“Make the lie big, keep it simple, keep saying it and eventually they will believe it”
– Dr Joseph Goebbels

On October 27, 1951, an American magazine “Collier’s” published a topic issue with a ominous title “Preview of the War We Do Not Want: Russia’s defeat and Occupation 1952-1960”. The issue was comprised of a series of “hypothetical” articles, turning into a parade of double-speak, projection, blame-shifting, and sugar-coating. The articles are written in the past tense, describing the war as a fait accompli, as a retrospective, where the USA is, naturally, victorious. On the cover, the title itself could have just as well dropped the “not” to become absolutely truthful.

The map on the cover made it absolutely clear which territories the USA (under the fig leaf of the UN) wanted to occupy: Ukraine, Baltics, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, creating the “sanitarrebiy cordon”. Moscow was also on the list, in order to paralyse and turn the USSR into a puppet state – no suprise there, as Hitler had had exactly the same goal just 10 years earlier. At one point, they mock Iosif Stalin with his loss of a son in the war against fascism-imperialism. Note how the whole conflict is presented as USSR against the UN, glossing over the fact that USSR is, in fact a founding member of that very UN, that the USA is using in the articles as a cover for their carnivorous desires, projected onto the USSR. We will meet many a propaganda device conceived by Goebbels, like the term “Red Army hordes”… The articles are also insistently calling their imaginary war for “The Great War” (with capital letters) so as to overshadow and push out of the focus the recent devastating World War II. Indeed, reading the “How the War Was Fought” section is like reading Hitler’s wet dreams put on paper! They went as fas as dragging through the mud the name of Ilya Ehrenburg, the journalist who only a decade ago had been rallying Soviet people to the fight against Nazism, giving spiritual strength to the Soviet Soldiers.

As time went by, it turned out that the title was not entirely hypothetical, or rather, not hypothetical at all. That we can see from the article that we re-blogged earlier: 204 A-Bombs Against 66 Cities: US Drew up First Plan to Nuke Russia Before WWII Was Even Over. In 1951, the USSR was still recovering from the loss of 27 million people, destruction of whole cities and agricultural land. In 1947, the USSR suffered a severe famine as result from the Nazi destruction, while it continued to help Poland and other countries of the Socialist block with food and equipment.

And against suffering, the USA was itching for a new war, a nuclear war – just like the Western politicians of today, when Britain and France, with the tacit approval of the USA, are planning to transfer nuclear weapons to the Nazi regime in Kiev. But what’s new – read an article by Dmitry Medvedev How the Anglo-Saxons Promoted Fascism in the 20th Century and Revived It in the 21st for a deeper understanding of the continuity of the Imperialist agenda from 1941 to 1951.

Below, we present the texts and pages of the Collier’s, extracted from the PDF, preserved by the WebArchive library. Read it and draw you own parallels to the russophobic media frenzy that we see today, when Russia is painted as an aggressor to prepare the population of the West for a new “drang nach osten”. Pay careful attention of how the narrative is woven. Goebbels’ quote above is taken to the extreme, so much so that Goebbels himself might have been overwhelmed and embarrassed. The point about repeating the same lie is taken very seriously – the sub-articles, even though they address different topics – will re-run certain narratives from various angles, hammering the lies and deceptive half-truths into the minds of the readers. We made several BATS-comments throughout, but it is virtually impossible to address every single lie, as we would be forced to leave comments in almost each paragaph. So we entrust our readers with this material as an exercise in critical thinking.

A few words about Collier’s

CHEAP MONEY…
that’s what the Reds would like to see in America.
Cheap money eats into savings; cuts down the value of insurance; wrecks plans for security.
Cheap money leads nations into chaos; collapse . . . and communism.
Moscow meddlers in positions of influence are promoting cheap money for America today.
Let’s throw them out!

Collier’s magazine was a popular periodical, which was viewed at the time as a serious publication. The magazine was very critical of Joseph McCarthy, the strident anti-communist politician in that period, but was focused on the EXTERNAL communist enemy and viewed McCarthy’s focus on INTERNAL enemies as abusive and anti-American. The page to the right was not a part of the extensive “imaginary war” topic, and serves as an illustration of Collier’s editorial political stance.

Time magazine wrote two days after the publication:

For “Eggnog,” Collier’s jumped its print order from 3,400,000 to 3,900,000, spent $40,000 extra on articles, almost doubled its usual sale of advertising.

As the same time, Collier’s was struggling financially, and it would eventually shut down in January of 1957. Interesting implications arise for this particular issue: financial difficulties, being on the outs with the McCarthy regime, increase in print, the exceptional quality of the material, he breadth of the myths, talking points and slander covered in one go, leave us with the impression that Collier’s were working on an order they could not refuse, with the outline of the materials provided by the US policy makers and think-tanks of the time.

