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Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal (LvMI) Kindle Edition

by Ralph Raico (Author), Robert Higgs (Foreword) Format: Kindle Edition
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 58 ratings
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The backdrop of this blistering and deeply insightful scholarly history is the whitewashing of "great leaders" like Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, FDR, Truman, Stalin, Trotsky, and other collectivists. They are highly regarded because they were on the "right side" of the rise of the state.

But do they deserve adulation? Ralph Raico, the great historian of classical liberalism, says no: these great leaders were the main agents in the decline of civilization in the 20th century, all of them antiliberals who used their power to celebrate and enhance state power.

Robert Higgs (author of Crisis & Leviathan) writes the foreword and cheers this powerful exposé as a necessary corrective: "Raico's historical essays are not for the faint of heart or for those whose loyalty to the US or British state outweighs their devotion to truth and humanity. Yet Ralph did not invent the ugly facts he recounts here, as his ample documentation attests. Indeed, many historians have known these facts, but few have been willing to step forward and defy politically popular and professionally fashionable views in the forthright, pull-no-punches way that Raico does."

"Thus," writes Higgs, "in these pages, you will find descriptions and accounts of World War I, of the lead-up to formal US belligerence in World War II, and of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Truman, among others, that bear little resemblance to what you were taught in school. Here you will encounter, perhaps for the first time, compelling evidence of how the British maneuvered US leaders and tricked the American people prior to the US declarations of war in 1917 and 1941. You will read about how the British undertook to starve the Germans — men, women, and children alike — not only during World War I, but for the greater part of a year after the armistice. You will be presented with descriptions of how the communists were deified and the German people demonized by historians and others who ought to have known better. You will see painted in truer shades a portrait of the epic confrontation between the great majority of Americans who wished to keep their country at peace in 1939, 1940, and 1941 and the well-placed, unscrupulous minority who sought to plunge the United States into the European maelstrom."

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  1. Print length
    265 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publication date
    March 2, 2011
  5. File size
    572 KB
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004QGYEX8
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ludwig von Mises Institute (March 2, 2011)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 2, 2011
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 572 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 265 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1610160967
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 58 ratings

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
58 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Gravity's Gone
5.0 out of 5 stars WOW!!!
Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2014
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Tremendously well written collection of essays. Raico is a master and pulls no punches. He is consistent in his indictment of both the modern left and right, and shines light on the vacuum in American politics once occupied by the non-interventionist Old Right. There is not much to say that has not already been well covered in the other Amazon reviews. Highly educational, extremely interesting, and capable of shattering world views. I would recommend this book to the following:
Anyone who values human life;
Anyone tired of John Bolton incessantly advocating for intervening in every schoolyard shoving match around the globe;
Anyone that has ever questioned whether actions have consequences even in foreign policy;
Anyone who might suspect that political leaders may not value your life quite as much as you do;
Anyone who has ever wondered whether many of the monsters America has had to go abroad to slay may have partially resulted from previous American monster slaying crusades;
Anyone that thinks Bill O’Reilly is pompous or anyone mesmerized by his massive forehead;
Anyone who thinks that Allan Combs is creepy and looks like the guidance counselor from South Park;
Anyone that has the utmost respect for the sacrifices of well-intending soldiers seeking to protect liberty but may have some reservations about accepting the pure intentions of the powerful elites who put those soldiers in harm’s way;
Anyone that has secretly wondered whether it was absolutely necessary to American security for Truman to mass murder incomprehensible numbers of Japanese civilians with the most devastating weapon ever known;
Anyone that has ever noticed that we must be reminded of Hitler’s atrocities on an almost daily basis but rarely hear the fellow travelers in the media and academia mention (Allied) Stalin’s numerically worse murderous attrocities;
Anyone interested in human freedom;
or anyone who has even the slightest curiosity about anything at all.
9 people found this helpful
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M. Fender
5.0 out of 5 stars Surprising, horrifying
Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2012
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The book covers a lot of topics without going into tons of detail, but the footnotes show where you can go digging for more detail if you're interested. Chapters 1 - 3 constitute the meat of the book (WWI, Churchill, and Truman). The last Chapters (4-12) are short and cover various topics lightly but in a very interesting way. I'm left feeling like I don't know enough about the topics to feel fully informed.

