Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Here we go again, for some reason there never ceases to be an audience for worn out Cold War revisionism. Whats in this book is a fairly old shtick: The entire Cold War could have been avoided had the United States cooperated with Stalin, who was a reasonable and peaceful man, and the entire premise for the conflict was created by paranoid reactionaries in the United States. You could argue that this sort of pseudo scholarship may have been defensible 25 years ago, but since the fall of the Soviet empire the sheer volume of documentary evidence that completely debunks this nonsense could fill several warehouses. Some examples of the more preposterous and easily debunked claims in the book: Had the US been nicer to Stalin in the 1930's (during the height of pruges), he never would have allied with Hitler, which was only done so the Soviets could prepare for the inevitable German invasion. Left out is the fact that the Soviets signed an extensive commercial agreement as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop which helped the Germans evade the Allied blockade for 18 crucial months. The Soviet Union fought the Germans by themselves until Normandy. Left out are the African campaigns, Sicily, Italy and the air war over Europe. Stalin and North Korea invaded the south ONLY to prevent an invasion from the South. The Marshall Plan was nothing more than a deliberate provocation designed to enflame the Soviets and the Berlin Wall was actually a good thing and done for the best interests of peace. The book along with the documentary is full of this kind of material, but for all the "new looks" Stone and Kuznik give to established conventional historic wisdom, they still cant seem to stray very far from the left wing dogma on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which states that the bombs were unnecessary, the Japanese were looking to surrender, the war would be over in weeks without their use and the only reason they were used was to intimidate the Soviets. One of the most comprehensive books on the subject, "Japan's Longest Day", written by Japanese's historians using archive material and interviews with survivors, explains why the bombs were necessary. The Japanese cabinet alone had the power to surrender and the decision had to be unanimous. The hawks of the cabinet, Army Minister General Anami, Army Chief of Staff General Umezu and Navy Chief of Staff Admiral Toyoda knew that the Potsdam declaration would allow them to keep their emperor and they also understood that victory over the US was impossible. The hawks believed that the Soviet entrance into the war, along with a costly guerilla campaign on the main islands, would force the US to offer terms more to their liking including possession of some overseas colonies and leaving the political structure they had become accustomed to intact. Although the emperor could have imposed his will on the hawks, he knew it would mean a military coup and his imprisonment. The hawks had no intention of stopping the war and their troops were fanatical .. a fact often left unmentioned. The atomic bombings decimated the hawks plans of a long term bloody guerilla war on the mainland because that forced them to acknowledge the reality that America didn't have to lose one soldier to annihilate the island. I say bombings, because right after Hiroshima General Anami still refused to concede defeat arguing that America only had one weapon and wouldn't/couldn't use another. The bombing was directly responsible for Anami, Umezu, and Toyoda coming to table and endorsing surrender along the terms laid out in the Potsdam declaration. If there were a zero star option, I'd give it.