World War II

Myths of “the Good War”

by Charles A. Burris

“The first casualty when war comes, is truth.” – Senator Hiram Johnson

World War II is sometimes referred to as “the Good War.” This is because it was characterized in propaganda accounts (both in Nazi Germany and the United States) as a Manichean struggle between the powers of Light and the powers of Darkness, the forces of good versus the forces of evil. This is the viewpoint in several of the films we will view in our World History Survey class such as The Democrat and the Dictator, WWII Propaganda Battle, Prelude to War, The Nazis Strike, Divide and Conquer, and The Battle of Britain. I am showing these particular films to you because you must understand that this is how persons during the Second World War (both in Nazi Germany and the United States) were persuaded by their governments to see and react to this deadly conflict which eventually killed over sixty million persons. This is what is called “court history” or “official history.”

Court historians are the intellectual bodyguards of the State. They shape and defend the “official line” or interpretation on the State's wars, its presidential regimes, or other key historical events and public policies. As a result they enjoy high esteem and recognition in the mainstream media and academia. As defenders of the status quo they frequently attack and label their critics as “conspiracy theorists,” “revisionists,” “isolationists,” “appeasers,” “anti-intellectuals,” or other boogie men, rather than engage in civil discourse or scholarly discussion.

As the famous economist and historian Murray N. Rothbard noted:

“All States are governed by a ruling class that is a minority of the population, and which subsists as a parasitic and exploitative burden upon the rest of society. Since its rule is exploitative and parasitic, the State must purchase the alliance of a group of ‘Court Intellectuals,’ whose task is to bamboozle the public into accepting and celebrating the rule of its particular State. The Court Intellectuals have their work cut out for them. In exchange for their continuing work of apologetics and bamboozlement, the Court Intellectuals win their place as junior partners in the power, prestige, and loot extracted by the State apparatus from the deluded public. The noble task of Revisionism is to de-bamboozle: to penetrate the fog of lies and deception of the State and its Court Intellectuals, and to present to the public the true history of the motivation, the nature, and the consequences of State activity. By working past the fog of State deception to penetrate to the truth, to the reality behind the false appearances, the Revisionist works to delegitimize, to desanctify, the State in the eyes of the previously deceived public.”

The standard, accepted story of World War II, especially as presented in “court history” propaganda accounts, goes as follows: Hitler wanted to take over the world; Japan committed an unprovoked and despicable act by bombing the United States at Pearl Harbor. The United States, minding its own business until that date which will live in infamy, was forced into war against all efforts of Roosevelt to the contrary. The United States then saved the world from Nazi and Japanese tyranny, and then altruistically aided in the rebuilding efforts of former enemies.

Let’s take a look at these myths of “the Good War:”

Who Really Won World War II?

by Michael E. Kreca

Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?

Why, if it prospers, none dare call it treason.

~ Sir John Harrington (1561-1612)

War is the health of the State.

~ Randolph Bourne (1886-1918)

Q: Why did the USA intervene in what became World War II?

A: Because if we didn't, we'd now all speak German or Japanese.

Q: Who benefited the most from the defeat of Germany and Japan in WWII?

A: The USA.

This, with variations, has been the standard Q&A about the history of and the events surrounding our entry into that war and usually ends further discussion. But the standard answers, on closer examination, are just plain wrong.

Why?

The first question first, since it takes a bit of detailed explanation.

The German General Staff, which had codenamed contingency invasion/occupation plans for dozens of nations (even one for the never-tried conquest of Switzerland called “Operation Christmas”) had none for the USA. Neither did the Japanese High Command. Neither nation's economy was ever fully mobilized for total war to the extent the USA's and Great Britain's had been. An invasion of North America would have required a major and early commitment by Berlin and Tokyo of financial, human and material resources to two forms of warfare, the first being large, long-range strategic bomber, transport and fighter escort aircraft, something neither Germany nor Japan had done. Both nations had superb short and medium range fighter/interceptors and medium bombers, but no bombers like the four-engine US B-17 or, later, the British Lancaster.

The second major and early commitment would have to have been to a sizable “blue water” naval “long-range power projection” force. Germany (unlike Japan) didn't have this and did not seriously plan on acquiring it -- something requiring numerous aircraft carriers, auxiliary and amphibious ships, carrier-based combat and reconnaissance aircraft, plus a sizable force of marines. There were minor proposals made early in the war to build an aircraft carrier to be christened “Frederick the Great” along with two large cruisers, all of which “land animal” Hitler soon nixed.

The German submarine threat, although still quite dire in WWII (thanks in great part to FDR's long and controversial delay in ordering the Navy to conduct aggressive antisubmarine warfare operations off the U.S. East Coast), was not nearly as potent as it was in WWI. This was in large part due to defensive seagoing escort and convoy tactics developed in 1917-18 and improved submarine detection techniques, like active sonar, created in the interwar years. Submarines alone could not effectively project broad-based, large-scale offensive naval power great distances (something demonstrated brilliantly by Admirals Nimitz, Mitscher and Halsey and the aircraft carrier-based “task force” concept in the Pacific war against Japan).

The goal of the German U-boat campaign remained much the same as that in WWI, chiefly defensive “commerce raiding;” attempts to cut off the flow of needed supplies to Great Britain and, this time, to the USSR as well. Its surface navy, consisting mainly of smaller sized “pocket” battleships as well as cruisers and some destroyers and patrol boats, operated in much the same commerce raider fashion -- voyaging about individually attacking and sinking tankers and freighters in the North and South Atlantic.

Germany's navy had not fought a major set-piece surface battle since Jutland in 1916, in which it was tactically victorious against but strategically defeated by the British. The Royal Navy forced the scuttling of one of the war's earliest effective German surface commerce raiders, the pocket battleship Graf Spee, off the Uruguayan coast at the end of 1939. The German Navy was thrashed by the British in the smaller 1940 naval battle at Narvik, Norway, the former losing several destroyers and patrol craft in that engagement. By the time the battleship Bismarck was sent to the bottom by two British warships, the HMS Rodney and King George, in May 1941, the German surface fleet threat was all but eliminated.

This was the illustrious naval record of a nation supposedly planning to and capable of invading and conquering the USA?

Hitler failed to subdue Great Britain in 1940 (in good part due to the moral strength of the Brits, a great deal of US aid, and because conquering Britain was not part of the Führer's eastern living space plan), so he would have had little chance of succeeding against the much more distant, much larger, more populous, and better-armed USA. Even Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (the chief planner of the Pearl Harbor attack) spoke warningly of “a rifle behind every blade of grass” when discussions of invading the USA came up.

A successful invasion of North America by both Nazi Germany and Japan would have also required a high degree of interservice and binational coordination and cooperation, something that even in the best of forces and times is difficult to achieve and maintain. The Germans and Japanese, despite appearances, were notorious for the utter lack of that, and given their respective highly xenophobic beliefs in their own complete racial superiority to any other group, there would have been little basis for any significant long-term cooperation between them. Both Hitler and Tojo would have also needed reliable and broad-based intelligence gathering and interpretation assets, and a sizable “fifth-column” of active native sympathizers here, something neither had in sufficient quality or quantity. German military intelligence, the Abwehr, was already long compromised by British spies -- its longtime director, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, was an active British sympathizer since the 1930s, while Japan's military and diplomatic ciphers were quickly and easily broken.

Both nations' forces featured the glaring absence of sophisticated and secure large-scale supply support and sizable long-range air, sea, and ground transport capable of logistically sustaining a long offensive war which was vital to any attacking force operating over long distances in hostile territory. This major weakness of the Wehrmacht was first confirmed on the Eastern Front in the fall of 1941 and by Japan early on in its war of attrition in China and later in the Pacific campaigns against the Americans. Authors Meirion and Sue Harries disclosed in their 1992 book Soldiers of The Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army that for each US GI there was an average of four tons of material produced, for the Japanese counterpart, an average of two pounds.

Furthermore, Germany (given the Führer's erratic nature, disdain for the daily tasks of governing and administration, and fixation on short-term solutions for every problem) never pursued an advanced weapons project (assault rifles, cruise and ballistic missiles, jet warplanes, atomic bombs) for any sufficient length of time to make a real difference in combat. The German “Atomic Association” was a quite pale and poorly funded and staffed version of our Manhattan Project (due in large part to the previous “brain drain” of numerous talented physicists out of Germany and into the USA and Great Britain throughout the 1930s), and even that was directed more toward development of a workable nuclear reactor for submarine propulsion, not an atomic bomb. Japanese advanced weapons research was practically nonexistent. Japan, whose government and military was long riddled with fierce, often-bloody factional political intrigue, was at first glance better prepared to mount an invasion of the USA given its large long-range carrier-based navy. However, Tokyo would have been badly hampered in such an attempt by its key strategic focus on a quickly completed regional land/island war and its unwillingness or inability to exploit large-scale submarine warfare.

Like Germany in the East, resource-poor Japan, via its “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” was only interested in securing and consolidating economic and territorial gains in a certain area of its own region (the Asian mainland and the far Western Pacific islands), a politico-economic relationship that Premier Tojo Hideki pointedly referred to as similar to that of the USA's in regard to Latin America. There was the lack of sufficient training, resources, and tactics to wage a long, decisive, large-scale continental ground war that an invasion of North America would have required -- a lack reflected in Japan's costly and ultimately fatal 1937-45 stalemate in China. There was also Japan's stunning and bloody defeat by the Red Army's large combined force of tanks, motorized infantry, and long-range artillery at the pivotal but little-known Battle of Nomonhan (on the Soviet-Manchurian border) in the summer of 1939. This battle exposed several glaring, never-to-be-resolved weaknesses in the quality of Japanese artillery, ground transport, tactics, and logistics and eventually led to a Soviet-Japanese nonaggression pact that lasted until the final days of the war.

Even Japan's raid on Pearl Harbor ended up more a fatally botched propaganda stunt than a decisive strategic blow to mortally wound the US Pacific Fleet and keep the USA from presumably getting in the way of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. It just got Japan in a war with an angry United States that many in Tokyo knew couldn't be won; Admiral Yamamoto predicting at the time Japan would exhaust its existing petroleum and fuel reserves by 1944. For instance, despite the terrible images of death and destruction, many of the ships sunk at their piers in the attack on Oahu were raised and refitted. Most piers, dry-docks, repair facilities, fuel bunkers and supply depots were untouched or only slightly damaged by Japanese bombs.

And lastly, both Germany and Japan were notorious for consistently and severely underestimating their adversaries and for quickly alienating and then oppressing the vast majorities of the native populations of any country they invaded, even ones that may have been initially sympathetic to the invaders.

Worst of all, much of the above was already well known by the Roosevelt administration before Pearl Harbor.

Neither Germany nor Japan planned for or could have launched a successful invasion and occupation of the USA. It's that simple. Even the legions of King George III nearly 200 years before, quite benign in contrast to those of Berlin and Tokyo, were eventually worn down and booted out of what soon became the USA.

But, again, why did we really intervene in what became World War II and who benefited the most from the defeat of Germany and Japan?

By 1937-38, FDR's New Deal welfare state was an expensive, widely unpopular and abject failure and was in serious danger of being all but thoroughly dismantled by a hostile public and Supreme Court (which FDR openly and foolishly tried to “pack” at the time, alienating many of his staunchest supporters) and an increasingly combative Congress, many of its bitterest critics being among Roosevelt's own ruling Democrats. So Franklin tried another form of domestic socialism, a “warfare state” inaugurated under the auspices of a pricey pork-barrel caper called “Lend-Lease,” and he and his successors had hit the jackpot for decades to come. Germany and Japan were the perfect and convenient excuses for both FDR and Stalin to flex their muscles on a global scale in a way that Marx and Lenin would have envied (and, as Winston Churchill desired, to keep both of those nations from emerging as major world players in their own right).

The conduct of the war all but guaranteed that. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, as expected, quickly flattened a strong and influential US noninterventionist movement that the Roosevelt administration (which probably knew of Tokyo's plans well in advance and did everything it could, legally and illegally, to provoke Tokyo into that “sneak attack”) was already viciously and unfairly trying to destroy, smear and discredit. Our enemy was then presumably Japan, a nation to whom we had long sold large subsidized amounts of our iron ore, scrap metal, and petroleum, all under the provisions of a 1911 trade treaty that FDR had personally and suddenly abrogated two years before.

While our GIs fought fiercely and died en masse in the Philippines and on Guam and Wake Island in the face of the invading Japanese, FDR blatantly wrote them off and pursued a “Europe First” policy. A key feature of this policy included the immediate transfer of huge amounts of financial and material aid to the recently-former German ally, Stalin's USSR, a nation whose leaders, like those of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, openly cared little for the supposed “democratic spirit” of the Atlantic Charter, and to which FDR (with the traitorous Alger Hiss in tow) made an all but open invitation at Yalta in February 1945 for it to occupy Eastern Europe.

Despite FDR's “Europe First,” no US troops set foot in the subjugated portions of the continent in any strategically significant numbers until Operation Overlord in June 1944, by which time the Soviets were midway through their massive broad-front push westward toward conquest of most of Eastern Europe and a sizable portion of eastern Germany. The latter was literally handed to the Soviets while our GIs were ordered to pull back and let the Red Army grab Berlin and the surrounding areas, actions which publicly infuriated Gen. George S. Patton and others. The notorious “Operation Keelhaul,” which forcibly sent millions of by then fiercely anti-Communist Soviet POWs back to certain death in the USSR, was next put into play.

In July 1945, at Potsdam, FDR/Churchill successors Harry Truman and Clement Attlee respectively certified Stalin's hold on Eastern Europe as originally proposed at Yalta. They also permitted him to break his 1941 nonaggression pact with Tokyo and sweep into Manchuria, northern Korea, and Sakhalin Island in the final days of the war against an all-but-beaten Japan. This final act ensured Moscow an easily obtained, major role in the carving up of the Far East into various spheres of influence. Japan's eventual self-defeat in China (predicted by then-President Herbert Hoover in 1931 as part of his refusal to ask Congress for US troops to aid the Chinese against Japanese encroachment) and its collapse in the western Pacific opened up a large power vacuum in Asia. In less than five years, this vacuum was quickly filled in large part by Stalin's brutal trio of Asian Communist protégés - Mao Tse-tung, Kim Il-Sung, and Ho Chi Minh -- all with the prior blessings of FDR and his Red-riddled “brain trust.”

The winner of WWII, tragically, was in reality not the Allies but instead the theory and practice of the large-scale coercive collectivist state, be it in the form of Communism or the large-scale welfare/warfare states of various types and the consequent rise of a violent, unstable, impoverished Third World addicted to the benefits of the same as cavalierly dispensed by the meddlesome mandarins of the First World. True, since 1945 we've been speaking a different language, and it's not German, Japanese, or even Russian or Chinese. Rather, it's the language of socialism couched in perpetual, petulant demands for ever-more forced, taxpayer-supported “fairness and social justice” on a global scale (commonly called “humanitarian intervention”) at the heavy expense of true peace, prosperity, and individual liberty. And the price, as usual in the imposition and maintenance of socialism, was and still is the untold millions of dead, impoverished, miserable, and imprisoned.

Recommended Books Concerning World War II:

Studs Turkel, The ‘Good War’: An Oral History of World War II; Ronald Takaki, Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II; Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War; Harry Elmer Barnes (ed.) Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath; Charles Callan Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933-1941; Viktor Suvorov, Icebreaker: Who Started World War II? Viktor Suvorov, Chief Culprit: Stalin’s Grand Design to Start World War II; David E. Murphy, What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarosa; Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof, 1939: The War That Had Many Fathers: The Long Run-Up to the Second World War; A. J. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War; Norman Davies, No Simple Victory: World War II in Europe, 1939-1945; Laurence Rees, World War II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West; Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin; Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews; Richard Rhodes, Masters of Death: The SS Einsatzgruggen and the Invention of the Holocaust; David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945; Arthur D. Morse, While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy; Gerda Weissman Klein, All But My Life; Robert B. Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor; Percy L. Greaves, Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy; George Morgenstern, Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War; John Toland, Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath; John Koster, Operation Snow: How a Soviet Mole Inside FDR’s White House Triggered Pearl Harbor; Henry C. Clausen, Pearl Harbor: Final Judgment; James Rusbridger, Betrayal at Pearl Harbor: How Churchill Lured Roosevelt Into War; Charles Austin Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: Appearances and Realities; Patrick J. Buchanan, Churchill, Hitler, and the ‘Unnecessary War’: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World; Thomas E. Mahl, Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States 1939-1944; British Security Coordination, The Secret History of British Intelligence in the America, 1940-45; William Stevenson, A Man Called Intrepid; Nigel West, A Thread of Deceit: Espionage Myths of World War II; Anthony Cave Brown, Bodyguard of Lies; Anthony Cave Brown (ed.), The Secret War Report of the OSS; Richard Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency; Patrick K. O’Donnell, Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of the Men and Women of WWII’s OSS; Ben Parnell, Carpetbaggers: America’s Secret War in Europe; Phil Swearngin, The Carpetbagger Project: Secret Heroes; Joseph E. Persico, Piercing the Reich: The Penetration of Nazi Germany By American Secret Agents During World War II; Burton Hersh, The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA ; Guido Giacomo Preparata, Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America Made the Third Reich; Justus D. Doenecke, Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939-1941; Justus D. Doenecke, From Isolation to War, 1931-1941; Justus D. Doenecke, In Danger Undaunted: The Anti-Interventionist Movement of 1940-1941 as Revealed in the Papers of the American First Committee; Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940-1941; Michele Flynn Stenehjem, An American First: John T. Flynn and the America First Committee; John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching; William Henry Chamberlain, America’s Second Crusade; Robert A. Nisbet, Roosevelt and Stalin: The Failed Courtship; Benjamin Colby, ‘Twas a Famous Victory: Deception and Propaganda in the War with Germany; Jules Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House; Smedley Darlington Butler, War Is a Racket; Hans Schmidt, Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History; Joseph W. Bendersky, The ‘Jewish Threat’: Anti-Semitic Politics of the U. S. Army; Edwin Black, Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust; Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler; Charles Higham, Trading With the Enemy: An Expose’ of the Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949; Christopher Simpson, The Splendid Blonde Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century; George Seldes, Facts and Fascism; George Seldes, 1000 Americans: The Real Rulers of the USA; George H. Nash (ed.), Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath; Julius Epstein, Operation Keelhaul: The Story of Forced Repatriation; Nikolai Tolstoy, Victims of Yalta: The Secret Betrayal of the Allies, 1944-1947; Mark R. Elliot, Pawns of Yalta: Soviet Refugees and America’s Role in Their Repatriation; Alfred M. De Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Anglo-Americans and the Expulsion of the Germans; Alfred M. De Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950.

Addendum

On a personal note, genealogical research of my ancestral roots shows that my great-great-great-great-great grandfather John C. Burris was a soldier in the French and Indian War, serving later in the American Revolution. He became a Quaker and married a Cheraw Indian woman Ester. Their son, my great-great-great-great grandfather, Daniel H. Burris, was also a Quaker and an abolitionist who fiercely opposed slavery and who helped runaway enslaved persons escape on the Underground Railway. Daniel and his wife Mary had sixteen children. Fourteen of his grandsons served in the Union Army during the Civil War, including my great-great grandfather, Eden Henry Burris, who fought with Company A, 57th Indiana Infantry regiment. He and his wife Rebecca had thirteen kids, one of which was Henry J. Burris, father of my grandfather Eden C. Burris, who fought in World War I in the Meuse-Argonne campaign against the Germans. My father, Eden C. Burris, Jr. was part of the Carpetbaggers’ effort in WWII until his B-24D crew was shot down and crashed on the night of March 3/4, 1944 at 23.10 hours north of the village of Humbercourt (Somme), France at a place called “Les Emonts.”

There is a monument plaque at Humbercourt commemorating this event erected on May 8, 2000 (the 55th anniversary of V-E Day) by the French. The plaque reads: “A La Memorire Des Lieutenants Aviateurs Americans Lonnie Hammond Jr. Et William D. Rees, Tombes A Humbercourt Le 3 Mars 1944, Au Cours D'Une Mission De Parachutage De Materiel Au Maquis,” honoring the two crew members who died during that mission parachuting materiel to the Maquis resistance.

For more details on the Carpetbaggers (and what happened to my Dad's crew) please consult Ben Parnell, Carpetbaggers: America’s Secret War in Europe – A Story of the World War II Carpetbaggers 801st/492d Bombardment Group (H) U. S. Army, Eighth Air Force.

From page 191 of the above book:

Lt. Wade A. Carpenter and crew crashed in B-24D 42-63789 on the night of March 3/4, 1944, at Humbercourt (Somme) after being hit by flak while flying at a low altitude. Burris (radio) was seriously wounded in the airplane by a flak burst prior to the crash. Dudley (tail gunner) bailed out at very low altitude and landed safely. The shock of the crash was brutal. Carpenter (pilot), Herdman (waist gunner), and Nesbitt (flying a buddy mission) were not injured. Eshleman (copilot) was wounded in the neck, Burris lost his left eye, and Johnson (engineer) suffered a broken ankle during the crash. Hammond (navigator) was killed in the crash, and Rees (bombardier) was trapped under heavy metal in the airplane with both legs crushed.

Carpenter and Eshleman walked to the village at the bottom of the hill to get help. Dr. Jacquemelle was summoned from a nearby village, Lucheux, and after some time arrived to render all possible aid to the injured. However, they could not get Rees out of the wreckage. Part of the airplane had to be cut away before he was finally pulled out. Rees and five of the crew were taken to a farm in the village of Humbercourt for care.

All eight of the fliers were taken by the Germans about noon on March 4. Hammond was buried on March 5 in the cemetery at Meharicourt. Rees was transferred to the hospital at Amiens, where both legs were amputated on March 5. Unfortunately, he was not able to take the shock and died the same day. Johnson and Burris were also hospitalized for their injuries. Carpenter, Eshleman, Nesbitt, and Herdman were taken to POW camps in Germany. Dudly managed to evade capture for a while with the help of the Bordeau-Loupiac escape network before being taken by the Germans.

Upon capture by the Germans my father was imprisoned for 18 months in three Prisoners of War (POW) camps in East Prussia: Stalag Luft VI, Stalag Luft IV, and Stalag Luft I, until liberated by Soviet troops of the Red Army on May 1, 1945.

I have all the primary document materials such as military correspondence records, telegrams, letters, and newspaper accounts of his capture describing his status first as MIA then as a POW, all the censored communications and letters he wrote to my mother, his German POW camp personnel file, as well as detailed maps and descriptions of the various camps he later obtained. My parents were quite the archivists, which is especially gratifying for their history teacher son.

My father was in personal correspondence with author Ben Parnell as well as with persons in France responsible for the monument plaque who knew precise first-hand details of what happened that night so many decades ago. Several of them who aided the crew that night were still living when it was dedicated. They had not forgotten what happened there and why. In 2004 my father died and was buried on March 4, exactly sixty years to the day of the above events.


Now available in a revised and updated edition, the continuing national bestseller (nearly 200,000 copies sold) about the events, ideas, and personalities of the seven decades since the end of World War I. Originally published in 1983 and named one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, this edition contains a new final chapter, and the text has been revised and updated.

Modern Times, says the author, began on May 29, 1919, when photographs of a solar eclipse confirmed the truth of a new theory of the universe—Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Paul Johnson then describes the full impact of Freudianism, the establishment of the first Marxist state, the chaos of "Old Europe," the Arcadian twenties and the new forces in China and Japan. Here are Keynes, Coolidge, Franco, the '29 Crash, the Great Depression and Roosevelt's New Deal. And there are the wars that followed—the Sino-Japanese, the Abyssinian and Albanian conflicts and the Spanish Civil War, a prelude to the massive conflict of World War II. The incredible repression and violence of the totalitarian regimes brought a new dimension to the solution of social and political problems, and in Germany, Russia and China we see this frightening aspect of the new "social engineering."

Churchill, Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Hirohito, Mussolini and Gandhi are the titans of this period. There are wartime tactics, strategy and diplomacy; the development of nuclear power and its use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the end of World War II and the harsh political realities of the uneasy peace that followed. The rise of the superpowers—Russia and the United States; the emergence of the Third World; the Marshall Plan and the Cold War; Tito, Nehru, de Gaulle, Eisenhower, Sukarno, Eden, Adenauer, Nasser, Ben Gurion and Castro are described. The book covers the economic resurgence of Europe and Japan; existentialism; Suez; Algeria; Israel; the New Africa of Kenya tta, Idi Amin and apartheid; the radicalizing of Latin America; the Kennedy years, Johnson and Vietnam, Nixon and Watergate, the Reagan years; Gorbachev and perestroika; Saddam Hussein and the Gulf War. And there are the Space Age, the expansion of scientific knowledge, the population explosion, religion in our times, world economic cycles, structuralism, genetic engineering and sociobiology.

Incisive, stimulating and frequently controversial, Modern Times combines fact, anecdote, incident and portrait in a major full-scale analysis of how the modern age came into being and where it is heading.

PAUL JOHNSON was educated at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, and Magdalen College, Oxford. He was assistant editor of Realités and was then on the staff of the New Statesman from 1955 to 1970, the last six years as editor. In 1980 and 1981 he was visiting professor of communications at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. He has received the Francis Boyer Public Policy Award and the Krug Award for Excellence in Literature. Among his other books are A History of the Jews, A History of the English People, Intellectuals, and The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830.

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini

Italian pronunciation:

[beˈniːto mussoˈliːni]; July 29 1883 – April 28 1945) was an Italian politician, journalist, and leader of the National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista; PNF), ruling the country as Prime Minister from 1922 to 1943. He ruled constitutionally until 1925, when he dropped all pretense of democracy and set up a legal dictatorship. Known as Il Duce (The Leader), Mussolini was the founder of Italian Fascism.

In 1912 Mussolini was the leading member of the National Directorate of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). Prior to 1914, he was a keen supporter of the Socialist International, starting the series of meetings in Switzerland that organised the communist revolutions and insurrections that swept through Europe from 1917. Mussolini was expelled from the PSI for withdrawing his support for the party's stance on neutrality in World War I. He served in the Royal Italian Army during the war until he was wounded and discharged in 1917. Mussolini denounced the PSI, his views now centering on nationalism instead of socialism, and later founded the fascist movement. Following the March on Rome in October 1922 he became the youngest Prime Minister in Italian history until the appointment of Matteo Renzi in February 2014. After removing all political opposition through his secret police and outlawing labor strikes, Mussolini and his followers consolidated their power through a series of laws that transformed the nation into a one-party dictatorship. Within five years he had established dictatorial authority by both legal and extraordinary means, aspiring to create a totalitarian state. Mussolini remained in power until he was deposed by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1943. A few months later, he became the leader of the Italian Social Republic, a German client regime in northern Italy; he held this post until his death in 1945.

Mussolini had sought to delay a major war in Europe until at least 1942. However, Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, resulting in declarations of war by France and the United Kingdom and starting World War II. On June 10 1940, with the Fall of France imminent, Mussolini officially entered the war on the side of Germany, though he was aware that Italy did not have the military capacity and resources to carry out a long war with the British Empire. Mussolini believed that after the imminent French armistice, Italy could gain territorial concessions from France and then he could concentrate his forces on a major offensive in North Africa, where British and Commonwealth forces were outnumbered by Italian forces. However, the UK government refused to accept proposals for a peace that would involve accepting Axis victories in Eastern and Western Europe, plans for an invasion of the UK did not proceed, and the war continued. In the summer of 1941 Mussolini sent Italian forces to participate in the invasion of the Soviet Union, and war with the United States followed in December.

On July 24 1943, soon after the start of the Allied invasion of Italy, the Grand Council of Fascism voted against him, and the King had him arrested the following day. On September 12 1943, Mussolini was rescued from prison in the Gran Sasso raid by German special forces. In late April 1945, with total defeat looming, Mussolini attempted to escape north, but was captured and summarily executed near Lake Como by Italian Communists. His body was then taken to Milan, where it was hung upside down at a service station for public viewing and to provide confirmation of his demise.

Reporter George Seldes was sent to Italy in 1919 as a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. He was to report on the "Red Revolution" where he would meet the then journalist, Benito Mussolini. Seldes would return to Italy occasionally until he was permanently assigned to Rome in 1924.

During his transfer from Berlin to Rome, he stopped at Paris where he met his colleague, William Bolitho. He informed Seldes that the Fascist regime was working to suppress the early history of Fascism and Mussolini.

While in Italy, Seldes worked to find rare documentation that the Fascists were trying to destroy. He also reported on one of the biggest scandals of the time, the assassination of Matteotti. Despite massive censorship by Mussolini's propaganda ministries, Seldes was able to send the story of Matteotti to Chicago. The story also printed in Paris which caught Mussolini's attention.

