Swiss American Historical Society Review
Keywords
Urner Klaus, Stephen Tanner, Angelo M. Codevilla, Hitler, Swiss Confederation, the Reich, American Airmen, Switzerland, World War II
Abstract
Klaus Umer, "Let's Swallow Switzerland": Hitler's Plans Against the Swiss Confederation (Lexington Books, Lanham, Maryland, 2001)
Stephen Tanner, Refuge from the Reich: American Airmen and Switzerland During World War II (Sarpedon Publishers, Rockville Center, New York, 2000)
Angelo M. Codevilla, Between the Alps and a Hard Place: Switzerland in World War II and Moral Blackmail Today (Regnery Publishing, Washington, D.C., 2000)
If, as in Tom Wolfe's phrase, the 1970s were the decade of the "me generation", perhaps the 1990s could be termed the "mea culpa" decade. The United States government belatedly and properly apologized and paid reparations to thousands of Japanese-American who had been unjustly interned in the panic that followed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Holocaust survivors and their heirs have successfully retrieved art and other assets stolen from them or their ancestors. Slave laborers have sought settlements from companies that profited from their exploitation. Mexican-American veterans of the wartime "bracero" guest worker program are seeking refunds, with interest, of money withheld from their meager wages. In such cases restitution or reparations as well as a public admission of wrongdoing are legally and morally justified as well as long overdue.
Recommended Citation
Messer, Robert
(2002)
"Review Essay: What Did You Do in the "Good War"?,"
Swiss American Historical Society Review: Vol. 38:
No.
3, Article 6.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol38/iss3/6