not so benevolent ...

    Chomsky, Noam, Nathan Robinson. The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World. Penguin Random House, 2024. ISBN: 9780593656327.
    Contents: Introduction: Noble goals and Mafia logic -- Disciplining the Global South -- The war on Southeast Asia : Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia -- 9/11 and the wrecking of Afghanistan -- Iraq : the crime of the century -- The myth of American idealism -- The U.S., Israel, and Palestine -- The great China threat -- NATO and Russia after the Cold War -- A world in peril : the threats of nuclear war and climate catastrophe -- The domestic roots of foreign policy : serving the "national interest" -- Our "rules-based" order : the application of international law -- How mythologies are manufactured : propaganda and the public mind -- Conclusion : hegemony or survival?


  "Every ruling power tells itself stories to justify its rule. Nobody is the villain in their own history." 
        - The Myth of American idealism, p. 1


    The table of contents listed above describes The Myth of American Idealism’s basic gestalt exceptionally well, but we could summarize even more succinctly by quoting the book’s subtitle – how U.S.  foreign policy endangers the world – only adding perhaps the controversial rider that American foreign policy also endangers the U.S. itself, this despite official pronouncements to contrary. In a word, American foreign adventurism doesn’t make its ordinary citizens any safer, probably just the opposite.  
    Before we go further, two things. First, American culture, citizens and yes, sometimes even the government, have been a force for many good things in the way of movements and accomplishments, both in the United States and abroad. Second, the present book doesn't even pretend to opine that the U.S. is uniquely evil. It’s not that, say, China and Russia – and a host of lesser powers – are blameless, far from it. But because of the power and influence the United States has wielded in world affairs since the end of World War II, it has the potential to commit huge wrongs, which apologists rationalize as well-intentioned ‘mistakes’ that didn’t work out.
     In any case, in The Myth of American Idealism, Noam Chomsky and Nathan Robinson survey the history of U.S. military and economic activity around the world, focusing on the post-1945 years. Chomsky and Robinson examine the American pursuit of global domination, and in particular survey the appalling extent of American missteps brought about by its hegemonic, Mafia don approach to foreign policy, which, boiled down to its unvarnished, realpolitik essence, is: what we say goes, in other words the Godfather’s word is law. This practice extends at least as far back as 1945, and probably earlier. Perhaps even more disturbing is how dominant elites in the United States have pushed self-serving myths, buttressed by a compliant media, about this country's commitment to "spreading democracy," while pursuing a reckless foreign policy that served the interest of few and endangered all too many, without even bothering to inform, much, less consult, the broader American public. To be sure, in true Mafia don fashion the American empire can on occasion be generous, but only when it chooses to, and in the manner it chooses to, read: when convenient to do so, and to those friendly to its interests.
     Regarding the common practice of American support of unsavory foreign governments (aka brutal right wing military dictatorships), paraphrasing Myth, and expressed in brutal terms: if killers and torturers are sympathetic to American interests, killers and torturers will do just fine, and inconvenient details like moral principles and international law simply don’t apply. The corollary here is that “nationalist” (read: democratically elected, popular) governments will be bad for American interests, and perhaps even more disconcerting, they set a bad example for other countries to follow. In all cases ‘American interests’ are determined by the U.S. socio-economic-political elite and not the general public.
     Despite the accusatory tone throughout, in many ways Myth of American Idealism is more history than political commentary or editorial opinion: the ideas and events are presented in more or less chronologic order, and more important, are excruciatingly referenced by eighty pages of citations and detailed footnotes, with many of the sources originating from official documents. They reveal the extent of connivance, in some cases outright deception, at the highest levels of American government. Perhaps even worse is the idée fixe of ‘optimistic’ thinking (with no basis in reality) that often served as the template for official policy making.
     I invoke the clichéd truism that this book ought to be required reading for any concerned citizen who wants to have a better understanding of what our government has been up to for at least the past eighty years, and shows few signs of willingness to change [1]. Indeed, if more current events are any indication, the rogue state practice has if anything only intensified in recent years.
    Alas, I fear the principal readership of this book will be those who don’t necessarily need to read it, that is to say, those for whom the basic thesis put forth in Myth is not news – leftists, pacifists, anarchists, internationalists, anti-war and climate change activists, left-leaning historians and journalists [2]. As for those at the other end of the political spectrum, i.e. the ones who really need to read this book, it’s unlikely they are receptive to Chomskyan ideas in the first place. They may never have even heard of Chomsky, much less be familiar with his writings. Still, I’d be curious to know the response of hard core right wingers and MAGA-heads to the contents of Myth.
   All this is not to suggest that The Myth of American Idealism is above criticism, or that Chomsky and Robinson always get it right. Despite the generally good press the book has received, some sources fault Chomsky for being too selective in his examples, that his philosophy is basically warmed over isolationism, that he could well be wrong in his assumption that most American citizens believe the myth of idealism and benevolence, and for his more or less rehashing what he’s been saying for the past six decades. And it must be admitted that these and other criticisms are, at least in part, well taken.
   To be sure, those familiar with Chomsky’s writings will find little new in Myth. In a sense it’s a condensed version of the great man’s writings and public statements that have already appeared. On the other hand it’s about the perfect place to start for a Chomsky novice. More important perhaps, as an insightful contrarian take on U.S. foreign policy since WW2, written in concise, nontechnical language, one could hardly do better than the present book.

