War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier
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- ISBN13: 9780922915866
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Originally printed in 1935, War Is a Racket is All-purpose Smedley Butler’s frank speech describing his role as a soldier as nothing more than serving as a puppet for huge-business interests. In addition to photos from the notorious 1932 anti-war book The Horror of It by Frederick A. Barber, this book includes two never-before-published anti-interventionist essays by All-purpose Butler. The introduction discusses why All-purpose Butler went against the corporate war machine and how he exposed a fascist coup d’etat plot against President Franklin Roosevelt. Widely appreciated and referenced by left- and right-wingers alike, this is an extraordinary argument against war – more significant now than ever.
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Regularly, when I read about a new theme, I like to be welcomed by a balanced, thoughtful, intelligent point of view, one that I find really convincing. This was not that point of view. He seems very opinionated, but light on the factual evidence. I had hoped to hear detailed accounts of the corporations involved in his global exploits. He just mentions them but, and then goes off on his rant including such eccentric suggestions as having our ships stay within 50 (or 100, I forget) miles of shore. While I suppose it is appealing to note that the “military-manufacturing complex” was alive and well back in the day, this is mostly just a novelty piece that offers small that can be of weight in today’s world. Overall, worth reading, but nothing to write home about. If Janine Garofalo thinks of this book as a valuable and scathing expose about war and money, She must not need much evidence to form the basis of a belief.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Smedley Butler wrote this book after a sudden conversion to pacifism. Sorry to say the rightousness of his conversion comes through with a number of mistatements and twists (or perhaps ignorance agreed Butler’s lack of privileged eductaion in national security affairs). Like the “Merchants of Death” hearings by Republican Congressmen in the same time period, a position is staked out, ie. “War is Terrible and is Caused by War Profiteers” and seeks to prove it.
The reviews that accompany this book show an innocent view of both the book and an appalling ignorance of the military equipment of WWI.
Take the issue of saddles. First, there was no fantastic mobile mechanical society to draw an army from as in WW2. Motor trucks and tractors as prime movers for artillery and logistics distribution were in their infancy. 90% of all artillery and 99% of all supplies were stirred by horses pulling caisons, wagons and gun tubes once they left the railheads. While many wagons were managed by drivers on a seat, most caisons and guns were pulled by horse teams controlled by riders, one per pair of horse. Each required a saddle. A 75mm M1897 gun required six to twelve horses depending on terrain, giving three to six drivers, each requiring a saddle. The US Army deployed over 1,000 such guns by Nov 1918. Each gun had a number of caisons carrying ammo. Then add in that such saddles were worn out within three months, and the artillery alone, and the supplies add up. While the US employed a minimum (compared to the additional armies on the Western Front) amount of cavalry in Europe, the Mexican border was secured by cavalry brigades, some 40-50,000 troops, with supporting equipment and weapons.
Next add the problem of enlistment. The US Army, including the National Guard and the Set aside, did not exceed 45,000 horse soldiers and 500 meadow guns in May 1917. The supplies for saddles for the mounted force were minimal at peacetime expenditure. Then suddenly the US was at war, the Army was to be expand to first 1, then 2 and finally over 5 million men, with minimal preparation, and massive amounts of equipment and weapons were needed. Orders were placed, funds generated and in the way of American war and a democracy mobilizing, the disorganized and uncoordinated efforts generated excess and redundancy. Just as vital, is that the war finished just as the US enlistment had been rationalized and was getting into stride. Saddles weren’t the only items that were produced after the war to contracts already let from funds already obligated with products already in the manufacturing line. Tanks, artillery, machine guns, rifles, canvas personal gear, ammunition, (even destroyers) all these items had more produced after the war finished then during the conflict. So much was manufactured that the US Army went to war in 1941 in uniforms, gear and with weapons not much changed from 1920, because there was too much surplus left from WWI and Congress wouldn’t appropriate funds to replace it. As far as destroyers, so many were built between 1918 and 1922, that a new US destroyer wasn’t built until 1934.
What is more is the effect this book and the “Merchants of Death” hearings had on the American people. They were significant parts of the isolationist and pacifist result to the advance of militarism and totalitarianistic agression throughout the world starting with Japan’s attack on China in 1932. That the Japanese militarists, Hitler and Mussolini got as far as they did and that so many died and the US was so unprepared for WW2 can be partly blamed on this book.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
This book was reviewed by George Orwell in (I reflect!) his Shooting an Elephant collection of essays for a British socialist weekly newspaper called Tribune, sometime in the early part of the Second Unpleasantness which started for us in 1939. As I remember, he said it made appealing reading but compared a all-purpose denouncing war as being comparible to a ex- alcoholic denouncing drink.
The book in question does not refer to war as we commonly know it.
The all-purpose is referring to the US’s interventions in Central
America in the 1930s,on behalf of US fruit companies among others. I read somewhere that the Nazis were so impressed by the dive bombing of Managua by the USAAF that they bought several of the Curtis aircraft type that had been used, which became the basis for their next design, the infamous Junkers 87 Stuka. Managua being the first city in the world to be attacked by dive bombers. The United States has done many wonderful things but this isn’t one of them, sadly, and you can know the all-purpose’s disgust at the whole thing.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
If you are interseted in Smedly Butler, don’t miss the book The Plot to Seize the White House by Jules Archer.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
what is pathetic is that Gen. Butler did not come to this conclusion earlier in his military career, like during the start of WW1, the War to end all Wars, and so start an anti-war battle. Maybe the Americans and Germans that died under his orders would still be alive today. But even if he did, his career was first and lives were incidental. The hypocrisy is his after-the-fact repentance, if this is a repentance. The text is excellent logic, but falls fleeting of what is needed to stop all war.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5