Russia had lost, to Germany’s Nazis, 13,950,000, or exactly 12.7% of its population. Another part of the Soviet Union, Belarus, lost 2.29 million, or exactly 25.3% of its population to Hitler. Another part of the USSR, Ukraine, lost 6.85 million, or 16.3%. The entire Soviet Union lost 26.6 million, exactly 13.7% of its population to Hitler. The US lost only 419,400, or 0.32% of its population. Furthermore, immediately after FDR died and Harry S. Truman became President, the US CIA (then as its predecessor organization the OSS) provided protection and employment in Germany for top members of Hitler’s equivalent to the CIA, the Gehlen Organization. (America’s CIA continues flagrantly to violate the law and hide from Congress and the American people crucial details of its relationship with the Gehlen Organization.) By contrast, the Soviet Union was unremitting in killing Nazis whom it captured.

Without the immense sacrifices by the USSR, Hitler would almost certainly have won WWII and Americans be living under Nazi rule, but the owner of that ‘investments’-firm airbrushes Russia totally out of the Allies’ victory.

The Bradford Exchange was founded by billionaire J. Roderick MacArthur, a rabid neoconservative liberal, whose fortune was left to heirs and to the liberal John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which sponsors its ‘genius’ awards; and also left to the Harper’s Magazine Foundation to buy that Magazine and place his son J.R. MacArthur in charge of it. They’re also major funders of NPR and PBS, America’s ‘public’ radio and TV.

As for US Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, they started the Cold War on 26 July 1945 at the Potsdam Conference between Truman, Churchill, and Stalin, each of which relied upon advisors. Eisenhower turned out to have been the key one for Truman.

Steve Neal’s 2002 Harry and Ike says (p. 40), “Truman was elated that Stalin was preparing to join the Allies in the war against Japan. [Stalin had made that intention clear to Truman on July 17th.] [But, on July 26th] Eisenhower advised [Truman against that, because, said Ike] ‘no power on earth could keep the Red Army out of that war unless victory came before they could get in.’” So, Truman rejected the overwhelming opposition he had received from the scientists, who favored doing only a public test-demonstration of the A-bomb for Japan’s leaders to view, and he simply nuked both Hiroshima and Nagasaki — in order to keep the Soviets out of Japan, not in order to win the war against Japan. (Then, of course, the very tactful Ike became Truman’s successor, and led, for what at the end of his Presidency he famously named the “military industrial complex,” which he warned against only after he had already served as the President and already given the generals whatever they had asked for.)

The Potsdam Conference ended on 2 August 1945, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred on 6 and 9 August — both within a week of that Conference.

So: those bomb-drops by Truman were part of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, spurred by Eisenhower’s advice, and not really part of the hot WWII to beat Japan, as the myth has it.

And, now, perhaps (according to the Bradford Exchange and other memorializers of a WWII victory that’s cleansed of the Russian ‘stain’ on it), is the time to airbrush Stalin out of the picture altogether, even though he was actually the key person in the defeat of the Nazis, and thus in all of the Allies’ — USSR, UK, and USA. — WWII victory.

Perhaps the reason why France (instead of USSR) was included on that coin, is that that country, which was defeated by the Nazis (instead of having contributed significantly to the Allies’ win), is viewed more sympathetically by propaganda-drenched Americans, than is the country which actually did more than any other — including than the United States itself — in order actually to defeat Hitler.

And the use of the A-bomb against Japan wasn’t really done in order to beat Japan, which already had no chance of winning, but it was instead done specifically because both Eisenhower and Truman, as early as 26 July 1945, wanted the US ultimately to conquer the Soviet Union. Japan was the eastern edge of that, and NATO (yet to be created in 1949) the western one. And the eastern edge of America’s surround-and-stifle strategy against ‘communism’ (but really for the US to take control over the entire world) began precisely on that date, 26 July 1945, when the fates of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were determined. The program to bring Nazi weapons-designers etc. into the US started immediately, at that time. NATO and The Marshall Plan came later, to secure US control over as much of Europe as they could get.

