the Pacific provide explanations for victories in the Coral
Sea and Midway that at one time were credited to naval expertise.

“War captures the essence of many myths. It’s so troubling, disturbing
and upsetting an event it rips apart the fabric of history, and has
got to be justified by some powerful force,” said Peter Kuznick,
a history professor at American University in Washington.

“There is near-universal agreement that the United States was the
good guy in World War II, and that this was a legitimate war that
should have been fought, and should have been won,” he said.

But he said that myth covers over some strategies that modern
historians now are questioning, including the military necessity of
firebombing Japanese cities and the decision to use the atomic bomb
on a nation whose military forces already had been destroyed on the
battlefield. Japan also emerged from the war with its own myths of
the heroism of Japanese troops. That myth doesn’t accommodate the
Japanese atrocities in the 1937 rape of Nanking, China, or the cruel
treatment given American and other prisoners of war in Japanese camps.

University of Pittsburgh professor Donald Goldstein said Hollywood
has been responsible for finding new war myths to promote, and
amplifying others.

Goldstein points to the myth of the superiority of Western bridge
design that is the plot of the Oscar-winning “Bridge over the River
Kwai.” He said there also are glaring mistakes in the 2001 movie
“Pearl Harbor.”

“The problem is that kids believe that’s the way it happened,”
Goldstein said. “They say that bad history is better than no history
because it gets people interested in reading more about it. But these
kids today are not going to the bookstore. I’m teaching it, I know it.”

Goldstein said he wouldn’t be upset if Hollywood declared its movies
were not accurate, but he said moviemakers use historical accuracy as
part of their campaigns to persuade Americans to come to the theater.
He credits movies like “Tora, Tora, Tora” and the first half of “Saving
Private Ryan” for their accuracy. Goldstein is less charitable about
“The Thin Red Line,” involving Guadalcanal, which he said is “awful
history.”

Harvard Sitkoff, a history professor at the University of New
Hampshire, said Hollywood has an enormous effect on students today
because of the impact of TV, film and music on younger generations.

“They often come with a lot of myths firmly implanted in their brains,
and they’re difficult to dislodge because the quality of filmmaking
is very good, and powerful images stay with us,” he said.

Sitkoff said Hollywood is too wrapped up in the message of World War
II as “the good war,” while glossing over the negative aspects of
war – the impact of firebombing raids, the labor strikes in America
and problems on the home front. He said historians are beginning to
detail some of the negative aspects of the war.

War myths are difficult to dislodge, historians say, especially if
they become part of the narrative of how government stays in power.

Peter Balakian, a Colgate University professor of English and author
of “The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response,”
said Turkey still refuses to acknowledge the 1915 massacre of Armenians
and Christians.

“I think the truth eventually does come out. The Soviet Union
dis-armored itself of its institutionalized myths that involved things
they said did not happen,” he said. “The smaller the world becomes,
the harder it is for totalitarian regimes to hold onto these ideas.”