When that sensational issue of Collier’s came out on October 27, 1951, in which articles by prominent writers described the course of World War III as if it had already taken place, there was a roar of outrage. Though the issue was titled “The War We Do Not Want,” it seemed to most observers that quite an opposite impression would be conveyed, especially to the peoples of Europe and Asia. There was a general feeling that the magazine had somehow committed an unpardonable offense, though few seemed inclined to judge it in terms other than Realpolitik: it would dishearten Europeans, frighten Asiatics, etc. Here, André Prudhommeaux gives one European’s reaction to the Collier’s episode, not as it affects the strategy of the cold war, but as it involves certain values intrinsic to Western civilization that contemporary journalism appears willing to dispense with.

Thus, Collier’s publication draw criticism in Europe, seen in the April 1952 commentary Where Journalism Must Draw the Line: A European Reacts to Collier’s “The War We Do Not Want”!

Note that in several articles references will be made to MVD as the scary oppressive “organ of totalitarianism”. Actually, MVD stand for “Ministry of Internal Affairs” – the American equivalent being the Department of Homeland Security, with some functions of the Interior Department. It appears this publication predates the time when KGB was promoted into the rank of the new boogeyman for the westerners.

And now, brew some calming tea, and embark on the most unnerving reading imaginable. You can click on each image to enlarge it.

Contents

• Operation Eggnog – An article about how this issue was created, complete with rationalisations and an off-handed admission that the talking points for the narrative came from what we would now collectively call as a “think tank”.
• Principal Events of World War III – The highlights of the desired war
• The Unwanted War – an “editorial”, setting the tone for the rest of the fiction.
• The Third World War – The whole monty, the complete main story, delivering a blow-by-blow account of how the USA – sorry, the UN – reluctantly ended up winning over the USSR.
• A-Bomb Mission to Moscow – Never mind that this is a bombing, after a Soviet retaliation A-bombing, after a US “preemptive” A-Bombing…
• Washington Under the Bomb
• How the War Was Fought – Detailed maps of the campaign, incidentally corresponding to the later-revealed American plans to bomb the USSR.
• I Saw Them Chute into the Urals – In invasion, launched from Tel-Aviv.
• Freedom – At Long Last – Depiction of the USSR as one large concentration camp. It is on this well-manured foundation that Solzhenicin later deposited his slander.
• We Worship GOD Again – A tearful story from Ukraine about new Russia, and how it is terrible and oppressive to live under Stalin…
• Women of Russia – Poor women in Russia would not enjoy silk stocking under the evil Reds…
• Russia’s Rebirth – A small smear campaign to paint the women of Russia as a fifth column that would have been happy for the defeat of the USSR in WWIII. With an offhanded implication of how happy the women of Japan had been to have an A-bomb to be dropped of them in the name of democracy.
• Out of the Rubble – A New Russia – Takes up the economics, disparaging the Socialist system, and telling how much better it is for Russia to be under the thoughtful capitalist American guidance. We all know how it went in reality during the Wild ’90s.
• Miracle of American Production – bragging time…
• Free Men at Work
• The Curtain Rises… – the “cultural” dribble about how there was not creativity in the USSR.
• Walter Winchell in Moscow – a short “correspondent” piece about bad Stalin, how bad it is that the USSR was governed by a federal (Soviet) central government and how good it is that the USA is governed by a federal central government, with a poke at the UN.
• Start the Presses! – The large ode to the freedom of expression, it eerily foreshadows the information garbage pile that the press and media turned into during the Wild ’90s under the watchful eye of the overseas handlers and local mankruts.
• Free Thoughts, Free Words – this section take up the question of economics and re-education of the Russians to the “democratic” way of schooling.
• Moscow Olympics – no, not the 1980, that the USA will subsequently boycott, but the hypothetical 1960 one in vanquished Russia. How can we forego politics in sports…
• Philadelphia Phase – A lengthy story of the “American revival” and the Russians relocated to the USA to “rebuild and learn”. And a semi-romatic tale with a touch of tragedy and projection of an American man and a Russian woman.
• Trouble at Tuaviti – “Far out in the South Pacific, one primitive islander, who knew how to distinguish strength from bluster, robbed the enemy of a base that might have been used in the destruction o f the United States”. This story is best followed by watching the 1966 American comedy “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!” – after all, why let a good fiction plot go to waste?
• The Present – If one is to peel away the narrative sugar-coating of this piece, what remains is a deep-seated desire that the USSR hadn’t won in World War II.
• Moscow Sketchbook – Four character drawings that are not too bad, with short remarks, that are worse

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