Victor Davis Hanson laments the current trend among historians who question American contributions and motivations in WWII. He criticizes the Dutch for protesting a visit of the US president, the leader of a nation who freed their fathers from Nazi bondage. How dare they?! [Funny how he makes no mention of American Bushies who berated the Chirac and France, a nation who provided the vital aid as well as a blockades squeezing out King George’s army, liberating the rebellious Americans.]
In his critique, he admonishes “…revision requires knowledge of orthodoxy.” Taking him at his word, here is a revisionist story of World War II that takes into account orthodoxy:
Our story begins in Fatima, 1917 where three children see apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In one of the visions she predicts that if man keeps offending God, a great war will break out during the reign of Pius XI. This happened 22 years later with the commencement of World War II.
Enter St. Maximilian Kolbe. A Polish Priest, devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and founder of the Militia of the Immaculatae. One of the primary missions of the Militia was to combat the evils of freemasonry. As its charter states, they engaged in, “…converting sinners, heretics and schismatics, particularly freemasons, and bringing all men to love Mary Immaculate".
In 1930, Kolbe established one of his many “Mary Towns” in Nagasaki, Japan.
After returning to Poland in 1936, Kolbe is arrested by the Nazi SS in February 1941 for the writing subversive material with words like:
"What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hecatombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?"
By May of 1941 he was sent to Auschwitz. His ministry continued with Confessions and Mass for other prisoners. Later that summer, Kolbe volunteered to take the place of a man, with a free and living wife and child, in a starvation chamber. With nine other men in the starvation bunker, Kolbe led them in prayer, rosary, confession, and last rites. After two weeks and the deaths of all the other nine men, Kolbe did not starve to death. The Nazis had to kill him with a lethal injection on August 14, 1941.Enter Harry Truman. Truman takes over as President and Commander in Chief of the United States at the death of Roosevelt on April 12, 1945. Truman was very involved in freemasonry. He was initiated in a Lodge in Missouri. He was honored as a grand master and was presented with a fifty year award.
August 6, 1945, by order of President Truman an atomic bomb is dropped over Hiroshima. At ground zero four Jesuit priests survive with no ill effects of radiation. There were other survivors of the ground zero blast, however all but the Jesuits died within a fifteen year period. The Church roof blew off but its walls were still standing, with everything else in site flattened. One of the Jesuits said they owed their lives to their daily devotion to the Blessed Virgin (Our Lady of Fatima) and daily rosary meditations.
August 9, 1945, by order of Truman once again, an atomic bomb is dropped over the city of Nagasaki. The Cathedral of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is destroyed. However, Maximilian Kolbe’s Mary Town and the Franciscan Friars inside are left unscathed, with the exception of a few stain glass windows. Once again these friars were devoted to the Blessed Mother and prayed the rosary daily.
August 15, 1945 U.S. forces stand down and World War II is over. This is the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
October 19, 1945, according to the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, Harry Truman was, “was made a Sovereign Grand Inspector General, 33°, and Honorary Member, Supreme Council on October 19,1945 at the Supreme Council A.A.S.R. Southern Jurisdiction Headquarters in Washington D.C., upon which occasion he served as Exemplar (Representative) for his Class.” A nice reward for being the first and only to nuke anybody, exemplar indeed.
Upon reexamination and revision, especially when reflecting on orthodoxy, it looks like there was a battle raging in World War II that was far greater than anything seen through the eyes of court historians and even many other revisionists. It looks as also there were more than two sides actively involved in the war. There were the Allies, the Axis, and an obscure group of men involved in the Militia of the Immaculate Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
I wonder what Mr. Hanson has to say about this faction. He might be upset that they didn't kill anyone. I invite Mr. Hanson and all to reflect on Kolbe's question, "...what use are the victories on the battlefield if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?" To find the answer, ask the Handmaiden of the Lord.