Seldes was immediately ordered out of the country (1925). While leaving on the Orient Express, the train was stopped by the Modena squadristi who attempted to forcibly remove Seldes. He was able to avoid being assaulted by posing as a British admiral.

Seldes would continue to work as correspondent to the Chicago Tribune. The facts he uncovered and his experiences in Italy became the basis for his book Sawdust Caesar (1935).

Mr. Burris has an autographed copy of this book.

An examination of the paranoia, cold-bloodedness, and sadism of two of the 20th century's most brutal dictators and mass murderers: Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

From the occult origins of the Nazi party to the death of Hitler in the flaming ruins of Berlin, the emergence of the doctrine of National Socialism took place in a dark and sinister world of rituals and beliefs.


Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy is a documentary on how Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime made use of ancient mysticism and occultism to win the war. The Nazi’s also used occult mind control techniques to brainwash Germans to perceive themselves as the master-race. Astrology, Reincarnation, a new blood religion. In this chilling yet fascinating glimpse at recent historical events, discover how Nazi beliefs were based on a perversion of ancient myths, pagan lore and the occult.

In their quest to create an Aryan super race, the Nazis left no myth or religion unexploited, using astrological forecasts to plan battles; pendulums to locate allied battleships; the prophesies of Nostradamus to frighten the Allies, and sacred symbols, such as Nordic runes, to inspire their warriors to battle. Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy explores the disturbing ways the Third Reich linked occult practices with political aims and created a reign of terror unparalleled in history.


In the early 20th century, the young Adolf Hitler was just one of many German-speaking people attracted by a new Germanic mythology that combined ancient legends and esoteric cosmologies with cutting-edge theories of genetic science. In the hands of the Nazis, the result was a new ideology that saw racial purity as the key to human destiny.

This was a belief-system of arcane rituals and potent symbols, with the ancient swastika appropriated for the Nazi cause. By the time of the Third Reich, Hitler and the Nazis had evolved an entirely new faith, complete with holy book, venerated relics and a priestly elite in the form of Himmler's SS. It was a religion based on obedience, power, and the cult of the leader, with Hitler himself conceived in Messianic terms.


Describe how this film investigates Hitler's own occult beliefs, in particular the German mysticism of Guido von List and Jorg Lanz, as well as the tremendous impact on him of the anti-Semitic German composer Richard Wagner and how they informed his upbringing and his racist political beliefs.



“The Abusive Exploitation of the Human Religious Sentiment”: Michael Burleigh as Historian of “Political Religion” -- Daniel J. Mahoney article





Chamberlain was extensively influenced by the anti-Semitic German composer Richard Wagner (he later married Wagner's daughter Eva and in 1909 he moved to Bayreuth where he lived at the family's famous home until his death in 1927).

It was in 1899 he published his greatest work, 'Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts' (The foundations of the Nineteenth Century), a volume of over twelve hundred pages, in German.

Despite its length and difficulty it eventually sold over a quarter of a million copies, and, in the event, made its author a rich man.

The work was stupendous, both in its breadth of scholarship and its complexity of thought. It profoundly impacted and shaped both Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler, both of whom he knew well.

Alfred Rosenberg's The Myth of the 20th Century was the second most important book in Germany's National Socialist Third Reich next to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (My Struggle). The title is a homage to Chamberlain's The Foundation of the 19th Century.


The Occult Roots of Nazism: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935 is a book by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke about Nazi occultism and Ariosophy, tracing some of its roots back to Esotericism in Germany and Austria between 1880 and 1945. The foreword is by Rohan Butler, who had written The Roots of National Socialism in the 1930s. The book is based on Goodrick-Clarke's 1982 Ph.D. thesis The ariosophists of Austria and Germany 1890-1935: Reactionary political fantasy in relation to social anxiety.

This book has been continually in print since its first publication in 1985, and has been translated into twelve languages, including French, Polish, Italian, Russian, Czech, German and Greek. It was republished as a paperback by New York University Press in 1992 (ISBN 0-8147-3060-4), and more recently republished by I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd (ISBN 1-86064-973-4).



Trevor Ravenscroft's 1973 book, The Spear of Destiny (as well as a later book, The Mark of the Beast), claims that Adolf Hitler started World War II in order to capture the spear, with which he was obsessed. At the end of the war the spear came into the hands of US General George S. Patton. According to legend, losing the spear would result in death, and that was fulfilled when Hitler committed suicide and Patton died in a car accident in an army camp.

Ravenscroft repeatedly attempted to define the mysterious "powers" that the legend says the spear serves. He found it to be a hostile and evil spirit, which he sometimes referred to as the Antichrist, though that is open to interpretation. He never actually referred to the spear as spiritually controlled, but rather as intertwined with all of mankind's ambitions.



Otto Rahn was the real "Indiana Jones."

Crusade Against the Grail is the daring book that popularized the legend of the Cathars and the Holy Grail. The first edition appeared in Germany in 1933 and drew upon Rahn's account of his explorations of the Pyrenean caves where the heretical Cathar sect sought refuge during the thirteenth century. Over the years the book has been translated into many languages and exerted a large influence on such authors as Trevor Ravenscroft and Jean-Michel Angebert, but it has never appeared in English until now. Much as German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann used Homer's Iliad to locate ancient Troy, Rahn believed that Wolfram von Eschenbach's medieval epic Parzival held the keys to the mysteries of the Cathars and the secret location of the Holy Grail. Rahn saw Parzival not as a work of fiction, but as a historical account of the Cathars and the Knights Templar and their guardianship of the Grail, a "stone from the stars." The Crusade that the Vatican led against the Cathars became a war pitting Roma (Rome) against Amor (love), in which the Church triumphed with flame and sword over the pure faith of the Cathars.

Otto Rahn was born in Michelstadt, Germany, in 1904. After earning his degree in philology in 1924, he traveled extensively to the caves and castles of southern France, researching his belief that the Cathars were the last custodians of the Grail. Induced by Himmler to become a member of the SS as a civilian archaeologist and historian, Rahn quickly grew disillusioned with the direction his country was taking and resigned in 1939. He died, an alleged suicide, on March 13, 1939, in the snows of the Tyrolean Mountains.

See also Otto Rahn And The Quest For The Grail, by Nigel Graddon.


First English translation of the author’s journeys in search of a Nordic equivalent to Mt. Sinai

Explains why Lucifer the Light Bringer, god of the heretics, is a positive figure.

Otto Rahn’s lifelong search for the Grail brought him to the attention of the SS leader Himmler, who shared his esoteric interests. Induced by Himmler to become the chief investigator of the occult for the Nazis, Rahn traveled throughout Europe--from Spain to Iceland--in the mid 1930s pursuing leads to the Grail and other mysteries. Lucifer’s Court is the travel diary he kept while searching for “the ghosts of the pagans and heretics who were [his] ancestors.” It was during this time that Rahn grasped the positive role Lucifer plays in these forbidden religions as the bearer of true illumination, similar to Apollo and other sun gods in pagan worship.

This journey was also one of self-discovery for Rahn. He found such a faithful echo of his own innermost beliefs in the lives of the heretics of the past that he eventually called himself a Cathar and nurtured ambitions of restoring that faith, which had been cruelly destroyed in the fires of the Inquisition. His journeys on assignment for the Reich--including researching an alleged entrance to Hollow Earth in Iceland and searching for the true mission of Lucifer in the caves of southern France that served as refuge for the Cathars during the Inquisition--also led to his disenchantment with his employers and his mysterious death in the mountains after his break with the Nazis.


The compelling story of a trek across an exotic land–and the sinister consequences

It was an SS mission led by two complex individuals–one who was using the Nazis to pursue his own ends, and one so committed to Nazism that afterward he conducted racial experiments using the skulls of prisoners at Auschwitz. Himmler's Crusade relates the 1938 Nazi expedition through British India to the sacred mountains of Tibet in search of the remnants of the Aryan people, the lost master race. Based on a wide range of previously unused sources, this intriguing book reveals the mission – a pet project of Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler—to be the result of both a bizarre historical fantasy and a strategy to provoke insurgency in British India. Providing rare glimpses into Himmler's SS stronghold, this riveting tale sheds new light on the occult component of the racial theories that obsessed Himmler and his fellow Nazis.

Compose a two page evaluative essay regarding the propaganda feature film of all time, Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens) the 1935 propaganda film directed, produced, edited and co-written by Leni Riefenstahl. It chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which was attended by more than 700,000 Nazi supporters.

The film contains excerpts from speeches given by Nazi leaders at the Congress, including Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess and Julius Streicher, interspersed with footage of massed Sturmabteilung (S.A.) and Schutzstaffel (S.S.) troops and public reaction.

When writing your essay imagine you are not a history student in 2020 in Mr. Burris' class watching this film but a enthusiastic young member of the Hitler Youth or League of German Maidens in 1934 (as shown in the film) or a German war veteran from WWI who has lost everything in the Great Depression and have been without a job for four years unable to feed your family. This movie was made five years before WWII began and only a year and a half after Hitler had taken control of Germany.

This three part profile of the German dictator examines his rise to power, leadership of the Nazi party and eventual World War II defeat. Included: a look at his childhood and schooling; a study of his military conquests in Eastern Europe; and clips from his early speeches.




Discuss the pharmacological effects of the 77 prescribed drugs by his doctor on the health and behavior of Adolf Hitler.



Konrad Heiden's penetrating, firsthand portrayal of Hitler's developing career and the Nazi's consolidation of power remains as incisive and compelling as it was when first published at the height of the Second World War. As a German citizen, Heiden watched Hitler grow from a small-time demagogue and failed revolutionary to a dangerously influential politician and finally dictator in total control of his party and eventually Germany. Starting with Hitler's unpromising youth and first political missteps, Heiden concludes with a gripping account of the "blood purge" of June 1934, in which Hitler executed his potential rivals in the Nazi Party and confirmed his monstrous vision for Germany.

This striking narrative of the great German dictator's rise also illuminates the national character of the German people - those people who committed the crimes that aided the Fuhrer and those who allowed them to be committed.

"Unique in its abundance of details, and it ranks beside the classics of historical writing" - Christian Science Monitor

"Remorselessly, ruthlessly objective" - New York Times Book Review

"[A] superior piece of writing . . . Essential for all libraries" - Library Journal

"The most complete study in the field" - The New Yorker


Until now there has been no up-to-date, one-volume, international history of Nazi Germany, despite its being among the most studied phenomena of our time. The Third Reich restores a broad perspective and intellectual unity to issues that have become academic subspecialties and offers a brilliant new interpretation of Hitler's evil rule.

Filled with human and moral considerations that are missing from theoretical accounts, Michael Burleigh's book gives full weight to the experience of ordinary people who were swept up in, or repelled by, Hitler's movement and emphasizes international themes-for Nazi Germany appealed to many European nations, and its wartime conduct included efforts to dominate the Continental economy and involved gigantic population transfers and exterminations, recruitment of foreign labor, and multinational armies.


The classic biography of Hitler that remains, years after its publication, one of the most authoritative and readable accounts of his life.


Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Toland’s classic, definitive biography of Adolf Hitler remains the most thorough, readable, accessible, and, as much as possible, objective account of the life of a man whose evil effect on the world in the twentieth century will always be felt.

Toland’s research provided one of the final opportunities for a historian to conduct personal interviews with over two hundred individuals intimately associated with Hitler. At a certain distance yet still with access to many of the people who enabled and who opposed the führer and his Third Reich, Toland strove to treat this life as if Hitler lived and died a hundred years before instead of within his own memory. From childhood and obscurity to his desperate end, Adolf Hitler emerges as, in Toland’s words, “far more complex and contradictory . . . obsessed by his dream of cleansing Europe Jews . . . a hybrid of Prometheus and Lucifer.”


A secret wartime 281 page report, authored by Walter C. Langer in 1943. Office of Strategic Services director General William J. Donovan suggested to psychologist Walter C. Langer that a psychological profile of Adolf Hitler needed to be developed. It was hoped that an accurate study would be helpful in gaining a deeper insight into Adolf Hitler and the German people and that the study might serve as a guide for Allied propaganda activities as well as for future dealings with Hitler and the Germans. Langer produced the report, "A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend," with the help of Professor Henry A. Murray, of the Harvard Psychological Clinic, Dr. Ernst Kris, of the New School for Social Research, and Dr. Bertram D. Lewin, of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.

Evaluate how former US Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler saved the United States from an attempted fascist coup d'etat by Wall Street plutocratic militarists in the early days of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.


The book tells the shocking true story of how United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler was the savior of our Republic from a fascist plot by Wall Street plutocratic militarists in the early 1930s.

Author Jules Archer is featured in The History Channel documentary, The Plot To Overthrow FDR, a concise summary of this exceptional book. This program is available for viewing on my MHS webpage.

For more on Butler and the attempted 1930's fascist coup d'etat against FDR, see my Amazon.com book and video list, Smedley Darlington Butler.



"This book names the most powerful forces in Europe which organized the Fascist and Nazi parties and movement, the powerful American forces which own, control and subsidize native Fascism, and the spokesmen, radio orators, writers and other agents of reaction in America."

Facts and Fascism is the definitive account and source book on Fascism in the United States after the First World War and on into the Second. No doubt every subsequent work on this explosive topic owes a great debt to this original research.

By crusading investigative journalist George Seldes, the book is in three parts: 1) The Big Money and Big Profits in Fascism, 2) Native Fascist Forces, and 3) Our Press as a Fascist Force.

The first part reveals the backing of U.S. and British big business behind the rise of Fascism and militarism, with chapters on Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain, the Nazi cartels and the National Association of Manufacturers. The author was a reporter in Italy in the early 20's as Fascism got its start, and wrote a full-length, critical portrait of Mussolini. In "Native Fascist Forces," Seldes first tells the story of the botched putsch by J. P. Morgan and the American Legion against FDR in 1934 - surely one of the most hushed-up episodes in US history.

Next Seldes dissects the Ford empire's support for Nazism and its repressive, even murderous labor practices, and Nazi apologists like Lindbergh, Father Coughlin and the Reader's Digest.

The third part explores and deplores acts of treason by war-profiteering heavy industry and by the major newspaper chains. He exposes their habit of faking news for their political agenda, going back to the 1850's in support of black slavery, and white servitude - that is, with attacks on labor and social justice.

The last chapter discusses profiteering from a different form of slavery, the tobacco addiction.

Among the appendices is one on the definition of Fascism, and data on Who Owns America - thirteen plutocratic families.


The Democrat and the Dictator - Transcript

Compare and contrast the childhood and formative years of development of "the Democrat," U. S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, with that of "the Dictator," German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, in shaping their distinctive personalities and leadership of their two nations.


WWII: The Propaganda Battle - Transcript

Analyze how propaganda was used in National Socialist Germany and in the United States to motivate their peoples during World War II.

The outbreak of World War II saw two motion picture experts from Germany and the United States battle each other with as much ferocity as any army or navy. Their respective missions: to ignite a public desire to wage and win a global conflict. This program contains interviews with Fritz Hippler, chief filmmaker for the Nazi Party, and Frank Capra, renowned filmmaker who worked for the Allied cause, noted for his gentle, humane films about ordinary folk standing up to oppression.


Frequently referred to as "the Greatest Generation," Americans of the World War II era were influenced by Hollywood's depictions of their nation, its role in world affairs, and the virtue of its involvement in the war. Stories of the bravery and heroism of the American military--as well as the moral and political threat posed by the enemy--filled movie screens across the country to garner passionate support for wartime policies. In Hollywood Enlists! Propaganda Films of World War II, Ralph Donald explores how the studios supported the war effort and helped shape the attitudes of an entire generation. Through films the studios appealed to the public's sense of nationalism, demonized the enemy, and stressed that wartime sacrifices would result in triumph.

The author contends that American films of the period used sophisticated, but often overlooked, strategies of propaganda to ideologically unite the country. While these strategies have long been associated with political speeches and writings during the war, little in-depth consideration has been given to their use in the era's cinema. By examining major motion pictures--including Casablanca, The Flying Tigers, Mrs. Miniver, Sergeant York, They Were Expendable, and many others--Donald illustrates how various propaganda techniques aligned the nation's entertainment with government aims. Hollywood Enlists! will appeal to readers with interests in war films and motion picture history, as well as politics and social history.


This excellent, indispensable book reveals the widespread use of front groups, agents, and collaborators- Details how British agents manipulated polling data and influenced election campaigns. It was a desperate time for England. Faced with the growing prospect of war with Germany in 1939, the British government mounted a massive secret political campaign in the United States to weaken the non-interventionists, bring America into the war, and then influence U.S. war policy in England's favor. Desperate Deception details a vast program that not only helped change the course of World War II but also the face of American politics in succeeding decades


"British propaganda brought America to the brink of war, and left it to the Japanese and Hitler to finish the job." So concludes Nicholas Cull in this absorbing study of how the United States was transformed from isolationism to belligerence in the years before the attack on Pearl Harbor. From the moment it realized that all was lost without American aid, the British Government employed a host of persuasive tactics to draw the US to its rescue. With the help of talents as varied as those of matinee idol Leslie Howard, Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin and society photographer Cecil Beaton, no section of America remained untouched and no method--from Secret Service intrigue to the publication of horrifying pictures of Nazi atrocities--remained untried. The British sought and won the support of key journalists and broadcasters, including Edward R. Murrow, Dorothy Thompson and Walter Winchell; Hollywood film makers also played a willing part. Cull details these and other propaganda activities, covering the entire range of the British effort. A fascinating story of how a foreign country provoked America's involvement in its greatest war, Selling War will appeal to all those interested in the modern cultural and political history of Britain and the United States.


As World War II raged into its second year, Britain sought a powerful ally to join its cause--but the American public was sharply divided on the subject. The Canadian-born MI6 officer William Stephenson, with his knowledge and influence in North America, was chosen to change their minds by any means necessary.

In this extraordinary tale of foreign influence on American shores, Henry Hemming shows how Stephenson came to New York--hiring Canadian staffers to keep his operations secret--and flooded the American market with propaganda supporting Franklin Roosevelt and decrying Nazism. His chief opponent was Charles Lindbergh, an insurgent populist who campaigned under the slogan "America First," and had no interest in the war. This set up a shadow duel between Lindbergh and Stephenson, each trying to turn public opinion his way, with the lives of millions potentially on the line.


Bestselling author Nicholson Baker, recognized as one of the most dexterous and talented writers in America today, has created a compelling work of nonfiction bound to provoke discussion and controversy -- a wide-ranging, astonishingly fresh perspective on the political and social landscape that gave rise to World War II.

Human Smoke delivers a closely textured, deeply moving indictment of the treasured myths that have romanticized much of the 1930s and '40s. Incorporating meticulous research and well-documented sources -- including newspaper and magazine articles, radio speeches, memoirs, and diaries -- the book juxtaposes hundreds of interrelated moments of decision, brutality, suffering, and mercy. Vivid glimpses of political leaders and their dissenters illuminate and examine the gradual, horrifying advance toward overt global war and Holocaust.

Praised by critics and readers alike for his exquisitely observant eye and deft, inimitable prose, Baker has assembled a narrative within Human Smoke that unfolds gracefully, tragically, and persuasively. This is an unforgettable book that makes a profound impact on our perceptions of historical events and mourns the unthinkable loss humanity has borne at its own hand.

Why We Fight Series

Why We Fight is a series of seven propaganda films commissioned by the United States government during World War II to justify to American soldiers their involvement in the war. Later on, they were also shown to the U.S. public to persuade them to support American involvement in the war.

Most of the films were directed by Frank Capra, who was daunted yet impressed and challenged by Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda film Triumph of the Will and worked in direct response to it. The series faced a tough challenge: convincing a recently non-interventionist nation of the need to become involved in the war and ally with the Soviets, among other things. In many of the films, Capra and other directors spliced in Axis powers propaganda footage going back twenty years, and re-contextualized it so it promoted the cause of the Allies.

Why We Fight was edited primarily by William Hornbeck, although some parts were re-enacted "under War Department supervision" if there was no relevant footage available. The animated portions of the films were produced by the Disney studios – with the animated maps following a convention of depicting Axis-occupied territory in black.


Prelude to War is the first film of Frank Capra’s Why We Fight propaganda film series, commissioned by the Office of War Information (OWI) and George C. Marshall. It was made to convince American troops of the necessity of combating the Axis Powers during World War II. The film was based on the idea that those in the service would be more willing and able fighters if they knew the background and reason for their participation in the war. It was later released to the general American public as a rallying cry for support of the war.


The Nazis Strike (1943) – covers Nazi geopolitics and the conquest of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Capra's description: "Hitler rises. Imposes Nazi dictatorship on Germany. Goose-steps into Rhineland and Austria. Threatens war unless given Czechoslovakia. Appeasers oblige. Hitler invades Poland. Curtain rises on the tragedy of the century—World War II."


Divide and Conquer (1943) – about the campaign in Benelux and the Fall of France. Capra's description: "Hitler occupies Denmark and Norway, outflanks Maginot Line, drives British Army into North Sea, forces surrender of France."


The Battle of Britain (1943) – depicts Britain's victory against the Luftwaffe. Capra's synopsis: "Showing the gallant and victorious defense of Britain by Royal Air Force, at a time when shattered but unbeaten British were only people fighting Nazis."


The Battle of Russia (1943) Part I and Part II – shows a history of Russian defense and Russia's battle against Germany. Capra's synopsis: "History of Russia; people, size, resources, wars. Death struggle against Nazi armies at gates of Moscow and Leningrad. At Stalingrad, Nazis are put through meat grinder."


The Battle of China (1944) – shows Japanese aggression such as the Nanking Massacre and Chinese efforts such as the construction of the Burma Road and the Battle of Changsha. Capra's synopsis: "Japan's warlords commit total effort to conquest of China. Once conquered, Japan would use China's manpower for the conquest of all Asia."


War Comes to America (1945) – shows how the pattern of Axis aggression turned the American people against non-intervention. Capra's synopsis: "Dealt with who, what, where, why, and how we came to be the USA—the oldest major democratic republic still living under its original constitution. But the heart of the film dealt with the depth and variety of emotions with which Americans reacted to the traumatic events in Europe and Asia. How our convictions slowly changed from total non-involvement to total commitment as we realized that loss of freedom anywhere increased the danger to our own freedom. This last film of the series was, and still is, one of the most graphic visual histories of the United States ever made."


The Negro Soldier is a 1944 documentary created by the United States Army during World War II. The film was produced by Frank Capra as a follow up to his successful film series Why We Fight. The army used this film as propaganda to convince Black Americans to enlist in the army and fight in the war. Most people regarded the film very highly, some going as far as to say that The Negro Soldier was "one of the finest things that ever happened to America". Due to both high reviews and great cinematography, The Negro Soldier proved to be a breakout film influencing army members and civilians of all races. In 2011, it was chosen to be preserved in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

African-Americans in WWII

Racial inequality was deeply ingrained in wartime America. Segregation, the system of separating people based on race in schools, transportation, public accommodations, and/or housing, was common throughout much of the country. In the South, where nearly 80 percent of African Americans lived before the war, so-called Jim Crow laws divided almost every aspect of life – from schools and streetcars to restrooms and recreational facilities – along racial lines. Segregation also flourished in other regions, thanks in part to the Supreme Court’s endorsement of the practice in its landmark 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson.

While that ruling established the idea of separate but equal, segregated facilities for blacks rarely received equivalent resources as those for whites. Southern states also denied African Americans their constitutional right to vote, and racial violence and employment discrimination threatened black lives and livelihoods across the United States.

Between 1918 and 1941, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) recorded at least 544 lynchings of African Americans. On the eve of World War II, African Americans also had an unemployment rate twice that of whites and a median income that was one-third of the average family. African Americans confronted these inequalities by building strong communities and institutions and by pursuing opportunities for greater freedom wherever and however they could.

Writers and activists such as W.E.B. Du Bois advocated for the protection of African Americans’ rights, while others such as labor leader A. Philip Randolph organized black workers to gain economic and political equality. As World War II erupted, African Americans also faced discrimination in defense industries and the military. In 1940, fewer than 250 of the more than 100,000 workers in the expanding aircraft industry were black, and some companies made clear that they would not hire blacks, regardless of their qualifications.

The US Marine Corps and the Army Air Corps (renamed the US Army Air Forces in 1941) also barred blacks from service. While the US Army and US Navy accepted a limited number of African Americans, the Army segregated black soldiers into separate units while the Navy confined them to service positions as cooks and stewards. Pressure from the NAACP and others led the War Department to pledge in the fall of 1940 that the army would receive African Americans according to their percentage in the population as a whole.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued additional directives to the military to increase opportunities for black enlistment following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Air Forces and Marines began accepting African Americans in 1941 and 1942, respectively. Yet even as African American numbers grew dramatically in all branches of the service, the proportion of African Americans in the wartime military never reached the 10.6% of blacks within the nation’s overall population.

While most African Americans serving at the beginning of WWII were assigned to non-combat units and relegated to service duties, such as supply, maintenance, and transportation, their work behind front lines was equally vital to the war effort. Many drove for the famous Red Ball Express, which carried a half million tons of supplies to the advancing First and Third Armies through France.

By 1945, however, troop losses pushed the military to increasingly place African American troops into positions as infantrymen, pilots, tankers, medics, and officers. The all-black 761st Tank Battalion, for instance, fought its way through France with the Third Army. They spent 183 days in combat and were credited with capturing 30 major towns in France, Belgium, and Germany. For this, the 761st Tank Battalion received the Presidential Unit Citation for “extraordinary heroism.” The Army Air Forces also established several African American fighter and bomber units. The pilots of the 99th Fighter Squadron, and later the 332nd Fighter Group, became the symbol of African American participation during World War II, despite being one of the smallest black units of the war. Bomber crews often requested to be escorted by these Tuskegee Airmen, who were responsible for destroying 111 enemy planes in the air and 150 on the ground during the war.

While African Americans served with as much honor, distinction, and courage as any other American soldier, the government was often painfully slow to recognize their contributions to the war effort. No African American soldier received the Medal of Honor for his WWII service until after a 1995 government-commissioned report concluded that discrimination marred the awards process. By the time President Bill Clinton awarded the Medal of Honor to seven African American WWII veterans in 1997, only one of those men was still living.

During the war, black protest also yielded significant, if mixed, results on the Home Front. In 1941, A. Philip Randolph cancelled a threatened March on Washington after Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which banned racial discrimination in war industries and established a Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) tasked with investigating workplace inequality. Employment discrimination persisted, and the African Americans flocking to cities for war production jobs often faced significant hostility, most notably during wartime riots in Detroit and Los Angeles in 1943. But blacks nevertheless advanced within the industrial economy.

By April 1944, African Americans comprised eight percent of the nation’s defense workers. The massive wartime migration of African Americans out of the South also reshaped the nation’s cities and its postwar political order. Many African Americans also viewed the war as an opportunity to fight for a Double Victory over racism at home and facism abroad.

Twenty-six-year-old James G. Thompson proposed the idea of a Double Victory in a 1942 letter to the editor of the black-owned Pittsburgh Courier, and the Courier soon introduced a Double V icon, which it displayed prominently in its pages for months. Throughout much of 1942, the Courier also vigorously promoted a Double V campaign by running regular Double V-related photos and stories and by encouraging its 140,000 subscribers to form Double V clubs.

By 1943, however, the Courier had mostly ended its Double V campaign. After the war, President Harry S. Truman created the President’s Committee on Civil Rights (PCCR) in response to increased reports of violence against black veterans and a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. The committee looked at the service of African American men and women in World War II, and in 1948 Truman acted on the committee’s recommendations by drafting Executive Orders 9980 and 9981, banning segregation in the federal government and ordering the integration of the armed forces. Profoundly unpopular in many quarters, these were groundbreaking moves toward reform directly based on African American service in World War II.

While some integrated units served in the Korean War, the US Army did not deploy a truly integrated force until the Vietnam War. African Americans served bravely in every theater of World War II, while simultaneously struggling for their own civil rights at home and fighting against discrimination – and for the right to fight – within the military. The National WWII Museum honors their contributions.

Double Victory tells the stories of African American women who did extraordinary things to help their country during World War II. In these pages young readers meet a range of remarkable women: war workers, political activists, military women, volunteers, and entertainers. Some, such as Mary McLeod Bethune and Lena Horne, were celebrated in their lifetimes and are well known today. But many others fought discrimination at home and abroad in order to contribute to the war effort yet were overlooked during those years and forgotten by later generations. Double Victory recovers the stories of these courageous women, such as Hazel Dixon Payne, the only woman to serve on the remote Alaska-Canadian Highway; Deverne Calloway, a Red Cross worker who led a protest at an army base in India; and Betty Murphy Phillips, the only black female overseas war correspondent.