    [1] Perhaps it’s instructive to recall the all too prescient words of Senator Frank Church. As much as Church’s work on the committee that bears his name has assured his place in political history,* an even greater, albeit much less well-known, moment occurred on February 21, 1968, in a speech on the Senate floor, in which Church specifically criticized American involvement in Vietnam.** He also cautioned against the trends of U.S. imperialism and militarism generally, and the ascendancy of a national-security state. Ergo the U.S. was acting more like an empire than a republic. The speech is extensively quoted in James Risen’s book,*** and space precludes our inclusion in detail here, but perhaps we might be allowed to reference an especially prescient passage:
   
       “… in the face of all this, I wish I could express some confidence that, by an act of our  own volition, we might soon commence to alter this country’s foreign policy from one of general, to one of selective, involvement. But I have no such confidence. Like other nations before us that drank deeply from the cup of foreign adventure, we are too enamored with the nobility of our mission to disenthrall ourselves. Besides, powerful vested interests now encrust and sanctify the policy. Were we to wait for the hierarchy of either political party to advocate a change of course, I fear we would wait indefinitely.”

     What is most remarkable about the speech, and this passage in particular, is not just its soaring eloquence, but that it could be delivered today, over a half century later, and be just as on the money, perhaps more so given recent events and the, frequently misguided, American response to said events. As for the Vietnam conflict, the war ended in 1975, but it's a sad commentary that it took the United States seven years after Church's speech in 1968 to finally conclude the war. And yet, regarding American foreign policy generally, Church got it right. He cautioned we might wait indefinitely for our leaders to change course, and today, nearly six decades later, it seems we’re still waiting.  

    * United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (1975-76), commonly referred to as the Church Committee.
    ** The full text of the admittedly long winded speech, titled ‘The Torment in the Land,’ can be found in the Senate Congressional Record, Wed. Feb 21, 1968.
    *** James Risen, The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys, and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy, Little, Brown, 2023.    

    [2] The book makes for a painful read, and not only for its coverage of the extent of American complicity in international crimes. Like Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States,* which is cut from the same ideological cloth as Myth, few individuals escape the rapier gaze. Political parties, too. Robinson and Chomsky point out that both Democrats and Republicans have consistently supported the imperialist, militarist version of American foreign policy. Myth also upsets the apple cart regarding some of our most cherished figures. To wit: a reading takes the gloss off JFK’s leftist, pacifist image.** Likewise Jimmy Carter’s human rights record: while in office his actions were often at odds with his later, noble pronouncements. Sobering examples that even the most idealistic minded of presidents will have trouble going against entrenched foreign policy interests when push comes to shove.

      * While Chomsky and Zinn share the same leftist ideological framework, Zinn’s A People’s History focuses mostly on domestic social and political movements, less so on foreign policy.   

      ** JFK and Vietnam is covered more thoroughly in Chomsky’s Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War and U.S. Political Culture. The inescapable conclusion is that Kennedy simply continued and intensified the momentum of gradual escalation his predecessors had already begun. Insofar as his Vietnam policy is concerned about the best that can be said for JFK is that his successors were far worse.
 
    Further reading: Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World, Public Affairs, 2020. Jakarta Method covers much the same territory as Myth of American Idealism, from a Cold War context, focusing on American co-ordination and support for anti-communist coups in Indonesia and Brazil in the 1960s. Bevins’s book is a devastating indictment of the dubious methods Washington used to ‘win’ the Cold War. The result was the deaths and otherwise ‘disappearances’ of millions of people and the installation of right-wing dictatorships throughout the Third World, the reverberations of which continue to this day.*** A recent book that might be recommended in connection with Myth is Caroline Elkins's Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire, which takes a similar approach in that it addresses the gap between lofty British pronouncements on 'civilizing' the world, while employing harsh methods to secure and maintain its colonial possessions. See also: John Newsinger's The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire.

