The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal As Ethnic Cleansing

The government initiative to renew America's large cities has been a profound and devastating failure. More homes were destroyed than were built; once-great metropolises lay in ruins; once-thriving neighborhoods were overwhelmed with drugs and crime; buildings built to last centuries fell to the wrecking ball after mere decades. The traditional explanation is that this was done to eliminate "blight." A more recent explanation is that it resulted from faulty design. The real story is different. What began as the World War II intelligence community's attempt to solve America's "nationalities problem" and provide workers for war industries degenerated into ethnic cleansing. In this meticulously documented book, E. Michael Jones proves that urban renewal had more to do with ethnicity than with design or hygiene or blight. It was the last gasp attempt of the WASP ruling class to control a country slipping out of its grasp for demographic reasons. The largely Catholic ethnics were to be driven from their neighborhoods into the suburbs, where they were to be Americanized according to WASP principles. The neighborhoods were to be turned over to sharecroppers from the South or turned into futuristic Bauhaus enclaves for new government elites. The Slaughter of Cities proposes a new take on familiar territory. Jones concentrates on Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Chicago. His conclusions will be shocking and controversial. The destruction of the ethnic neighborhoods that made up the human, residential heart of these cities was not an unfortunate by-product of a well-intentioned plan that somehow went awry; it was part of the plan itself.