Offering a new and diverse perspective on the war and including source notes and a bibliography, Double Victory is an invaluable addition to any student’s or history buff’s bookshelf.

I would have climbed up a mountain to get on the list [to serve overseas]. We were going to do our duty. Despite all the bad things that happened, America was our home. This is where I was born. It was where my mother and father were. There was a feeling of wanting to do your part.

--Gladys Carter, member of the 6888th

To Serve My Country, to Serve my Race is the story of the historic 6888th, the first United States Women's Army Corps unit composed of African-American women to serve overseas.

While African-American men and white women were invited, if belatedly, to serve their country abroad, African-American women were excluded for overseas duty throughout most of WWII. Under political pressure from legislators like Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the NAACP, the black press, and even President Roosevelt, the U.S. War Department was forced to deploy African-American women to the European theater in 1945.

African-American women, having succeeded, through their own activism and political ties, in their quest to shape their own lives, answered the call from all over the country, from every socioeconomic stratum. Stationed in France and England at the end of World War II, the 6888th brought together women like Mary Daniel Williams, a cook in the 6888th who signed up for the Army to escape the slums of Cleveland and to improve her ninth-grade education, and Margaret Barnes Jones, a public relations officer of the 6888th, who grew up in a comfortable household with a politically active mother who encouraged her to challenge the system.

Despite the social, political, and economic restrictions imposed upon these African-American women in their own country, they were eager to serve, not only out of patriotism but out of a desire to uplift their race and dispell bigoted preconceptions about their abilities. Elaine Bennett, a First Sergeant in the 6888th, joined because "I wanted to prove to myself and maybe to the world that we would give what we had back to the United States as a confirmation that we were full- fledged citizens."

Filled with compelling personal testimony based on extensive interviews, To Serve My Country is the first book to document the lives of these courageous pioneers. It reveals how their Army experience affected them for the rest of their lives and how they, in turn, transformed the U.S. military forever.

Despite the participation of African American women in all aspects of home-front activity during World War II, advertisements, recruitment posters, and newsreels portrayed largely white women as army nurses, defense plant workers, concerned mothers, and steadfast wives. This sea of white faces left for posterity images such as Rosie the Riveter, obscuring the contributions that African American women made to the war effort. In Bitter Fruit, Maureen Honey corrects this distorted picture of women's roles in World War II by collecting photos, essays, fiction, and poetry by and about black women from the four leading African American periodicals of the war period: Negro Digest, The Crisis, Opportunity, and Negro Story.

Mostly appearing for the first time since their original publication, the materials in Bitter Fruit feature black women operating technical machinery, working in army uniforms, entertaining audiences, and pursuing a college education. The articles praise the women's accomplishments as pioneers working toward racial equality; the fiction and poetry depict female characters in roles other than domestic servants and give voice to the bitterness arising from discrimination that many women felt. With these various images, Honey masterfully presents the roots of the postwar civil rights movement and the leading roles black women played in it.

Containing works from eighty writers, this anthology includes forty African American women authors, most of whose work has not been published since the war. Of particular note are poems and short stories anthologized for the first time, including Ann Petry's first story, Octavia Wynbush's last work of fiction, and three poems by Harlem Renaissance writer Georgia Douglas Johnson. Uniting these various writers was their desire to write in the midst of a worldwide military conflict with dramatic potential for ending segregation and opening doors for women at home.

Traditional anthologies of African American literature jump from the Harlem Renaissance to the 1960s with little or no reference to the decades between those periods. Bitter Fruit not only illuminates the literature of these decades but also presents an image of black women as community activists that undercuts gender stereotypes of the era. As Honey concludes in her introduction, "African American women found an empowered voice during the war, one that anticipates the fruit of their wartime effort to break silence, to challenge limits, and to change forever the terms of their lives."


Washburn is the author of A Question of Sedition: The Federal Government's Investigation of the Black Press During World War II.

A long-awaited English translation of the groundbreaking oral history of women in World War II across Europe and Russia—from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

“A landmark.”—Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

For more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich has been the memory and conscience of the twentieth century. When the Swedish Academy awarded her the Nobel Prize, it cited her invention of “a new kind of literary genre,” describing her work as “a history of emotions . . . a history of the soul.”

In The Unwomanly Face of War, Alexievich chronicles the experiences of the Soviet women who fought on the front lines, on the home front, and in the occupied territories. These women—more than a million in total—were nurses and doctors, pilots, tank drivers, machine-gunners, and snipers. They battled alongside men, and yet, after the victory, their efforts and sacrifices were forgotten.

Alexievich traveled thousands of miles and visited more than a hundred towns to record these women’s stories. Together, this symphony of voices reveals a different aspect of the war—the everyday details of life in combat left out of the official histories.

Translated by the renowned Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Unwomanly Face of War is a powerful and poignant account of the central conflict of the twentieth century, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the human side of war.

“But why? I asked myself more than once. Why, having stood up for and held their own place in a once absolutely male world, have women not stood up for their history? Their words and feelings? They did not believe themselves. A whole world is hidden from us. Their war remains unknown . . . I want to write the history of that war. A women’s history.”—Svetlana Alexievich

THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

“for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.”


The Soviet Story is a 2008 documentary film about Soviet Communism and Soviet–German collaboration before 1941 written and directed by Edvīns Šnore and sponsored by the UEN Group in the European Parliament.

The film features interviews with western and Russian historians such as Norman Davies and Boris Sokolov, Russian writer Viktor Suvorov, Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, members of the European Parliament and the participants, as well as survivors of Soviet terror.

Using these interviews together with historical footage and documents the film argues that there were close philosophical, political and organizational connections between the Nazi and Soviet systems. It highlights the Great Purge as well as the Great Famine, Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Katyn massacre, Gestapo-NKVD collaboration, Soviet mass deportations and medical experiments in the GULAG. The documentary goes on to argue that the successor states to Nazi Germany and the USSR differ in the sense that postwar Germany condemns the actions of Nazi Germany while the opinion in contemporary Russia is summarized by the quote of Vladimir Putin: "One needs to acknowledge, that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century"

Moscow Strikes Back (Russian: Разгром немецких войск под Москвой, Razgrom Nemetskikh Voysk Pod Moskvoy, "Rout of the German troops near Moscow") is a Soviet war documentary about the Battle of Moscow made during the battle in October 1941 – January 1942, directed by Leonid Varlamov and Ilya Kopalin.

The English version's cues were written by Albert Maltz and Elliot Paul, and the vocal narration was by Edward G. Robinson. It was distributed by Artkino Pictures and Republic Pictures.

In the USSR, the film was awarded the Stalin Prize. In America, it was one of four winners at the 15th Academy Awards for Best Documentary. It also won the National Board of Review award for best documentary in 1942 and New York Film Critics Circle Awards for Best War Fact Film.


The movie chronicles the experiences of the second American ambassador to the Soviet Union and was made in response to a request by Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was made during World War II, when the Americans and Soviets were allies, and takes an extremely solicitous view of not only the USSR in general but of Stalinism and Stalinist repressions in particular. For that reason, it was scrutinized by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

The film, made during World War II, shows the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin in a positive light. Completed in late April 1943, the film is, in the words of Robert Buckner, the film's producer, "an expedient lie for political purposes, glossily covering up important facts with full or partial knowledge of their false presentation".

The movie gives a one-sided view of the Moscow trials, rationalizes Moscow's participation in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the Soviet invasion of Finland, and portrays the Soviet Union as a state that was moving towards a democratic model, a Soviet Union committed to internationalism. The book was vague on the guilt or innocence of defendants in the Moscow trials, but the film portrays the defendants in the Moscow trials as guilty in Davies' view. It also showed some of the purges as an attempt by Stalin to rid his country of pro-German fifth columnists. Some fifth columnists are described in the film as acting on behalf of Germany and Japan. The film "defends the purges, complete with a quarter-hour dedicated to arguing that Leon Trotsky was a Nazi agent". In the film, Davies proclaims at the end of the trial scene: "Based on twenty years' trial practice, I'd be inclined to believe these confessions."

There are anachronisms in the film—for example, the trials of Mikhail Tukhachevsky (June 1937) and Nikolai Bukharin (March 1938) are depicted as occurring at the same time. Tukhachevsky and Timoshenko are shown as marshals of the Soviet Union at the same time, but Tukhachevsky was executed in June 1937 and Timoshenko was not made marshal until 1940.

According to film historian Robert Osborne, "At the time this movie was made it had one of the largest casts ever assembled ... was very successful ... When it was shown in Moscow, despite all the good will, people who saw it considered it a comedy—its portrayal of average, everyday life in the Soviet Union apparently way off the mark for 1943". "When the Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich saw it, he observed that no Soviet propaganda agency would dare to present such outrageous lies."

In 1940, after Russia invaded Poland, Stalin deported 1.7 million Poles to slave labour camps in Siberia and Kazakhstan. Only one third of them survived. A Forgotten Odyssey - The Untold Story of 1,700,000 Poles Deported to Siberia in 1940 tells their story.

By 1941 when the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union perhaps half of the labour camp inmates had already died from disease, starvation and the terrible conditions. This film deals mainly with those lucky enough to escape from Russia in 1942 and who went on to continue the fight in General Anders army. In their own words the survivors tell their moving story.

A lavishly produced Hollywood wartime propaganda epic with an all-star cast. Like the films "Mission to Moscow" and "Song of Russia" its purpose was to boost support for our Soviet ally. It opens as a lighthearted semi-musical, but then abruptly erupts in violence and stark tragedy as the Nazis attack and occupy a peaceful Ukrainian village. Corny at times, over the top at times, yet there is no denying this film's power. Of course there is no reference to the genocide of over seven million Ukrainians deliberately and systematically starved to death by Josef Stalin and the Soviets in the Winter of 1933-34.

The notorious unrepentant Communist apologist Lillian Hellman was the screenwriter.

Actor Walter Brennan later became a staunch anti-Communist ultra-conservative, prominent member of the John Birch Society, and dedicated supporter of 1964 GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater as a result of his experience of appearing in this film.

  • Apologists of Stalinist Mass Murder and Repression

Sabotage: The Secret War Against America -- Book by Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn

Alfred Eugene Kahn was a journalist and secret member of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) during World War II.

Kahn was a graduate of Dartmouth College and winner of the Crawford-Campbell Literary Fellowship, Mr. Kahn in 1939 became Executive Secretary of the American Council Against Nazi Propaganda, of which the late William E. Dodd, Sr., former Ambassador to Germany, was Chairman. Kahn also edited of The Hour, a confidential newsletter devoted to exposing German and Japanese fifth column operations.

In 1946 the San Francisco KGB suggested that Kahn be recruited into Soviet espionage. Kahn requested that Julia Older, who worked in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), obtain information. Elizabeth Bentley stated in her deposition to the FBI that Kahn had furnished information directly to Jacob Golos and herself in 1942 on immigrant Ukrainians hostile to the Soviet Union. Kahn is referenced as code name "Fighter" in Venona project decypt # 247 San Francisco to Moscow, 14 June 1946.

The Great Conspiracy Against Russia -- Book by Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn

The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War Against Russia (1946) was an international bestseller. On the Moscow purge trials, the authors accepted as valid the charges of treason against former Soviet leaders, and the underlying allegation of plots to overthrow the Soviet state, assassinate Lenin, Stalin, Gorky, and others.

Undercover: My four Years in the Nazi Underground of America (Part 1) -- Book by John Roy Carlson (Arthur Derounian)

"Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America - The Amazing Revelation of How Axis Agents and Our Enemies Within Are Now Plotting To Destroy the United States" became a best seller when published in 1943.

John Roy Carlson (April 9, 1909, Alexandroupoli – April 23, 1991, New York City) is one of the many pen names of Arthur Derounian, born Avedis Boghos Derounian.

Pro-Soviet propagandist Derounian was a self-appointed investigator of subversive activity, and infiltrated numerous "patriotic" groups, some of which he listed in the opening of his book Under Cover: German American Bund, Christian Front, American Nationalist Party, American Women Against Communism, The Gray Shirts, America First Committee, Christian Mobilizers, The American Defense Society, Anglo-Saxon Federation of America, National Workers League, Yankee Freemen, Flanders Hall, American Patriots among many others.

He was a master at guilt-by-association and smearing individuals opposed to US intervention in World War II. Derounian was also the chief investigator of the British intelligence front, Friends of Democracy, which campaigned for American intervention in WWII,.

Undercover: My four Years in the Nazi Underground of America (Part 2) -- Book by John Roy Carlson (Arthur Derounian

By this time a smear campaign against the America First Committee had begun. The ultra-interventionist pro-New Deal group led by the Reverend Leon M. Birkhead, the "Friends of Democracy," was in the forefront of this vicious campaign, which sought to equate anti-war sentiment with support for Hitler and Mussolini. Birkhead hired the notorious John Roy Carlson as an agent provocateur. Carlson's real name was Avedis Derounian; using yet another alias, "George Pagnanelli," he passed himself off as an Italian and joined the isolationist movement. "Pagnanelli" pretended to be an antiSemite, even going so far as to put out an antiJewish hate sheet, the Defender, the purpose of which was to spread the calumny that the antiwar movement was pro-Nazi. While there undoubtedly was a pro-Nazi fringe, Carlson's effort to smear all or even most America First supporters with the brush of Hitlerism was a crude lie. In his book Under Cover, he uses the old trick of focusing on the activities of marginal bigots, who are then quoted expressing agreement with the anti-war arguments of AFC members like Flynn and other leading figures. The atmosphere of war hysteria and leader worship that permeated the pre-war years is brought home in Under Cover and its sequel, The Plotters, where Carlson equates all criticism of the New Deal and Roosevelt with treason and support for Hitler. The tragedy of those years is that Carlson's diatribe was put out by a major publisher and became a bestseller, reviewed in all the mass-circulation journals, while Flynn's reply, The Smear Terror, was privately published and received only a limited circulation.

-- Justin Raimodo, from "John T. Flynn: Exemplar of the Old Right"

Lies Concerning The History of the Soviet Union -- Mario Sousa article

Mario Sousa is a member of the Communist Party in Sweden, KPML. This article was published in the Communist newspaper Proletären in April 1998. In the article he attacks the historical integrity and veracity of historians Robert Conquest and Alexander Solzhenitsyn in their discussions of the horrific genocidal crimes of mass murder under Joseph Stalin.

Stalin's New American Apologists -- Jacob Heilbrunn article

WHEN THE SOVIET UNION went under, Russian historians and citizens' movements began to confront Communist crimes. Mass graves were unearthed. New documents pointing to Lenin's culpability were uncovered. In Western Europe, as well, the recent publication of The Black Book of Communism and Francois Furet's The Passing of an Illusion has marked a major shift, even a revision, in traditionally lenient attitudes toward Stalinism. While these books' likening of communism to Nazism created a vigorous debate, no one challenged their indictments, let alone sought to defend Stalinism.

The United States, however, is a different story. As one might expect, the Nation ran a hostile review of The Black Book and declared Furet's book worthless. But an even more vigorous denunciation of the works has now appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. The reviewer, UCLA history professor J. Arch Getty, offers a telling example of how revisionists continue to tart up old myths about communism. Getty's novelty is to portray Stalinism almost as a powerful interest group that pulled America in a progressive direction: "Labor reform in the West in the past century," he explains, "came about under the threat of a radicalized international labor movement protected and supported by the USSR. Social goals that are commonplace today, including women's rights and racial integration, were planks of the Communist party platform long before mainstream American parties took them seriously."

Getty exemplifies the new revisionism that has taken hold in Soviet studies; rather than deny outright Stalin's crimes, it seeks to justify them. This kind of revisionism would be condemned -- indeed, it would be a career-killer -- if its subject were Nazism, but it continues to be rewarded and acclaimed in the field of Soviet studies. Getty, for instance, is not some junior faculty member trying to make a name for himself, but a member of the board of Yale University Press's important Annals of Communism series, with access to, and control over, important Moscow archives.

Revisionism first took hold in the 1970s, when a younger generation of academics shaped by the Vietnam war dismissed as Cold War propaganda the notion that the Soviet Union was totalitarian. Stephen F. Cohen launched the first revisionist on-slaught in 1973 with a biography of Bolshevik leader Nikolai Bukharin, which claimed that had the more moderate Bukharin only triumphed over Stalin, socialism could have flourished without terror. Before long, a more aggressive breed of debunkers sought to relieve Stalin of responsibility for the purges and show trials of the 1930s. By 1986, even Cohen, writing in the Russian Review, worried that his fellow revisionists were "closing one or both eyes to a major dimension of social reality -- the prolonged mass terror of the Stalin years." Soviet scholar Peter Kenez was less politic: The revisionist's "choice of subject matter reminds one of a historian who chooses to write an account of a shoe factory operating in the death-camp of Auschwitz. He uses many documents, and he does not falsify the material . . . [but] he does not notice the gas chambers."

Perhaps no revisionist fit this description better than Getty, who had earned his revisionist stripes with a 1979 dissertation in which he claimed that Stalin had not been directly responsible for the great terror. Instead, local officials had spun out of control, and "many thousands (perhaps even hundreds of thousands) of people were unjustly arrested, imprisoned, and sent to labor camps, and thousands were executed." Getty complained that historians' reliance on the accounts of death-camp survivors had grossly distorted the Stalinist record. Victims of the terror, he felt, were not reliable witnesses: The "dominant tendency . . . has been automatically to believe anything an emigre asserted while automatically denying the truth of everything from the Stalinist side." He argued that Robert Conquest's The Great Terror could not be trusted because he may have "accepted payment from British intelligence agencies." Conquest's work is now considered to be a landmark history of the Stalinist purges.

Once Gorbachev and other Soviet officials began to face up to Stalinist crimes, Getty and other revisionists upped the death toll slightly but still maintained that Stalin had simply been unable to control an overzealous bureaucracy. In The Road to Terror, a new book of documents on Stalinism that appeared under the auspices of Yale's Annals of Communism, Getty and co-editor Oleg Naumov dismiss the notion of a Stalinist "terror machine," arguing that the secret police felt embattled. And they search for parallels that they think let Stalin off the hook, but actually read like a parody of Communist propaganda: "Both colonial America and Stalinist Russia had bureaucratic constituencies and popular masses who went along with the bloodletting and who thought it right and even proper."

In his treatment of The Black Book, Getty dispenses with any scholarly throat-clearing. It's absurd to pin the blame for mass murder on Communist ideology, he insists, because unlike Nazi death camps, Stalin's camps "were planned components of the Soviet economy, designed to provide a stable slave-labor supply and to populate forbidding territories forcibly with involuntary settlers." This is a distinction without a difference. Millions of religious and ethnic minorities, merchants, peasants, and (after the Second World War) returning POWs were murdered in Stalin's camps. Does it matter that some of them were worked to death rather than gunned down? Getty goes on to play the numbers game: From 1934 until Stalin's death, "more than a million perished in the gulag camps." But more than a million, of course, could be 40 million, which is probably about the number murdered by Stalin. Perhaps Getty's most audacious claim is that "on the international scene the Soviet Union provided support for Nelson Mandela and other reformers." Like that great reformer Mengistu, whose man-made famine murdered millions in Ethiopia? Like Fidel Castro?

"Why are we seeing books like these now, when communism is gone and there are no more dragons to slay?" Getty asks. But revisionism is rampant. Two years ago, Yale denied Vladimir Brovkin's proposal for a three-volume project on the Gulag because board members complained of, among other things, its "excessively 'anti-Bolshevik' tone." Sheila Fitzpatrick, who teaches at the University of Chicago and who is also a member of the Yale Annals of Communism board, observes in her book Everyday Stalinism, of what was probably the most murderous regime ever: "mostly it was a hard grind, full of shortages and discomfort." Rather like the Great Depression, one gathers. Robert W. Thurston, in the introduction to Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia (Yale), notes that "this book argues that Stalin was not guilty of mass first-degree murder from 1934 to 1941 and did not plan or carry out a systematic campaign to crush the nation. This view is not one of absolution. . . . This fear-ridden man reacted, and overreacted, to events. All the while, he could not control the flow of people within the country, job turnover or illegal acts by managers." Which makes the ruthless dictator sound like a small business owner trying to comply with immigration law.

But wait, there's more. In the recent textbook Russia: A History, Brandeis professor Gregory L. Freeze writes that Stalin "extinguished large numbers of people . . . more prophylactically than purposefully." In the same volume, Michigan State professor Lewis Siegelbaum, whose chapter is titled "Building Stalinism," declares that while some workers "succumbed to industrial accidents . . . many others became true Soviet patriots."

Thus Getty's question is answered: If we are seeing more works on the crimes of Lenin, Stalin, and their successors, well, there are indeed still dragons to slay. If the work of Getty and Co. in sanitizing the record of one of the most murderous tyrants in history is any indication, the number of dragons is increasing. In the United States, at least, and especially in the most prestigious academic outposts, illusions about communism are alive and kicking.

Jacob Heilbrunn is a writer in Washington, D.C.


Stalinist propaganda as a system for control --

Selfless obedience and heroism at the front --

A single forced labor camp --

Material privations --

Monstrous atrocities --

A bestial plan for physical extermination --

Hatred with all the might of the soul --

The motherland and its peoples --

Immortal avengers and enemy accomplices --

Allies who must join the action.


  • The Pro-Red Orchestra In the USA, 1941, by James J. Martin

This article is adapted from Chapter One of the forthcoming book, Hands Across the Volga: American Mass Communication and the Wartime Affair with the Soviet Union, 1941-1947.

Contents

Part 1: Opinions and opinion makers in the USA

Part 2: Winston Churchill as a factor influencing Americans at the outset, June 1941

Part 3: Initial reaction of interventionist spokesmen and press to the Soviet entry into the European war

Part 4: Some diplomatic and economic straws in the wind

Part 5: The Roosevelt administration and press supporters lean toward aid at the time of the August 1941 Atlantic Conference

Part 6: The main pockets of resistance to supporting Stalin

Part 7: American Communists as a complication in the Soviet aid debate

Part 8: Time, corporate America and 'culture' contribute to the confusion

Part 9: New voices in behalf of assistance to Stalin, at home and abroad

Part 10: Continued annoyance from influential anti-Soviet liberal personalities, while pro-aid forces gain in academe

Part 11: October 1941 polls register a gain in aid-to-Stalin sentiment

Part 12: President Roosevelt creates a diversion over the religious issue

Part 13: Diplomatic moves toward vastly increased military aid to Stalin

Part 14: Culture, big names, and the well-placed lend their assistance to the building pro-Soviet bandwagon

Part 15: Echoes of the religious dust-up reverberate

Part 16: British propaganda diversions, and related American Anglophile support for the growing enhancement of Stalin

Part 17: Fellow travelers -- domestic and foreign -- add their bit

Part 18: Vote of no confidence from the Saturday Evening Post

Part 19: Some practical consequences of Soviet aid get aired

Part 20: The origins of "second front" talk in the West, and the impact of Soviet aid production on American labor and business/ businessmen

Part 21: Pearl Harbor forces a temporary diversion in the overall drive to assist the Soviet Union

Part 22: Reactions and second-guessing following Stalin's avoidance of involvement in the war Against Japan

Part 23: The dimensions of the propaganda war as waged by the authors and publishers

Part 24: The ante rises after Pearl Harbor on production and appropriations for Stalin

Part 25: Davies' book, Mission to Moscow, sets the tone on the adulation of Soviet Communism for the rest of the war

Part 26: Endnotes


It contains new controversial material which only became available to the public after the fall of communism from the Soviet archives, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Each episode lasts approximately one hour and features reenactments of the situations subject.

World War II Behind Closed Doors: Part 1 - Documentary (1 page essay

World War II Behind Closed Doors: Part 2 - Documentary (1 page essay)

World War II Behind Closed Doors: Part 3 - Documentary (1 page essay)

World War II Behind Closed Doors: Part 4 - Documentary (1 page essay)

World War II Behind Closed Doors: Part 5 - Documentary (1 page essay)

World War II Behind Closed Doors: Part 6 - Documentary (1 page essay)


It is safe to assume that if you have not read Viktor Suvorov's Icebreaker (or, at least, are not familiar with his ideas), you don't understand the last 85 years of the world history.

Viktor Suvorov was trained as a military intelligence officer at the time when soviet military intelligence was the best in the world (probably still is). In the late seventies Suvorov defected to England, where he wrote several books about soviet army and intelligence. By all accounts (friends and enemies alike), Viktor Suvorov possesses encyclopedic knowledge about military theory and history, particularly the history of World War II. His knowledge and analytical ability are astounding.

Published first in the eighties, Icebreaker was the first in Suvorov's series of historical books. By the year 2000, it was translated into 27 languages and published more than 100 times. Icebreaker is a book about communist preparation and execution (however poorly, but not for the lack of trying) of the biggest crime in the history of mankind, World War II. Because of that, in addition to its historical value of showing communist conspiracy as a true cause of WWII, Icebreaker is probably the best, most convincing anti-communist book ever written. Suvorov neither uncovers any secrets, nor does he simply catalogue the crimes. He analyzes communists' own words and innumerable well-known facts to show communism as the darkest, most evil episode in the human history.


Bestselling author Victor Suvorov probes newly released Soviet documents and reevaluates existing material to analyze Stalin's strategic design to conquer Europe and the reasons behind his controversial support for Nazi Germany. A former Soviet army intelligence officer, the author explains that Stalin's strategy leading up to World War II grew from Vladimir Lenin's belief that if World War I did not ignite the worldwide Communist revolution, then a second world war would be needed to achieve it. Stalin saw Nazi Germany as the power that would fight and weaken capitalist countries so that Soviet armies could then sweep across Europe. Suvorov reveals how Stalin conspired with German leaders to bypass the Versailles Treaty, which forbade German rearmament, and secretly trained German engineers and officers and provided bases and factories for war. He also calls attention to the 1939 nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany that allowed Hitler to proceed with his plans to invade Poland, fomenting war in Europe.

Suvorov debunks the theory that Stalin was duped by Hitler and that the Soviet Union was a victim of Nazi aggression. Instead, he makes the case that Stalin neither feared Hitler nor mistakenly trusted him. Suvorov maintains that after Germany occupied Poland, defeated France, and started to prepare for an invasion of Great Britain, Hitler's intelligence services detected the Soviet Union's preparations for a major war against Germany. This detection, he argues, led to Germany's preemptive war plan and the launch of an invasion of the USSR. Stalin emerges from the pages of this book as a diabolical genius consumed by visions of a worldwide Communist revolution at any cost--a leader who wooed Hitler and Germany in his own effort to conquer the world. In contradicting traditional theories about Soviet planning, the book is certain to provoke debate among historians throughout the world.

One of the enduring puzzles of World War II is Stalin's dismissal of unmistakable evidence of a looming German invasion, a blunder that contributed to the disastrous Russian defeats of 1941. This engaging study of the Soviet intelligence apparatus helps clarify the mystery. Murphy, an ex-CIA Soviet specialist and co-author of Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War, argues that Stalin knew virtually everything for many months before the attack. Soviet spies in the German government offered detailed reports of invasion plans. Britain and the United States passed along warnings. Soviet agents in Eastern Europe noted the millions of German soldiers heading east to the Soviet border and their stock-piling of weapons and Russian phrase books. Stalin rejected these reports as Western provocations and barred the Red Army from taking elementary precautions, like chasing off the German reconnaissance planes surveying their defenses. Murphy presents a bizarre additional wrinkle in two letters Hitler sent to allay Stalin's suspicions, which claimed that the German armies massing in Poland were preparing to attack England and warned Stalin that rogue Wehrmacht units might invade Russia against Hitler's wishes-a smokescreen that inhibited Stalin's response to the German buildup and initial attacks. Murphy chalks up the debacle to Stalin's clinging to a Marxist fantasy of the capitalist powers fighting each other to exhaustion, and to the paralysis instilled in the Red Army by his purges. Fearful subordinates bowed to Stalin's absurd complacency about German intentions; the one intelligence chief who dared challenge his delusions was arrested and shot. Murphy's well-researched account offers both a meticulous reconstruction of an intelligence epic and a window into the tragedy of Stalin's despotism.

This extensively researched book illuminates many of the enigmas that have surrounded the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, offering keen insights into Stalin’s thinking and the reasons for his catastrophic blunder.