     *** Along these lines an interesting recent documentary is Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (2024), directed by Johan Grimonprez. The film intersperses jazz numbers in while presenting a Cold War-esque story of the 1961 assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, which the film argues was a conspiracy driven by Western imperialist interests, especially Belgium and the U.S., to retain control Congo's mineral wealth.  

coffee-table can be beautiful

     Albrecht, Donald. Cecil Beaton: The New York Years. New York, Skira Rizzoli, 2011. [Published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name held at the Museum of the City of New York, October 2011-March 2012.]  
   Brassaï : For the Love of Paris, Agnès de Gouvion Saint-Cyr [exhibition curator]. Paris, Flammarion, 2013. Translated from the French by David Radizinowicz. "Simultaneously published in French as Brassaï, pour l'amour de Paris" (Title page verso). [Published on the occasion of an exhibition held from November 8, 2013 to March 8, 2014 in the Salle Saint-Jean at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris].
     Fashion: The Definitive History of Costume and Style. New York, DK, 2012. [‘Smithsonian’ - cover]
     Jorgensen, Jay and Scoggins, Donald L. Creating the Illusion: A Fashionable History of Hollywood Costume Designers. Foreword by Ali MacGraw. Philadelphia, Running Press; Atlanta, Turner Classic Movies, [2015].  


     There’s the coffee table and then there’s the coffee table book. Alas, so called coffee-table books have attained a bad odor: they’re really just ornaments for display, things not really to be savored, much less read. Thus the moniker. In a word, they’re status symbols that advertise how cultured (and how well off) we are. Official sources tend to reinforce this: the term reportedly made its first appearance in a 1961 issue of Arts Magazine, and according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, coffee-table refers to "a large expensive book with many pictures that is typically placed on a table for people to look at in a casual way." Similarly, the august New Oxford American Dictionary, Third Edition, chimes in with the almost exact same definition: a large, expensive, lavishly illustrated book, especially one intended only for casual reading. However … I hope the four volumes listed above will to some extent refute this assumption: they have scrumptious photos but also sprightly, well informed, highly literate texts, so much so that at least one of them might be considered a full-on monograph.    

    The Brassaï volume is in its way the most substantial, though not necessarily the most beautiful, of the four. While Brassaï was a man of many talents – novelist, sculptor and painter – it’s his nighttime vistas of Paris that assure his place in aesthetic history. Indeed, the Hungarian-born Gyulus Halasz (1899–1984), who worked as Brassaï, was something of a lifelong Paris specialist, and the black and white images herein concentrate on the between-the-wars years and the 1950s. It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that the city has never been captured so evocatively or poetically. My favorites are the photos that distill the melancholy and mystery of the night, and especially those that give us the night people – criminals, prostitutes, grifters, night owls, alcoholics, drug addicts, cabaret entertainers, the homeless – in the all their unsavory splendor. Brassaï: For the Love of Paris further benefits from David Radizinowicz’s insightful translation from the French. Includes a chronology.

    As for Cecil Beaton, he was of course more than just a portrait and fashion photographer. Illustrator, artist, set and costume designer, incorrigible bon vivant, his many talents are seen to best advantage in the extravagant volume that’s Cecil Beaton: The New York Years. Fans of Beaton will lap up this book like catnip and if one is new to his work you’ll probably become a fan quickly. We have page after page of mouth-watering photos (some never before published) of the beautiful – in all senses of the word – people. I’m especially partial to the candid(?) and not-so-candid entries of Greta Garbo. Also making an appearance are the usual suspects of the rich, famous and notorious: Brando, Astaire, Warhol, Marilyn, Capote, Callas, Chanel, Mick Jagger. Indeed Beaton ran with the beau monde and, like Capote and a few others, blurred the line between self and subject.
    Not so surprising then that this volume features selections from the elite figures in art, theater, fashion and the entertainment worlds from the 1930s to the 1960s. The portraits and ‘informal’ photos are fine, but what captures my heart are the illustrations of the theatrical costume designs in their technicolor glory. In his designs Beaton had an eye for the classical style and brought truth to the adage that old is always new again if we wait long enough. In sum, Cecil Beaton: The New York Years is a wonderful production and shows how classy a ‘coffee-table book’ can be.

