The First casualty of War

History gets revised as history is being made, especially in time of war, let alone after the war is over and the victors can write what they like. As Churchill said, "The first casualty of war is truth".

You can bet your bottom dollar that if truth is indeed the first casualty of war, then by the time that war nears it's end, truth is in a pretty bad way!

A classical example of how history is revised is the way we were told, then and now, that we had to drop the bomb on Japan because they refused to surrender.

As Gore Vidal argues, on the basis of several published books with citations, the Japanese had been willing to surrender on the condition that they retained their emperor, and had been contacting the US admin through the embassies of neutral countries.

The US insisted on unconditional surrender and dropped the bomb, as Vidal says, to frighten the Russians.

And as it happened, McArthur decided to retain the emperor anyway.

As Voltaire said, "History is a lie that is generally agreed upon!" Wise words indeed!

Churchill also said that truth was so precious it had to be rationed which, frankly, I find deeply sinister.