“If, after the war, the Soviet Union had somehow been capable of producing an official inquiry into the catastrophe of 6/22—comparable in its mandate to the 9/11 commission here—its report might have read a little like [this book]. . . . Murphy brings to his subject both knowledge of Russian history and an insider’s grasp of how intelligence is gathered, analyzed and used—or not.”—Niall Ferguson, New York Times Book Review

"A fascinating and meticulously researched account of mistaken assumptions and errors of judgment that culminated in Hitler’s invasion of Russia in June 1941. Never before has this fateful period been so fully documented."—Henry A. Kissinger

“This is a masterly book, very well documented and composed. It casts a clear and strong light on what is (and remains) the enigma of June 1941 and of the two or three months preceding it: what Stalin knew, and, perhaps more telling: what Stalin did not want to know. David Murphy’s knowledge and his reading of Russian papers, books, and articles is the fundament of this extraordinary reconstruction. It should be of high interest, well beyond the ranks of Russian and Soviet specialists, for every serious reader about the Second World War.”—John Lukacs

“Fascinating and shrewd, this intelligence officer’s investigation throws new light onto Stalin’s colossal blunder, one of the war’s greatest mysteries—as well as tells the story with the suspense of a wartime thriller.”—Simon Sebag Montefiore, Author of Stalin: The Court Of The Red Tsar and Potemkin: Catherine The Great’s Imperial Favourite

World War II -- The Eastern Front -- Animated maps describing the conflict

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The Unknown War: WWII And The Epic Battles Of The Russian Front -- Landmark 20 Part Documentary Series

The Unknown War -- 20 Part Documentary Series

The Unknown War (Russian: "Великая Отечественная" (The Great Patriotic War) or "Неизвестная война" (The Unknown War) is an American documentary television series. The 20-part series documents the World War II conflict between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The show was produced and syndicated for international distribution by Air Time International, and the executive producer was Fred Weiner. Each episode is about 48 minutes long, similar in format to the film The World at War. The footage was edited from over 3.5 million feet of film taken by Soviet camera crews from the first day of the war during Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941 until the Soviet entry into Berlin during the Battle of Berlin in May 1945. Most of these films have never been seen outside this documentary series.

The series is hosted by Academy Award Winner Burt Lancaster, who spent three weeks in eight cities in the USSR for location filming. Film footage from Soviet archives comprises a major portion of the series, supplemented by film from both the United States and British archives. Appearing in exclusive interviews would be Russian Commanders like Georgi Zhukov and Vasily Chuikov. Other interviews shot for the series included Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev and Averell Harriman, who was U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union during World War II.

The series was produced with Soviet cooperation after the release of The World at War, which the Soviet government felt paid insufficient attention to their part in World War II. Released in 1978, The Unknown War is sympathetic to the Soviet struggle against Nazi Germany. It was quickly withdrawn from TV airings after it ran in 1978. Later it returned to airings on cable, including A&E, the History Channel and YouTube.

Episode 1 June 22, 1941

Episode 2 The Battle for Moscow

Episode 3 The Siege of Leningrad

Episode 4 To the East

Episode 5 The Defense of Stalingrad

Episode 6 Survival at Stalingrad

Episode 7 The World's Greatest Tank Battle

Episode 8 War in the Arctic

Episode 9 War in the Air

Episode 10 The Partisans

Episode 11 The Battle of the Seas

Episode 12 The Battle of Caucasus

Episode 13 Liberation of the Ukraine

Episode 14 The Liberation of Belorussia

Episode 15 The Balkans to Vienna

Episode 16 The Liberation of Poland

Episode 17 The Allies

Episode 18 The Battle of Berlin

Episode 19 The Last Battle of the Unknown War

Episode 20 A Soldier of the Unknown War

Russia's War, Blood Upon the Snow: The History of the Stalin Years (1924-1953) -- Epic 10 Part Documentary Series

This acclaimed ten part documentary series describes the historic clash of the military forces of gnostic totalitarian collectivism -- Hitler's Wehrmacht and Stalin's Red Army.

Russia’s War brings to life the story of the people of the Soviet Union during World War II who struggled to survive the tyrannical reign of Joseph Stalin. A compelling story of dictatorship, bloody battles and endless courage as the Soviet people combat not only Hitler and the German Army , but their own leader as well. Hosted by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, this 10 hour program features never-before-seen Russian images, once-secret documents, and leading Russian historians to explore Russia from 1924 through 1953.

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War of the Century -- Acclaimed 4 Part Documentary Series

This acclaimed four-part BBC series investigates what led to the largest military operation in history - and the bloodiest. Assisted by leading historians and granted unique access to Eastern film archives and to both Soviet and German participants, War of the Century is the definitive series on a war that shaped the borders and attitudes of Europe for the second half of the 20th Century.

War of the Century -- Episode 1

War of the Century -- Episode 2

War of the Century -- Episode 3

War of the Century -- Episode 4

How the Red Army Defeated Germany: The Three Alibis - Dr. Jonathon House

The scholars of the Department of Military History at the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College provide an in-depth look at the significance of specific WWII battlegrounds, with attention to factors such as other major world players, campaigns and tactics, U.S. military-government policy, the role of women service members and the bombing of Japan.

Patriot or traitor? More than one-half century after his execution, General Andrei Vlasov remains one of World War II's most controversial figures. A brilliant Soviet commander, Vlasov was captured by the German Wehrmacht in July, 1942, and soon became central to the campaign by junior German officers to launch a Russian Liberation Army (usually referred to as the ROA) against Stalin's regime. These plans ran up against Nazi dogmas of Lebensraum and Slavic inferiority, however, and Vlasov spent much of the war under house arrest. Only in the last months of the war did the Germans consent to sponsor a truncated version of his Liberation Army, with predictably futile results. Yet Vlasov's vision - of a Russia freed of Stalin's yoke, with guaranteed freedoms for its peoples - survived his battlefield defeats; that he sought to attain his goals through German Nazi sponsorship underlines the tragedy of his - and Soviet Russia's - predicament.

This new documentary offers newly-found film footage and extensive interviews with Vlasov's surviving associates, lieutenants, and foot soldiers, including Igor Novosiltzev, Constantine Sacharevitsch, Nikolai Kozlov, Nikolai Numerov, Nikolas Vastchenko, and Nikolai A. Chiketov. The views of Vlasov's German backers are represented by Hans von Herwath, Robert Krötz, and Helmuth Schwenninger, while William Sloane Coffin, Arthur Cowgill, Frank Roberts, and Tom Dennis comment upon the U.S.-British supervised repatriation of Vlasov's surviving troops to the Soviet Union in 1945. With its multiple perspectives and rich visual documentation, this solidly-researched film provides the clearest picture yet of this difficult subject, revealing Vlasov's tortured legacy in its many dimensions.

Germany, 1995, B&W/Color, 59 minutes, English commentary and subtitles.


The Gestapo was the most feared instrument of political terror in the Third Reich, brutally hunting down and destroying anyone it regarded as an enemy of the Nazi regime: socialists, Communists, Jews, homosexuals, and anyone else deemed to be an 'anti-social element'. Its prisons soon became infamous -- many of those who disappeared into them were never seen again -- and it has been remembered ever since as the sinister epitome of Nazi terror and persecution.

But how accurate is it to view the Gestapo as an all-pervasive, all-powerful, all-knowing instrument of terror? How much did it depend upon the cooperation and help of ordinary Germans? And did its networks extend further into the everyday life of German society than most Germans after 1945 ever wanted to admit?

Answering these questions and more, this book uses the very latest research to tell the true story behind this secretive and fearsome institution. Tracing the history of the organization from its origins in the Weimar Republic, through the crimes of the Nazi period, to the fate of former Gestapo officers after World War II, Carsten Dams and Michael Stolle investigate how the Gestapo really worked - and question many of the myths that have long surrounded it.


First published in 1961, Raul Hilberg's comprehensive account of how Germany annihilated the Jewish community of Europe spurred discussion, galvanized further research, and shaped the entire field of Holocaust studies. This revised and expanded edition of Hilberg's classic work extends the scope of his study and includes 80,000 words of new material, particularly from recently opened archives in eastern Europe, added over a lifetime of research. It is the definitive work of a scholar who has devoted more than 50 years to exploring and analyzing the realities of the Holocaust. Spanning the 12-year period of anti-Jewish actions from 1933 to 1945, Hilberg's study encompasses Germany and all the territories under German rule or influence. Its principal focus is on the large number of perpetrators - civil servants, military personnel, Nazi party functionaries, SS men, and representatives of private enterprises - in the machinery of death.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history. It is dedicated to helping leaders and citizens of the world confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy.

With an operating budget of just under $78.7 million ($47.3 million from Federal sources and $31.4 million from private donations) in 2008, the Museum had a staff of about 400 employees, 125 contractors, 650 volunteers, 91 Holocaust survivors, and 175,000 members. It had local offices in New York City, Boston, Boca Raton, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas.

Since its dedication on April 22, 1993, the Museum has had nearly 30 million visitors, including more than 8 million school children, 91 heads of state, and more than 3,500 foreign officials from over 132 countries. The Museum's visitors came from all over the world, and less than 10 percent of the Museum's visitors are Jewish. Its website had 25 million visits in 2008 from an average of 100 different countries daily. 35% of these visits were from outside the United States.

The USHMM’s collections contain more than 12,750 artifacts, 49 million pages of archival documents, 80,000 historical photographs, 200,000 registered survivors, 1,000 hours of archival footage, 84,000 library items, and 9,000 oral history testimonies. It also has teacher fellows in every state in the United States and almost 400 university fellows from 26 countries since 1994.

Researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have documented 42,500 ghettos and concentration camps erected by the Nazis throughout German-controlled areas of Europe from 1933 to 1945.

Dan Stone is Professor of Modern History and Director of the Holocaust Research Institute at RHUL. He is a historian of ideas who works primarily on twentieth-century European history. His research interests include: the history and interpretation of the Holocaust, comparative genocide, history of anthropology, history of fascism, the cultural history of the British Right and theory of history. He is the author or editor of sixteen books and some eighty scholarly articles. Dan Stone was co-editor of Patterns of Prejudice and the Journal of Genocide Research and is now on the editorial boards of those two journals as well as Critical Philosophy of Race, The Journal of Holocaust Research (formerly Dapim: Studies on the Shoah), Hypothesis and History of Communism in Europe. His most recent publications include Goodbye to All That? The Story of Europe since 1945 (Oxford University Press, 2014), The Liberation of the Camps: The End of the Holocaust and its Aftermath (Yale University Press, 2015) and Concentration Camps: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2019). From 2016 to 2019 he was engaged on a three-year Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship for a project on the International Tracing Service. The resulting book, Fate Unknown: Tracing the Missing after the Holocaust and World War II, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2021. Dan is also currently writing a book on the Holocaust for Penguin's revived Pelican series and co-editing volume 1 of the Cambridge History of the Holocaust. He chairs the academic advisory board for the Imperial War Museum's Holocaust Galleries redesign, due to open in 2021, and is a member of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust's Experts Reference Group and the UK Oversight Committee for the International Tracing Service Archive.

This collection of essays by leading scholars in their fields provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date survey of Holocaust historiography available. Covering both long-established historical disputes as well as research questions and methodologies that have developed in the last decade's massive growth in Holocaust Studies, this collection will be of enormous benefit to students and scholars alike.

'A remarkable, pathbreaking achievement. More than half a century after Auschwitz a group of largely young academics, all experts in the fields of their scholarship, render a critical and comprehensive account on the Historiography of the Holocaust. The monumental study is a must for everyone engaged in Holocaust research, teaching and education. It sets the tone for future debate both at public and academic level.' - Konrad Kwiet, Adjunct Professor for Jewish Studies and Roth Lecturer in Holocaust Studies, University of Sydney, Australia

'Dan Stone is to be congratulated for having brought together an exceptionally nuanced, sophisticated, and well-focused collection of essays from a wide range of disciplines and national perspectives. Eminent specialists are well represented here, as are the newer insights of a younger generation of scholars. The end-result offers an excellent survey of virtually the whole range of historical thinking and writing in Holocaust Studies today. This is the book for anyone who is looking for a state-of-the-art, authoritative handbook; it will be read and re-read.' - Professor Jonathan Webber, UNESCO Chair in Jewish and Interfaith Studies, University of Birmingham, UK

'The Historiography of the Holocaust will undoubtedly become a standard work, indispensable for those teaching in the field...Dan Stone's edited volume will provide a compass for those entering the field and a standard of excellence for those interested in historiography in general and the Holocaust in particular.' - Milton Shain, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies

'[A] remarkable, path breaking achievement. More than half a century after Auschwitz a group of largely young academics, all experts in the fields of their scholarship, render a critical and comprehensive account on the historiography of the Holocaust. This monumental study is a must for everyone engaged in Holocaust research, teaching and education. It sets the tone for future debate at both public and academic level.' - Konrad Kwiet, Adjunct Professor for Jewish Studies and Roth Lecturer in Holocaust Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia

The Eternal Jew (1940) is a virulently antisemitic German Nazi propaganda film, presented as a documentary. The film's title in German is Der Ewige Jude, the German term for the character of the "Wandering Jew" in medieval folklore. At the insistence of Nazi Germany's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, the film was directed by Fritz Hippler. The screenplay is credited to Eberhard Taubert. The film consists of feature and documentary footage combined with materials filmed shortly after the Nazi occupation of Poland. At this time Poland's Jewish population was about three million, roughly ten percent of the total population. Actor Harry Giese (1903–1991) narrated.

Examines the way in which the National Socialists worked to marginalize mentally and physically disabled people. Includes propaganda films intended to justify and gain public support for Nazi policies and actions, including the killing or forced sterilizing of disabled individuals.

The Nazis’ Secret Killing Squads. A & E Documentary, Bill Kurtis Investigative Reports, 1999. Focuses upon the Einsatzgruppen (special action groups) and their SS leadership’s prosecution at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal by the heroic Benjamin Ferencz.

This is an excellent series on the Einsatzgruppen (special action groups) which followed the German army when it invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. What is remarkable about this new series is the wide usage of documentary film footage of actual murders and horrific actions, as well as interviews with witnesses and survivors of this genocide. It shows how it was not just the SS and German troops who perpetrated this mass murder but Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, etc. locals who were recruited, hired, or volunteered for this project. You may watch all four episodes on the above link.

Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, looked at President Franklin Roosevelt’s relationship with the American Jewish community, and efforts by Jewish leaders to influence administration policy during the Nazi era.

Authors David Wyman and Rafael Medoff discussed their book A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust, published by The New Press.

Through a 12-hour interview with Peter Bergson, the authors document the campaign led by Peter Bergson, a Zionist activist and American immigrant during World War II, to inform the U.S. Government, media establishment, and American public of Nazi violence against European Jews.

The authors are joined in the discussion by fellow biographers David Nasaw and Blanche Wiesen-Cook.

This is the most important film you will ever see. Filmed by British, American, and Soviet forces in 1945 as the Nazi concentration and death camps were liberated. The searing graphic images are horrific. The wry ironic narration by the late Trevor Howard perfectly magnifies this horror.

This hour-long documentary on the liberation of the German concentration camps was assembled in London in 1945, but it was never completed. It was constructed from footage shot by the service and newsreel cameramen accompanying the British, American, and Russian armies, but it wasn’t shown until May 7, 1985 when PBS FRONTLINE first presented it to mark the 40th anniversary of the liberation. PBS FRONTLINE broadcast the film just as it was found in the archives of London’s Imperial War Museum, unedited, with the missing sound tracks, and with the title given to it by the Museum -- "Memory of the Camps." The project originated in February 1945 in the Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force). "Memory of the Camps" was intended to document unflinchingly the conditions of the camps in order to shake and humiliate the Germans and prove to them beyond any possible challenge that crimes against humanity were committed and that the German people -- and not just the Nazis and SS -- bore responsibility.

A variety of bureaucratic and technical glitches delayed completion of the film. In the end, it was unfinished, and the British military command felt the need for a more congenial approach to improving Anglo-German relations. They worried that the film might increase the chaos and demoralization. Despite being shelved for decades, five of the film's six reels had survived in a 55-minute fine-cut print without titles or credits. (The quality of the print reflects the fact that the negative was lost and it was made from a nitrate positive cutting copy, the equivalent of a work-print today.) Missing was a sixth reel comprised of Russian footage of the liberation of Auschwitz and Maidanek, presumed to have been taken to Moscow.

The editing of the footage was done by a team of accomplished filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock. One of Hitchcock’s important contributions was the inclusion of wide establishing shots which support the documentary feel of the film and showed that the events in the film could not have been staged. According to Peter Tanner, one of the film's editors, Hitchcock's concern was that "we should try to prevent people thinking that any of this was faked...so Hitch was very careful to try to get material which could not possibly be seen to be faked in any way.

This is the powerful and moving 1995 Academy Award-winning documentary on Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein. After showing the film to my students for over a decade I had the opportunity to meet the courageous Ms. Klein, one of the high points of my life. In 2010 she was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In 1937, a 17-year-old German Jew named Kurt Klein emigrated to the US to escape the growing discrimination against Jews that had become a terrible fact of life following Hitler's rise in 1933. Together with his brother and sister, who had emigrated previously, Klein worked to establish himself so that he could obtain safe passage for his parents out of Germany. America and the Holocaust uses the moving tale of Klein's struggles against a wall of bureaucracy to free his parents to explore the complex social and political factors that led the American government to turn its back on the plight of the Jews. The film is produced by Martin Ostrow. Hal Linden narrates.

In 1938, American society had its own political, social, and economic problems, including a long-standing--and rising--anti-Semitism. Despite stories coming from Europe about a campaign to force Jews out of Germany and about the horrors of Kristallnacht ("the night of broken glass"), the majority of Americans were fearful that an influx of immigrants would only aggravate the serious unemployment problem brought on by the Depression.

More than 100 anti-Semitic organizations blanketed the US with propaganda blaming Jews for all America's ills. Businesses discriminated against Jews, refusing them jobs. Signs at private beaches bore the words "No Jews or Dogs allowed" and certain hotels and housing developments proudly proclaimed themselves "Restricted." Even the government was not immune from anti-Semitic sentiments. While the Kleins were struggling to obtain visas from the American consulate, the State Department ordered its consuls to stall the process.

"Even though we continued our attempts to get our parents out--because we knew that they were in the unoccupied part of France which was still not totally under German control--everything we did for them turned into nothing," recalls Kurt Klein.

"The State Department probably had a greater degree of anti-Semitism than others, particularly in the immigration section," says former Treasury Department employee Edward Bernstein. "Their attitude was, `If we're patient, we find that the problems of the Jews in Germany are not really life-threatening."

But for Kurt Klein and other German-American Jews with relatives overseas, patience was a commodity they couldn't afford. By the end of 1941, the Nazis had murdered half a million Jews. Although trains regularly headed to fully operational killing centers by the spring of 1942, the "final solution" was still a well-guarded secret. That summer the State Department was advised by Gerhart Reigner, the representative of a Jewish organization in Geneva, of Nazi plans to exterminate all the Jews in Europe. Their response was to dismiss the information, calling it "a wild rumor inspired by Jewish fears."

"The State Department was actively blocking information about the genocide, " says historian David Wyman. "Roosevelt refused to focus on the issue. The American churches were largely silent...and the press had little to say--and buried that little on the inner pages. So it fell to Jewish activists to bring the information to the American public."

It took protests and petitions from Jewish organizations and finally the Treasury Department, headed by Henry Morgenthau, to uncover the State Department's deliberate obstruction of rescue. "Secretary Morgenthau, who valued above all else his relationship with the president, nevertheless felt he had to put himself on the line and be the spokesman on this issue," recalls John Pehle of the Treasury Department.

At last, on January 16, 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt met with Morgenthau in the Oval Office. Six days later, Roosevelt officially reversed the government's policy of obstruction. He signed Executive Order 9417, creating the War Refugee Board, which was instructed to "take all measures to rescue victims of enemy oppression in imminent danger of death."

"In the end, the War Refugee Board played a vital role in saving the lives of 200,000 Jews," says Wyman, "a very valuable contribution, to be sure. But the number is terribly small compared to the total of six million killed. The Board did prove that a few good people--Christians and Jews--could finally break through the walls of indifference. The great shame is that if Roosevelt had created the board a year earlier [it] could have saved tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands more--and in the process, have rescued the conscience of the nation."

This exceptional documentary on how American anti-Semitism, combined with callous indifference to the fate of European refugees, led to the deliberate decision of the Allied governments not to attempt rescue of European Jewry until very late in the war. Also focuses upon the tragic story of Kurt Klein, the liberator (and later husband) of Gerda Weissmann Klein, featured in One Survivor Remembers.

Researchers discover film footage from World War II that turns out to be a lost documentary shot by Alfred Hitchcock and Sidney Bernstein in 1945 about German concentration camps liberated by allied troops. When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums. This eloquent, lucid documentary by André Singer (executive producer of the award-winning The Act of Killing) tells the extraordinary story of the filming of the camps and the fate of Bernstein’s project, using original archive footage and eyewitness testimonies.

The sheer magnitude of the Holocaust has commanded our attention for the past sixty years. The extent of atrocities, however, has overshadowed the calculus Nazis used to justify their deeds. According to German wartime media, it was German citizens who were targeted for extinction by a vast international conspiracy. Leading the assault was an insidious, belligerent Jewish clique, so crafty and powerful that it managed to manipulate the actions of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. Hitler portrayed the Holocaust as a defensive act, a necessary move to destroy the Jews before they destroyed Germany. Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, and Otto Dietrich’s Press Office translated this fanatical vision into a coherent cautionary narrative, which the Nazi propaganda machine disseminated into the recesses of everyday life. Calling on impressive archival research, Jeffrey Herf recreates the wall posters that Germans saw while waiting for the streetcar, the radio speeches they heard at home or on the street, the headlines that blared from newsstands. The Jewish Enemy is the first extensive study of how anti-Semitism pervaded and shaped Nazi propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust, and how it pulled together the diverse elements of a delusionary Nazi worldview. Here we find an original and haunting exposition of the ways in which Hitler legitimized war and genocide to his own people, as necessary to destroy an allegedly omnipotent Jewish foe. In an era when both anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories continue to influence world politics, Herf offers a timely reminder of their dangers along with a fresh interpretation of the paranoia underlying the ideology of the Third Reich.

On January, 20, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's second in command of the SS, convened the Wannsee Conference in Berlin with 15 top Nazi bureaucrats to coordinate the Final Solution (Endlösung) in which the Nazis would attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe, an estimated 11 million persons.

"Europe would be combed of Jews from east to west," Heydrich stated.

The minutes of that meeting have been preserved but were edited by Heydrich substituting the coded language Nazis used when referring to lethal actions to be taken against Jews.

"Instead of emigration, there is now a further possible solution to which the Führer has already signified his consent - namely deportation to the east," Heydrich stated for example when referring to mass deportations of Jews to ghettos in occupied Poland and then on to the soon-opened death camps at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.

"...eliminated by natural causes," refers to death by a combination of hard labor and starvation.

"...treated accordingly," refers to execution by SS firing squads or death by gassing - also seen in other Nazi correspondence in a variety of connotations such as "special treatment" and "special actions" regarding the Jews.

Christopher R. Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews—now with a new afterword and additional photographs.

Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever.

While this book discusses a specific Reserve Unit during WWII, the general argument Browning makes is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do of their own volition.

Ordinary Men is a powerful, chilling, and important work with themes and arguments that continue to resonate today.

“A remarkable—and singularly chilling—glimpse of human behavior...This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust."—Newsweek

Oskar Schindler is a vainglorious and greedy German businessman who becomes unlikely humanitarian amid the barbaric Nazi reign when he feels compelled to turn his factory into a refuge for Jews. Based on the true story of Oskar Schindler who managed to save about 1100 Jews from being gassed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. A testament for the good in all of us.

Schindler's List is Mr. Burris' favorite movie.

Voyage of the Damned is a 1976 drama film, which was based on a 1974 book written by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts with the same title.

The story was inspired by true events concerning the fate of the MS St. Louis ocean liner carrying Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba in 1939

Escape from Sobibor is a 1987 British made-for-TV film which aired on CBS. It is the story of the mass escape from the extermination camp at Sobibor, the most successful uprising by Jewish prisoners of German extermination camps (uprisings also took place at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka). The film was directed by Jack Gold and shot in Avala, Yugoslavia (now Serbia).

On 14 October 1943, members of the camp's underground resistance succeeded in covertly killing 11 German SS-Totenkopfverbände officers and a number of Sonderdienst Ukrainian and Volksdeutsche guards. Of the 600 inmates in the camp, roughly 300 escaped, although all but 50 - 70 were later re-captured and killed. After the escape, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the death camp closed. It was dismantled, bulldozed under the earth, and planted over with trees to cover it up.

This beloved film is one of the most popular movies of all time, thrilling and entertaining millions for decades.

In World War II Casablanca (in North Africa), Rick Blaine, exiled American and former freedom fighter, runs the most popular nightspot in town. The cynical lone wolf Blaine comes into the possession of two valuable letters of transit. When Nazi Major Strasser arrives in Casablanca, the sycophantic police Captain Renault does what he can to please him, including detaining Czech underground leader Victor Laszlo. Much to Rick's surprise, Lazslo arrives with Ilsa, Rick's one time love. Rick is very bitter towards Ilsa, who ran out on him in Paris, but when he learns she had good reason to, they plan to run off together again using the letters of transit. Well, that was their original plan. . .

Evacuation of Allied soldiers from Belgium, the British Empire, and France, who were cut off and surrounded by the German army from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, France, between May 26- June 04, 1940, during Battle of France in World War II.

With Europe on the threshold of World War II as Hitler's armies rampage across the continent's once proud nations, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Neville Chamberlain, is forced to resign, appointing Winston Churchill as his replacement. But even in his early days as the country's leader, Churchill is under pressure to commence peace negotiations with the German dictator or to fight head-on the seemingly invincible Nazi regime, whatever the cost. However difficult and dangerous his decision may be, Winston Churchill has no choice, but to shine in his darkest hour.

June 1944. Allied Forces stand on the brink: a massive army is secretly assembled on the south coast of Britain, poised to re-take Nazi-occupied Europe. One man stands in their way: Winston Churchill. Behind the iconic figure and rousing speeches: a man who has faced political ridicule, military failure and a speech impediment. An impulsive, sometimes bullying personality - fearful, obsessive and hurting. Fearful of repeating, on his disastrous command, the mass slaughter of 1915, when hundreds of thousands of young men were cut down on the beaches of Gallipoli. Obsessed with fulfilling historical greatness: his destiny. Exhausted by years of war and plagued by depression, Churchill is a shadow of the hero who has resisted Hitler's Blitzkrieg. Should the D-Day landings fail, he is terrified he'll be remembered as an architect of carnage. Political opponents sharpen their knives. General Eisenhower and Field Marshal Montgomery are increasingly frustrated by Churchill's attempts to stop.

The Longest Day is a 1962 epic war film based on Cornelius Ryan's book The Longest Day (1959), about the D-Day landings at Normandy on June 6, 1944, during World War II. The film was produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, who paid author Ryan $175,000 for the film rights. The screenplay was by Ryan, with additional material written by Romain Gary, James Jones, David Pursall and Jack Seddon. It was directed by Ken Annakin (British and French exteriors), Andrew Marton (American exteriors), and Bernhard Wicki (German scenes).

The Longest Day, which was made in black and white, features a large ensemble cast including John Wayne, Kenneth More, Richard Todd, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton, Steve Forrest, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Red Buttons, Peter Lawford, Eddie Albert, Jeffrey Hunter, Stuart Whitman, Tom Tryon, Rod Steiger, Leo Genn, Gert Fröbe, Irina Demick, Bourvil, Curt Jürgens, George Segal, Robert Wagner, Paul Anka and Arletty. Many of these actors played roles that were essentially cameo appearances. In addition, several cast members – including Fonda, Genn, More, Steiger and Todd – saw action as servicemen during the war, with Todd actually being among the first British officers to land in Normandy in Operation Overlord and he in fact participated in the assault on Pegasus Bridge.

The film employed several Axis and Allied military consultants who had been actual participants on D-Day. Many had their roles re-enacted in the film. These included: Günther Blumentritt (a former German general), James M. Gavin (an American general), Frederick Morgan (Deputy Chief of Staff at SHAEF), John Howard (who led the airborne assault on the Pegasus Bridge), Lord Lovat (who commanded the 1st Special Service Brigade), Philippe Kieffer (who led his men in the assault on Ouistreham), Pierre Koenig (who commanded the Free French Forces in the invasion), Max Pemsel (a German general), Werner Pluskat (the major who was the first German officer to see the invasion fleet), Josef "Pips" Priller (the hot-headed pilot) and Lucie Rommel (widow of German Gen. Erwin Rommel).