    Speaking of classy coffee table books, Fashion: The Definitive History of Costume and Style, while it may overstate its title – I’m not sure what a ‘definitive’ history would look like – this massive volume is nonetheless a feast for the senses, well, certainly for the eyes. As the fellow said, fashion changes but art and artistry doesn’t.
     Impressive in its range and with impeccable production values, Fashion covers the most important trends in costume and style from antiquity to the present. True to DK form, the book scores on quality – and most definitely quantity – of illustrations; layout; and, to a certain extent, content, providing almost too many facts in one volume. Each chapter has a timeline; analysis of social, historical and cultural issues; major trends; feature articles on fashion legends and major designers; and many, many illustrations. The detailed index, even with its squint inducing small print, is also a plus, though conspicuously absent is a reading list or footnotes.
     One curiosity about Fashion is that there’s no author credited, not even an editor. There are lots of names listed on the copyright page, thus we assume this production was done by committee. However – to be perfectly technical, a listing of ‘consultant authors’ and ‘writers’ is provided on pages [8-9]. In any event, and perhaps not so surprising, the writing itself, while commendable in the plethora of information it offers, has a certain generic quality and lacks a cohesive voice or point of view.
     If I were to quibble, and it’s only a quibble, I would have preferred more coverage of costume design in the movies, and in particular its influence on fashion trends in the broader culture, especially during cinema’s golden age (roughly 1930-1955). Another caveat, if that is the word: the book’s content leans heavily toward women’s fashions, along with an almost total emphasis on white, American/Euro fashions that rich people wore, to the almost total exclusion of other cultures and socio/economic groups. Still, as long as there are those who appreciate the chronicling of costume design, conveyed through the most luxuriant imagery, Fashion: The Definitive History of Costume and Style will never go out of style.

     As much as Fashion: The Definitive History … may be a little weak on costume and the movies, Creating the Illusion: A Fashionable History of Hollywood Costume Designers fills the void admirably, almost with a vengeance. The cover photo of a wildly adorned Marlene Dietrich gives us an idea of the extravagant treasures to be found inside the pages of this huge tome. The book then is little short of nirvana for film lovers, especially those partial to the Golden Age. Each chapter has a brief biography of a designer, starting with the silent era and progressing more or less to the present. The better-known designers get several pages each, with heavy emphasis on the biographic details to the detriment somewhat of the aesthetic elements. A parochial observation: I was delighted to see that longtime RKO designer Renié Conley (who usually went by just plain ‘Renié’) was given a chapter. Among many other films, she created the wardrobes for the Val Lewton horror classics in the 1940s, and won the Oscar in 1963 for her over-the-top designs for Cleopatra.    
    Creating the Illusion then is a beguiling, somewhat incongruous combination of photos of near camp, and, in some cases, straight-on camp costumes, combined with a sensitive, knowing text that borders on the scholarly. The verdict: the book is an absolute stunner, and will delight movie fans, especially connoisseurs of classic cinema. A mild criticism: as the book's subtitle implies, the coverage is very Hollywood-centric, thus, and alas, very few, if any, foreign films are included.

the good war that never ends

    Collingham, E. M. (Elizabeth M.)  The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food. New York, Penguin, 2012.
     Kempowski, Walter. Swansong 1945: A Collective Diary of the Last Days of the Third Reich. Translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside. Foreword by Alan Bance. New York, Norton, 2015. [Originally published in Great Britain by Granta Books, 2014 as Swansong 1945: A Collective Diary from Hitler's Last Birthday to VE Day.] "Original German edition first published in 2005. Walter Kempowski: Das Echolot. Abgesang '45 Ein kollekitives Tagebuch. Copyright © 2005 by Albrecht Knaus Verlag, Munich."
     McConahay , Mary Jo. The Tango War: The Struggle for the Hearts, Minds and Riches of Latin America during World War II. New York, St. Martin’s 2018.
     McMeekin, Sean. Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II. New York, Basic Books, 2021.
     Schmid, Walter. A German POW in New Mexico. Translated by Richard Rundell; edited by Wolfgang T. Schlauch. Albuquerque, NM, University of New Mexico Press, 2005. [Published in cooperation with the Historical Society of New Mexico]. [First published in Germany in 2000 under the title Einer unter Vielen: ein Bericht über Kriegseinsatz in Tunesien und Gefangenschaft in Amerika und England 1942-1947 (W. Schmid [Libri Books on Demand], Hamburg, [Norderstedt], 2000)].
     Selby, Scott Andrew. A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin: The Chilling True Story of the S-Bahn Murderer. New York, Berkley Books, 2014.

