Trump’s Kind of VE Day
Let’s just call it MAGA revisionism.
Everyone knows that Donald Trump is a deep-thinking historian, military strategist and decorated war veteran, so it was surprising to see him post this the other day:
“Many of our allies and friends are celebrating May 8th as Victory Day, but we did more than any other Country, by far, in producing a victorious result on World War II … nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance...”
Since today (tomorrow in most of the ex-Soviet world) is the 80th anniversary of VE Day, let’s dissect.
The U.S. “did more than any other country, by far” to win the war? There are 27 million Soviet souls who might disagree. That, says the National World War II Museum, is how many the USSR lost in the war. At least 45% of them, or 13 million, were civilians who were murdered, raped, bombed and starved to death in the four years after Hitler’s astonishing 1941 invasion (two years after signing a non-aggression pact with Stalin). By 1945 there were 77 men in Soviet Russia for every 100 women.
By comparison, the U.S. lost 418,500 people in all theatres of the war, 0.04% of them civilians. The death of 1,700 U.S. civilians is a tragedy, but they disappear in the ocean of 45 million civilians who died in the war worldwide.
The U.S. lost 0.32% of its 1939 population in the war. The UK lost 0.94%, France 1.44%, China 3.4%, Australia 0.58% and Canada 0.38%.
The Soviet Union lost 13.7% (from 1940).
As for economic sacrifices, Europe was devastated, to say the least, and would have taken who knows how long to recover without a Marshall Plan. By contrast, the U.S. economy thrived during the war, growing by about two-thirds and reducing unemployment from a Depression-era 17% in 1939 to around 3% in 1945. There’s a lot to be said for military Keynesianism and splendid isolation.
We might also show some luv for the RAF, without whom the Allies might not have had an aircraft carrier called Great Britain from which to launch bombing raids on Germany or, for that matter, an invasion at Normandy.
Another jewel of Trumpian insight: “Without the United States, the War would have been won by other Countries…”
Well, yes, that seems likely.
We can’t accuse Trump of historical amnesia, because you have to know something before you can forget it. His understanding of the war probably begins and ends with “Saving Private Ryan” or some other source that doesn’t require reading. As with any bloviating know-nothing, his pronouncements on history contain a high gas-to-fact ratio.
It’s hard to listen to Trump without recalling 19th century House Speaker Thomas Reed’s memorable disparagement of two unfortunate colleagues: “They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.”