09/02/2026
On this anniversary of Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, an event that quickly escalated into a global conflict that still shapes our world today, it would be fitting to reflect on one of Charlie's perennial themes: The Second World War. While Charlie continually returned to this subject, one of his most detailed comments related to that titanic struggle and its enduring consequences was spoken in his 1994 interview with Bill Murphy. - NS 01/09/18
CM: ''In the Forties, we had a war. And all of our economies went towards this war effort. The war ended, on one level, but we wouldn't let it end on the other levels. We kept buying and selling this war. I'm not locked in a penitentiary for crimes, I'm locked in the Second World War. I'm locked in the Second World War with this decision to bring to the world court, there must be one world court, or we're all going to be devoured by crime.
Crime, and the definition of crime, comes from Nuremberg, when the judges decided that they wanted to call Second World War a crime. Honor and war is not a crime. When you go to war, and you're a soldier, and you fight for your God and your Country, that's not criminal. That's honorable. That's what you must do to be a man. If you don't fight for your God and your Country, you're not worth anything. If you have no honor, then you're not worth Patty's pig.
Truth is, we've got to overturn the decision that you made in the Second World War, or the Second World War will never end. Decrees of the war were written in Switzerland, in Geneva, the conferences that were made, by the men at the tables, clearly stated that anyone in uniform would be given the respect of their rank and their uniforms. Then, when the United States won the war, and got all the Germans in handcuffs, they started breaking their own rules. And they've been breaking their own rules ever since.
War is not a crime. But if you judge war as a crime, from a court room, then turn around. If two and three is five, then three and two is five. If you say war is a crime, then crime becomes your war.
I am, by all standards, a prisoner of war. I have been a prisoner of war since 1944, in juvenile hall, for setting the school building on fire in Indianapolis, Indiana. I've been locked up 45 years trying to figure out how I got to be a criminal. It matters not whether I want to be.... You've got to keep criminals going to keep the war going because that's the economy. Your whole economy is based on war. You've got to get your dollar bills off the war, you got to take your silver markets sterling off the war. You've got to take your gold and your diamonds off the war.
You've got to overturn that decision that hung six thousand men by the neck. You killed six thousand soldiers for obeying orders. That's wrong, and the world has got to accept they're wrong.
If you accept you're wrong, and you say you're sorry for all the things you've done, then I'll be a note in that chord, and maybe we can get some harmony going on this planet Earth now.''
