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B-24J Liberators of the 579th Bomb Squadron drop incendiary bombs made from fighter plane drop tanks filled with napalm on targets near Royan, France, Apr 15 1945.

Interchange – Tell It Slant: The Truth of the Bombs Bursting in Air

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Today Bruce Franklin will be trying to connect lots of dots. He’lll argue, among other things, that we need to learn what three particular dead white guys are still trying to teach us. Two were bombardiers in WWII: Joseph Heller and Howard Zinn. One was bombed in WWII: Kurt Vonnegut. All three raised this question: Who won that so-called Good War? The definitive answer may come in November 2020. We are close to repeating what happened in Germany in the 1930s. Germany was a small almost landlocked nation in the middle of Europe. It could be defeated, but not without the combined forces of the Soviet Union and United States. If next year America votes to become a white nationalist global empire, who or what can save our species from the result?

GUEST
H. Bruce Franklin was once a tugboat mate and then an Air Force navigator and intelligence officer. He is now and has been for more than half a century a progressive activist and renowned historian and author. His nineteen books and hundreds of articles have won him top awards for lifetime achievement in fields as diverse as American studies, science fiction, prison literature, and marine ecology. He retired in 2016 from a 30 year career as a professor at Rutgers University in Newark. His latest book is Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War published by Rutgers University Press. It is memoir, history, and analysis artfully woven together in the service of revelation.

RELATED
Undoing the Falsifications of History: A Crash Course with H. Bruce Franklin
How the U.S. Used Jazz as a Cold War Secret Weapon

MUSIC
“When Johnny Comes Marching Home” Jimmy Smith, Crazy Baby! (1960)
“Yankee Doodle Never Went to Town” Billie Holiday (1935)
“Nightmare” Artie Shaw (V-Disc, 1943)
“Not In Our Name” Charlie Haden and the Liberation Music Orchestra (2005)
“Star Spangled Banner” Louis Armstrong (1960)

CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Studio Engineer: Dan Withered
Executive Producer: Kade Young

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