War—What Is It Good For?

The answer to the question I posed in my title will be a series of posts over the next week or so. The answer is that it favors the elites that run the country. 

Goering at NuremburgHere is what Herman Goering, head of the German Air Force during WWII, said about it:

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

Since you can't really trust internet quotes, I checked and it appears that he did say this to a reporter at his trial at Nuremberg.

How did the Nazis lead the German people around by the nose? They used "false flags." Here is how Wikipedia describes a false flag operation:

False flag (aka Black Flag) operations are covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is flying the flag of a country other than one's own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and can be used in peace-time. 

Reichstag After WWIIIn 1933 an unemployed communist immigrant set fire to the German Parliament, the Reichstag. It is not clear if he acted alone or with others. It is not even clear if he actually set the fire. Many think that he was framed. It seems most likely that he did set the fire. What the Nazis did afterwards is what I am referring to. They used it as an excuse to suspend civil liberties. They arrested all prominent communists, including all communist members of the Reichstag itself. By coincidence, this gave the Nazis a majority in parliament. 

The fire was used by the Nazis to seize power. It was probably set by the communist acting alone, but that did not matter. It was the excuse that was needed by the Nazis to justify their actions. 

Of course if no handy arsonist happens to come along, one can be invented. This is what the Nazis did to justify their invasion of Poland. They invented attacks and border incidents. Here is how Wikipedia describes one such incident:

Much of what is known about the Gleiwitz incident comes from the sworn affidavit of Alfred Naujocks at the Nuremberg Trials. In his testimony, he states that he organized the incident under orders from Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller, the chief of the Gestapo.

On the night of 31 August 1939, a small group of German operatives, dressed in Polish uniforms and led by Naujocks,seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish (sources vary on the content of the message). The Germans' goal was to make the attack and the broadcast look like the work of anti-German Polish saboteurs.

To make the attack seem more convincing, the Germans brought in Franciszek Honiok, a German Silesian known for sympathizing with the Poles, who had been arrested the previous day by the Gestapo. Honiok was dressed to look like a saboteur; then killed by lethal injection, given gunshot wounds, and left dead at the scene, so that he appeared to have been killed while attacking the station. His corpse was subsequently presented as proof of the attack to the police and press. 

I have decided that it is not enough for me to assert that the public is being manipulated. I need to show how this manipulation has worked in history. Most of America's wars are based on false flags and propaganda. Sometimes these supposed incidents are invented. Sometimes the incident occurs. Sometimes the incident is forced on the other side to make them act first. The Spanish American War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq all fit this pattern, as we will see over the next two weeks.