AMERICA ENDS WORLD WAR II JAPAN DEFIANT By August 1945, America was poised to achieve total victory in World War II. As described in my preceding article Downfall, following the August 6, 1945, atomic attack on Hiroshima, it was evident that the Potsdam Declaration was no bluff. American broadcasts and leaflets announced the nuclear catastrophe … Read more
AUGUST 6, 1945 EXCEPTIONAL DEVELOPMENT On August 6, 1945, America effectively ended World War II by triggering the downfall of Imperial Japan. Firstly, as described in my previous post Trinity, with the unprecedented and exceptional project code-named Manhattan, the United States had harnessed nuclear energy. Secondly, we successfully tested the first atomic bomb in New … Read more
BOLD AND AMBITIOUS GAMBLE Fifty years have passed since American President Richard Nixon made his historic trip to China. On February 21, 1972, when Air Force One landed in Beijing, two decades of enmity between America and China ended. Firstly, a beaming President Nixon alighted to respectfully shake the hand of an approving Premier Zhou … Read more
SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER Celebrating its 80th anniversary, America’s international broadcasting service, the Voice of America, serves as an important and reliable source of news and information for people around the world. During February 1942, the United States launched wartime overseas service with Stimmen aus America (Voices from America) for the people of the enemy … Read more
DECEMBER 7, 1941 At Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Imperial Japan awakened America. At that moment, the great republic began its inexorable march toward to genuine exceptionalism. Consequently, America Ascendant, the Rise of American Exceptionalism, documents the events of that fateful morning on Oahu that shaped the rest of American and world history for … Read more
APRIL 12, 1945 COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF Shortly before 1:00 p.m. on April 12, 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was seated in the living room of the Little White House at his beloved Warm Springs, Georgia therapeutic spa. Three days earlier, Lucy Mercer Rutherford arrived from Aitken, South Carolina, accompanied by portrait artist Elizabeth Schoumatoff. Meanwhile, when the … Read more
AMERICAN CHRISTMAS 1776 was not simply the year that the members of the Continental Congress risked their lives and fortunes to declare an independent America. However, as we honor their risk of high treason taken on July 4, let us also remember December 25, 1776, when Gen. George Washington changed the course of world history. … Read more
THEN AND NOW America First was a provocative movement in 1940 and it remains controversial eighty years later. America First as advocated in 1940 was incompatible with genuine American exceptionalism. Likewise, the 2020 version of America First is often confused with the original movement. But it is different. Therefore, let us expose what America First … Read more
NATION OVER PARTY STATESMANSHIP Unlike Wendell Willkie, the 1940 Republican presidential candidate, many modern politicians and media appear institutionally incapable of objective reasoning. However, Willkie’s story proves that there was a time when bipartisan statesmanship was possible in Washington. Furthermore, we misunderstand the isolationist opposition to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s foreign policy before and during … Read more
AMERICA GOES NUCLEAR At 5:29 a.m. Mountain War Time on July 16, 1945, the United States detonated the first nuclear weapon, an atomic device code named Trinity, in the Jornada del Muerto desert about thirty-five miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on the Army Air Forces’ Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range. Scientists and military personnel … Read more