A cultural history/visual culture book featuring the story, photos, ephemera, and art of The Ghost Army, a World War II deception unit, which used inflatable tanks and other illusions to mislead the Germans on the battlefields of Europe. The Army recruited artists to create these illusions; in private moments, they painted and sketched their way across Europe, creating a unique visual record of the war. Many of these inflatables were used to deceive the Germans regarding the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944 and the D-Day landing of troops.

Opening with the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, members of the 2nd Ranger Battalion under Captain. Miller fight ashore to secure a beachhead. Amidst the fighting, two brothers are killed in action. Earlier in New Guinea, a third brother is KIA. Their mother, Mrs. Ryan, is to receive all three of the grave telegrams on the same day. The United States Army Chief of Staff, George C. Marshall, is given an opportunity to alleviate some of her grief when he learns of a fourth brother, Private James Ryan, and decides to send out eight men (Captain Miller and select members from 2nd Rangers) to find him and bring him back home to his mother.

In 1943, having expended enormous resources on recapturing escaped Allied prisoners of war (POWs), the Germans move the most determined to a new, high-security prisoner of war camp. The commandant, Luftwaffe Colonel von Luger, tells the senior British officer, Group Captain Ramsey, "There will be no escapes from this camp." Von Luger points out the various features of the new camp designed to prevent escape, as well as the perks the prisoners will receive as an incentive not to try. After several failed escape attempts on the first day, the POWs settle into life at the prison camp.

Meanwhile, Gestapo and SD agents bring RAF Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett to the camp. Known as "Big X", Bartlett is introduced as the principal organiser of escapes. As Kuhn leaves, he warns Bartlett that if he escapes again, he will be shot. However, locked up with "every escape artist in Germany", Bartlett immediately plans the greatest escape attempted, with tunnels for breaking out 250 prisoners, to the point that as many troops and resources as possible will be wasted on finding POWs instead of being used on the front line.

The story of men at war and that of the esteemed Pulitzer prize winning war correspondent Ernie Pyle. Soon after the U.S. entry into World War II, Pyle joined C Company, 18th Infantry in North Africa. There he got to know the men and often wrote about them in his columns mentioning them by name, something both the soldiers and their families back home appreciated. Pyle moved to other units but as C Company is the first he went into combat with, he considers them "his" company and rejoins them in Italy. Many will die but his reporting brings a human face to war.

The story of the final years of the respected World War II German general, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.

Come and See is a 1985 Soviet war drama directed by Elem Klimov, with a screenplay written by Klimov and Ales Adamovich. It is generally viewed as one of the most important anti-war movies ever made, and one of the great movies in history with the most historically accurate depictions of the crimes on the Eastern Front.

The film is inspired by The Long Walk (1956), the memoir by former Polish prisoner of war Sławomir Rawicz, who claimed to have escaped from a Soviet Gulag in Siberia and walked 4,000 miles (6,400 km) to freedom in World War II.

This is the powerful story of an American crew of a downed bomber, captured after a run over Tokyo, early in the war. Relates the extreme hardships the men endure while in captivity,

Watch this true story based on the courage of one single girl who had the faith and fortitude to STAND AGAINST the Nazi Empire while in Munich. Is this coming to America? Will we each have to face the same system she did? If that does happen, what will we do when the time comes to speak for what is right? Each one of us must examine if we have the fortitude to practice what we preach. Her faith in the Biblical Jesus gave her courage and the will to defy the powers of darkness even to the end. She was executed by beheading for her "crimes" against the Nazi Reich. What happens when freedom becomes a crime?

First published in 1955, They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Mayer’s book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name “Kronenberg.” “These ten men were not men of distinction,” Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis.

“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.”--from Chapter 13, “But Then It Was Too Late.”

An excerpt from They Thought They Were Free; The Germans, 1933-45.

This documentary uncovers the unholy alliance between Nazi Germany and some of the biggest corporations in the US — companies which were indispensable for Hitler to wage war. Henry Ford, the automobile manufacturer; James D Mooney, the General Motors manager; and Thomas Watson, the IBM boss were all awarded the Grand Cross of the German Eagle — the Nazi’s highest distinction for foreigners for their services to the Third Reich. Of course, many American corporations were also actively engaged in building up the Soviet military-industrial complex during the interwar period. War is the health of the State (and its corporatist adjuncts).

For further details, see Edwin Black, Nazi Nexus: America's Corporate Connections to Hitler's Holocaust.

Nazi Nexus is the long-awaited wrap-up in a single explosive volume that details the pivotal corporate American connection to the Holocaust. The biggest names and crimes are all there. IBM and its facilitation of the identification and accelerated destruction of the Jews; General Motors and its rapid motorization of the German military enabling the conquest of Europe and the capture of Jews everywhere; Ford Motor Company for its political inspiration; the Rockefeller Foundation for its financing of deadly eugenic science and the program that sent Mengele into Auschwitz; the Carnegie Institution for its proliferation of the concept of race science, racial laws, and the very mathematical formula used to brand the Jews for progressive destruction; and others.

Author Edwin Black talked about his book Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust (Dialog Press; February 25, 2009). In his book Mr. Black looks at the U.S. corporations that were directly involved with the Holocaust and how they allowed for its enormous scope. He synthesized the information detailed in his previous specific works such as IBM and the Holocaust and War Against the Weak.

Author Edwin Black discusses his book, IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation.

In the early 1880s, Herman Hollerith, an employee at the U.S. Census Bureau, conceived of the idea of creating readable cards with standardized perforations, each representing specific individual traits such as gender, nationality, and occupation.

The millions of punched cards created for the population counted in the national census could then be sorted on the basis of specific bits of information they contained—thereby providing a quantified portrait of the nation and its citizens.[2] In 1910, the German licensee Willy Heidinger established the Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft (German Hollerith Machine Corporation), known by the acronym "Dehomag."[3] The next year, Hollerith sold his American business to industrialist Charles Flint (1850–1934) for $1.41 million ($34 million in 2012 dollars).[4] The counting machine operation was made part of a new conglomerate called the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR).[4] Flint chose Thomas J. Watson (1874–1956), the star salesman of the National Cash Register Corporation, to head the new operation.[5] The German licensee Dehomag later became a direct subsidiary of the American corporation CTR.[6] In 1924, Watson assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer of CTR and renamed the company International Business Machines (IBM).

Black details the ongoing business relationship between Watson's IBM and the emerging German regime headed by Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). Hitler came to power in January 1933; on March 20 of that same year he established a concentration camp for political prisoners in the Bavarian town of Dachau, just outside the city of Munich. Repression against political opponents and the country's substantial ethnic Jewish population began at once. By April 1933, some 60,000 had been imprisoned.[7] Business relations between IBM and the Hitler regime continued uninterrupted in the face of broad international calls for an economic boycott.[8] Indeed, Willy Heidinger, who remained in control of Dehomag, the 90%-owned German subsidiary of IBM, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Hitler regime.[9]

On April 12, 1933, the German government announced plans to conduct a long-delayed national census.[10] The project was particularly important to the Nazis as a mechanism for the identification of Jews, Gypsies, and other ethnic groups deemed undesirable by the regime. Dehomag offered to assist the German government in its task of ethnic identification, concentrating upon the 41 million residents of Prussia.[11] This activity was not only countenanced by Thomas Watson and IBM in America, Black argues, but was actively encouraged and financially supported, with Watson himself traveling to Germany in October 1933 and the company ramping up its investment in its German subsidiary from 400,000 to 7,000,000 Reichsmark—about $1 million.[12] This injection of American capital allowed Dehomag to purchase land in Berlin and to construct IBM's first factory in Germany, Black charges, thereby "tooling up for what it correctly saw as a massive financial relationship with the Hitler regime."[12]

Black also asserts that a "secret deal" was made between Heidinger and Watson during the latter's visit to Germany which allowed Dehomag commercial powers outside of Germany, enabling the "now Nazified" company to "circumvent and supplant" various national subsidiaries and licensees by "soliciting and delivering punch card solution technology directly to IBM customers in those territories."[13] As a result, Nazi Germany soon became the second most important customer of IBM after the lucrative US market, Black notes.[14] The 1933 census, with design help and tabulation services provided by IBM through its German subsidiary, proved to be pivotal to the Nazis in their efforts to identify, isolate, and ultimately destroy the country's Jewish minority. Machine-tabulated census data greatly expanded the estimated number of Jews in Germany by identifying individuals with only one or a few Jewish ancestors. Previous estimates of 400,000 to 600,000 were abandoned for a new estimate of 2 million Jews in the nation of 65 million.

The millions of punched cards created for the population counted in the national census could then be sorted on the basis of specific bits of information they contained—thereby providing a quantified portrait of the nation and its citizens.[2] In 1910, the German licensee Willy Heidinger established the Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft (German Hollerith Machine Corporation), known by the acronym "Dehomag."[3] The next year, Hollerith sold his American business to industrialist Charles Flint (1850–1934) for $1.41 million ($34 million in 2012 dollars).[4] The counting machine operation was made part of a new conglomerate called the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR).[4] Flint chose Thomas J. Watson (1874–1956), the star salesman of the National Cash Register Corporation, to head the new operation.[5] The German licensee Dehomag later became a direct subsidiary of the American corporation CTR.[6] In 1924, Watson assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer of CTR and renamed the company International Business Machines (IBM).

Black details the ongoing business relationship between Watson's IBM and the emerging German regime headed by Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). Hitler came to power in January 1933; on March 20 of that same year he established a concentration camp for political prisoners in the Bavarian town of Dachau, just outside the city of Munich. Repression against political opponents and the country's substantial ethnic Jewish population began at once. By April 1933, some 60,000 had been imprisoned.[7] Business relations between IBM and the Hitler regime continued uninterrupted in the face of broad international calls for an economic boycott.[8] Indeed, Willy Heidinger, who remained in control of Dehomag, the 90%-owned German subsidiary of IBM, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Hitler regime.[9]

On April 12, 1933, the German government announced plans to conduct a long-delayed national census.[10] The project was particularly important to the Nazis as a mechanism for the identification of Jews, Gypsies, and other ethnic groups deemed undesirable by the regime. Dehomag offered to assist the German government in its task of ethnic identification, concentrating upon the 41 million residents of Prussia.[11] This activity was not only countenanced by Thomas Watson and IBM in America, Black argues, but was actively encouraged and financially supported, with Watson himself traveling to Germany in October 1933 and the company ramping up its investment in its German subsidiary from 400,000 to 7,000,000 Reichsmark—about $1 million.[12] This injection of American capital allowed Dehomag to purchase land in Berlin and to construct IBM's first factory in Germany, Black charges, thereby "tooling up for what it correctly saw as a massive financial relationship with the Hitler regime."[12]

Black also asserts that a "secret deal" was made between Heidinger and Watson during the latter's visit to Germany which allowed Dehomag commercial powers outside of Germany, enabling the "now Nazified" company to "circumvent and supplant" various national subsidiaries and licensees by "soliciting and delivering punch card solution technology directly to IBM customers in those territories."[13] As a result, Nazi Germany soon became the second most important customer of IBM after the lucrative US market, Black notes.[14] The 1933 census, with design help and tabulation services provided by IBM through its German subsidiary, proved to be pivotal to the Nazis in their efforts to identify, isolate, and ultimately destroy the country's Jewish minority. Machine-tabulated census data greatly expanded the estimated number of Jews in Germany by identifying individuals with only one or a few Jewish ancestors. Previous estimates of 400,000 to 600,000 were abandoned for a new estimate of 2 million Jews in the nation of 65 million.

Author Edwin Black is an American syndicated columnist and investigative journalist. He specializes in human rights, the historical interplay between economics and politics in the Middle East, petroleum policy, the abuses practiced by corporations, and the financial underpinnings of Nazi Germany.

The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine is a historic book written by author Edwin Black, documenting the transfer agreement ("Haavara Agreement" in Hebrew) between Zionist organizations and Nazi Germany to transfer a number of Jews and their assets to Palestine. This agreement was partly inspired by a global boycott of Germany that had appeared to threaten the Reich. Controversial as it may be seen in hindsight, it marked one of the few rescue of Jews and their assets during the Holocaust.

This book documents the agreement between Nazi Germany and an organization of German Zionists in 1933 to salvage the smallest amounts of German Jewish assets and the voluntary emigration of German Jews to Palestine before the Third Reich implemented confiscation, expulsion and then extermination. The Transfer Agreement rescued some 60,000 German Jews. A sweeping, worldwide economic boycott of Germany by Jews helped spur a deal between the Nazis and Zionists. At that time, there were few Jews in Palestine, but from 1933 through 1936, 60,000 German Jews immigrated into the region, bringing with them a portion of the assets they once held in Germany

Much has been written about the Second World War, the age of the dictators, and the Holocaust, but this is the first book to relate the history of Zionism to these events and to show the interaction between Herzl's movement and the rise of Fascism and Nazism in Europe. In Zionism in the Age of the Dictators Lenni Brenner searches through the Zionist record -- and finds evidence that it sought the patronage and benevolence of the avowed anti-Semites and, ultimately, the collaboration of the Fascists and Nazis. In a carefully researched and closely reasoned work, Brenner shows how from the beginning Zionism's leaders were prepared to go to almost any length to achieve the goal of a separate Jewish homeland.

Fundamental Features of the Proposal of the National Military Organization in Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi) Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the NMO in the War on the Side of Germany (1941)

FROM THE BACK COVER: The Iron Wall is a comprehensive and documented history of Revisionism which is now the dominant ideological tendency in present-day Zionism. Starting with the pre-Revisionist period of Vladimir Jabotinsky's life, this book traces the origins and course of what used to be regarded as the lunatic fringe of Zionism, but which has, since 1977, dominated the Likud Administrations of Menachem Begin, and Yitzhak Shamir. Lenni Brenner gives his readers an account of Revisionism that is indispensable to any understanding of the Israel¡ Government's policies on the West Bank and in the Middle East as a whole. Jabotinsky, the movement's founder, laid down ideological guidelines not merely for his own tendency within Zionism, but, indeed, increasingly for Zionism as a whole. He was explicit in his racism, his colonialism, and the pro-capitalist nature of his movement. Arguing that no compromise with the Palestinians was possible, his stance led the Revisionists into close connections with Mussolini as well as terrorism against the Arabs. Begin saw himself explicitly as his mentor's successor, with results since 1977 that are there for al¡ to see. And the subsequent Likud Prime Minister, Shamir, was himself the last of the Revisionist leaders. He created the Stern Gang that proposed a war-time alliance with Adolf Hitler and the establishment of a totalitarian Jewish state. As Lenni Brenner shows in this deeply disturbing book, Shamir's Revisionist legacy makes it likely that he will further curtail the rights of Israel's Jews as well as subject the Palestinians to yet more repression and militarist aggression, as Zionism spirals ever further to the Right.

History based on documents is difficult to refute and more books like this one should be known to establish the facts over propaganda.

This paper examines the value of connections between German industry and the Nazi movement in early 1933. Drawing on previously unused contemporary sources about management and supervisory board composition and stock returns, we find that one out of seven firms, and a large proportion of the biggest companies, had substantive links with the NSDAP. Firms supporting the Nazi movement experienced unusually high returns, outperforming unconnected ones by 5 to 8 percent between January and March 1933. These results are not driven by sectoral composition, and are robust to alternative estimators and definitions of affiliation.

Richard Nixon’s political career began in 1945, when as a navy officer he was assigned to review some captured Nazi documents. Allen Dulles told Nixon to keep quiet about what he had seen and, in return, arranged to finance the young man’s first congressional campaign.

The documents that Dulles was eager to cover up concerned Karl Blessing, the former Reichsbank officer and then head of the Nazi oil cartel called Kontinentale 01 AG, or “Konti.” Konti was in partnership with Allen and John Foster Dulles’ principal Nazi client, I.G. Farben, the infamous chemical/weapons producer. Both companies had despicable records regarding their complicity with the Nazis and their ill treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.

Dulles was also covering up for Blessing in order to protect continued control of German oil interests in the Middle East. Blessing’s Konti was the Nazi link to King Ibn Saud [whose family was empowered to rule the Arabian peninsula thanks to Nazi collaborators within British and U.S. intelligence] and Aramco (the Arab-American Oil Co.). If Blessing went down, he could have taken a lot of people with him, including Allen Dulles.

The Dulles brothers took Nixon under their wing and escorted him on a tour of fascist, “freedom fighter” operations in Germany.

When Truman was reelected in 1948, Nixon became Allen Dulles’ mouthpiece in Congress. Both Nixon and Senator Joseph McCarthy received volumes of classified information to support the charge that the Truman administration was filled with “pinkos.” When McCarthy went too far in his Communist investigations, it was Nixon who worked with CIA director Bedell Smith, to steer investigations away from the intelligence community.

The CIA was grateful for Nixon’s assistance. Dulles had been recruiting Nazis under the cover of the State Department’s Office of Policy Coordination, whose chief, Frank Wisner, had systematically recruited the Eastern European émigré networks that had worked for the Nazi SS. [Editor’s Note: Since WWII, these Nazi émigrés have been instrumental in many U.S. government covert operations including drug and weapons smuggling, Latin American death squads and protofascist regimes, LSD mind control experiments (like MKULTRA), the Republican National Committee’s Ethnic Heritage Councils as well as the presidential campaigns of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.]

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning is a book by Jonah Goldberg, in which Goldberg argues that fascist movements were and are left-wing. Published in January 2008, it reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list of hardcover non-fiction in its seventh week on the list. Goldberg is a syndicated columnist and the editor-at-large of National Review Online.

In the book, Goldberg argues that both modern liberalism and fascism descended from progressivism, and that before World War II, "fascism was widely viewed as a progressive social movement with many liberal and left-wing adherents in Europe and the United States". Goldberg writes that there was more to fascism than bigotry and genocide, and argues that those characteristics were not so much a feature of Italian fascism, but rather of German Nazism, which was allegedly forced upon the Italian fascists "after the Nazis had invaded northern Italy and created a puppet government in Salò."

He argues that over time, the term fascism has lost its original meaning and has descended to the level of being "a modern word for 'heretic,' branding an individual worthy of excommunication from the body politic", noting that in 1946, the socialist anti-fascist writer George Orwell described the word as no longer having any meaning except to signify "something not desirable".

The smiley face with an Adolf Hitler-style mustache on the cover of the book is a reference to comments made by comedian George Carlin on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher that "when fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jackboots. It will be Nike sneakers and smiley shirts. Smiley-smiley."

This is an excellent authoritative tell-all book on the hidden history of the period the author describes, roughly from 1896 to 1936.

"IN THIS work we are not concerned with the methods, legal or illegal, by which the great American fortunes of today were created. These fortunes exist. Their potentialities for good or evil are not altered whether we accept Gustavus Meyers' account of their formation or whether we give credence to the late John D. Rockefeller's simple statement : "God gave me my money." What this book purports to do is to furnish replies, naming names and quoting book, chapter, and verse, to two blunt questions: Who owns and controls these large fortunes today, and how are these fortunes used? To answer this second question it is necessary, of course, to examine the role of great wealth in politics, industry, education, science, literature and the arts, journalism, social life and philanthropy. The reader is warned that this work is not predicated on the premise of James W. Gerard, who in August, 1930, named fifty-nine men and women that, he said, "ran" America. In Mr. Gerard's list were many persons deemed by the author of slight importance, many of them merely secondary deputies of great wealth and some of them persons whom Mr. Gerard undoubtedly flattered by including in his select list. The factor determining the inclusion of persons in this narrative has at all times been pecuniary power, directly or indirectly manifested. This work will consider incidentally the various arguments brought forward by the apologists of great fortunes. These arguments arc to the effect that huge fortunes are necessary so that industry may be financed; that the benefactions of great wealth permit advances in science, encourage writers and artists, etc.; that the lavish expenditures of wealthy persons "give employment" to many people; and that in any case these big fortunes are dissipated within a few generations. More and more it is becoming plain that the major political and social problem of today and of the next decade centers about the taxation of great wealth. It is hoped that this book, the first objective study of the general social role of great fortunes, will shed at least a modicum of light upon this paramount issue." -- Statement by author Ferdinand Lundberg.

Kuehnelt seeks to redefine the political spectrum. His background as an Austrian nobleman gives him a perspective on politics that is very different and unique compared with the vast majority of Americans. Kuehnel also openly writes from a Roman Catholic viewpoint and pro-Christian viewpoint. He defines as "leftist" as any movement that emphasizes "identitarianism" (i.e. sameness) and either the total rule of the state or "the will of the people" over the populace's affairs.

The political writings of Aristotle identify three poor forms of government: democracy, oligarchy and tyranny; and three good forms: constitutional republic, aristocracy and monarchy. Democracies tend to degenerate into tyranny as witness by the chaotic Weimar republic sowing the seeds for the Nazi takeover because it lacked any foundations in traditional German politics, which was dominated by the nobility.

What is especially odd about Kuehnelt's study is he classifies Nazism and Fascism as "leftist" movements. The Nazis were anti-aristocratic and anti-tradition, and tried to create a revolutionary state. Since left wing movements tend to want to standardize everything and make everything the same, Nazism had a leftist tendency when it emphasized the "Aryan race" as the ideal for all humanity. Hitler was a product of the mass society of the early 1900s. Nazism is similar to the more familiar liberal, internationalist Leftism, which denies racial and gender differences and seeks to make the world a giant unisex, brown conglomerate.

In both perspectives, one race (the Aryan or the hybrid) is given the key to the future as the harbinger of a worldly, conflict free paradise. Marxism and socialism during the 19th and 20th centuries was of course profoundly leftist. They tried (and were successful in Russia) to overthrow all of the "bourgeoisie" establishments in society and set up a totally ahistorical new form of government that supposedly would accommodate the interests of the majority of humanity, the proletariat, by eradicating traditional religion and having a small party of government bureaucrats dictate economic policy. This of course resulted in human catastrophe, as the deportations, famines and sheer brutality of life in Communist Russia and China have shown. Hatred of the Jews is generally attributed to the right, but Kuehnelt provides examples of Marx's distaste for the Jewish culture he grew up in.

Democratic tyranny (this is not an oxymoron) in the name of "the people" has a heritage reaching back to the Enlightenment, the ideals of Rousseau and the violence of the French Revolution. Then of course don't forget the liberalization-at-gunpoint programs of Peter the Great, Kemal Ataturk and the US Civil Rights movement. America started off with a constitutional republic and has since fallen prey to democratic tendencies. The Founding Fathers were not egalitarians by any sense of the word (especially not Jefferson, who is usually touted as having the most egalitarian views), but were rather aristocrats who wanted to protect their own interests in the US and opposed royal authority over them.

Especially harmful in the international scene were the utopian pretensions of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. The most prominent example of a true rightist government in the 20th century was Francisco Franco's who defeated communists, socialists and assorted enemies of the Catholic Church in the Spanish Civil War.

Kuehnelt's book is also greatly helpful because he defines how true rightists in different countries may in fact be very different from each other because of a variety of cultural and national circumstances. He does not want conservative groups solely made up of the "haters of the haters," like the neo-Nazis who opposed democracy and liberalism today. He decries the harmful rightist tendency, especially prominent in America, towards anti-intellectualism.

The term "liberal" can also be redefined to its more original usage. "Liberty" meant personal freedom, restriction from government control. "Liberty" is mutually exclusive with "Equality" whenever people are forced intentionally by an external institution to be the Equal (in education, occupation, physical appearance, financial income, etc) because enforced equality (a type of 'secular monasticism' as Kuehnelt describes it) goes against human nature. It is the product of a more or less conscious rejection of Christian theology because it presupposes man's perfectibility in this life.

Leftism: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot -- Review By David Gordon

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn gives us in Leftism a remarkable defense of classical liberal and libertarian thought, based on his enormous learning in the twenty languages he could read. Kuehnelt-Leddihn, an Austrian aristocrat, became in his long career after World War I a historian and world traveler. His lectures often brought him to the United States, and he spoke several times at the Mises Institute. He and Mises were friends, and he praised Hans-Hermann Hoppe as a “brilliant thinker.”

Like Hans Hoppe, Kuehnelt-Leddihn saw a fundamental opposition between democracy and liberty. The Left seeks to eradicate all distinctions, and to do so it must suppress liberty. Democracy is not liberty’s friend, but rather its enemy because it opposes efforts by individuals to set themselves above the masses.

From this perspective, Kuehnelt-Leddihn conducts us through the history of the West. He stresses the rejection of democracy by Plato and Aristotle and finds in the Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages and the Baroque a libertarian impulse. With the Hussites and Martin Luther, by contrast, he has little sympathy

For him, the French Revolution with its “frightful atrocities” lies at the origin of modern totalitarianism, and he brings against it a devastating indictment. He contrasts this with the American Revolution, which decidedly did not create a democratic regime. For him, America is a republic, not a democracy.

The plans of Woodrow Wilson during and after World War I to spread democracy throughout the world were for Kuehnelt-Leddihn the height of folly. The old monarchical civilization of Europe was destroyed, and he in particular mourns the fate of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kuehnelt-Leddihn excoriates the Czech nationalist Eduard Beneš for his virulent propaganda and subversive activities against the Habsburgs; the breakup of Austria-Hungary, he holds, led directly to the rise of Hitler.

Fascism and National Socialism are often seen as rightist movements, but Kuehnelt-Leddihn dissents. In their emphasis on mass mobilization and their opposition to individualism, they belong to the Left.

Kuehnelt-Leddihn is a resolute revisionist, and he shows how the inept and deluded policies of Roosevelt and Churchill during World War II promoted the interests of World Communism. He concludes the book with a shrewd analysis of the New Left. Kuehnelt-Leddihn agrees with Kierkegaard that “personality is aristocratic,’ and readers of this long and learned book will find it difficult to disagree.

371 Swiss banks stand accused of collaborating with the Nazis during World War II. This was suspected at the time by by U.S. Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau, who began investigating this collaboration. He found the Swiss were not alone. His archives reveal that both British and American bankers continued to do business with Hitler, even as Germany was invading Europe and bombing London.

This investigative film shows in detail the roles played by the Anglo-German banking clique. Key members of the Bank of England together with their German counterparts established the BIS, the Bank for International Settlement, which laundered the plundered gold of Europe. On its board were key Nazis such as Walther Funk and Hjalamar Schact The president of BIS was an American, Thomas McKittrick, who readily socialized with leading Nazis. Not only the BIS, but other allied banks worked hand in hand with the Nazis. One of the biggest American banks kept a branch open in Occupied Paris and, with full knowledge of the managers in the U.S., froze the accounts of French Jews. Deprived of money to escape France, many ended up in death camps.

When President Roosevelt died in April 1945, Morgenthau lost his protector and his crusade against the banks came to an end. He was further weakened when men in his department were accused of being Communists during the McCarthy era. This incredible story contains interviews with surviving members of banking families and Morgenthau's investigative team as well as newly found archive material.

  • The Devil’s Chemists: 24 Conspirators of the International Farben Cartel Who Manufacture Wars -- Book by Josiah DuBois Part 1, Part 1

Like Ambruster’s Treason’s Peace, Josiah DuBois’s The Devil’s Chemists highlights how the I.G. Farben chemical firm manipulated trade relationships to the advantage of the Third Reich. In addition, the book illustrates how corporations, businessmen and politicians beholden unto the firm’s non-German cartel partners assisted that manipulation, as well as the postwar rehabilitation and exoneration of both I.G. and its most important personnel. Those personnel are the primary focus of Josiah Du Bois’s The Devil’s Chemists. In addition, DuBois emphasizes the damage done to America’s international credibility by its postwar preservation of I.G. Farben and other Axis/fascist cartels.

One cannot understand the history of the 20th century without understanding the role played in world events of the time by the I.G. Farben company, the chemical cartel that grew out of the German dyestuffs industry. Comprising some of the most important individual companies in the history of industrial capitalism, the firm has dominated the dyestuffs, chemical and pharmaceutical industries before and during World War II. The companies that grew out of I.G.’s official dissolution after the war—Bayer, Hoechst, BASF, and Agfa continued to be decisive in world markets. Among the many products developed by I.G. or its member companies are aspirin, heroin, Novocain, methadone (originally named Dolophine in honor of Adolph Hitler) and Zyklon B (the poison gas used in the extermination centers of World War II.)

Both the Ambruster and DuBois texts set forth the international scope and economic impact of the company, its role as the spine of the industrial war-making economy of the Third Reich and the firm’s elevation of Hitler to his position of power. As one observer noted, “Hitler was Farben and Farben was Hitler.” Much of the impact that the company wielded derived from its international dominance of the chemical, rubber, petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries through its cartel arrangements with partner firms in other countries. Farben’s foreign counterparts had much to do with letting the company and its executives—many of them war criminals of the first order—off the hook after World War II.

