Eugene G. Windchy, author of Tonkin Gulf (“Superb investigative reporting”—NY Times), lays bare the tricks, errors, and secret plans that have taken the American people into avoidable wars.
Our nation's greatest catastrophe was the Civil War, in which more than 620,000 people died. The war began when Southerners fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. Windchy reports that the rebels had an opportunity to take the fort peacefully. Why did they open fire? We find out who made the final decision and why.
World War I was a “war to make the world safe for democracy.” Instead, it gave birth to totalitarian Fascist and Communist regimes. World War II was a continuation of World War I, and that was followed by America's anti-Communist struggles in Korea and Vietnam. Today there are Communist countries with nuclear missiles aimed at American territory. We are still trying to cope with the effects of World War I, the greatest crime in modern history.
How did the Great War begin? The history books tell us that it was sparked by an assassination. A young Serb shot an Austrian archduke, and Austria's retaliation on Serbia led to war between two great European alliances. Germany has received most of the blame for having promised to back up its Austrian ally. Twelve American Wars reveals that the archduke's assassination was a Serbian plot guided by Russian officials. The textbooks fail to mention that a month later there was another assassination. The silencing of a anti-war French politician covered up years of secret war planning by France and Russia.
How did the United States get involved? One factor was the outrage provoked by the sinking of the huge passenger liner Lusitania, a British ship with Americans on board.Twelve American Wars presents overwhelming evidence that the British Admiralty, headed by Winston Churchill, deliberately put the Lusitania at risk, hoping to bring the United States into the war.
Contrary to what we hear from Mexicans, the United States did not steal California from Mexico in the Mexican War of 1846 to 1848. Native Californians, called “Californios,” had expelled their last Mexican governor in 1845.
Eugene Windchy's book is full of surprising facts. He believes that policy makers hoping to prevent war need to know the truth about our past wars, not just the politically acceptable stories in the textbooks.