Part III: Are war and economic disaster what Trump has in mind for MAGA?
His weekend attack on Iran certainly underscores his love of showing off American power
“Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness.”
－ Anne Frank, World War II diarist
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THIRD IN A SERIES
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Memory is a strange thing; it can take irrelevancies and explode them into profundities, yet reduce moments of importance to mere shadows and snippets.
For most of us alive today, we have a personal link to one of the most tumultuous moments in American history — World War II — yet have little understanding of the impact it continues to have today.
We might have elderly parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles who lived through the time — although that generation is slowly disappearing.
Or we watch movies like “Saving Private Ryan,” TV series like “Band of Brothers” or watch the History Channel and think they explain that war.
But that’s like watching “Hair,” “Gilligan’s Island” or “I Dream of Jeannie” and figuring those explain the ’60s.
And we know even less about World War I — although I spend a lot of time on the History Channel, learning something new every time I watch.
Yet the end of that “War to End all Wars” had more to do with today’s global landscape than most of us will ever understand.
In Part II of my continuing essay on the goal of MAGA, I looked at the Gilded Age and how it so closely matches the conditions we see in America today.
But following that era, the U.S. entered an up-and-down period in which we reluctantly went to war, became fervent isolationists mired in a Great Depression and then went back to war — coming out the other end as the first global superpower.
Do any of these periods work as a moment when America was “great” and therefore meets Donald Trump’s MAGA goal?
Especially in light of his pre-emptive attack on Iran?
Let’s see, starting with…
THE END OF WORLD WAR I
I’m not going to focus on the war itself; it’s far more instructive to look at its aftermath.
We know that more than 11 million military personnel were killed from 1915-1918 (mostly men), plus another 13 million civilians — all for about 125 square miles of territory gained by the Allies after four years of fighting.
(Or about twice the size of Washington, D.C.)
About 1.7 billion people were alive during World War I, which means we lost nearly 2% of our population — making it the deadliest war in human history; today, that level of loss would be more than 115 million dead.
But I’m sure it’s not the fog of war that Trump and MAGA are thinking about recapturing — even though his current on-again-off-again attitude toward Iran is just as haphazard as those summer moments in 1914; it’s what happened at the end that might apply to MAGA.
Currently, I’m re-reading — for the third or fourth time — the historical work “Paris 1919,” by Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan.
This comprehensively researched look at the peace conference held that year provides valuable lessons — in hubris, luck, battle fatigue, power vacuums and repeated missteps — that everyone should learn.
And what makes it a great read is that she peppers the facts with vignettes involving individuals who either made an impact in the moment or took what they had learned with them into the future.
People like Winston Churchill, who was Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty during the war, but was removed from that post following the disaster at Gallipoli.
Yet by 1919 he had been named both Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air, and at the peace conference argued for a continued Allied presence in Russia to counter Bolshevism.
It didn’t happen, which had its own consequences. Twenty years later, of course, Churchill would use his experience to guide England through World War II as prime minister.
In 1946, Churchill’s consistent views on Russia led to him to famously coin the phrase “iron curtain” to describe the division of Europe into West and East — setting the boundaries of a Cold War that lasted until the 1990s.
Also in Paris was T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia), who served as translator for King Faisal, the uncle of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — better known to us as “MBS.”
Today, MBS is the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, and a close friend of Trump — and was the one who invested $2 billion in Jared Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners.
W.E.B. DuBois, the American sociologist and historian, was there, organizing a Pan-Africanist Congress session — that none of the great powers attended.
A key player at the peace conference was emerging influential economist John Maynard Keynes, whose “demand-side” approach to markets (“Keynesian economics”) ran counter to long-held beliefs by conservatives that a “supply-side” model worked better.
Of course, that debate continues today: the GOP has long been on the side of “supply-side” — or “trickle-down” — economics (famously dubbed “Voo-doo economics” by George H.W. Bush), which argues that stimulating the economy by increasing the production of goods and services (the "supply") is more effective than stimulating “demand.”
They try to do this by lowering taxes and reducing regulations on businesses and high-income earners.
This, they always claim, will incentivize the rich and powerful to invest, produce more and create jobs, ultimately benefiting the entire economy.
Sound familiar? It should: It’s the core tenet of Trump and the Trumplicans’ current budget bill — which would slash taxes for the rich and powerful.
Important note: It never works; the rich simply keep the money, and corporations keep the profits.
