It is often presented as the moment that the industrial might and ambitions of global domination of the world’s most horrible evil, Nazi Germany, was confronted by little more than the noble words of Winston Churchill and the hardworking devotion of Rosie the Riveter supplying GI Joe with the materiel to save the world for freedom and democracy.

Nazi German was defeated, but is it unreasonable to wonder if the world was made safe for freedom and democracy? The record of history also shows that the American government, after WW II, gave up all pretense of operating under the limits of constitutional law. The usurpation of power and wealth that came with the war effort continued, largely unabated, after the victory. Dollar diplomacy firmly established an American foreign policy tradition of purchasing allies at the expense of working wages. The courts became more assertive in social matters as politicians shied from taking controversial stands under the harsh glare of the growing influence of the emerging national media.

The end of WW II also offered great territorial gains for Stalinist Russia. This gain was not a victory of democracy on the march, as President George W. Bush noted in a speech celebrating the 50th anniversary of V-E day, "For much of Eastern and Central Europe, victory brought the iron rule of another empire. V-E day marked the end of fascism, but it did not end the oppression. The agreement in Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable. ... The captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs in history."

Columnist Pat Buchanan grabbed upon this rhetorical flourish of the president to point out that the agreement in Yalta was agreed upon by the two popular heroes of W.W.II, President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This fact brought Buchanan to ponder, "If Yalta was a betrayal of small nations as immoral as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, why do we venerate Churchill and FDR? " Later Buchanan pointed out that while we were fighting the evil of Hitler’s Nazis, the allied forces after that struggle enabled the spread murderous communist revolutions and pointed out, "Where Hitler killed his millions, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot and Castro murdered their tens of millions."

Statistics on communist and other government murders are kept on the Freedom, Democide, War: Home Page (http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/welcome.html) that shows modest estimates of the murders of Russian communists (61, 911,000 from 1917-1987), Chinese Communists (35,236,000 from 1948-1987) Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian communists (3,740,000 from 1975-1987) and Cuban communists (73,000) actually places the totals over 100 million. Stalinist purges from 1937 through 1938 accounted for 10 million deaths nearly five to six years before Nazis began gassing concentration camp prisoners.

Left unexamined by Buchanan was the fact that Hitler’s regime was made possible by Wilson’s quest to make the world safe for democracy which actually extended and changed the outcome of W.W.I and forced the stupid treaty of Versailles on Germany. He did point out, however, as America is in its new millennial crusade to make the world safe for democracy, that, "After all, the Germans voted Hitler in."

W.W.II is a sacred conflict for many, though, where the lines between good and evil were clearly drawn and Hitler’s evil was focused almost exclusively on people of Hebrew heritage. Consequently, Buchanan’s observations, which he made in greater depth with thorough reference in his book, A Republic, Not an Empire, earned nothing more than accusations of anti-Semitism from the media and government. Is it reasonable to wonder, then, if systemic murders of certain people are more horrible than systemic murders of other people? If people believe this, are they not guilty of racist beliefs themselves? After all, why is the murder of 6,000,000 Jews by one country considered to be more horrible than the deaths of more than 100,000,000 people--including Jews, by the way--in six countries?

History serves no purpose for the future if it is not investigated honestly and without bias. The political ambitions and mistakes by both Allied and Axis leaders that led to the 50 million deaths of WW II should be closely examined so as not to repeat them. As we do so, it should not be forgotten, as America invests lives and treasures to the new quest to make the world safe for democracy, that, "After all, the Germans voted Hitler in."