“[The] construct of American exceptionalism was invoked to justify the settlement and expansion of English colonies in North America, the creation of the United States as an independent country, its territorial expansion across the continent, and the extension of American military and political power around the globe. In the wake of World War II . . . its increasingly hegemonic power is proffered as evidence of its inherent superiority, its evolutionary ‘fitness’ to remake the world in its image.”
—Natsu Taylor Saito1
“This is the crime of which I accuse my country and countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.”
—James Baldwin2
By 1840, the American capitalist economy was a burgeoning world power. Rapid industrial development was enabled by the enormous profit reaped from the genocide of the Native and the enslavement of the African. Profit under capitalism is never equally distributed, for this would negate the purpose of the system itself. This was no less true in the American republic. The spoils of land theft and slavery went primarily to land speculators, bankers, industrialists, and whichever political party served their interests at the time. Whatever profit wasn’t pocketed by the opulent robber barons of the American republic was used for further industrial expansion both in North America and around the world.
The world was a very different place by the time it became engulfed in military conflict that characterized much of the early to mid-20th century. Capitalist development in the Western world fueled even more intense drives for colonial expansion. Imperialism became much more than a mere quest for empire. It became a social system where the division of the world among imperialist nations was critical toward the continued profits of cartels, banks, and monopolies. Competing interests among Western capitalist nations in Europe, Africa, and Asia led to World War I. The American capitalist class benefited from the imperial division of the world by laying the foundations for its own empire. While Europe scrambled to colonize Asia and Africa, American enterprise invaded lands East, West, and South of its border. Large territories of French Louisiana, Mexico, and South America came under the economic and political dominion of the U.S. empire as it awaited the time where it could compete with the older European empires.
And like the genocide of Indigenous nations and the enslavement of Africans that created the foundations of European empire, the American ascent into the realm of imperialist power relied on state violence. Untold numbers of people were killed under the same banner of “Manifest Destiny” that presupposed American civilization superior to that of “backward” people residing in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The Monroe Doctrine declared South America an extension of the American Republic and thus gave the U.S. government the right to “defend” South American nations and peoples from European colonization. American exceptionalism was thus adjusted to fit the global vision of American politicians and businessmen who saw expansion as a necessary precondition to the preservation of the American way of life.
The savior complex inherent to the ideology of American exceptionalism was altered to justify the assumption of control over nations and regions of the world thought of as European colonial domain. American influence abroad would not only protect the interests of the American people but also people living in all corners of the globe. American democracy, according to the American political and economic establishment, was a civilizing order destined for world dominance. Indeed, as early as 1780, rich and prominent Americans such as Thomas Jefferson spoke of the American nation-state as an “Empire of Liberty.” This empire would spread liberty and democracy across the world in a similar manner that such virtues were brought to Africans and Indigenous people within its original colonial borders.
Perhaps no other historical event has been so tied to this notion of an American “Empire of Liberty” as World War II. The Second World War made the U.S. the world’s lone superpower. U.S. imperialism spent most of the war developing the most technologically feared military in the world while American capitalism became the most prosperous economy in terms of total Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The American dollar became the dominant currency of global exchange under the Bretton Woods Agreement. European powers such as France, Britain, and Germany relinquished many of their colonies to anti-colonial forces. However, many of these nations fell under de facto colonial rule with a new master: the United States. Superpower status allowed the American establishment to take credit for the defeat of both the “Great Depression” and the march of “Fascism,” lending much credence to the narrative of American exceptionalism.
The image of U.S. imperialism’s supposedly heroic role in the Second World War has endured for more than a half a century after the war’s end. Over this period, the great conflict between capitalist empires has been framed by prominent historians, academics, and elite class figures as a struggle between “good” and “evil.” On one side stood the arbiters of “democracy” led by the U.S. military. On the other stood the arbiters of “fascism” led by Germany, Italy, and Japan. Democracy prevailed, the argument goes, making the war not only necessary but also “good.” The United States’ decisive entrance into the war supposedly made it the force that saved the world from the spectre of fascism and barbarity.
American virtuosity during the Second World War instilled a deep sense of patriotism in the populace. Patriotism, a key pillar of American exceptionalism, was bolstered by the hegemonic economic and military position that the nation now occupied in the world. Unquestioned American dominance was heralded as a Golden Age brought about by military superiority and “New Deal” policy. American workers saw wages increase and living standards rise as a result of the global dominance of the American capitalist economy. However, while the conditions of poverty experienced by Black, Native, and immigrant sectors of society persisted, they were whitewashed in the frenzy of patriotism and conservatism that gripped the nation.
The Second World War is a prime example of the ways in which American exceptionalism has shaped historical memory by divorcing it from material reality. Said differently, American exceptionalism and innocence are not merely ideas, but also weapons. The notion of American superiority masks the realities of U.S. policy and thus detracts us from a true understanding of the system that designs such policy. American exceptionalism and innocence are connected in that the presumption of the U.S. as an “Empire of Liberty” and arbiter of “democracy” deifies its existence and absolves the U.S. of its crimes. As Lisa Yonemaya argues, such narratives play a critical role to the making of American wars in the present:
During the U.S. military invasion and occupation of Iraq, I argued that the reason why so many U.S. war crimes, especially those in Asia, remain unredressed might be found in what can be most appropriately called the American imperialist myth of “liberation and rehabilitiation.” According to this myth, the losses and damages brought on by U.S. military violence are deemed “prepaid debts” incurred by those liberated by American intervention. This myth, which presents both violence and liberation as “gifts for the liberated,” has serious implications for the redressability of U.S. military violence. The injured and violated bodies of the liberated . . . do not seem to require redress according to this discourse of indebtedness, for their liberation has already served as the payment/reparation that supposedly precedes the violence inflicted upon them. This economy of debt . . . is what sustains the regime of unredressability pertaining to colonial injustices.3
Thus, the ideas of freedom, democracy, and liberty attributed to American national identity are a formidable barrier to lifting the veil of innocence and nobility that surrounds American involvement in the Second World War.
Just like all American wars, U.S. involvement in the Second World War is far more complex than what is generally taught in schools and the media. Readers might be a little uneasy with the way World War II is remembered outside of dominant circles. After all, when asked to defend the “greatness” of their country, American exceptionalists seem to always circle back to World War II. So why do so many Americans still cling to the idea that the United States saved the world? Perhaps it reflects the fact that the United States cannot claim any positive role in any other war. In addition, the U.S. had the advantage of becoming the most prosperous capitalist economy shortly after. This excites people. It gets them thinking it could happen again. Plus, it’s a lot easier to believe that your country is a benevolent and liberating force for good in the world, rather than as an imperial nation that enters (and wages) war to further its strategic and economic interests. Of course, this is not to deny that individual soldiers in the battlefields may have had virtuous motives for fighting in the war. But it is to say that the United States may not be as benevolent, exceptional, or innocent as we once thought.
To begin, we’d be wise to remember Aimé Césaire’s famous observation that the West never wanted Germany as an enemy and only waged war against the Nazi regime after Hitler “applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the ‘coolies’ of India, and the ‘niggers’ of Africa.”4 In other words, it didn’t bother the United States and its Western allies to see such evil perpetrated against the slave and the colonized—especially when the U.S. was the one committing the violence. Rather, it only became a problem when imperial violence was perpetrated against their own “family” of white-ruled, Western nations.
And while we might like to think that the United States’ “land of the free” represents a stark contrast to Hitler’s racist regime, the truth is more troubling. Ideologically, the white supremacist roots of America’s legal system provided great inspiration to the rise of Nazism in Germany. In his book Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, Yale legal historian James Whitman notes:
In the 1930s the United States, as the Nazis frequently noted, stood at the forefront of race-based lawmaking. American immigration and naturalization law, in the shape of a series of laws culminating in the Immigration Act of 1924, conditioned entry into the United States on race-based tables of “national origins.” It was America’s race-based immigration law that Hitler praised in Mein Kampf . . . and leading Nazi legal thinkers did the same after him, repeatedly and volubly. The United States also stood at the forefront in the creation of forms of de jure and de facto second-class citizenship for blacks, Filipinos, Chinese, and others; this too was of great interest to the Nazis, engaged as they were in creating their own forms of second-class citizenship for Germany’s Jews.5
The fascist Nazi movement in Germany thus found great inspiration in the ability of the United States to codify racism into law through policies such as the segregation of Black and white American institutions, the forced removal of Indigenous Americans from their land, and the nation’s discriminatory treatment toward immigrant populations.
White supremacy was but one bond that connected the so-called democratic America to fascist Germany. Attracted to Adolf Hitler’s suppression of German labor unions and communists, as well as his overarching goal of destroying the Soviet Union, many of America’s most powerful corporate interests gave critical support to the German fascist regime. General Motors, Ford, and Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon) were just a few of the major American monopolies to invest in Nazi Germany’s economic and military development. By the time of the strike on Pearl Harbor, American investments in Nazi Germany were estimated at $475 million dollars.6 And it was none other than Prescott Bush, banker and grandfather to George W. Bush, and famed industrialist Henry Ford who provided decisive financial support for Hitler’s rise.7 Until 1941, Nazism was seen as not only a profitable investment but also a bulwark against the Soviet Union.
The United States entered the Second World War in 1941. Popular mythology holds that the U.S. entered the war in response to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and Germany’s subsequent declaration of war with America. There are a number of problems with this assertion. For one, American monopolies had already been supporting Germany and Great Britain, two of the biggest players in the war, since its inception. While American economic investment in Germany gradually decreased just prior to 1941, there was a rapid increase in economic activity with Great Britain through the Lend-Lease program. This government program lended subsidized contracts to American monopolies in their efforts to fortify Great Britain’s military. By 1945, military expenditures to Great Britain amounted to 45 billion USD.8
U.S. imperialism did not begin to break its ties with Germany out of some yearning to preserve “the free world” from fascism. In fact, much of the U.S. elite supported Germany early on in the hopes that Nazism, as TIME magazine put it, would be “an antidote against Bolshevism.”9 Prominent American elites such as Herbert Hoover, Henry Ford, and James Mooney of General Motors supported Hitler with the hopes that his leadership would destroy the Soviet model. The Soviet Union was established in 1917 in a popular revolution against Tsarist rule. Its socialist model presented a nightmare to the owners of private property in the American and European world and their monopolies and corporations that controlled production in the West. They feared that this model would spread and that the rule of private profit would come under growing danger. When Hitler’s Nazi regime appeared incapable of destroying the Soviet Union by 1941, American businesses sought to diversify their portfolio with Great Britain, which was embattled in war with Germany.
Furthermore, U.S. imperialism played a major role in provoking the strike on Pearl Harbor. Not only did American officials have knowledge of Japan’s plan to strike, but the U.S. government had also been escalating tensions with Japan through economic sanctions and naval provocations in the Pacific. The Roosevelt Administration hoped Japan would bite and it eventually did. As Yonemaya observes, “[T]he ‘good war’ narrative produced during Cold War years remembers that the United States fought a just war for the liberation of the people of Asia and the Pacific region, including the Japanese themselves, from Japan’s barbaric militarism and racial backwardness.”10 But the United States sought a war not to liberate Japan but to prevent it from colonizing East Asia in hopes that the valuable resources there would come under American possession soon after. Only the appearance of being attacked would allow the American military to intervene without being forced to give up its supposedly “neutral” position in the war.
However, the American elite miscalculated and was dragged into Eurasia when Hitler desperately declared war on the U.S. on December 11th, 1941. Hitler hoped that declaring war on the U.S. would convince Japan to join Germany in the fight to destroy the Soviet Union. Suddenly, the U.S. found itself alongside its arch enemy, the Soviet Union, and the allied powers. This was not an alliance of principle but rather of convenience. U.S. imperialism hoped that Germany and the Soviet Union would destroy each other. By the time the U.S. entered the war full steam, only one goal mattered: to redesign the world in the interests of American monopolies, with Great Britain by its side.
Two major events during the war underscore U.S. imperialism’s true motivations. First, the British Royal Air Force firebombing of Dresden, Germany, in 1945 primarily utilized American bombers to kill over 300,000 people.11 While Dresden was not an important strategic location in the war, the bombing was meant as a show of force to the Soviet Union of American and British military capabilities. The firebombing of Dresden is a quintessential example of how U.S. imperialism utilized its participation in the war for aims other than the preservation of “democracy” against nascent fascism.
Second, the United States is often credited for ending the Second World War for good following its use of the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. America’s nuclear bombing of these cities incinerated over 100,000 people. The nuclear bombs inflicted long-term damage on the population. The U.S. establishment deemed the bombing necessary to force a Japanese surrender. Several members of the military establishment at the time felt differently. In his 1949 memoirs, commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces Henry “Hap” Arnold wrote, “it always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.” President Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff Admiral William Leahy confirmed Arnold’s assessment, stating, “[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.” Still, the bombs were dropped and to this day not one American president has apologized for the damage that the bombs or the war caused. Not to the people of Hiroshima. Not to the people of Nagasaki. And it wasn’t until 1988 when the federal government formally apologized for the Japanese Americans imprisoned in U.S. internment camps during the war.12
American exceptionalism and American innocence have rendered the reality behind the use of nuclear bombs in Japan a “necessary evil” that brought lasting peace to a brutal world war. The dominant narrative presumes that the United States was an exceptional player in the Second World War and thus was justified in its use of biological warfare against the authoritarian “Jap” government. However, even mainstream historians have called into question the heroic justification for America’s use of nuclear weapons against Japan. Many historians have cited that the U.S. used the bombs to intimidate the Soviet Union in preparation for the Cold War.13 This is especially relevant since a Japanese surrender was likely without the bombings. Historians have recently concluded that the Soviet Union’s decision to break neutrality with Japan ultimately forced surrender, not two nuclear bombs which only added more damage to a country that had been ravaged far worse by conventional warfare.14 The use of nuclear weapons ultimately did more to support U.S. imperialism’s broader strategic interests than to end the war.
The realities of the Second World War reveal the extent to which American exceptionalism has influenced the way history is taught and remembered. Few in the U.S. have been allowed to learn about the connections between American business and German Nazism or see American-bred white supremacy as linked to the rise of fascism in Europe. And even fewer can recall the hundreds of thousands that were killed in places like Dresden and Hiroshima in the prelude to the Cold War. The rulers of American society benefited mightily from its participation in the war and used American exceptionalist ethos to hide their imperial ambitions. The United States imposed itself as the hero of the Second World War despite the leading role that the Soviet Union played in defeating Nazi Germany at the cost of 27 million Soviet lives. The illusion of American heroism in the Second World War helped prepare the way for a permanent American war agenda against both foreign and domestic challenges to imperialism while at the same time strengthening the notion that America was in fact an exceptional, democratic nation. This is all that the myth of the “good war” has ever been good for.