    For professional historians as well as amateur enthusiasts (like myself), World War II is a source of never ending fascination and discovery, as is witnessed by the continuing deluge from the major publishing houses, small presses, and do-it yourselfers: every year new information is discovered or a new take on the events surges forth.
    As for myself, I enjoy the offbeat and even eccentric approaches to the conflict: studies that consider a specialized aspect or offer a different perspective, in contrast to the Allied-centric narrative we’re presented by pop culture venues like the History Channel, Story, A&E, Hollywood, as well as the many print popular histories. Thus the six, relatively recent, entries considered here, presenting as they do aspects of the war that haven’t been covered so thoroughly, are especially welcome.
   Selby’s account of a serial murderer in Nazi Berlin at the height of the war, and Schmid’s POW memoir, while the slightest entries, are in their different ways the most remarkable, certainly the most novel, of the six volumes considered herein. McMeekin’s hefty Stalin tome, even with its revisionist vibe, is the most conventional in content and treatment, and moreover has considerable academic sheen. Collingham's analysis of food and the war similarly takes the familiar historical approach. The two remaining titles, Tango War and Swansong 1945, fall somewhere in-between.
    Kempowskli’s volume, however, is practically sui generis and thus deserves primacy as it is indeed a unique historical document. Swansong delivers the goods primo as it portrays the multi-dimensional, collage-like nature of the war as experienced by a wide swath of individuals. Swansong is the final entry of Kempowski’s ten-volume, 7,000-page opus maximus, Sonar: A Collective Journal (1993-2005). For two decades Kempowski collected newspaper articles, diaries, letters, memoirs and documents written by people on all sides of the fighting and from every level of experience and life during World War II. Swansong 1945 covers the final conflagration and ultimate end of Nazi Germany and the war in Europe. It covers four fateful days in Spring 1945: Hitler's birthday on April 20, American and Soviet troops meeting at the Elbe on April 25, Hitler's suicide on April 30, and finally the German surrender on May 8. In the Sources section the vast majority of the cites are of German texts, giving a primary source verisimilitude to the mix.
    The various persons quoted run the gamut from heads of state to civilians, prisoners-of-war, ordinary soldiers, refugees, and artists and writers caught up in the conflict. Indeed for some of us, such first-person historical accounts of the type we get in Swansong are the best barometers for what really happened, even if in some cases the memories must be treated with care. Still, one is tempted to invoke the cliché compulsively readable, because this book is exactly that. It’s tough to put down because there’s something compelling on every page.
    Especially fascinating to read is Joseph Goebbels’s unintentionally ironic entry from 20 April (perhaps not so coincidentally Hitler’s birthday), in which he poetically – and presciently – waxes on about a newer, brighter Europe that will emerge after the war. Just such a Europe did emerge, but perhaps not in the way Dr. Goebbels envisioned. Then there’s an SS officer recalling a dinner at the fashionable Hotel Adlon in Berlin on April 20, where “waiters in tuxedos and maîtres d’ in tailcoats went on solemnly and unflappably serving purple pieces of kohlrabi on the silver trays meant for better days.” And there are the chilling first-hand accounts of the activities at the Führerbunker during the last days of the war.
      One quibble: I would have preferred some photographs of the individuals. If that wasn’t possible then a few photos of the various diaries, newspaper clippings, letters, notebooks, etc.. to give a flavor of the originals. But a quibble is only a quibble. Swansong 1945 is a work of signal import and is highly recommended to all serious students of WW2.
     Sean McMeekin’s ponderous Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II is not so much a new history – most of the chronologies and events discussed have been covered at length elsewhere – as it is a new emphasis and interpretation, actually more of individuals than events themselves. Most historical accounts of WW2 describe it as Hitler’s war and make Hitler the central protagonist and ultimate villain in the conflict. McMeekin, however, argues that the war that emerged in Europe in August 1939 was the one Stalin wanted, not Hitler, also that the Pacific War was due at least in part to Stalin’s maneuverings and schemings. McMeekin covers in some detail the massive aid in materiel offered to the Soviets by the United States. Apparently egged on by “Soviet assets” in his orbit, President Roosevelt went out of his way to appease the Soviet dictator, perhaps too much so. If Roosevelt didn’t exactly give away the store, he gave way a lot. The ultimate result was that Stalin emerged as the major beneficiary of the war, and that the Soviet Union was in a much stronger position, albeit at horrific cost, at the war’s conclusion than when the war started.
     McMeekin doesn’t go so far as to overtly endorse the controversial Suvorov theory that Stalin was planning a massive attack against the West in 1941 or 1942, and that Hitler simply beat him to the punch by attacking the Soviet Union first, a classic case of a preventive, rather than preemptive, assault [1]. But if one reads carefully between the lines we can see at least a certain sympathy for and receptivity to this revisionist view. That McMeekin had access to documents in Russian archives and reads Russian adds strength to his arguments, be they controversial or conventional. Stalin’s War includes index, photos, and 120 pages of notes and bibliography.
     Similarly Mary Jo McConahay’s The Tango War, if not quite revisionist history, refreshingly takes on an aspect of WW2 that’s largely ignored in conventional histories, that is, the struggle between the U.S. and Germany for allegiances – and resources – in Latin America during World War II. Indeed McConahay’s opus may well be the first popular survey of what was going on South-of-Border during WW2, and for the most part the book succeeds admirably.
