The Rebuttal: Defending 'American Betrayal' From the Book-Burners Read Online Free PDF Page B

seems to be now consulting historian Laurence Rees,
in whose popular book, World War II
Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazi and the West , the “gravity of the
war” anecdote appears (p. 127). Radosh will rely heavily on Rees throughout his
“take-down” of American Betrayal .
Rees is a British historian and BBC documentary-maker, and reliably mainstream
(read: liberal). (Full disclosure: Rees is cited about a half-dozen times in American Betrayal .)
    If Radosh had just turned the page,
he would have seen, pace Rees (p.
128), that the US disagreed with Churchill’s moral and/or military position
here, as did the British War Cabinet. Thus, Churchill’s “military reality on
the ground” concession to Stalin at this time was rejected. This rather cancels
Radosh’s point about the “military reality on the ground” dictating Soviet
appeasement, at least this time around. And that rather cancels his point
against me.
    One might
quote Radosh to Radosh himself to note that his “judgment” (see “Radosh’s
Introduction”) here was “not only bizarre on its face, but also unwarranted by
the evidence and refuted by the very authorities [he] draws on.”
    Then
again, even if Churchill were making judgments to appease Stalin based on “the
military reality on the ground,” that “reality” certainly shifted for Churchill
to a point where Churchill would come up against Stalin throughout the
following year, 1943, in pushing the Italy/Balkan strategy.
    But as
noted above, Radosh completely missed the Italy/Balkan part of my book.
    MILITARY ANALYST HANSON BALDWIN ON THE
“SEPARATE PEACE” FEAR FACTOR
    For an
opposing view on the “separate peace” fear factor, I will now quote military
analyst Hanson Baldwin.
    In Great Mistakes the War , pp. 10-11,
Baldwin writes:
    “In the same manner, a
careful study of strategical facts and available military information should
have indicated clearly the impossibility, from
the Russian point of view , of a separate peace with Germany. Such a peace
could only have been bought in the opening years of the war by major
territorial concessions on Russia’s part, concessions which might well have
imperiled the Stalin regime, and which, in any case, would have left the
Russo-German conflict in the category of `unfinished business.’ In the closing
years of the war, when Russia had everything to gain and nothing to lose by
continuing the struggle to complete victory, a separate peace would have been
politically ludicrous.” (Emphasis in the original.)
    Nonetheless,
Radosh raps me once more for failing to take the conventional consensus view.
    Radosh:
    “Instead of weighing these
fears [separate-peace fear-factor], West turns to another anecdote…”
    THE MISSING ANECDOTES
    I now
re-enter the surreal dimension of this rebuttal to note that the anecdote he
now describes is not in my book.
    This, too, is part of the Radosh
“take-down” pattern: Imagining or fabricating events (I don’t know which),
statements that are not in my book. The following is a particularly bizarre
example.
    The
anecdote, he writes, is “telling how George Elsey found confidential files in
the Map Room that showed FDR naively thinking he could trust Stalin, and
instructed Hopkins to tell Soviet Minister Molotov that FDR was in favor of a
Second Front in 1942.”
    When I
posted at dianawest.net the fact that this anecdote wasn’t in my book, Radosh
replied at Frontpage Magazine (“Diana West’s Attempt to Respond” [7] ). Incredibly, he fought me about the
contents of my book.
    Radosh:
    “ Maybe
she couldn’t find the anecdote. But it is there in three different places where
she writes how FDR told Hopkins to go into Molotov’s bedroom while he was
staying in the White House so that he could meet with the President, and at
that meeting, Hopkins told Molotov that FDR was in favor of a Second Front.”
    Please
note how Anecdote 1 (George Elsey, confidential files, Map Room) has changed
form – now