So, in a sense, this Bradford Exchange coin is a reassertion of the Truman-Eisenhower spirit, of total conquest, which had been initiated on 26 July 1945, by those men, America’s first two post-War US Presidents. They were of different Parties, but the same mind, to achieve the world’s first all-encompassing, global, empire, and to make it a ‘moral’ Crusade. There was nothing moral about it.

“The Mueller report makes Trump look vain, ignorant, inept, and astonishingly dishonest.” So writes my Washington Examiner colleague Quin Hillyer, never an enthusiast of President Donald Trump.

He refers to many passages of the report: one that shows the president ordering his White House counsel to arrange the firing of the special counsel and then ordering the counsel to state in writing he never said that; one suggesting that Trump was dangling pardons to cooperative aides; and others in which Trump vents his rage at the protracted investigation, which eventually, after almost two years, found no evidence that he or his people colluded with Russia.

House Democrats are looking hard to find something a bare majority of House members will find a plausible basis for impeachment. They will ignore the fact that Trump’s aides — notably, former White House counsel Donald McGahn — refused to carry out his orders or ignored his suggestions. They will call this obstruction of justice, even though it’s nothing more than thinking bad thoughts — out loud.

That’s not an offense that will get him removed from office by two-thirds of the Senate. But it is a species of political malpractice, one that may lead the voters to remove him in November 2020.

And it’s very different from the modus operandi of the three most successful presidents of the last 90 years, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, who won their second terms with an average of 59 percent of the popular vote.

Donald Trump shares all but his innermost thoughts with us. Moments of irritation and elation prompt instant tweets, full of execration and exultation, respectively.

Not so with Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Reagan. Each of them projected an image of friendliness and cheer. Each seemed to have shared the tastes and gut instincts of ordinary people.

But none of the three had any really close friends, any aides or companions with whom they shared their plans and to whom they revealed their reactions to people and events. Each had gone through a long period of enforced idleness, an enforced hibernation in what are, for most professionals, their peak years — Roosevelt bedridden with polio, Eisenhower stuck as lieutenant colonel, Reagan with his declining movie career. Each then suddenly gained great fame, Roosevelt and Reagan as governors of the nation’s largest states, Eisenhower as commander of the nation’s largest military operation.

Each came to the presidency used to great responsibility and accustomed to long loneliness. As president, each kept his strategy and most of his tactics to himself. None seems to have fully trusted or confided in anyone for any extended period. None seems to have wanted the public to know how knowledgeable and well-read he was, and each managed to fool historians on that point as well.

There are some, but only a few, resemblances between these three presidents and Donald Trump. Trump did enjoy success and gain fame early, and perhaps there was a form of enforced hibernation during his near-bankruptcy in the 1990s. He seems to share the tastes and instincts of many ordinary people.

But he has nothing like the self-discipline apparent in the determination of Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Reagan to keep their long-term strategies and as much as possible of their short-term tactics to themselves. Roosevelt cordially disliked some political allies; Eisenhower had a volcanic temper; Reagan had his pet hates — but they all kept these things secret from the public and, mostly, from their closest aides as well.

The contrast with Donald Trump is obvious. You can get his instant responses to just about any public events or political developments by signing up for his Twitter feed. Former aides, political allies and rank-and-file supporters have all suggested, multiple times, that someone grab and hide the cellphone on which he tweets. No one has done it.

It’s obviously foolish for Democrats to follow the advice of Trump haters in the media and impeach Trump for making comments and threats he and his subordinates never acted on. Nor is expressing rage at an investigation evidence of guilt, as CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin argues, even after special counsel Robert Mueller found no collusion with Russia. Vagrant musings should not be the basis for overturning the result of a presidential election.

But neither is the dismissal of charges evidence that Trump’s undisciplined self-exposure is the best way to govern. Maybe he should click off cable news and read a few books to see how his three most successful recent predecessors managed to keep to themselves.

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