Farben’s cartel partners abroad constituted an inventory of the wealthiest and most powerful corporations in the world. In the United States, the major firms with which Farben did business included: Du Pont, the Standard Oil companies, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Union Carbide, Dow Chemical and Texaco. In turn, these corporate giants wielded controlling political influence in the United States through the elected and appointed officials in their sway. Attempts at reducing Farben’s influence in the United States before and during World War II, as well as efforts at holding the company and its top executives to account for their crimes after the war were neutralized by the cartel’s corporate hirelings. Many of names of the combatants on both sides are important and, to older and better-educated readers, familiar. Farben exerted a profound influence in other countries as well.

  • Treason’s Peace – German Dyes and American Dupes -- Book by Howard Watson Ambruster Part 1 Part 2

One cannot understand the history of the 20th century without understanding the role played in world events by the I.G. Farben company, the chemical cartel that grew out of the German dyestuffs industry. Comprising some of the most important individual companies in the history of industrial capitalism, the firm has dominated the dyestuffs, chemical and pharmaceutical industries before and during World War II. The companies that grew out of I.G.’s official dissolution after the war—Bayer, Hoechst, BASF, and Agfa continued to be decisive in world markets. Among the many products developed by I.G. or its member companies are: aspirin, heroin, novocain, methadone (originally named Dolophine in honor of Adolph Hitler) and Zyklon B (the poison gas used in the extermination centers of World War II.)

In his text about I.G., Ambruster sets forth the international scope and economic impact of the company, its role as the spine of the industrial war-making economy of the Third Reich, and the firm’s elevation of Hitler to his position of power. As one observer noted, “Hitler was Farben and Farben was Hitler.” Much of the impact that the company wielded derived from its international dominance of the chemical, rubber, petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries through its cartel arrangements with partner firms in other countries. Farben’s foreign counterparts had much to do with letting the company and its executives—many of them war criminals of the first order—off the hook after World War II.

Farben’s cartel partners abroad constituted an inventory of the wealthiest and most powerful corporations in the world. In the United States, the major firms with which Farben did business included: Du Pont, the Standard Oil companies, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Union Carbide, Dow Chemical and Texaco. In turn, these corporate giants wielded controlling political influence in the United States through the elected and appointed officials in their sway. Attempts at reducing Farben’s influence in the United States before and during World War II, as well as efforts at holding the company and its top executives to account for their crimes after the war were neutralized by the cartel’s corporate hirelings and political shills. Many names of the combatants on both sides are important and, for older and better-educated readers, familiar.

On the floor of Congress, California Representative Jerry Voorhis waged a valiant, eloquent and, ultimately, unsuccessful fight to bring Farben to heel. After failing to subdue the dragon of I.G. Farben, Voorhis was defeated for reelection by an up-and-coming California Republican—Richard Milhous Nixon. Helping to preserve a state of “business as usual” for Farben on both sides of the Atlantic was John J. McCloy, eventually the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, head of Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank and a key member of the Warren Commission that covered up the assassination of President Kennedy.

Treason’s Peace is a vivid, remarkable illustration of the workings of great corporate power both in the United States and abroad. It is must reading for any serious student of political economics and the dynamics of contemporary globalization.

American-linked German corporations were pivotal in financing the political ascension of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. In addition, the cartel agreements between corporate industrial giants on both sides of the Atlantic were instrumental in giving Germany access to vital strategic raw materials and technologies, while restricting that access for the Allies. During World War II, the job of interdicting the Trans-Atlantic cartel relationships between German and American firms fell to the Economic Warfare Section of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. Headed by James Stewart Martin, this group was titled “The Bombing Boys” because they helped to generate target selection for the strategic aerial bombardment of German industry. After the war, Martin served as the point man in the unsuccessful attempt at dissolving the Trans-Atlantic financial and industrial access and de-cartelizing Germany.

Martin’s All Honorable Men documents the manner in which powerful economic interests in the United States frustrated attempts at de-cartelization, thereby ensuring the postwar perpetuation of globalized “business as usual” for both Germany and the United States. As Martin points out, these commercial interests were able to successfully manipulate the networks through which government operates, and direct it to their own nefarious ends. In addition to lobbying in Congress and waging a vigorous public relations campaign against de-cartelization, the American partners of the German cartels successfully placed their own personnel in positions of responsibility for the postwar economic “reconstruction” of Germany.

One of the most important aspects of Martin’s eloquent book is his warning for the future. Having witnessed firsthand how easily the American business interests were able to subvert the economic restructuring of Germany, Martin feared for the future of the United States. Noting that economic concentration in Germany had made it possible for a small number of powerful interests to put Hitler in power, Martin noted the same pattern of economic concentration becoming evident in the United States as of the late 1940’s. He offered a stark warning for future generations of Americans.

“The ecopolitical masters of Germany boosted Hitler and his program into the driver’s seat at a time when the tide in the political fight between the Nazis and the supporters of the Weimar Republic was swinging against the Nazis. All of the men who mattered in banking and industrial circles could quickly agree on one program and throw their financial weight behind it. Their support won the election for the Nazis. We must assume that the same thing is not yet true in the United States. We do have economic power so concentrated that it would lie in the power of not more than a hundred men—if they could agree among themselves—to throw the same kind of combined economic weight behind a single program. They have not agreed yet. . . . If the United States should run into serious economic difficulties, however, most of the conditions for a re-enactment of the German drama would already exist on the American stage. The slight differences within the camp of the fraternity then may be the only real barrier to the kind of integration of the financial and industrial community behind a single repressive program, like that which the financiers and industrialists of Germany executed through Hitler. Are we safe in assuming that it would take a grave economic crisis to precipitate the dangers inherent in economic concentration? The basic integration of the financial and industrial groups in the United States is evident when we look at the increase of concentration in the past few years. . . .”

Nazism is usually depicted as the outcome of political blunders and unique economic factors: we are told that it could not be prevented, and that it will never be repeated. In this explosive book, Guido Giacomo Preparata shows that the truth is very different: using meticulous economic analysis, he demonstrates that Hitler's extraordinary rise to power was in fact facilitated -- and eventually financed -- by the British and American political classes during the decade following World War I. Through a close analysis of events in the Third Reich, Preparata unveils a startling history of Anglo-American geopolitical interests in the early twentieth century. He explains that Britain, still clinging to its empire, was terrified of an alliance forming between Germany and Russia. He shows how the UK, through the Bank of England, came to exercise control over Weimar Germany and how Anglo-American financial support for Hitler enabled the Nazis to seize power. This controversial study shows that Nazism was not regarded as an aberration: for the British and American establishment of the time, it was regarded as a convenient way of destabilising Europe and driving Germany into conflict with Stalinist Russia, thus preventing the formation of any rival continental power block. Guido Giacomo Preparata lays bare the economic forces at play in the Third Reich, and identifies the key players in the British and American establishment who aided Hitler's meteoric rise.

Makes Every Previous Book on World War II Obsolete.

Finally, a distinguished scholar has penetrated the cloak of falsehood, deception, and duplicity that for more than thirty years has protected one of the most incredible secrets of World War II: the support from key Wall Street financiers and other international bankers in subsidizing Hitler's rise to power.

Professor Antony C. Sutton proves that World War II was not only well planned, it was also extremely profitable—for a select group of financial insiders.

`The contribution made by American capitalism to German war preparations can only be described as phenomenal. It was certainly crucial to German military capabilities...

Not only was an influential sector of American business aware of the nature of Nazism, but for its own purposes aided Nazism wherever possible (and profitable) - with full knowledge that the probable outcome would be war involving Europe and the United States.'

Penetrating a cloak of falsehood, deception and duplicity, Professor Antony C. Sutton reveals one of the most remarkable but unreported facts of the Second World War: that key Wall Street banks and American businesses supported Hitler's rise to power by financing and trading with Nazi Germany. Carefully tracing this closely guarded secret through original documents and eyewitness accounts, Sutton comes to the unsavory conclusion that the catastrophic Second World War was extremely profitable for a select group of financial insiders. He presents a thoroughly documented account of the role played by J.P. Morgan, T.W. Lamont, the Rockefeller interests, General Electric Company, Standard Oil, National City Bank, Chase and Manhattan banks, Kuhn, Loeb and Company, General Motors, the Ford Motor Company, and scores of others in helping to prepare the bloodiest, most destructive war in history.

A piercing study of the tenacious roots of American fascism in our plutocracy, from robber baron days to Reichstag fire to the WTC atrocity and "Homeland Security." This sweeping, 700-page documentary of the American oligarchy's century-long project for world dictatorship is bound to be a landmark in the writing of American history. Includes a blow-by-blow account of the successful fascist assault and takeover of America's media.

A disturbing report on how US bankers, lawyers, and diplomats responded to the Armenian massacres of WW I and the Holocaust. Simpson (Blowback, 1988) has double expertise for this comparative study, since he's a member of the national advisory board of the Armenian Genocide Archive and also served as research director for Marcel Ophuls's documentary of Klaus Barbie, Hotel Terminus. During WW I, Simpson tells us, America and its European allies saw the recently drafted Hague and Geneva Conventions fail when the Turkish government killed one million Armenians--and when, at the Versailles peace conference, the victors allowed Turkey to escape punishment in hope of obtaining Middle Eastern oil. Hitler cited the Armenian genocide as the prototype of his own larger, more systematically organized crimes--although Simpson, by using newly released documents, suggests that the Nazis could not have conducted their hideous slaughter without Western bungling: in one ease, through American concerns such as Ford Motor Co. and John Foster Dulles's Sullivan and Cromwell law firm, whose European trading partners looted Jewish businesses in the Nazi "Aryanization" program; and, in another case, through State Department bureaucrats who buried intelligence reports on the Final Solution. Further, Simpson shows how prominent Nazis, such as oil chief Karl Blessing and SS general Karl Wolff, escaped judgment at Nuremberg with the assistance of these State Department functionaries and of John Foster Dulles's brother Allen (then an OSS agent who helped clear German businessmen). The motive: to aid Nazi industrialists who had spied for the US during the war, or who might help rebuild Germany as an anti-communist bulwark in Europe. Except for its simplistic conclusion (that the lax US war-crimes posture contributed to the souring of American-Soviet relations): revelatory and shocking investigative scholarship of a high order.

Mr. Burris has an autographed copy of this book.

In late 2005, American popular culture paid homage to one of the greatest journalists of all time. In “Goodnight and Good Luck,” the life and work of CBS radio and television journalist Edward R. Murrow provided the material for a Hollywood feature film. Paul Manning was arguably the greatest of “Murrow’s Boys”—the group of skilled journalists Murrow ran in Europe during World War II. After training as a gunner and flying combat missions in both Europe and over Japan, Manning broadcast the surrenders of both Germany and Japan on the CBS radio network. After the war, Manning undertook an investigation of Hitler’s Deputy, Martin Bormann, and the postwar capital network he ran, in considerable measure, at the encouragement of Murrow. Partially underwritten by CBS, the story of the Bormann organization proved too sensitive for the network to report.

A decisively powerful network of corporate entities run by hardened SS veterans, the Bormann group constitutes what one veteran banker termed “the greatest concentration of money power under a single control in history.” The foundation of the organization’s clout is money—lots and lots of money. Controlling German big business and, through investments, much of the rest of the world’s economy, the organization was the repository for the stolen wealth of Europe, estimated by British intelligence to have totaled more than $180 billion by the end of 1943 (not including the money taken from Greece and the former Soviet Union, nor that taken after 1943.) [For more on the global economic significance of the Bormann group, see—among other programs—FTR#99.] This organization literally constitutes a postwar “Underground Reich” with (as discussed in FTR#155) a governing hierarchy composed of the sons and daughters of SS men, holding military ranks and titles from the Third Reich.

In addition to the enormous power deriving from its consummate economic clout, the Bormann group has wielded tremendous global influence through its intelligence and enforcement network. Administered by SS general Heinrich Mueller, the wartime head of the Gestapo, the Bormann group’s intelligence and security network was composed of some of the toughest, most capable veterans of the SS. In addition, the Bormann organization and Mueller’s security outfit have commanded the loyalty of the political, intelligence and military elements requisitioned by the Allies after the war. In that regard, the Bormann/Mueller operation could draw on the loyalties of the Reinhard Gehlen spy outfit that handled the CIA’s intelligence on the former Soviet Union and which ultimately became the intelligence service of the Federal Republic of Germany. In addition, Bormann and Mueller were the political masters of the numerous scientists recruited by the U.S. and other nations for their expertise during the Cold War, as well as the numerous Nazis brought into the U.S. under the auspices of the Crusade For Freedom. Those latter ultimately coalesced into a major element of the Republican Party.

With its economic, political and espionage capabilities, the Bormann group embodies the triumph of the forces of National Socialism in the postwar period. Whereas the United States was the dominant element within the international cartel system prior to, and during, World War II, the Bormann group is the primary entity in the postwar global corporate economy.

The organization’s clout has successfully obscured its existence in the face of journalistic investigation. Compare the “official” fate of Bormann (supposedly killed at the end of the war) with demonstrable historical fact, as researched by Manning. Relating information from the FBI’s file on Bormann, Manning writes: “ . . .The file revealed that he had been banking under his own name from his office in Germany in Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires since 1941; that he held one joint account with the Argentinian dictator Juan Peron, and on August 4, 5 and 14, 1967, had written checks on demand accounts in first National City Bank (Overseas Division) of New York, The Chase Manhattan Bank, and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co., all cleared through Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires. . . .”

The First World War and American intervention therein marked an ominous turning point in the history of the United States and of the world. Those who can remember "the good old days" before 1914 inevitably look back to those times with a very definite and justifiable feeling of nostalgia. There was no income tax before 1913, and that levied in the early days after the amendment was adopted was little more than nominal. All kinds of taxes were relatively low. We had only a token national debt of around a billion dollars, which could have been paid off in a year without causing even a ripple in national finance. The total federal budget in 1913 was $724,512,000, just about 1 percent of the present astronomical budget.

Ours was a libertarian country in which there was little or no witch-hunting and few of the symptoms and operations of the police state which have been developing here so drastically during the last decade. Not until our intervention in the First World War had there been sufficient invasions of individual liberties to call forth the formation of special groups and organizations to protect our civil rights. The Supreme Court could still be relied on to uphold the Constitution and safeguard the civil liberties of individual citizens.

Libertarianism was also dominant in Western Europe. The Liberal Party governed England from 1905 to 1914. France had risen above the reactionary coup of the Dreyfus affair, had separated church and state, and had seemingly established the Third Republic with reasonable permanence on a democratic and liberal basis. Even Hohenzollern Germany enjoyed the usual civil liberties, had strong constitutional restraints on executive tyranny, and had established a workable system of parliamentary government. Experts on the history of Austria-Hungary have recently been proclaiming that life in the Dual Monarchy after the turn of the century marked the happiest period in the experience of the peoples encompassed therein.

Enlightened citizens of the Western world were then filled with buoyant hope for a bright future for humanity. It was believed that the theory of progress had been thoroughly vindicated by historical events. Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, published in 1888, was the prophetic bible of that era. People were confident that the amazing developments in technology would soon produce abundance, security, and leisure for the multitude.

In this optimism in regard to the future no item was more evident and potent than the assumption that war was an outmoded nightmare. Not only did idealism and humanity repudiate war but Norman Angell and others were assuring us that war could not be justified, even on the basis of the most sordid material interest.

In our own country, the traditional American foreign policy of benign neutrality and the wise exhortations of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Henry Clay to avoid entangling alliances and to shun foreign quarrels were still accorded respect in the highest councils of state.

Unfortunately, there are relatively few persons today who can recall those happy times. In his devastatingly prophetic book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell points out that one reason why it is possible for those in authority to maintain the barbarities of the police state is that nobody is able to recall the many blessings of the period which preceded that type of society.

A significant and illuminating report on this situation came to me recently in a letter from one of the most distinguished social scientists in the country, a resolute revisionist. He wrote,

I am devoting my seminar this quarter to the subject of American foreign policy since 1933. The effect upon a Roosevelt-bred generation is startling, indeed. Even able and mature students react to the elementary facts like children who have just been told that there is (or was) no Santa Claus.

While the First World War headed the United States and the world toward international disaster, the Second World War was an even more calamitous turning point in the history of mankind. It may, indeed, have brought us — and the whole world — into the terminal episode of human experience.

It certainly marked the transition from social optimism and technological rationalism into the Nineteen Eighty-Four pattern of life, in which aggressive international policies and war scares have become the guiding factor, not only in world affairs but also in the domestic, political, and economic strategy of every leading country of the world. The police state has emerged as the dominant political pattern of our times, and military state capitalism is engulfing both democracy and liberty in countries which have not succumbed to Communism.

The manner and extent to which American culture has been impaired and our well-being undermined by our entry into two world wars has been brilliantly and succinctly stated by Professor Mario A. Pei, of Columbia University, in an article on "The America We Lost" in the Saturday Evening Post, May 3, 1952, and has been developed more at length by Garet Garrett in his trenchant book, The People's Pottage.

Perhaps, by the mid-century, all this is now water under the bridge and little can be done about it. But we can surely learn how we got into this unhappy condition of life and society — at least until the police-state system continues its current rapid development sufficiently to obliterate all that remains of integrity and accuracy in historical writing and political reporting.

The readjustment of historical writing to historical facts relative to the background and causes of the First World War — what is popularly known in the historical craft as "revisionism" — was the most important development in historiography during the decade of the 1920s. While those historians at all receptive to the facts admitted that revisionism readily won out in the conflict with the previously accepted wartime lore, many of the traditionalists in the profession remained true to the mythology of the war decade. In any event, the revisionist controversy was the outstanding intellectual adventure in the historical field in the 20th century down to Pearl Harbor.

Revisionism, when applied to the First World War, showed that the actual causes and merits of that conflict were very close to the reverse of the picture presented in the political propaganda and historical writings of the war decade. Revisionism would also produce similar results with respect to the Second World War if it were allowed to develop unimpeded. But a determined effort is being made to stifle or silence revelations which would establish the truth with regard to the causes and issues of the late world conflict.

While the wartime mythology endured for years after 1918, nevertheless leading editors and publishers soon began to crave contributions which set forth the facts with respect to the responsibility for the outbreak of war in 1914, our entry into the war, and the basic issues involved in this great conflict.

Sidney B. Fay began to publish his revolutionary articles on the background of the First World War in the American Historical Review in July, 1920. My own efforts along the same line began in the New Republic, the Nation, the New York Times, Current History Magazine, and the Christian Century in 1924 and 1925. Without exception, the requests for my contributions came from the editors of these periodicals, and these requests were ardent and urgent. I had no difficulty whatever in securing the publication of my Genesis of the World War in 1926, and the publisher thereof subsequently brought forth a veritable library of illuminating revisionist literature.

By 1928, when Fay's Origins of the World War was published, almost everyone except the die-hards and bitter-enders in the historical profession had come to accept revisionism, and even the general public had begun to think straight in the premises.

Quite a different situation faces the rise of any substantial revisionism after the Second World War. The question of war responsibility in relation to 1939 and 1941 is taken for granted as completely and forever settled. It is widely held that there can be no controversy this time. Since it is admitted by all reasonable persons that Hitler was a dangerous neurotic, who, with supreme folly, launched a war when he had everything to gain by peace, it is assumed that this takes care of the European aspects of the war-guilt controversy. With respect to the Far East, this is supposed to be settled with equal finality by asking the question, "Japan attacked us, didn't she?"

About as frequent as either of these ways of settling war responsibility for 1939 or 1941 is the vague but highly dogmatic statement that "we had to fight." This judgment is usually rendered as a sort of ineffable categorical imperative which requires no further explanation. But some who are pressed for an explanation will allege that we had to fight to save the world from domination by Hitler, forgetting General George C. Marshall's report that Hitler, far from having any plan for world domination, did not even have any well-worked-out plan for collaborating with his Axis allies in limited wars, to say nothing of the gigantic task of conquering Russia. Surely, after June 22, 1941, nearly six months before Pearl Harbor, there was no further need to fear any world conquest by Hitler.

The mythology which followed the outbreak of war in 1914 helped to produce the Treaty of Versailles and the Second World War. If world policy today cannot be divorced from the mythology of the 1940s, a third world war is inevitable, and its impact will be many times more horrible and devastating than that of the second. The lessons learned from the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials have made it certain that the third world war will be waged with unprecedented savagery.

Vigorous as was the resistance of many, including powerful vested historical interests, to the revisionism of the 1920s, it was as nothing compared to that which has been organized to frustrate and smother the truth relative to the Second World War. History has been the chief intellectual casualty of the Second World War and the cold war which followed.

It may be said, with great restraint, that never since the Middle Ages have there been so many powerful forces organized and alerted against the assertion and acceptance of historical truth as are active today to prevent the facts about the responsibility for the Second World War and its results from being made generally accessible to the American public.

Even the great Rockefeller Foundation frankly admits the subsidizing of historians to anticipate and frustrate the development of any neorevisionism in our time. And the only difference between this foundation and several others is that it has been more candid and forthright about its policies. The Sloan Foundation later supplemented this Rockefeller grant. Charles Austin Beard summarized the implications of such efforts with characteristic vigor:

The Rockefeller Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations … intend to prevent, if they can, a repetition of what they call in the vernacular "the debunking journalistic campaign following World War I." Translated into precise English, this means that the Foundation and the Council do not want journalists or any other persons to examine too closely and criticize too freely the official propaganda and official statements relative to "our basic aims and activities" during World War II. In short, they hope that, among other things, the policies and measures of Franklin D. Roosevelt will escape in the coming years the critical analysis, evaluation and exposition that befell the policies and measures of Woodrow Wilson and the Entente Allies after World War I.

As is the case with nearly all book publishers and periodicals, the resources of the great majority of the foundations are available only to scholars and writers who seek to perpetuate wartime legends and oppose revisionism. A good illustration is afforded by my experience with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation which helped to subsidize the book by Professors Langer and Gleason. I mentioned this fact in the first edition of my brochure on The Court Historians versus Revisionism. Thereupon I received a courteous letter from Mr. Alfred J. Zurcher, director of the Sloan Foundation, assuring me that the Sloan Foundation wished to be absolutely impartial and to support historical scholarship on both sides of the issue. He wrote in part

  1. About the last thing we wish to do is to check and frustrate any sort of historical scholarship since we believe that the more points of view brought to bear by disciplined scholars upon the war or any other historical event is in the public interest and should be encouraged.

In the light of this statement, I decided to take Mr. Zurcher at his word. I had projected and encouraged a study of the foreign policy of President Hoover, which appeared to me a very important and much needed enterprise, since it was during his administration that our foreign policy had last been conducted in behalf of peace and in the true public interest of the United States rather than in behalf of some political party, foreign government, or dubious ideology. One of the most competent of American specialists in diplomatic history had consented to undertake the project, and he was a man not previously identified in any way with revisionist writing.

  1. My request was for exactly one thirtieth of the grant allotted for the Langer-Gleason book. The application was turned down by Mr. Zurcher with this summary statement: "I regret that we are unable to supply the funds which you requested for Professor ——'s study." He even discouraged my suggestion that he discuss the idea in a brief conference with the professor in question.

A state of abject terror and intimidation exists among the majority of professional American historians whose views accord with the facts on the question of responsibility for the Second World War. Several leading historians and publicists who have read my brochure on The Struggle Against the Historical Blackout have written me stating that, on the basis of their own personal experience, it is an understatement of the facts. Yet the majority of those historians to whom it has been sent privately have feared even to acknowledge that they have received it or possess it. Only a handful have dared to express approval and encouragement.

Moreover, the gullibility of many "educated" Americans has been as notable as the mendacity of the "educators." In Communist Russia and Nazi Germany, as well as in Fascist Italy, and in China, the tyrannical rulers found it necessary to suppress all opposition thought in order to induce the majority of the people to accept the material fed them by official propaganda. But, in the United States, with almost complete freedom of the press, speech, and information down to the end of 1941, great numbers of Americans followed the official propaganda line with no compulsion whatever.

In many essential features, the United States has moved along into the Nineteen Eighty-Four pattern of intellectual life. But there is one important and depressing difference. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Orwell shows that historians in that regime have to be hired by the government and forced to falsify facts. In this country today, and it is also true of most other nations, many professional historians gladly falsify history quite voluntarily.

This article is excerpted from chapter 1 of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, 1953

Jeff Riggenbach's book is a godsend for anyone who needs a crash course in revisionist history of the United States. What is revisionism? It is the retelling of history from a point of view that differs from the mainstream, which always treats the victor (the state) as glorious and the conquered (individual liberty) as deserving of its fate.

Obviously the libertarian telling of American history is going to be different. The state and its creations are not the heroes. The producers of capital, the average people, the voluntary society: these are the forces that make up civilization.

There is a massive literature of revisionist American history. It is so vast, in fact, that people whose field is economics, law, or philosophy can feel intimidated by it all, especially since this material is not taught in class. Must we accept the idea that the architects of the Constitution loved liberty, that Lincoln was a liberator, that the United States had to crush Spain in the late 19th century, that World War I was unavoidable, that the U.S. was always the good guy in the Cold War?

No, not at all, say the revisionists. They tell a version of events that turns every convention on its head. But there is yet another problem here: most of the major revisionist historians are writing from the point of view of the political left, and their interpretation is skewed by that bias. What Riggenbach does is offer a thoroughgoing critique of leftwing revisionism in favor of a distinctly libertarian form of revisionism.

This book is a roundup of the major figures and the most important books; it is also a clear-headed assessment of all the major controversies. What you get from this one book is what would otherwise take a student months or years of searching in the library to locate and learn. There has never been anything like it.

He covers the work of Kenneth Roberts, John Dos Passos, Gore Vidal, Harry Elmer Barnes, James J. Martin, Charles A. Beard, William Appleman Williams, Murray Rothbard, Thomas Woods, among many others. He weighs on the great issues of whether the Old Right was really part of the "right" and how the definitions of these terms change. He defends Thomas Woods against his critics among the mainstream while arguing that Woods is not a conservative at all but rather an old-style liberal.

This book is written in an engaging style, with the goal of sharing as much knowledge of this literature with the reader as is possible. In this way, this book opens up whole worlds you never knew existed.

There is no longer any reason to feel lost in the thicket of interpretation and reinterpretation. Like Virgil in the Inferno, Riggenbach is your guide

Revisionism as applied to World War II and its origins (as also for previous wars) has the general function of bringing historical truth to an American and a world public that had been drugged by wartime lies and propaganda. This, in itself, is a virtue. But some truths of history, of course, may be largely of antiquarian interest, with little relevance to present-day concerns. This is not true of World War II revisionism, which has much critical significance for today's world.

The least of the lessons that revisionism can teach has already been thoroughly learned: that Germany and Japan are not uniquely "aggressor nations," doomed from birth to menace the peace of the world. The larger lessons have, unfortunately, yet to be learned.

The United States is again being subjected to that "complex of fear and vaunting" (in the brilliant phrase of Garet Garrett's) which drove us, and the Western world, into two other disastrous wars in our century. Once again, the American public is being subjected to a nearly unanimous barrage of war propaganda and war hysteria, so that only the most searching and rational can keep their heads. Once again, we find that there has emerged upon the scene an Enemy, a Bad Guy, with the same old Bad Guy characteristics that we have heard of before; a diabolic, monolithic Enemy, which, generations ago in some "sacred texts," decided (for reasons that remain obscure) that it was "out to conquer the world."

Since then, the Enemy, darkly, secretly, diabolically, has "plotted," conspiratorially, to conquer the world, building up a vast and mighty and overwhelming military machine, and also constructing a mighty international and "subversive" "fifth column," which functions as an army of mere puppets, agents of the Enemy's central headquarters, ready to commit espionage, sabotage, or any other act of "undermining" other states. The Enemy, then, is "monolithic," ruled solely and strictly from the top, by a few master rulers, and is dominated always by the single purpose of world conquest. The model to keep in mind is Dr. Fu Manchu, here trotted forward as an international bogeyman.

The Enemy, then, says the war propaganda, is guided by but one purpose: conquest of the world. He never suffers from such human emotions as fear — fear that we might attack him — or belief that he is acting in defense, or out of self-respect and the desire to save face before himself as well as before others. Neither does he possess such human qualities as reason.

No, there is only one other emotion that can sway him: superior force will compel him to "back down." This is because, even though a Fu Manchu, he is also like the Bad Guy in the movie Western: he will cower before the Good Guy if the Good Guy is strong, armed to the teeth, resolute of purpose, etc. Hence, the complex of fear and vaunting: fear of the supposedly implacable and permanent plotting of the Enemy; vaunting of the enormous military might of America and its meddling throughout the world, to "contain," "roll back," etc., the Enemy, or to "liberate" the "oppressed nations."