Keynesian economists, on the other hand, is a “demand-side” model that says the consumer is key to economic success (which we are), and that government should intervene during recessions and depressions — which is what FDR did in the 1930s. (Read on.)
Then there was a young reporter named Keith Murdoch, who attended the peace conference with Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes.
Murdoch made his mark in 1915 by publishing a report (avoiding war censors) on Churchill’s disastrous Gallipoli campaign.
Later, he would use one newspaper to launch a media empire eventually taken over by his son, Rupert, in 1952. (Yep, that Fox News.)
Also at the peace talks was a young Nguyen ai Quac who petitioned the great powers — the U.S., Great Britain, France and, to a lesser degree, Japan and Italy — seeking self-determination and an end to French colonial rule in Indochina.
His efforts were ignored — with the Allied powers more interested in redrawing Europe’s boundaries than paying attention to Southeast Asia — helping create a committed communist we got to know as Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War 50 years later.
That lack of attention to Southeast Asia also had another unintended consequence: Japan had hoped for more from the peace talks and were humiliated by the refusal of the U.S. to include a racial equality clause to the final treaty.
This turned the Japanese against the western powers, in part setting the stage for World War II in the Pacific.
There are others MacMillan talks about throughout her nearly 500-page opus (with another 40-plus pages of notes and footnotes) — from presidents and prime ministers to aides and hangers on — which help tell the story of how this moment in time forever changed our global landscape.
Something Trump would be wise to read — if he reads anything.
What we know about World War I itself is that, like nearly all wars, it was blundered into, not planned.
And although the peace conference was “planned,” what grew out of it is a world that saw nations vanish, new nations created — and the imposition of punishing reparations against Germany (read on) that led to the rise of National Socialist (Nazi) party.
And Adolph Hitler.
What’s also important to understand is that those who attended the peace conference, as direct participants or peripheral characters, forever influenced the economic, social and geopolitical landscape that surrounds us today.
Indeed, although I can’t imagine MAGA means returning to a world war, I can imagine Trump wants to be a power broker who leaves his own handprints on the global map — complete with making his blunders along the way, like how he just launched an unprovoked pre-emptive air strike on Iran, putting us on an unexpected war footing.
This even as he talked about negotiating a deal with the Middle East nation – yet in the next breath telling reporters he’s “not too much in the mood” to negotiate.
(In the next breath after that, he tells other reporters “I’ve been negotiating. I told them to do the deal.”)
Of course, there WAS a deal negotiated in 2017 and signed by Iran, the U.S., France, Germany, Great Britain, China and Russia – and Trump walked away from it in 2018.
Then last week, Trump abruptly left the G-7 meeting in Canada and posted that “Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”
What followed was his unsanctioned — by Congress — attack on a sovereign nation, just like what Russia did to Ukraine.
Yes, this is how wars begin — and hardly something that would “make” American great again, although Trump might disagree, since he gets to play commander in chief for real.
But it’s the aftermath of war — best epitomized in “Paris 1919” — that we need to keep front of mind as Trump stumbles his way through the early moments of this war.
For if there’s anything to be learned from World War I, it’s that we don’t want to go down that road again — especially by accident or via some misplaced and unfounded sense of superiority over situation.
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Although we’re generally relegated to history books to learn about World War I, not so when it comes to this aftermath: a world-wide economic collapse caused in part by that war.
Many of us have family members — certainly up in age, if they’re still with us — who can recount (or have told tales of) living through the Great Depression.
A time of want, fear, desperation, shattered dreams and loss of hope for a better future.
Once again, of course, I have a book in our library (also on my “re-read” list) that deals, in part, with the making of this moment by laying out the financial groundwork for the Great Depression vs. the geopolitical background found in “Paris 1919.”
“The Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World” deals with the Central Banks of the great powers — Benjamin Strong Jr. of the New York Federal Reserve, Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, Émile Moreau of the Banque de France, and Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank — as they tried to navigate through the financial disaster left in the First World War’s wake.
(Keep in mind that our Federal Reserve System was only six years old by 1919.)
Interestingly — and purposely — the book dwells on the efforts of economist John Maynard Keynes, who was highly critical of the lax approach taken by the banks to address the problem at hand: how to manage German reparations while preventing a global economic collapse.
A key to understanding the problem was that the bankers wanted to adhere to a gold standard, arguing that it would provide stability to the monetary supply.
The problem is that the gold standard is restrictive and prevents government intervention (that’s why we went off it in two stages — first domestically in 1993 and then globally in 1971).
