GRGR(5): note on Katje

[Paul Mackin]

On Tue, 13 Jul 1999, Michael Perez wrote:

> 
> I think, though, with a little thought to the time _GR_ was written,
> part of the point of the book could have been that the "Good War" had
> not been so good after all.  During the time a war was being fought
> that was, even while it dragged on, becoming increasingly thought to be
> less than noble, comes a book showing the less noble side of what many
> have considered the noblest of wars. However, as Paul said:  "That's
> war."

True and this was an increasingly  popular idea in the late sixties.
There was a group of revisionist historians as they were called who very
much picked up on the idea that WWII and  the Cold War growing out of it
were not all that noble from the American and British standpoint. One was
named Gregory Kolko and his book was _The Politics of War_. One statement
I remember him making was roughly that once the War was in progress both
sides pulled out all the stops as far as barbarity was concerned, an
idea that was kind of hard to argue with. (I should note that this was not
the main indictment the book was trying to make, it being freely granted
that war is war and the only thing is to win. The indictment of the Yanks
and Brits had to do more with the Cold War that followed but that's
another story, heh heh heh.)

			P.