     McConahay’s approach is journalistic rather than purely historical, and she concentrates on the human element in the form of the wide array of colorful, often shady characters on both sides of the conflict. Perhaps most entertaining are the descriptions of the Good Neighbor efforts by the Office of Inter-American Affairs, which sent not-so-secret weapons – Hollywood celebrities like Errol Flynn, Orson Welles and the Walt Disney troupe – south to garner good will for the American cause. In the case of Welles and Disney, some legitimate cinematic products resulted, specifically Welles’s ill-fated documentary It’s All True and the Disney films Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. On the other hand, the shameful, forced internment in the U.S. of "dangerous" individuals being extended to Central and South America was one of the more cringeworthy episodes recounted in the book, especially so since some of the internees were exchanged for American prisoners-of-war. Likewise compelling is the chapter on espionage activities. There’s also a section on the infamous ‘ratlines,’ the escape routes that helped Nazi fugitives escape to South America.
     In the final chapter McConahay discusses the sinister parallels between European fascists of World War II and Latin American dictators of the 1970s and ’80s, many of whom were unrepentant fans of Mussolini and Hitler. These regimes had the sometimes public, sometimes covert, backing of Washington, so long as they were anti-Communist and friendly toward American economic interests. A mild weakness of Tango War is that McConahay eschews the chronologic for the topical, and as a result there’s some jumping around in the narrative. On balance, however, a good read, also replete with lots of photos. Tango War is a long overdue examination of a little-known aspect of the war.
     Scott Andrew Selby’s A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin is more noteworthy for the book’s subject matter than its treatment or style. For all that there’s plenty of works in English on Germany’s war effort, both military and civilian alike, little has been written on crime and criminals in the Third Reich amongst ordinary civilians, much less about serial murderers. And as has been pointed out, it’s a concept awash in contradiction: that such a regime specializing in state sponsored mass murder would spend so many resources tracking down a lone killer of a few women is difficult to understand. Indeed the dynamic is not unlike that depicted so provocatively in Hans Helmutt Kirst’s novel Night of the Generals, later adapted into a popular film, which told the story of a Polish prostitute murdered in 1942 by a high ranking German general, and of a certain Major Grau’s subsequent quest to track down the culprit. One can’t help recalling Grau’s maxim, ‘let us say what is admirable on the large scale is monstrous on the small. Since we must give medals to mass murderers, why not give justice to the small entrepreneur.’
     Serial Killer covers the case of Paul Ogorzow, the S-Bahn Killer. He had a family, a job with the railroad, and was a member of the Nazi Party. Since Ogorzow worked on the railway he found that the air raid blackouts at night provided good cover for him to do his deeds. Ogorzow murdered eight women total, attempted to murder six others, and assaulted many others. Wilhelm Lüdtke, head of the Berlin police’s serious crimes division, emerges as the story’s hero as he was tasked to hunt down the monster in the midst, and eventually he did. Lüdtke had the, albeit discreet, support of the likes of Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels, who “wanted to project an image of Nazi Germany as a place free from such problems as the predations of a serial killer.” Lüdtke’s rather florid afterlife following the war is covered in some detail in the epilogue. In addition to his other activities, Lüdtke worked as an asset for the CIA in the 1950s.
     Ogorzow was convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed – by guillotine – two days later. The book offers plenty of detail about the S-Bahn and investigative techniques of the German police, but little on the psychology of the protagonist. Thus the story that emerges is rather dry. For those of us accustomed to the backgrounds and especially psychology of serial killers, we sense something is lacking.
     The case was such a sensation that a series of crime novels emerged, most prominently Death Rode the Train (Der Tod fuhr im Zug). Its author was Wilhelm Ihde, writing under the name Axel Alt, and the killer’s name was changed to ‘Omanzow,’ but the fiction didn’t fool anybody, and the book was a big seller in Germany during the war. An even more bizarre detail is that Ogorzow’s widow was charged a fee for the use of the guillotine during the execution. Serial Killer includes a detailed S-Bahn map as well as photos of S-Bahn carriages, stations and towers.
     Walter Schmid’s A German POW in New Mexico offers a different take on the war experience. There are any number of WW2 personal narratives out there, written by those on all sides of the conflict, among them quite a few prisoner-of-war memoirs. Most of these are from the Allied point of view, but there aren’t many accounts of the German POW experience, written by a German, published in English, no less. In fact, A German POW is the only one I know of, though indeed there could be others.
     Walter Schmid was a member of Rommel's Afrika Korps and had fought only five months before he was captured in Tunisia. Schmid was one of 380,000 German POWs sent to prison camps in the United States. He was first sent to Oklahoma and soon transferred to New Mexico in July 1944. Schmid worked in southern New Mexico near Las Cruces as a farm laborer. His primary duties were picking cotton and harvesting melons. A German POW in New Mexico is based on his diary and the letters he sent home to his German girlfriend, whom he later married. Schmid's memoir was published in Germany in 2000, and the abbreviated English version that’s A German POW in New Mexico benefits from the translation of Richard Rundell. Special mention must also be made of editor Wolfgang Schlauch’s introduction, as well as his commentary interspersed throughout. Includes vintage photos, bibliography and appendixes.
     Collingham's hefty opus, Taste of War, was an eye opener for me in many ways. Even as a (admittedly amateur) WW2 buff, truth be told I never thought much about the importance of food production and delivery in the context of the conflict. There have been many books on the personalities, battles and strategy of the war, but the present tome may well be the first (more or less) scholarly treatment of how something so basic as the supply of food and the feeding of soldiers (and civilians) was central to the prosecution of the total war that was World War II. Includes photos, maps, extensive notes and bibliography. Much recommended.  