Nevertheless, the bankers argued for not only staying on gold, but then hiking interest rates to protect their dwindling reserves when, in fact, the world economy needed lower interest rates to survive.
In fact, in 1928 the U.S. Fed raised interest rates to curb stock market speculation, but that didn’t quite work as planned: The higher interest rates had the unintended consequence of causing a global credit crunch — the same thing that happened here in 2007 when banks, crippled by housing market debt, didn’t have the capital to lend, prompting the $700 billion TARP bailout.
Today, what’s important to note is that the economic headwinds we’re currently facing are NOT the result of some war, some bubble (although many fear a crypto bubble is coming), a gold standard or even high interest rates.
They’re Trump-made via his on-again-off-again tariffs, immigration policies that are frightening the U.S. labor workforce (that picks our food, work as home health aides and cleans our hotels) and foreign policies that bounce from “let’s negotiate” to “evacuate now” — all of it roiling a market that seeks stability.
At the same time, Trump wants to provide tax cuts to the rich and powerful, rather than providing for the social safety net that helps four times the number of Americans.
All while adding billions to our national debt, further shaking the markets.
Concerning Trump’s destructive tariff policies, Americans should remember that shortly after the stock market crash, Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, which significantly increased tariffs on imported goods.
Its intent was to protect American industries from foreign competition during the Great Depression, but…
But the problem was — and is today — that retaliatory tariffs by other countries led to a catastrophic decrease in international trade, making things worse.
Which begs the question: Is THIS what Trump has in mind for a “great” moment to resurrect?
Certainly, your grandparents would say, “no.”
But what about other aspects of the 20 years between world wars — from 1919 to 1939?
On the world stage, this period of economic upheaval and uncertainty spawned the emergence of authoritarian rule in previously democratic societies, with Germany (Hitler) and Spain (Franco) the most notable.
At the same time, Mussolini and his fascists took control of Italy, while Stalin reinforced his grip on the Soviet Union.
What all of them had in common was a transition into a one-party, autocratic state that prosecuted political opponents, imprisoned people without charge, and persecuted minorities — especially Jews.
While no one is claiming Trump is Hitler, his obvious love for authoritarian practices is becoming more pronounced as his second administration continues — and the guardrails of Trump 1.0 are gone.
We already have witnessed arbitrary arrests without charge, the shipping of migrants to other countries to be held incognito, the illegal stationing of Marines on city streets, the federalizing of the National Guard in violation of federal law, the cutting of federal jobs in violation of congressional funding, the arrest or detention of Democratic lawmakers, threats made to the press and threats made to anyone who opposes or simply disagrees with his opinions and policies.
I asked AI for the definition of an autocracy, and this was its answer:
“In simple terms, autocracy is a form of government where one person holds absolute power and makes all the decisions without needing to consider the opinions or wishes of others. It’s essentially a system ruled by a single, all-powerful individual.”
Our Constitution says we don’t have an autocracy or dictatorship, but actions speak louder than words, and unless Congress and the Supreme Court reassert their constitutional authority as equal branches of government, we have whatever this is.
In other words, Trump already has his MAGA moment… if we continue to let him.
Which reminds me of Benjamin Franklin’s famous response to a woman after the writing of the Constitution: ‘Well, doctor,” asked Elizabeth Willing Powel, “what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
His response: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
And therein lies our challenge today.
For most Americans, of course, the Great Depression equates with economic disaster.
Which is precisely what’s going on today, but with a twist: instead of being the inescapable result of war, what we have today this is deliberate, a man-made economic disaster that didn’t have to happen.
And that’s why, according to various polls, 55% of Americans have expressed pessimism about the broader economy; 84% are “highly concerned” about inflation and 68% rated economic conditions as only “fair” or “poor.”
In addition, a recent Fox News poll, reported that 59% of Americans oppose the Trumplicans’ horrific, punishing tax-cut-for-the-rich budget bill.
All of this after Trump made repeated campaign promises to “end inflation and make America affordable again,” to “rapidly drive prices down” and, finally, “a vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper.”
Is this the MAGA era Trump envisions? Well, we might already be there, especially when it comes to the threat of autocratic rule.
Which runs counter to our role in the Second World War.
THE GREATEST GENERATION
For the “greatest generation” of veterans, the creation of an American autocracy is not what they fought for 80 years ago; indeed, that greatest generation specifically battled against authoritarian rule — and certainly never expected it to rise behind their backs two generations later.
