The topic of a recent Heritage event on American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character, by noted author and columnist Diana West, was nothing less than a startling rewriting of American history since the 1930s.
West’s book and her compelling presentation—which can be viewed on Heritage.org—deserve a wide audience and debate.
West argues that the accepted narratives of World War II and the Cold War often depart profoundly from actual reality. Inconvenient truths about the threat of Communism were ignored by the nation’s leaders and written out of history, basically until the arrival of President Ronald Reagan. West then finds a parallel in the struggle with violent extreme Islam today. She believes we are blinding ourselves to the real threats from Sharia law and ideological Islam, about which she has also written extensively.
The boldness of West’s arguments will make historians sit up and take notice. She believes that Soviet infiltration of the American political system was so extensive that it not only opened our national secrets to the Soviets but also influenced the entire political process and the course of history.
Some examples:
- The decision to recognize the Soviet Union by President Franklin D. Roosevelt entirely ignored the Ukrainian famine created by the Soviet government in the 1930s, which cost 20 million people their lives. This despite the fact that Joseph Stalin’s murderous actions against them were covered in the U.S. media.
- Overtures by high-level German opponents of Hitler as early as 1943 to the U.S. government were stonewalled by the national security staff because the Germans were also anti-Communists and therefore did not fit in with the U.S. alliance with the Soviet Union. Had we listened, an overthrow of Hitler might have ended the war before a second front was opened on D-Day in June 1944.
- The U.S. shipped enriched uranium to the Soviets during World War II, routing it through Canada as part of the lend-lease agreement, despite the fact that this was against U.S. law.
- The forced repatriation of thousands of Soviet citizens, as well as those of Central and Eastern Europe, by the Allied forces after Yalta was a dark consequence of the unholy pact made with Stalin.
The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 only gave us a partial victory in the Cold War. To date, American university campuses remain territory occupied by the followers of Karl Marx, whose ideas continue to undermine the character of this nation. This leads to multiculturalism, political correctness—even the fear of offending (or just naming) the Islamist terrorists who threaten this country today.