   [1] Suvorov, Viktor.The Chief Culprit: Stalin's Grand Design to Start World War II. Annapolios, Md., Naval Institute Press 2008.

Revisionism and its discontents

    Zinn, Howard, A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.
   Jeff Riggenbach, Why American History is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism, Auburn, Mises Institute, 2009.

Revisionism. The policy or practice of revision or modification; departure from the original interpretation of a theory, etc.; esp. the revision of Marxism on evolutionary socialist or pluralist principles. 2. The theory or practice of revising one's attitude to a previously accepted situation or point of view; spec. (orig. U.S.) a movement or process involving the revision of an established or accepted version of historical events.
Revisionist.orig?. U.S. A person who questions or revises a previously accepted version of historical phenomena or events.

   “Inevitably history becomes what the historian chooses to point out.” - Simon Winder, The Man Who Saved Britain

   “It is always difficult for the non-historian to remember that there is nothing absolute about historical truth” - Gordon Craig, “The Devil in the Details,” NY Review of Books, Sept. 19, 1996.

    A crusty old professor of mine once told me that all history is opinion. The more I experience of history, and of life itself, the more I’m convinced he was spot on in his assessment. Indeed, like the doctor and lawyer, the (professional) historian is paid for expressing opinions, but he has other privileges, chief among them an especial perk not available even to the two aforementioned honorable professions, that is, to alter the way we see history itself. In other words, and put simpler, historians have the power to, well, rewrite the past [1].
    But not so fast. To wit, over time clichés and 'truisms' gradually creep into the conversation and are accepted uncritically as part of the historical record, and there emerges a historical consensus. Nowhere is this more egregious than in what we might call pop history. In any case, and getting back to revisionism, there are, happily, a few dissenting voices, which we usually refer to as revisionist, or less controversially, contrarian. In a perfect world all history could be characterized as revisionist [2], and rightly so: the historian’s job is to examine conventional interpretations of history and consider new evidence or interpret facts and events in a new light, applying new methodologies and fresh perspectives. In this sense it’s not such a step to also view creative writing as revisionist. We writers of fiction revisit the old formulas and provide new takes in, we hope, fresh and interesting ways.

    Characteristically dry and uncontroversial, the Oxford English Dictionary’s entry above is hard to fault. But revisionism is more complicated than a mere definition, and, like some phrases – ‘feminist,’ ‘liberal,’ or ‘activist’ come to mind – the word itself has taken on a bad odor [3], to the point where it’s more or less synonymous with deliberate falsification and distortion. Recriminations and counter-recriminations abound with charges of conspiracy theory thinking at one extreme and political correctness at the other. Thus anything labelled revisionist carries with it an emotional charge, and as a result it has been both praised and (mostly) damned by both the Left and the Right. Depending on the source, or audience, a revisionist historian may delight or infuriate: one person’s revisionist is another’s responsible, skeptical historian [4]. Like many things in the study of history - and politics - what's a revisionist and what is not is in the eye of the beholder. 

    As a case in point, there’s the calculus of historians like Howard Zinn, whose A People’s History of the United States in particular critiques the ruling classes and their (according to Zinn) self-conferred right to tell history their way, i.e. usually state-friendly [5]. Zinn’s approach to history gives voice to those who don’t have voices, i.e. those who don’t usually write history: poor and working-class people, women, African-Americans, gays and lesbians, the uneducated, among others. Not so surprising, then, Zinn’s opus maximus explodes much of orthodox history. True, it is biased and selective – there’s little history that isn’t – and Zinn doesn’t hide his likes and dislikes. There’s nary a sacred cow that escapes his rapier gaze: Lincoln, FDR, JFK, World Wars I & II, the New Deal. All take their lumps.

    A People’s History has garnered the most mainstream acceptance of any revisionist work – it's even used at a text at some high schools and colleges & universities. [6] It’s also been much reviewed and commented on: at last count well over a thousand (mostly favorable) reviews on Amazon alone.

    Jeff Riggenbach is a kind of Zinn disciple, and his provocatively titled if much less well-known Why American History is Not What They Say offers a fresh and illuminating analysis, both as consideration of U.S. history as well as a meaty introduction to revisionist history in general. Included is a wealth of detail, but some topics and individuals get special attention: the Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Cold War, Zinn, and libertarian guru Murray Rothbard.