In my house is yet another book, but this one is much smaller, plain with faded edges, stored in an equally faded envelope.
Its pages are frail, given its age, but full of history: It’s my mother’s ration book from World War II, a tangible relic from when sacrifice not only came in the form of lives on the battlefield, but also in struggles on the home front.
This moment in time didn’t arrive in a vacuum, however; prior to Pearl Harbor, isolationism was alive and well, with most Americans preferring to never get into another “European war” again.
At the extremes, the rise of “America First” (contrary to his claim, Trump never coined the phrase) provided a platform for many — such as American hero Charles Lindbergh — to argue against our involvement overseas.
Locally, we already had Detroit’s Father Coughlin in the 1930s using the radio to reach an estimated 30 million listeners a week (long before right wing talk radio) — preaching antisemitic vile, among other things.
Indeed, there was a dirty, foul undercurrent at work across the country in the runup to the war — and if not for Pearl Harbor, it begs the question as to whether FDR’s “New Deal” would have instead evolved into a laissez-faire, isolationist government in which everyone would be left to their own devices — the rich would’ve gotten richer; the poor, poorer — and whether America would ever have assumed a leadership role in the world.
Certainly Trump identifies with much from this period — except for the “sacrifice” part: he has never gone without, and has routinely demeaned the military as full of “suckers” and “losers.”
(Unless, of course, they work as useful props at a rally or birthday party — or provide muscle for his attempts to entice protesters to engage with violence.)
Of course, Trump is quick to beat his chest about America’s military might when it serves his purposes — such as threatening a hostile takeover of Greenland and the Panama Canal — or launching air strikes against Iran.
Yep, President Bone Spurs is quick to invoke the military when the mood strikes — which is a far cry from what happened after Dec. 7, 1941.
In the days, weeks, months and years that followed, our nation changed, as did the world.
We shifted into high gear industrially, converting peacetime manufacturing into wartime, with one B-24 Liberator bomber rolling out of the Willow Run bomber plant every hour.
At the same time, Warren’s Detroit Tank Arsenal built 22,000 tanks and armored fighting vehicles during the war.
For those who never knew why, that’s how Detroit got the moniker the “Arsenal of Democracy.”
Of course, that’s part of what Trump sees in his MAGA dream: a return to high-capacity manufacturing.
But that’s a pipe dream in today’s global economy.
Not only won’t many high-paying industrial jobs come back here, but those that do return in some form will be “manned” by robots and more automation.
From 1941 to 1945, more than 16 million Americans served in the military (61% were drafted) — or 12% of our population. Of that total, more than 400,000 we died during the war and another 700,000 were wounded.
The war was ostensibly about fighting fascism around the world, about fighting it “over there” to keep it from “coming here.”
If that sounds familiar, the same message was repeated in the aftermath of 9/11, when President Geroge W. Bush told the American Legion in 2007 that “our strategy is this: We will fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America.”
But as defensible as our entry into World War II was, that doesn’t mean everything we did was equally honorable.
During the war, racism was alive and well, with Americans of Japanese descent stripped of their assets and sent to our version of concentration camps.
At the same time, although African-Americans served in the military, they were posted in segregated units — as were second-generation Japanese, known as “Nise.”
And while we’ve all heard of the Native American “code talkers” who used their tribal languages to transmit secret messages during the war, they faced discrimination and severe poverty on reservations, with many forced to migrate to cities for work.
So, sure, World War II might’ve been our “finest hour” when it came to winning the war, but it left a lot to be desired when it came to domestic issues — setting the stage for the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements of the 1960s.
Still, it’s that militaristic view of American that Trump appears drawn to — not the defeat of fascism.
A view best exemplified by his June 14 parade in Washington, D.C., held ostensibly to celebrate the Army’s founding, but “coincidentally” to celebrate his own birthday — and his autocratic notions of a military parade parroting the behavior of strongman like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
And a view reinforced by his attack on Iran, making this unquestionably “Trump’s War.”
I think I can speak for my uncles who served in that Second World War that this is not what they fought for then — and it’s certainly not why I served 50-plus years ago.
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The next — and last part
So what’s left to consider when we talk about Trump wanting to reanimate some era of our history as part of his MAGA fever dream?
Is there any part of the last 60 years of American history that Trump has in mind when he talks about MAGA?
Well, that’s what I’ll explore in my next — and final — installment.
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Craig Farrand is an award-winning journalist, Army veteran and former managing editor of the largest non-daily newspaper in Michigan. I can be reached at: