Garet Garrett and the Good War

One book that many consider ground-breaking in uncovering the myths of World War II is Patrick J. Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. Not to belittle Mr. Buchanan’s scholarly work, but I believe the very best volumes dispelling the myth of World War II were written years ago by people who lived at the time. Many of these people argued up until the very last that meddling in the affairs of Europe did not reflect the interest of the American people. Such an action, they argued, would in fact degrade our moral standing as peacemakers in the world. They were skeptic of Roosevelt’s lend lease project where America lent tanks, guns, and ships to Great Britain in order to help fight Hitler. These men and women were derided then, and still are if you spend any time listening to a PBS special, as isolationists or even the American arm of Hitler’s National Socialist Party.
One such “isolationist” who wrote extensively on the subject and argued for genuine neutrality in World War II was Saturday Evening Post’s editor Garet Garrett. Garrett was a tireless advocate for complete neutrality in the Europe’s war. Defend America First is a collection of Saturday Evening Post editorials written by Garrett on the subject of World War II. On July 13th, 1940, Garrett wrote that America’s meddling in the affairs of Europe would have a predictable outcome. “We do not believe the people had ever thought of going again to the battlefields of Europe. They had been misled to think this country somehow could put forth its economic strength and not itself become involved. That is what they were thinking when they were polled on whether we should be giving more aid to the Allies. The idea that we could help to destroy an aggressor in Europe and not get hurt was a propagated fantasy and produced on many minds the hypnotic effect that may or may not have been intended.”[1] What Garrett is saying is that many people were duped into believing they could take sides in Europe’s conflict and not end up getting into the conflict. As Garrett had predicted, favoring one side over the other would backfire and end up embroiling the country in a war that was not in America’s interest.
As I have commented before, sometimes the predictions of these war opponents are astonishingly accurate. On September 7th, 1940, Garrett wrote the following: “If it should come awake one morning to read in the newspaper headlines, or hear by the radio, that it had walked backward into war, it would take it no doubt as having somehow inevitable from the first, and yet nobody would be able to say quite how or why it happened.”[2] In other words, Garrett is saying that people were at first duped into believing the propaganda, and then duped into believing that America’s involvement was inevitable. They seemed to forget the fact that America could have separated itself from all belligerent nations in Europe and stayed true to its neutrality.
Garet Garrett was one of many who refused to put on rose-colored glasses and go along with the notion of defending America by aiding the Allies. It’s one thing for historians like Patrick J. Buchanan to question conflicts of the past. It’s quite another to question conflicts as they happen, when it’s considered unpatriotic. Garet Garrett was much like the Ron Pauls of today’s current War on Terror in that he dared to speak his mind. He offers a perspective on the Second World War that is in many ways lost today.
Notes
[1] Garrett, Garet, Ramsey, Bruce, Defend America First, Caxton Press 2003, pg. 56
[2] Ibid: 61