    Why American History is Not What They Say presents its case in well organized and engaging, if wordy, style: the detail-rich content includes many sources listed in the text supplemented by a blizzard of footnotes. In fact Riggenbach’s book is so source-rich it wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to describe it as a gigantic bibliographic essay with some history and editorial comment sprinkled in.

    For all its virtues – and flaws – Riggenbach’s tome is hardly the last word on revisionism, the nature of which precludes any conclusive or definitive statements. But Why American History is Not What They Say does an admirable job of synthesizing and summarizing the current state of revisionist art in a relatively even-handed, if ultimately sympathetic, fashion.

    [1] However, the old adage you can have your own views but not your own facts hasn’t always been adhered to, and the practice of embroidering, censoring or softening historical facts to make a more palatable narrative for interested individuals, groups, or nations, certainly didn’t begin with our current climate in which the phenomenon seems to be taking on epic proportions. But that, as the man said, is another story, and another post. In a post elsewhere on this blog, I more or less take on this question directly and opine that all history is spin in that the historian wants to project a certain interpretation of events and persuade the reader to accept said interpretation.
    [2] In his excellent book The Ever-Changing Past: Why All History is Revisionist History (Yale Univ. Press, 2021), author James Banner makes that very point. He demonstrates why historical knowledge is unlikely ever to be absolute, unchallenged and unchanging, and why history as a branch of knowledge is both a science and an art. Using several broad historical examples, he goes on to explain why all historians are revisionists as they seek to more fully understand the past, and how they always bring their distinct dispositions, perspectives, expertise, and yes, biases to the historical subjects they cover.
   [3] Interesting that revisionism as a term doesn’t appear in the august Library of Congress Subject Headings. Rather, the term ‘Historiography’ is used, both as main heading and subheading.
   [4 In recent years World War II has been especially fertile territory for revisionist and quasi-revisionist interpretations that, at least to some extent, take issue with the idea of WW2 as the ultimate Good War. British historian A.J.P. Taylor was one of the first to give an academic patina to World War II revisionist history with his The Origins of the Second World War, published in 1961. Other examples of WW2 revisionism might include: Patrick Buchanan, Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, Crown, 2008; Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: the Beginning of the Second World War and the End of Civilization, Simon & Schuster, 2008; Jörg Friedrich, The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945, Columbia Univ. Press, 2006; David Irving, Hitler's War and the War Path, Focal Point Publications, 1991; George H. Nash, ed., Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath, Hoover Institution Pr., 2011; Jacques R. Pauwels, The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, Lorimer, 2002; Ashley Smith, “World War II: The Good War?” International Socialist Review, Issue 10, Winter 2000; Viktor Suvorov, The Chief Culprit: Stalin’s Grand Design to Start World War II, Naval Institute Press, 2013; M.S. King, The Bad War: The Truth Never Taught About World War II; Sean McMeekin, Stalin's War: A New History of World War II, Basic Books, 2021; Michael C.C. Adams, The Best War Ever: America and World War II, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2015. See also: “A ‘Good War’ No More: The New World War II Revisionism,” in: Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, Hi Hitler!: How the Nazi Past is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture, Cambridge Univ. Pr., 2015, pp. 29-77.
   [5] “In one of his most iconoclastic essays, “The Anatomy of the State,” Murray Rothbard observed that it is crucial to ruling groups to manipulate the thinking of the ruled. They must get the populace to accept that the rulers are truly good people working tirelessly to advance the common good. Toward that end, the rulers employ a bag of tricks, among them the writing of history to cast the State in a positive light.” - George C. Leef, review of Riggenbach’s Why American History is Not What They Say.
   [6] A People’s History “... has gone through five editions and multiple printings, been assigned in thousands of college courses, sold more than a million copies, and made the author something of a celebrity.” [Michael Kazin, “Howard Zinn’s History Lessons,” Dissent, Spring 2004].

Further reading:

Anders, Charlie Jane, “When Does Historical Revisionism Become Alternate History?” 
Bacevich, Andrew J., “The Revisionist Imperative: Rethinking Twentieth Century Wars,”
   Journal of Military History 76 (April 2012), pp. 333–42.
Conger, Cristen, How Revisionist History Works 
Duberman, Martin, Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left, New Press, 2012
Fantina, Robert, Empire, Racism & Genocide: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy, Red Pill
    Press, 2013
Hughes-Warrington, Marnie, Revisionist History, Routledge, 2013.
Judt, Tony, “What Have We Learned, if Anything?” NY Review of Books, 1 May 2008
Kirsch, Adam, "Is World War II still 'the Good War'?" NY Times, May 27, 2011 

Newsinger, John. The Blood Never Dried : A People's History of the British Empire. Second
   edition. London, Bookmarks, 2013.
Novick, Peter. That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American
    Historical Profession, Cambridge, 1988