Politics (journal) - Allied Conduct of The Second World War

Allied Conduct of The Second World War

As a self-described pacifist and opponent of American entry into the Second World War, Macdonald in the early numbers of his magazine tracking the final year and a half of the war found much to criticize: the cynicism of Allied war aims, the bombing of civilian populations, the betrayal by the Russians of the Polish resistance in the wake of the crushing of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the internment of Japanese-Americans, racial segregation in the American armed forces, the sentimental belief of the "liblabs" - Macdonald's term of parodist art for the broad liberal and labor coalition across the Democratic party and the left intelligentsia - that the winning of the war would issue in the triumph of the "Common Man" and a "More Abundant Future for All" (parodic scare-capitals were among Macdonald's standard craftsman's tools), and the punitive ascription of collective guilt to civilian populations for the crimes and war policies of the governments to which they were subject.