Now revisionism teaches us that this entire myth, so prevalent then and even now about Hitler, and about the Japanese, is a tissue of fallacies from beginning to end. Every plank in this nightmare evidence is either completely untrue or not entirely the truth. If people should learn this intellectual fraud about Hitler's Germany, then they will begin to ask questions, and searching questions, about the current World War III version of the same myth. Nothing would stop the current headlong flight to war faster, or more surely cause people to begin to reason about foreign affairs once again, after a long orgy of emotion and cliché.

For the same myth is now based on the same old fallacies. And this is seen by the increasing use that the Cold Warriors have been making of the "Munich myth": the continually repeated charge that it was the "appeasement" of the "aggressor" at Munich that "fed" his "aggression" (again, the Fu Manchu, or Wild Beast, comparison), and that caused the "aggressor," drunk with his conquests, to launch World War II. This Munich myth has been used as one of the leading arguments against any sort of rational negotiations with the Communist nations, and the stigmatizing of even the most harmless search for agreement as "appeasement." It is for this reason that A.J.P. Taylor's magnificent Origins of the Second World War received probably its most distorted and frenetic review in the pages of National Review.

It is about time that Americans learn: that Bad Guys (Nazis or Communists) may not necessarily want or desire war, or be out to "conquer" the world (their hope for "conquest" may be strictly ideological and not military at all); that Bad Guys may also fear the possibility of our use of our enormous military might and aggressive posture to attack them; that both the Bad Guys and Good Guys may have common interests which make negotiation possible (e.g., that neither wants to be annihilated by nuclear weapons); that no organization is a "monolith," and that "agents" are often simply ideological allies who can and do split with their supposed "masters"; and that, finally, we may learn the most profound lesson of all: that the domestic policy of a government is often no index whatever to its foreign policy.

"Revisionism has the general function of bringing historical truth to a public that had been drugged by wartime lies and propaganda."

We are still, in the last analysis, suffering from the delusion of Woodrow Wilson: that "democracies" ipso facto will never embark on war, and that "dictatorships" are always prone to engage in war. Much as we may and do abhor the domestic programs of most dictators (and certainly of the Nazis and Communists), this has no necessary relation to their foreign policies: indeed, many dictatorships have been passive and static in history, and, contrariwise, many democracies have led in promoting and waging war. Revisionism may, once and for all, be able to destroy this Wilsonian myth.

There is only one real difference between the capacity of a democracy and a dictatorship to wage war: democracies invariably engage much more widely in deceptive war propaganda, to whip up and persuade the public. Democracies that wage war need to produce much more propaganda to whip up their citizens, and at the same time to camouflage their policies much more intensely in hypocritical moral cant to fool the voters. The lack of need for this on the part of dictatorships often makes their policies seem superficially to be more warlike, and this is one of the reasons why they have had a "bad press" in this century.

The task of revisionism has been to penetrate beneath these superficialities and appearances to the stark realities underneath — realities which show, certainly in this century, the United States, Great Britain, and France — the three great "democracies" — to be worse than any other three countries in fomenting and waging aggressive war. Realization of this truth would be of incalculable importance on the current scene.

Conservatives should not need to be reminded of the flimsiness of the "democratic" myth; we are familiar now with the concept of "totalitarian democracy," of the frequent propensity of the masses to tyrannize over minorities. If conservatives can see this truth in domestic affairs, why not in foreign?

There are many other, more specific but also important, lessons that revisionism can teach us. The Cold War, as well as World Wars I and II, has been launched by the Western democracies so as to meddle in the affairs of Eastern Europe. The great power-fact about Eastern Europe is that the smaller nations there are fated to be under the dominance, friendly or otherwise, of Germany or Russia.

In World War I, the United States and Britain went to war partly to help Russia expand into the part of Eastern Europe then dominated by Austria-Hungary and Germany. This act of meddling on our part, at the cost of untold lives, both West and East, and of an enormous increase in militarism, statism, and socialism at home, led to a situation in Eastern Europe which brought the United States and Britain into World War II, to keep Germany from dominating Eastern Europe.

As soon as World War II was over (with its enormous consequent increase in statism, militarism, and socialism in the United States), the US and Britain felt they had to launch a Cold War to oust Russia from the dominance over Eastern Europe which it had obtained as a natural consequence of the joint defeat of Germany. How much longer is the United States to play with the fate of the American people, or even the human race itself, for the sake of imposing a solution of our own liking on Eastern Europe? And if we should wage a holocaust to "destroy communism," and there should (doubtfully) be any Americans remaining, how distinguishable from communism will the American system, in reality, be?

There have been two major facets to the Cold War: trying to establish US and British hegemony over Eastern Europe, and attempting to suppress nationalist revolutions that would take undeveloped countries outside of the Western imperialist orbit. Here again, revisionism of World War II has important lessons to teach us today. For in World War I, England, backed by the United States, went to war against Germany to try to hobble an important commercial competitor which had started late in the imperialist game. Before World Wars I and II, Britain and France tried to preserve their imperialist domination as against the "have-not" nations Germany and Japan that came late in the imperialist race.

And now, after World War II, the United States has assumed the imperialist scepter from the weakened hands of Britain and France. Revisionism thus provides us with the insight that America has now become the world colossus of imperialism, propping up puppet and client states all over the undeveloped areas of the world, and fiercely attempting to suppress nationalist revolutions that would take these countries out of the American imperial orbit.

As Garet Garrett also said: "We have crossed the boundary that lies between republic and empire." Communism having allied itself with the immensely popular movements of national liberation against imperialism, the United States, in the hypocritical name of "freedom," is now engaged in the logical conclusion of its Cold War policy: attempting to exterminate a whole nation in Vietnam to make very sure that they are rather dead than Red — and to preserve American imperial rule.

All these lessons revisionism has to teach us. For revisionism, in the final analysis, is based on truth and rationality. Truth and rationality are always the first victims in any war frenzy; and they are, therefore, once again an extremely rare commodity on today's "market." Revisionism brings to the artificial frenzy of daily events and day-to-day propaganda, the cool but in the last analysis glorious light of historical truth. Such truth is almost desperately needed in today's world.

Whereas historians obsessively trace every event's causal lineage further and further into the past, nonhistorians tend toward the opposite extreme: they assume in effect that the world began immediately before the event they have in mind. I call this unfortunate tendency "truncating the antecedents." Among the general public, it has given rise to mistaken interpretations of historical causation in cases too numerous to mention, and mistakes of this sort continue to occur frequently, in part because politicians and other conniving parties have an interest in propagating them.

I was recently struck by this tendency while reading comments at a group blog associated with the History News Network. A commentator there had mentioned that the blame for World War II is not as cut and dried as Americans typically assume it to be, and hence some revisionism is long overdue. In response, another discussant, whose previous contributions to the blog show that he is an intelligent man, expressed bafflement: "Yes, obviously some revisionism regarding the 'great allied leaders' of WWII is called for. But an attempt to be revisionist about the justness of a war where U.S. territory is attacked by one opponent and war is declared on the U.S. by the other opponent is sort of like justifying the War on Iraq on the basis of mythical WMD."

Like Americans in general, this man takes the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the German declaration of war on December 11, 1941, as dispositive evidence that Japan and Germany started the war that ensued between these nations and the United States, and therefore he concludes that they should be held responsible for it. In a later post, he persists in this interpretation by saying: "Nation X attacks Nation Y. One or the other is right. Either Nation Y is a victim or the attack was a 'justified pre-emptive attack.' Yes, the response may be disproportionate, etc., but those really aren't reasons to declare Nation Y 'wrong.' Or the two 'equally wrong.'" This view represents a classic case of truncating the antecedents.

Many people are misled by formalities. They assume, for example, that the United States went to war against Germany and Japan only after its declarations of war against these nations in December 1941. In truth, the United States had been at war for a long time before making these declarations. Its warmaking took a variety of forms. For example, the U.S. navy conducted "shoot [Germans] on sight" convoys, which might include British ships, in the North Atlantic along the greater part the shipping route from the United States to Great Britain, even though German U-boats had orders to refrain (and did refrain) from initiating attacks on American shipping. The United States and Great Britain entered into arrangements to pool intelligence, combine weapons development, test military equipment jointly, and undertake other forms of war-related cooperation. The U.S. military actively cooperated with the British military in combat operations against the Germans, for example, by alerting the British navy of aerial or marine sightings of German submarines, which the British then attacked. The U.S. government undertook in countless ways to provide military and other supplies and assistance to the British, the French, and the Soviets, who were fighting the Germans. The U.S. government provided military and other supplies and assistance, including warplanes and pilots, to the Chinese, who were at war with Japan. The U.S. military actively engaged in planning with the British, the British Commonwealth countries, and the Dutch East Indies for future combined combat operations against Japan. Most important, the U.S. government engaged in a series of increasingly stringent economic warfare measures that pushed the Japanese into a predicament that U.S. authorities well understood would probably provoke them to attack U.S. territories and forces in the Pacific region in a quest to secure essential raw materials that the Americans, British, and Dutch (government in exile) had embargoed.

Consider these summary statements by George Victor, by no means a Roosevelt basher, in his recently published, well-documented book The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable (Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2007).

Roosevelt had already led the United States into war with Germany in the spring of 1941 — into a shooting war on a small scale. From then on, he gradually increased U.S. military participation. Japan's attack on December 7 enabled him to increase it further and to obtain a war declaration. Pearl Harbor is more fully accounted for as the end of a long chain of events, with the U.S. contribution reflecting a strategy formulated after France fell. . . . In the eyes of Roosevelt and his advisers, the measures taken early in 1941 justified a German declaration of war on the United State — a declaration that did not come, to their disappointment. . . . Roosevelt told his ambassador to France, William Bullitt, that U.S. entry into war against Germany was certain but must wait for an "incident," which he was "confident that the Germans would give us." . . . Establishing a record in which the enemy fired the first shot was a theme that ran through Roosevelt's tactics. . . . He seems [eventually] to have concluded — correctly as it turned out — that Japan would be easier to provoke into a major attack on the Unites States than Germany would be. (pp. 179—80, 184, 185, emphasis added)

The claim that Japan attacked the United States without provocation was . . . typical rhetoric. It worked because the public did not know that the administration had expected Japan to respond with war to anti-Japanese measures it had taken in July 1941. . . . Expecting to lose a war with the United States — and lose it disastrously — Japan's leaders had tried with growing desperation to negotiate. On this point, most historians have long agreed. Meanwhile, evidence has come out that Roosevelt and Hull persistently refused to negotiate. . . . Japan . . . offered compromises and concessions, which the United States countered with increasing demands. . . . It was after learning of Japan's decision to go to war with the United States if the talks "break down" that Roosevelt decided to break them off. . . . According to Attorney General Francis Biddle, Roosevelt said he hoped for an "incident" in the Pacific to bring the United States into the European war. (pp. 15, 202, 240)

These facts and numerous others that point in the same direction are for the most part anything but new; many of them have been available to the public since the 1940s. As early as 1953, anyone might have read a collection of heavily documented essays on various aspects of U.S. foreign policy in the late 1930s and early 1940s that showed the various ways in which the U.S. government bore responsibility for the country's eventual engagement in World War II — showed, in short, that the Roosevelt administration wanted to get the country into the war and worked craftily along various avenues to ensure that, sooner or later, it would get in, preferably in a way that would unite public opinion behind the war by making the United States appear to have been the victim of an aggressor's unprovoked attack. (See Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath, edited by Harry Elmer Barnes [Caldwell, Id.: Caxton Printers, 1953].) As Secretary of War Henry Stimson testified after the war, "we needed the Japanese to commit the first overt act" (qtd. in Victor, Pearl Harbor Myth, p. 105).

At present, however, sixty-seven or more years after these events, probably not one American in 1,000 — nay, not one in 10,000 — has an inkling of any of this history. So effective has been the pro-Roosevelt, pro-American, pro-World War II faction that in this country it has utterly dominated teaching and popular writing about U.S. engagement in the "Good War." Only a few years ago, when an essay of mine was included in a collection being considered for publication by the University of Chicago Press, the press's expert outside reader expressed shock that I had mentioned in passing Roosevelt's pre-Pearl Harbor maneuvers to bring the country into the war, and he declared that crackpot statements of this sort would discredit the entire volume. (In deference to the editor and to discourage the volume's rejection by the press, I removed the single obnoxious sentence, which was not central to my purposes in the essay in any event, and eventually the book was published, notwithstanding this "expert's" negative appraisal of my own contributions to it.)

Observations such the foregoing ones tend to elicit angry accusations of "Holocaust denial" and "moral equivalence," among many others. For the record, then, let me avow that I do not deny the Holocaust, nor do I regard the Roosevelt administration as morally equivalent to Hitler's regime. While I am making my innocence plain, let me also avow that I do not regard the Roosevelt administration as morally equivalent to Stalin's regime. This latter comparison comes up surprisingly seldom, however, given that the two regimes were close allies in the war, and, most important, that the major outcome of the war was to leave Stalin and his puppet regimes astride the greater part of the European continent in an area that stretches from the Urals to Bohemia and from Estonia to Azerbaijan. In short, if anyone deserves to be recognized as the war's "winner," that person is Stalin. Somehow this fact has never seemed to me to fit comfortably into a characterization of this horrible conflict as the "Good War." Perhaps I'm just unduly squeamish.

The fate of the European Jews also requires mention, inasmuch as after the war many people professed to believe that saving the Jews was the war's prime justification. Aside from the fact that none of the Allied leaders held that view — Roosevelt himself was a genteel anti-Semite of the sort typical in his time, place, and class — the undeniable truth is that the Jews were not saved: approximately 80 percent of them had perished by the end of the war. Little wonder, too, because U.S. and British war plans did not give high priority to saving them; as a rule, those plans completely disregarded the urgent need to rescue the surviving Jews.

Few Americans have ever entertained the idea that their country ought not to have entered World War II. They persist in believing that they — the ordinary people of the country, as distinct from its political leaders and their foreign legionnaires — were genuinely threatened by the Japanese and the Germans and therefore that the war "had to be fought." Even George Victor, from whose honest and useful book The Pearl Harbor Myth I quoted earlier, has brought himself to believe that Roosevelt had excellent motives for his persistent provocation of Germany and Japan. Thus, he writes: "As Germany began to prepare for conquest, genocide, and destruction of civilization, the leader of only one major nation saw what was coming and made plans to stop it. As a result of Roosevelt's leadership, a planned sequence of events carried out in the Atlantic and more decisively in the Pacific brought the United States into one of the world's greatest cataclysms. The American contribution helped turn the war's tide and saved the world from a destructive tyranny unparalleled in modern history" (p. 16).

Unparalleled? What about Stalin's tyranny or Mao's? Regardless of one's answer to this question, however, another question remains — whether Nazi Germany, as evil as it certainly was, had the ability to defeat the United States, much less to "destroy civilization." Americans love to speculate about German acquisition of atomic weapons, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and other military capabilities the Nazis, in fact, never came close to acquiring. As things actually stood, Germany lacked the capability to invade and conquer even Great Britain. Conquering the United States, thousands of miles across the Atlantic, was realistically inconceivable. Whatever else one may take U.S. leaders' motives for war to have been in the early 1940's, national self-preservation could not have been among them, unless they were shockingly ill-advised as to the economic, logistical, and technological constraints on the German war machine. In reality, that machine had its hands more than full in dealing with the Soviets on the eastern front, not to mention the British and others who were pestering it on other fronts.

Thirty-six years ago, Bruce M. Russett's little book No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the U.S. Entry into World War II (New York: Harper & Row, 1972) was published. Russett noted at the outset that "[p]articipation in the war against Hitler remains almost wholly sacrosanct, nearly in the realm of theology" (p. 12). In this regard, nothing has changed since 1972. Yet Russett argued forcefully, with logic and evidence, that this orthodoxy rests on shaky grounds. He concluded that World War II "may well have been an unnecessary war that did little for us and that we need not have fought" (p. 20). Nor did he concede that although the war may have been imprudent on instrumental grounds, it was well justified on moral grounds: "it is precisely moral considerations that demand a reexamination of our World War II myths," he insisted (p. 21). Although much has been added to the corpus of World War II scholarship since the publication of Russett's book, this little volume remains unjustly neglected, and its argument deserves serious consideration even now.

Of course, many other great events in American history might be examined as I have suggested U.S. participation in World War II ought to be examined — by taking the relevant antecedents fully into account. For historians, this advice should be unnecessary; if they know anything, they know that history did not begin yesterday. The American people at large, however, remain extremely vulnerable to misleading descriptions of the government's actions, especially its plunges into foreign wars — accounts of which generally disregard many relevant antecedents, particularly those that cast blame on the United States for stirring up enmities abroad. Yet, any honest account of U.S. foreign policy reveals that this country's government has engaged again and again in foreign interventions whose official justifications cannot withstand critical scrutiny. Many of these interventions amounted to little more than armed errand-running for privileged American business interests seeking to beat foreigners into line and, not coincidentally, to line their own pockets. This aspect of U.S. foreign policy famously led General Smedley Butler to declare that war is a racket.

Time, some wit has said, is God's way of keeping everything from happening at once. Taking this idea to heart, we may remind ourselves and others that whenever the U.S. government launches a new war abroad, we would be well advised to look into what happened in that part of the world previously, perhaps over the course of several decades. We may well discover that the locals have legitimate grievances against our government or some of its corporate cronies. Or we may simply discover that the situation is more complicated than it has been made out to be. We know one thing for certain at the outset, however: we cannot rely on the government to tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Unvarnished truth is to our rulers as holy water is to vampires.


Carroll Quigley was a legendary teacher at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. His course on the history of civilization was extra-ordinary in its scope and on its impact on its students. One of his students was future president Bill Clinton. Clinton named Quigley as an important influence on his aspirations and political philosophy during his acceptance speech to the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

The Evolution of Civilizations is a comprehensive and perspective look at the factors behind the rise and fall of civilizations. Quigley examines the application scientific method to the social sciences. He poses a division of culture into six levels, from the more abstract to the more concrete – intellectual, religious, social, political, economic and military. - and he identifies seven stages of historical change for all civilizations: mixture, gestation, expansion, conflict, universal empire, decay and invasion. He tests these hypothesis by a detailed analysis of five major civilizations: the Mesopotamian, the Canaanite, the Minoan, the classical, and the Western.

Quigley defines a civilization as "a producing society with an instrument of expansion." A civilization's decline is not inevitable but occurs when its instrument of expansion is transformed into an institution.

Carroll Quigley taught the History of Civilization at Georgetown School of Foreign Service for more than thirty years. A graduate of Harvard University he first taught history there and at Princeton. Professor Quigley was regarded as an expert on the comparative history of civilizations, twentieth century Europe and African Affairs.

"As a teenager I heard John Kennedy's summons to citizenship. And as a student at Georgetown, I heard the call clarified by a professor I had named Carroll Quigley, who said America was the greatest country in the history of the world because our people have always believed in two great ideas: first, that tomorrow can be better than today, and second, that each of us has a personal moral responsibility to make it so."

When Bill Clinton spoke these stirring words to millions of Americans during his 1992 acceptance address before the Democratic National Convention upon receiving his party's nomination for President of the United States, the vast multitude of his television audience paused for a micro-second to reflect: Who is Carroll Quigley and why did he have such a dramatic effect on this young man before us who may become our country's leader?

Carroll Quigley was a legendary professor of history at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University, and a former instructor at Princeton and Harvard.

He was a lecturer at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, the Brookings Institution, the U. S. Naval Weapons Laboratory, the Foreign Service Institute of the State Department, and the Naval College.

Quigley was a closely connected elite "insider" to the American Establishment, with impeccable credentials and trappings of respectability.

But Carroll Quigley's most notable achievement was the authorship of one of the most important books of the 20th Century: Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time.

No one can truly be cognizant of the intricate evolution of networks of power and influence which have played a crucial role in determining who and what we are as a civilization without being familiar with the contents of this 1,348-page tome.

It is the "Ur-text" of Establishment Studies, earning Quigley the epithet of "the professor who knew too much" in a Washington Post article published shortly after his 1977 death.

In Tragedy and Hope, as well as the posthumous The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden, Quigley traces this network, in both its overt and covert manifestations, back to British racial imperialist and financial magnate Cecil Rhodes and his secret wills, outlining the clandestine master plan through seven decades of intrigue, spanning two world wars, to the assassination of John Kennedy.

Through an elaborate structure of banks, foundations, trusts, public-policy research groups, and publishing concerns (in addition to the prestigious scholarship program at Oxford), the initiates of what are described as the Round Table groups (and its offshoots such as the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations) came to dominate the political and financial affairs of the world.

For the ambitious young man from Hope, Arkansas, his mentor's visionary observations would provide the blueprint of how the world really worked as he made his ascendancy via Oxford through the elite corridors of power to the Oval Office.

Published in 1966, Tragedy and Hope lay virtually unnoticed by academic reviewers and the mainstream media establishment.

Then Dr. W. Cleon Skousen, the noted conservative author of the 1961 national best-seller, The Naked Communist, discovered Quigley, and the serious implications of what Quigley had revealed.

In 1970, Skousen published The Naked Capitalist: A Review and Commentary on Dr. Carroll Quigley's Book Tragedy and Hope.

This was soon followed by None Dare Call It Conspiracy. This slim volume by Gary Allen (and Larry Abraham) provided the massive paradigm shift of grassroots, populist conservatives from mere anti-Communism to a much larger anti-elitist world-view.

Millions of copies of these books came into print, and the conservative movement changed forever.

Copies of Tragedy and Hope began disappearing from library shelves.

A pirate edition was printed.

Quigley came to believe that his publisher Macmillan had suppressed his book.

Dr. Gary North, the esteemed economic commentator and historian has an interesting discussion of these curious facts in the chapter, "Maverick 'Insider' Historians," in his ebook, Conspiracy: A Biblical View, available on-line.

Quigley himself discusses these issues concerning his book in a five part YouTube interview.

However some persons believe Carroll Quigley was simply amplifying earlier research in conservative authors Emanuel Josephson's Rockefeller 'Internationalist': The Man Who Misrules The World, and Dan Smoot's The Invisible Government, or that of the radical sociologist C. Wright Mill's The Power Elite, which had outlined these same elite networks of power.

I disagree with that narrow assessment. Although there is much to disagree with in interpretation in Quigley's book, the originality and titanic scope of the work cannot be doubted or disparaged.

In a book much praised by economist and historian Murray Rothbard, author Carl Oglesby's The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies From Dallas To Watergate, has a fascinating discussion of Quigley within a wider framework of American power politics and subterranean intrigue.

And in a volume hailed by Gore Vidal, Christopher Hitchens, before he morphed from Trotskyist man of letters to Neocon mouthpiece, had some insightful musings along the line of Quigley in his Blood, Class, and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies.

Tragedy and Hope is indeed one of the most important books you will ever read.

From The Anglo-American Establishment

"One wintry afternoon in 1891, three men were engaged in earnest conversation in London. From that conversation were to flow consequences of the greatest importance to the British Empire and to the world as a whole. For these men were organizing a secret society that was, for more than 50 years, to be one of the most important forces in the formulation and execution of British imperial and foreign policy.

"The three men thus engaged were already well known in England. The leader was Cecil Rhodes, fabulously wealthy empire builder and the most important person in South Africa. The second was William T. Stead, the most famous, and probably also the most sensational, journalist of the day. The third was Reginald Baliol Brett, later known as Lord Esher, friend and confidant of Queen Victoria, and later to be the most influential adviser of King Edward VII and King George V."


The late Ralph Raico was a specialist in European classical liberalism and Austrian Economics. He learned economics under Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Friedrich Hayek, and was professor emeritus of history at Buffalo State College.

In this lecture, Raico teaches a Cato Summer Seminar group the history of World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. He offers an in-depth look at the conditions which led to both wars and the ways in which governments throughout the 20th century have used war powers to justify and fuel their expansion.

The Origins of Totalitarianism (German: Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft, "Elements and Origins of Totalitarian Rule"; 1951), by Hannah Arendt, describes and analyzes Nazism and Stalinism, the major totalitarian political movements of the 20th century.

The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) describes the rise of anti-Semitism in central Europe and in western Europe in the early-to-mid 19th century; then examines the New Imperialism, from 1884 to the start of the First World War (1914–18); then traces the emergence of racism as an ideology, and its modern application as an “ideological weapon for imperialism”, by the Boers during the Great Trek (1830s–40s) in the early 19th century.

Arendt's analysis of the rise of scientific racism begins with An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853–55), by Arthur de Gobineau, and the anti-patriotic and anti-nationalist racism of Henri de Boulainvilliers. Besides bureaucracy, experimentally applied in Egypt, by Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer, racism was the main trait of colonialist imperialism, itself characterized by unlimited territorial and economic expansion, as illustrated by Cecil Rhodes. That unlimited expansion necessarily opposed itself and was hostile to the territorially delimited nation-state. Arendt traces the roots of modern imperialism to the accumulation of excess capital in European nation-states during the 19th century. This capital required overseas investments outside of Europe to be productive and political control had to be expanded overseas to protect the investments. She then examines "continental imperialism" (pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism) and the emergence of "movements" substituting themselves to the political parties. These movements are hostile to the state and antiparliamentarist and gradually institutionalize anti-Semitism and other kinds of racism. Arendt concludes that while Italian Fascism was a nationalistauthoritarian movement, Nazism and Stalinism were totalitarian movements that sought to eliminate all restraints upon the power of the movement.

The book's final section is devoted to describing the mechanics of totalitarian movements, focusing on Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. Here, Arendt discusses the transformation of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the non-totalitarian world, and the use of terror, essential to this form of government. Totalitarian movements are fundamentally different from autocratic regimes, says Arendt, insofar as autocratic regimes seek only to gain absolute political power and to outlaw opposition, while totalitarian regimes seek to dominate every aspect of everyone's life as a prelude to world domination. Arendt discusses the use of front organizations, fake governmental agencies, and esoteric doctrines as a means of concealing the radical nature of totalitarian aims from the non-totalitarian world. A final section added to the second edition of the book in 1958 suggests that individual isolation and loneliness are preconditions for totalitarian domination.

Le Monde placed the book among the 100 best books of any kind of the 20th century, while the National Review ranked it #15 on its list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the century. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute listed it among the 50 best non-fiction books of the century. The book made a major impact on neoconservative Norman Podhoretz, who compared the pleasure of reading it to that of reading a great poem or novel.

Omnipotent Government was published in 1944, when the battle against Nazism held the world’s attention. How had this terrible system gained power? Mises considers and rejects several explanations popular at the time he wrote, such as inherent defects in the German national character. Instead, he looks to the rise of a malignant ideology, which he terms etatism.

Mises begins by showing how Prussian liberalism collapsed. Intellectuals spurned the free market in favor of schemes, lacking all support in sound economic theory, which stressed the role of the state in promoting national power and prosperity.

The Nazi system developed and extended the earlier etatist trends of the Bismarckian and Wilhelmine epochs. Hitler claimed, in classic etatist fashion, that Germany needed to expand in order to feed its growing population. Hitler’s idea made sense within his etatist presuppositions: in order to see what is wrong with it, one needs to understand correct economic theory. This teaches that free trade, not conquest of foreign territories, is the best means to advance prosperity.

Mises resolutely rejects the Marxist canard that Nazism was an expression of monopoly capitalism. To the contrary, Nazism was a form of socialism: the forms of private property were retained, but control and planning were in the hands of the state.

Mises concludes with a discussion of reform measures to be undertaken after the hostilities of World War II end. He calls for peace and the free market and subjects to withering criticism proposals for global central planning.

Omnipotent Government displays to the full Mises’s immense historical knowledge and his unrivaled grasp of economic principles. It is an indispensable guide to understanding nineteenth and twentieth-century European history.

Ludwig von Mises’s Socialism is the most important critical examination of socialism ever written.

Socialism is most famous for Mises’s penetrating economic calculation argument. The book contains much more however. Mises not only shows the impossibility of socialism: he defends capitalism against the main arguments socialists and other critics have raised against it. A centrally planned system cannot substitute some other form of economic calculation for market prices, because no such alternative exists. Capitalism is true economic democracy.

Socialism addresses the contemporary issues of economic inequality and argues that wealth can exist for long periods only to the extent that wealthy producers succeed in satisfying the consumers. Mises shows that there is no tendency to monopoly in a free market system.

Mises analyzes reform measures, such as social security and labor legislation, which in fact serve to impede the efforts of the capitalist system to serve the masses.

Socialism is a veritable encyclopedia of vital topics in the social sciences, all analyzed with Mises’s unique combination of historical erudition and penetrating insight.

