Jonathan Power
It is a common trait in mankind to apply to ourselves a generosity of interpretation which we do not extend to others. We find proofs of wickedness, using evidence that we would not use against our own. We play down the sins of ourselves, our own country and our leaders, past and present.
In the days of the Nazi government in Germany there was an inbuilt tendency in the Allies’ reporting to distort what Hitler was doing. For example, they wanted to pin on him the fact that in the early days of the war that he had started the indiscriminating bombing of civilians. In fact, it was begun by the directors of British strategy, as some of the more honest of them later boasted.
The true record is there for anyone who wishes to study these events dispassionately. In a sober study, “Germany’s Economic Preparations for War” published in 1959 by Burton H. Klein, an economist with the Rand Corporation which is, in effect, the research arm of the Pentagon, there is a true account of both sides’ bombing and rearmament policies.
During the war Klein was a member of the US’s Strategic Bombing Survey. Later, he was a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and was a special assistant to the Secretary of Defence. He concluded that until the spring of 1936 German rearmament was largely a myth.
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