I am really glad to see that there are books about war that don't glorify it, and actually call into question the wisdom of people who got us into them.

This book is actually very shocking because it unveils the astounding hypocrisy of how historians in general talk about Hitler's evil without showing any concern for Churchill's war crimes such as starving civilians in WWI (against international law) and continuing to starve them after Germany surrendered. Or callously repatriating soviets to be murdered by Stalin after WWII.

For all we hear about how evil Osama Bin Laden was for targeting civilians, I as under the impression that it's the kind of thing that should be completely out of the question. Yet Churchill had 400,000 war refugees (civilians, women and children) killed from the air. You've got to be kidding me.

And somehow I always assumed that bombing Japanese civilians must have been a harrowing decision for poor Truman. But his rational was that Japanese soldiers killed civilians so we shouldn't feel bad doing it?!?! Seriously?
6 people found this helpful
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David C. Robine
5.0 out of 5 stars Scathing overview of revisionist history
Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2014
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I really enjoyed reading Ralph Raico's synopsis of some of the revisionist history and the incredible perspective it provides on many of our so-called "Great Leaders". It's not confined to American Presidents either. Winston Churchill takes a serious beating here along with Lincoln, FDR, and Wilson. The book is a collection of essays, so you may have read some or all of these previously. I had not and found it a refreshing change from all the sycophantic hero-worship of most histories and biographies. It gets a bit polemic at times, so, if you're looking for a dispassionate analysis, you won't find it here. But that is available in the voluminous footnotes referring to many revisionist history books available. I didn't know of many of them, so it was interesting to get titles and authors to do some further research. Well worth reading, in my opinion.
3 people found this helpful
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Ason OfLiberty
5.0 out of 5 stars History you won't be told in school
Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2014
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We all have learned that Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt are heroes who got us through the Second World War. This book smashes the myths. In a series of essays you will come to find that our modern day heroes are not heroes at all but the true villains. Woodrow Wilson, Churchill and Roosevelt are exposed as the war-mongering leaders who led their countries into wars that cost millions of lives and permitted communism to spread throughout Eastern Europe. It is a book that will bring the two world wars into better prospective.
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Efrem Sepulveda
5.0 out of 5 stars Tour de force summary of 20th Century fiascos
Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2016
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Ralph Raico should get better credit for the brilliant history overviews that he has written over the years. Enclosed in this book is a dozen essays of how so called great leaders of the two world wars were at best incompetent and at worst sinister. Churchill, Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and various other western leaders are given deservedly harsh treatments for the misery they unleashed on the world. A great work. Five stars.
One person found this helpful
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groundhog
5.0 out of 5 stars Brief debunking
Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2013
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Ralph Raico has written a brief,yet detailed book on revisionist history.
The footnotes are plentiful and gives a new look into Churchill who is deified on both sides of the pond.The book reads at a quick pace and doesn't come across as a history book,always a good thing with this type of book.This is a great book at a great price, for those wishing to take a chance on a different viewpoint
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Adam B. Graham
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing and Informative
Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2018
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Such a great compilation of content and commentary on the 20th century’s most influential wars and leaders. The only drawback is the sheer amount of other books cited that will simply have to be read afterwards.
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Top reviews from other countries

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André L. C.
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente! Tudo que imaginamos saber é verdade?
Reviewed in Brazil on November 28, 2017
Verified Purchase
Um livro excelente para quem deseja conhecer outro ponto de vista sobre os personagens e os conflitos que marcaram a humanidade.
O que você leu no livro de história é verdade?
Você realmente conhece os chamados "heróis" envolvidos nas chamadas grandes guerras?
A quem interessou estes desastres?
Muitos pontos interessantes e controversos.
Recomendo!
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Tobias Pfender
5.0 out of 5 stars Gutes Buch
Reviewed in Germany on November 17, 2014
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Gutes und informatives Buch mit teils überraschenden Fakten.
Leider gibt es hierfür bisher anscheinend keine deutsche Übersetzung, trotzdem fünf Sterne.
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