This book applies Austrian business cycle theory to understanding the onset of the 1929 Great Depression. Rothbard first summarizes the Austrian theory and offers a criticism of competing theories, including the views of Keynes.

Rothbard then considers Federal Reserve policy in the 1920s, showing its inflationary character. The influence of Benjamin Strong, the Governor of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, was especially important. In part, his expansionary policy was motivated by his desire to help Britain sustain the pound. Strong was close friends with Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England.

After the 1929 crash, Herbert Hoover followed an interventionist policy that prefigured the New Deal. He favored keeping wage rates high and thus contributed to rising unemployment. Against the popular stereotype, Rothbard shows that Hoover was not a partisan of laissez-faire.

This fiery monograph shows a side of Murray Rothbard not seen in his theoretical treatise: his ability to employ "power elite" analysis to understand the relationship between money, power, and war.

Rather than allow the left to dominate this approach to history; Rothbard shows how wealthy elites are only able to manipulate world affairs via their connection to state power. Those mainstream historians might deride Rothbard's history as a "conspiracy" approach, Rothbard himself is only out to show that world affairs are not random historical forces but the consequence of choices and paths chosen by real human beings.

Here he gives the grim details of how a network of banks, bond dealers, and Wall Street insiders have both favored war and profited from it.

The contents of this volume include a long and thoughtful introduction by Anthony Gregory and an afterword by Justin Raimondo

“The single most resonant and carefully imagined book of Dick’s career.” —New York Times

It’s America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war—and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan.

This harrowing, Hugo Award–winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to wake.

Winner of the Hugo Award

  • Night -- Novel by Elie Wiesel

Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man.

Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.

The Book Thief centers on the life of Liesel Meminger, a ten to fourteen-year-old girl living in Germany during World War II. Liesel's experiences are narrated by Death, who describes both the beauty and destruction of life in this era.

After her brother's death, Liesel arrives in a distraught state at the home of her new foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann. During her time there, she is exposed to the horror of the Nazi regime and struggles to find a way to preserve the innocence of her childhood in the midst of her destructive surroundings. As the political situation in Germany deteriorates, her foster parents hide a Jewish man named Max, putting the family in danger. Hans, who has developed a close relationship with Liesel, teaches her to read in secret. Recognizing the power of writing and sharing the written word, Liesel begins to not only steal books the Nazi party is looking to destroy, but also write her own stories and share the power of language with Max. As Liesel copes with the trauma of her past and the violent horrors of the war-torn world around her, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery, the formation of a new family, and mostly, her life as a book thief

This book is one of the most significant ever edited by Denson. It contains essays that have been turned into major movies and documentaries, and influenced politics in ways no one could have expected. The thesis in brief: the warfare state is as great or greater threat to liberty than the welfare state. Lovers of freedom need to focus their energies in favor of peace and against war.

Further, there can be no reconciling freedom and empire.

The 2nd edition is expanded to include an additional essay on World War I by Ralph Raico and another by David Gordon on war propaganda. Other contributors include Murray N. Rothbard and Robert Higgs.

"An original and scholarly appraisal of America's wars and their consequences, The Costs of War is easily one of the most important books to emerge from American conservatives in a generation...." —Thomas Woods, Modern Age

"John Denson's The Costs of War offers a devastating critique of Washington's interventionist tendencies. The book, a series of conference papers, shows how, for instance, the Civil War sparked the federal government's (still ongoing) centralization of power and how World War I reflected the triumph of collectivism." —Doug Bandow, World

"This book is the most convincing attack on the warmongering state to appear since the end of the Second World War." —Gerard Radnitsky, Neuezuericher Zeitung.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the most sainted president of the 20th century. You have to look far and wide to discover the truth about his character and policies. But as John T. Flynn noted in this landmark 1948 volume, FDR actually prolonged the Great Depression and deliberately dragged the country into a war that seriously compromised American liberties.

What's more, he did this despite campaign promises to slash bureaucracy and cut spending. He ran as a small-government liberal, a fact (among a million) that has been completely forgotten today.

This new edition has an introduction by historian Ralph Raico, who shows that this work still remains the best overall book on the FDR era. Flynn wrote a devastating indictment. If the contents of the book were widely known, the monuments erected in FDR's honor would be torn down forthwith.

From the author:

Randolph Bourne, one of the critical commentators of the Woodrow Wilson period, once wrote that war is like a wild elephant: it carries the rider where it desires, not where he may desire. Perhaps the historian predilected to spare Franklin D. Roosevelt an unfavorable judgment at the bar of history will find in this simile his best expedient for divesting Roosevelt of responsibility for the tragic epilogue which followed World War II. By conjuring up the vision of the savage beast uncontrollable by the man, one can reduce to irrelevancy the qualities of the man. In the psychological climate thus engendered, a bald assumption that the man's intentions were virtuous, his motives pure, and his competence abundant becomes easy to propagate. History bows to a legend.

Was World War II a failure? It is an unthinkable thought in the American political ethos. but noted American journalist and author William Henry Chamberlin dares think it, from the vantage point of the immediate postwar world of 1950.

"Not one of the positive goals set forth in the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms has been realized. There is no peace today, either formal or real. Over a great part of the world there is neither freedom of religion nor freedom of speech and expression. Freedom from fear and want is now an outstanding characteristic of the present age. The right of national self-determination, so vigorously affirmed in the Atlantic Charter, has been violated on a scale and with a brutality seldom equalled in European history."

Further: "No war in history has killed so many people and left such a legacy of miserable, uprooted, destitute, dispossessed, human beings."

The opponents of entry argued that even if totalitarianism was beaten in Europe, the war would bring socialism to the United States. Chamberlin argued that they were not only correct about this but there was also the bitter irony that totalitarianism was not in fact beaten in Europe.

"Stalin got what he wanted in Poland: a frontier that assigned to the Soviet Union almost half of Poland's prewar territory and the abandonment by American and Great Britain of the Polish government-in-exile in London.... Yalta put the seal on the process which had begun at Teheran of betraying the East Europeans who preferred free institutions to communism."

Chamberlain sums up in a quotation from a friend in Paris: "You know, Hitler really won this war — in the person of Stalin."

If you have ever been curious about the postwar attitude of those who oppose Roosevelt's march to war, this is your book. He makes a very strong case - and a courageous one given the times.

This book is not for the timid and those whose politically correct phony sensitive balloons would burst by the accounts in this book. Mr. Colby wrote a good introduction as to the realities of FDR & co. manipulating public opinion and diplomacy to curry favor with the the Soviets and to commit genocide against the Geman civilians during World War II.

Benjamin Colby introduces the reader to FDR's secret war against the Germans in 1940 using U.S. Navy to assist British forces against the German Navy while FDR promised peace and that "American boys would not die in foreign wars." Colby is clear that the media folks catered to his treachery and "pie in the sky" slogans.

Colby also compares and contrasts FDR's Churhill's pious comments contained in the Atlantic Charter while secretly arranging to save the Soviets and encourage Stalin's territorial ambitions in Eastern Europe. Colby also cites chapter-and-verse the amount of secret aid given to the Soviets which was not known by the American people.

There are interesting sections Colby mentions re FDR's pleading with Stalin & co. to at least make some proclamation that Soviet authorities proclaim freedom of religion. The final public pronouncement was so vague as to provoke amusement among those who knew the actual Soviet condtions re freedom of religion.

Colby' book gives a good account of FDR's policy makers and U.S. news executives whitewashing Soviet atrocities during the war. Of particular interest is Colby's account over the Soviet murder at the Katyn Forest in the Smolensk region of Poland in 1939. This atrocity was originally blamed on the Germans, but the realities soon became clear. Red Cross officials and German authorities promised a full investigation of the masscre, but Soviet authorities refused to permit such investigations. In fact, the Soviets used the incident to sever diplomatic relations with the Polish Government in Exile which made Soviet dominance easier in Poland. All the Soviets had to do was create a Polish puppet government and purge Polish non-communists.

The Teheran and Yalta Conferences are well reported in this book. The secret concessions given to Stalin and the Soveits were never revealed until after World War II which, when revealed, led to a useless Cold War. Basically these conferences insured that several million innocent civilians would be brutalized and enslaved once the war was over. What is ironic is that those who preached fire an brimstone against the Germans during World War II were the same men who whined about Soviet dominance in Eastern and Central Euroepe. These were the same men who smeared those who gave similiar warnings before and during World War II.

Colby's examination of U.S. press barons is interesting. Freedom of the Press was openly violated by journalistic lying and official and unofficial censorship. Cyrus McCormick was literally forced out of THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE Office for no other reason than he opposed FDR's New Deal and foreign policy. Colby has a good commentary of The War Writers' Board whose officials hired cheap fiction writers in an attempt to refute historians and experts on diplomacy. Their efforts to inflame racial and ethnic hatred toward innocent Germans did not abate after the war, and they tried to inflame public well into the early years of the Cold War. Colby is clear that these hate mongers lost their credibility when the realities of the Cold War became clear, and the "Hate Germans" campaigned looked rediculous.

Post War treatment of innocent Germans verged on the most savage treatment since Genghis and Kublai Khan. The Morgenthal Plan was supposed to starve the Germans into extinction. Colby presents views of some "experts" who argued in favor of efforts to breed the Germans out of existence. An interesting anecdote was Anti-Fraternization effort imposed on U.S. soldiers who refused to obey such orders, and efforts to enforce this insanity failed.

Colby also refutes claims that U.S. bombing was based on precision. He gives a brief description of the saturation fire bombing of Dresden in 1945. Some fighter pilots masscred a boys choir during this tragedy. Note should be taken that the Soviets and East German Communists exploited this bombing in their propaganda vs. the West. Dresdeon was just one incident in "allied" bombing of civilians.

Colby refutes the myths of "allied" righteousness re World War II. He gives readers a short but reasonable account of the actualities of World War II. The only criticism this book is that Colby could have expanded this book by examining FDR's policy vs. the Japanese. This would have made the book more comprehensive and given the reader a more thorough view of the actual realities of World War II.

Yet,this is still a solid book. Colby has exhaustive footnotes at the end of the book which gives readers sources and books to confirm his own book. Colby's book is well researched and well written. Companion books are Chamberlain's AMERICA'S SECOND CRUSADE, Veale's ADVANCE TO BARBARISM, and James J. Martin's REVISIONIST VIEWPOINTS. An even more comprehensive book is Barnes's PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE.

Who started the mass bombing of civilians in World War II? This book proves, with clinical detail, that it was the Allies, and not the Germans, who started the "blitz" and once underway, carried it to the most extreme murderous ends. The author, a legally-trained expert, shows how European conflicts for 200 years prior to 1939 had an unwritten agreement to avoid involving civilians in warfare and gives several historical examples where victors exercised non-vindictive restraint in dealing with the vanquished. This code of conduct, however, vanished in an orgy of hatred in the 1939-1945 conflict. Veale is meticulous in his arguments and cites cabinet meeting transcripts, memoirs of those involved in the decision-making, and many other sources to prove that the British and Americans were the first and the best at killing innocent civilians-and that if there had been any justice at Nuremberg, the accused would have included the Allied leaders as well.

John T. Flynn's classic work from 1944 on how wartime planning brought fascism to America. In some ways, this is the finest and most mature of all his works. It was written in wartime and his points were profoundly cutting. After all, the U.S. was supposedly fighting the total state abroad, but meanwhile at home was drafting people, controlling all prices and wages, rationing all goods, and enforcing a wicked central plan through massive government coercion.

Were we becoming what we were supposedly fighting? Flynn said yes. The war on dictatorship abroad was bringing about dictatorship at home.

Flynn was a prominent journalist and rare case of an American public intellectual who resisted the onslaught of both the warfare and welfare states during the period in which FDR ruled America. This study links the domestic policy of the New Deal with the drive for war and wartime central planning. He draws attention to the bitter irony that America was becoming precisely what we were fighting.

His analysis of fascism is incisive and devastating. Though American conservatives (and liberals) have ignored this book and its lessons, it speaks of truths for the ages. His comparisons of the Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin regimes with what was taking place in the United States are truly unforgettable.

Flynn was not just a journalist but a real scholar and a moral critic of the police state. There is a reason why this great book is a classic of libertarian literature.

The test of fascism is not one's rage against the Italian and German war lords. The test is — how many of the essential principles of fascism do you accept and to what extent are you prepared to apply those fascist ideas to American social and economic life? When you can put your finger on the men or the groups that urge for America the debt-supported state, the autarkical corporative state, the state bent on the socialization of investment and the bureaucratic government of industry and society, the establishment of the institution of militarism as the great glamorous public-works project of the nation and the institution of imperialism under which it proposes to regulate and rule the world and, along with this, proposes to alter the forms of our government to approach as closely as possible the unrestrained, absolute government — then you will know you have located the authentic fascist.

But let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that we are dealing by this means with the problem of fascism. Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic Americans, as violently against Hitler and Mussolini as the next one, but who are convinced that the present economic system is washed up and that the present political system in America has outlived its usefulness and who wish to commit this country to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering in the affairs of the states and cities; taking part in the management of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the role of great national banker and investor, borrowing millions every year and spending them on all sorts of projects through which such a government can paralyze opposition and command public support; marshaling great armies and navies at crushing costs to support the industry of war and preparation for war which will become our greatest industry; and adding to all this the most romantic adventures in global planning, regeneration, and domination all to be done under the authority of a powerfully centralized government in which the executive will hold in effect all the powers with Congress reduced to the role of a debating society. There is your fascist. And the sooner America realizes this dreadful fact the sooner it will arm itself to make an end of American fascism masquerading under the guise of the champion of democracy.

-- John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching

The great historian of classical liberalism strips away the veneer of exalted leaders and beloved wars. Professor Ralph Raico shows them to be wolves in sheep's clothing and their wars as attacks on human liberty and human rights.

In the backdrop of this blistering and deeply insightful and scholarly history is the whitewashing of "great leaders" like Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, FDR, Truman, Stalin, Trotsky, and other collectivists. They are highly regarded because they were on the "right side" of the rise of the state. But do they deserve adulation? Raico says no: these great leaders were main agents in the decline of civilization in the 20th century, all of them anti-liberals who used their power to celebrate and enhance state power.

Robert Higgs writes the introduction and cheers this powerful expose as a necessary corrective.

"For Ralph Raico," writes Robert Higgs in the foreword, "it would be not only unseemly but foolish to quiver obsequiously in the historical presence of a Churchill, a Roosevelt, or a Truman. He knows when he has encountered a politician who lusted after power and public adulation, and he describes the man accordingly. He does not sweep under the rug the crimes committed by the most publicly revered Western political leaders. If they ordered or acceded to the commission of mass murder, he tells us, without mincing words, that they did so. The idea that the United States has invariably played the role of savior or 'good guy' in its international relations Raico recognizes as state propaganda, rather than honest history.

"Thus, in these pages, you will find descriptions and accounts of World War I, of the lead-up to formal U.S. belligerence in World War II, and of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Truman, among others, that bear little resemblance to what you were taught in school. Here you will encounter, perhaps for the first time, compelling evidence of how the British maneuvered U.S. leaders and tricked the American people prior to the U.S. declarations of war in 1917 and 1941. You will read about how the British undertook to starve the Germans — men, women, and children alike — not only during World War I, but for the greater part of a year after the armistice. You will be presented with descriptions of how the communists were deified and the German people demonized by historians and others who ought to have known better. You will see painted in truer shades a portrait of the epic confrontation between the great majority of Americans who wished to keep their country at peace in 1939, 1940, and 1941 and the well-placed, unscrupulous minority who sought to plunge the United States into the European maelstrom.

"Raico’s historical essays are not for the faint of heart or for those whose loyalty to the U.S. or British state outweighs their devotion to truth and humanity. Yet Ralph did not invent the ugly facts he recounts here, as his ample documentation attests. Indeed, many historians have known these facts, but few have been willing to step forward and defy politically popular and professionally fashionable views in the forthright, pull-no-punches way that Raico does. The historians’ principal defect for the most part has not been a failure or refusal to dig out the relevant facts, but rather a tendency to go along to get along in academia and 'respectable' society, a sphere in which individual honesty and courage generally count against a writer or teacher, whereas capitulation to trendy nonsense often brings great rewards and professional acclaim."

The horrors of the twentieth century could hardly have been predicted in the nineteenth century, which saw the eighteenth century end with the American Revolution bringing about the creation of the first classical liberal government in history. The twentieth century was the bloodiest in all history. More than 170 million people were killed by government with 10 million having been killed in World War I and 50 million killed in World War II.

Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom -- Book by John V. Denson (editor)

Everyone seems to agree that brutal dictators and despotic rulers deserve scorn and worse. But why have historians been so willing to overlook the despotic actions of the United States' own presidents? You can scour libraries from one end to the other and encounter precious few criticisms of America's worst despots.

The founders imagined that the president would be a collegial leader with precious little power who constantly faced the threat of impeachment. Today, however, the president orders thousands of young men and women to danger and death in foreign lands, rubber stamps regulations that throw enterprises into upheaval, controls the composition of the powerful Federal Reserve, and manages the priorities of swarms of bureaucrats that vex the citizenry in every way.

It is not too much of a stretch to say that the president embodies the Leviathan state as we know it. Or, more precisely, it is not an individual president so much as the very institution of the presidency that has been the major impediment of liberty. The presidency as the founders imagined it has been displaced by democratically ratified serial despotism. And, for that reason, it must be stopped.

Every American president seems to strive to make the historians' A-list by doing big and dramatic things—wars, occupations, massive programs, tyrannies large and small—in hopes of being considered among the "greats" such as Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR. They always imagine themselves as honored by future generations: the worse their crimes, the more the accolades.

Well, the free ride ends with Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom, edited by John Denson.

This remarkable volume is the first full-scale revision of the official history of the U.S. executive state. It traces the progression of power exercised by American presidents from the early American Republic up to the eventual reality of the power-hungry Caesars which later appear as president in American history. Contributors examine the usual judgments of the historical profession to show the ugly side of supposed presidential greatness.

The mission inherent in this undertaking is to determine how the presidency degenerated into the office of American Caesar. Did the character of the man who held the office corrupt it, or did the power of the office, as it evolved, corrupt the man? Or was it a combination of the two? Was there too much latent power in the original creation of the office as the Anti-Federalists claimed? Or was the power externally created and added to the position by corrupt or misguided men?

Contributors include George Bittlingmayer, John V. Denson, Marshall L. DeRosa, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Lowell Gallaway, Richard M. Gamble, David Gordon, Paul Gottfried, Randall G. Holcombe, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Michael Levin, Yuri N. Maltsev, William Marina, Ralph Raico, Joseph Salerno, Barry Simpson, Joseph Stromberg, H. Arthur Scott Trask, Richard Vedder, and Clyde Wilson.

This book is a critical survey and appraisal of the development of American foreign policy during the Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt and of its results, as they have affected the course of world history, the national interest of the United States, and the welfare of its citizens.

The contributors to this volume represent the outstanding living revisionist historians, social scientists, and publicists who have thus far contributed actively to the furtherance of revisionist studies relative to the second World War. Each is a specialist in the field which he treats in his chapter. An effort has been made to cover adequately all the main aspects of the recent foreign policy of the United States.

Charles Callan Tansill, one of the foremost American diplomatic historians of the twentieth century, argues that FDR wished to involve the United States in the European War that began in September 1939. When he proved unable to do so directly, he determined to provoke Japan into an attack on American territory. Doing so would involve Japan’s Axis allies in war also, and we would thus enter the war through the “back door”. The strategy succeeded, and Tansill maintains that Roosevelt in accord with it welcomed Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The book is based on exhaustive research in the State Department archives.

The People's Pottage - Book by Garet Garrett

A time came when the only people who had ever been free began to ask: "What is freedom?"

Who wrote its articles — the strong or the weak? Was it an absolute good? Could there be such a thing as unconditional freedom, short of anarchy?

Given the answer to be "no," then was freedom an eternal truth or a political formula?

The three essays brought together in this book, entitled respectively, The Revolution Was, Ex America, and Rise of Empire, were first published as separate monographs by The Caxton Printers. They were written in that order, but at different times, as the eventful film unrolled itself. They are mainly descriptive. They purport to tell what it was happened and how it happened, from a point of view in which there is no sickly pretense of neutralism. Why it happened is a further study and belongs to the philosophy of history, if there is such a thing; else to some meaning of experience, dire or saving, that has not yet been revealed.

From the publisher:

Several of the essays gathered together in this volume received worldwide circulation, despite having been published originally in journals of extremely limited circulation. They drew a wide variety of complimentary comments from figures of some importance. Characteristic of the European commentaries was that of Dr. Edmund Marhefka, one of the representatives of Germany at the Versailles Treaty proceedings following World War One. "The intrinsic and formidable style of Prof. James J. Martin interested me very much," he reported to one correspondent. Confessing to be "fascinated by the sagacity and striking way of expression" employed, Dr. Marhefka remarked, "He has got the way to talk to statesmen and politicians of nowaday's sort."

Though these essays are historical in nature, they concern matters of importance to the contemporary scene, and involve unresolved matters growing out of the great world conflict of 1939-1945, issues so complicated that they have not lent themselves to any substantial settlement and furthermore have tended to reappear in the new wars of the last quarter of a century. Contemporary concern over such matters as conscription, the morality of strategic bombing, the concept of "war crimes," the interlocking relationships between politics, industry, finance and the military, the resurgence of talk about "Fascism," the economics of war and the origins and consequences of the Cold War, as well as the significance of Revisionism as a school of historical interpretation, are all to be found under consideration here. The emphasis is upon the continuity of such phenomena since at least the preliminaries of World War Two, as a corrective to contemporary tendencies to find the modern versions of these subjects peculiar to the last few years.

It was in 1955 that Dr. Louis Morton, then Chief of the Pacific Section of the United States Army Office of Military History, declared insofar as it concerned the Second World War, that "Revisionism reached the status of a mature historical interpretation of events that no serious student of prewar policy could ignore," as far back as 1948. A formidable library of works has accumulated since that time which has made Revisionism's point so emphatically that one finds more and more of this view gaining ground even in official and essentially defensive narratives. This volume is another contribution in the Revisionist tradition, more oriented toward the subject of opinion and opinion-making rather than exploration of diplomatic papers, concerned with where populaces get their ideas, how such matters go into the fabrication of popular support for war and the policies which eventuate in wartime, and which often continue in force long after formal hostilities have ended.

This animated jumbo of a book, which is alive with the savor and color of a long departed time when half-forgotten figures like Oswald Garrison Villard and Raymond Gram Swing were setting our intellectual attitudes, provides fascinating chart readings on the drift of liberal opinion from peace to war between 1931 and 1941. The resulting verdict on liberalism, modern American style, is melancholy any way you take it. Either the liberals were wrong at the beginning of the decade of the 'Thirties, or they were wrong at the end—which says little for the quality of their claim to intellectual leadership of the community. The record is either one of premises falsely checked or axioms mistakenly abandoned.

From the foreword by John Chamberlain:

This animated jumbo of a book, which is alive with the savor and color of a long departed time when half-forgotten figures like Oswald Garrison Villard and Raymond Gram Swing were setting our intellectual attitudes, provides fascinating chart readings on the drift of liberal opinion from peace to war between 1931 and 1941. The resulting verdict on liberalism, modern American style, is melancholy any way you take it. Either the liberals were wrong at the beginning of the decade of the 'Thirties, or they were wrong at the end—which says little for the quality of their claim to intellectual leadership of the community. The record is either one of premises falsely checked or axioms mistakenly abandoned.

Modernity Without Restraint: The Political Religions, The New Science of Politics, and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism -- Books by Eric Voegelin

Eric Voegelin was one of our most distinguished political philosophers. This marvelous collection provides the best introduction to the study of gnostic political religions, especially as it applied to National Socialism and Communism.

Acclaimed historian Thomas Fleming brings to life the flawed and troubled FDR who struggled to manage WWII. Starting with the leak to the press of Roosevelt's famous Rainbow Plan, then spiraling back to FDR's inept prewar diplomacy with Japan, and his various attempts to lure Japan into an attack on the U.S. Fleet in the Pacific, Fleming takes the reader inside the incredibly fractious struggles and debates that went on in Washington, the nation, and the world as the New Dealers, led by FDR, strove to impose their will on the conduct of the War. Unlike the familiar yet idealized FDR of Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time, the reader encounters a Roosevelt in remorseless decline, battered by ideological forces and primitive hatreds which he could not handle-and frequently failed to understand-some of them leading to unimaginable catastrophe.

From influential British historian A.J.P. Taylor, a reprint of his influential text The Origins of the Second World War. Controversial for his thesis that Hitler was an opportunist with no thorough plan, The Origins of the Second World War is an extensive exploration of the international politics and foreign policy that lead up to the one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 20th century.

Published in 1961, The Origins of the Second World War is a classic of modern history. A.J.P. Taylor's years of research helped change the long-accepted view that Adolf Hitler had wanted and planned in detail for a war. With clear and relatable prose, Taylor articularly depicts the diplomatic mistakes from both the Allied and Axis powers that lead to the outbreak of World War II. A groundbreaking work, The Origins of the Second World War "is an almost faultless masterpiece, perfectly proportioned, perfectly controlled" (The Observer).

Blasting the Historical Blackout: A Review of A. J. P. Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War, by Harry Elmer Barnes

This is Harry Elmer Barnes' amazing booklet with the full title Blasting the Historical Blackout - A.J.P. Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War - Its Nature,Reliability, Shortcomings and Implications (1962) which analyses the breakthrough for revisionist history marked by A.J.P. Taylor's book The Origins of World War II.

Barnes, who was one of America's leading revisionist historians, describes historical blackout as an effort which has been made since the outbreak of the second World War to suppress the truth relative to the responsibility for this great conflict and the manner in which the United States entered the war. This has involved ignoring or suppressing the facts which run counter to wartime propaganda when writing books on these subjects and suppressing, ignoring or seeking to discredit those books which have taken account of such facts.

After the first World War the defeated countries, such as Germany, Hungary and Austria presented such facts as they could bring forth to justify their case and demonstrate their innocence of sole or primary responsibility for the outbreak of war in August, 1914. This has not been the case since 1945. In neither Germany nor Italy has there been much activity in producing historical literature designed to present the case of these countries with respect to the events of 1939, and what is known as Revisionism - the effort to get at the truth on the second World War - has been sporadic and fragmentary in Japan. West Germany and Italy have almost outdone the victors in castigating their leaders of 1939 days and their alleged guilt and the East Germans have been additionally throttled by the intensely Germanophobe and anti-Hitler attitude of Soviet Russia.

A whole generation has grown up which knows little or nothing beyond President Roosevelt's "Day of Infamy" subterfuge and deception. No book has yet been published in the United States which is devoted primarily to telling the truth about the causes of the second World War, whereas American historians had fully and definitively covered the causes of war in 1914 within ten years after the Armistice of 1918. But in no country has the historical blackout been more intense and effective than in Great Britain. Virtually nothing has been written to reveal the truth about the British responsibility for the second World War or its disastrous results.

Until the appearance of professor Taylor's book in 1961, the only work which had been published in England that dealt specifically with the origins of the second World War was the Diplomatic Prelude by Sir Lewis B. Namier. His book on 1939, written in 1946, was vehemently pro-Polish and anti-German, and the author admitted that it was based chiefly on the severely censored wartime documents and the perhaps even more unreliable material presented as evidence in the Nuremberg Trials.

Taylor was a renowned English historian of the 20th century and certainly one of the most controversial of its time as he sought the story behind the black and white picture that was offered as explanation of causes of war by cleverly made war propaganda that eventually became the official history of the whole period. Those who maintain the historical blackout have been able to keep most of the vital information from the public and out of the historical books which are used in the schools and colleges.

An awareness of real history provides understanding about the great issues of the present and the future. Blasting the Historical Blackout is all the more relevant in these troubled times as the political-economic order imposed by the victorious powers of the Second World War breaks apart - and along with it a distorted and one-sided historical perspective. 45 pages. A must read for everyone.

Review of The Origins of the Second World War, by Murray N. Rothbard

[From a memo to Mr. Kenneth Templeton at the William Volker Fund, April 18, 1962.]

It is not often that one is privileged to review a book of monumental import, a truly significant “breakthrough” from obscuran­tism to historical knowledge and insight. But such a book is the magnificent work by A.J .P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1961 — now New York: Athenaeum, 1962). As Taylor points out and explains at the beginn­ing of this book, Revisionism of World War II, in every country of the world, has been virtually non-existent. In the United States, Pearl Harbor revisionism has progressed a long way and built up a successful body of historical literature, so that its opponents have had to beat one retreat after another. But, in vivid contrast to the situation after World War I, the origins of the ”1939 war in Europe have been a locked door,” and the historical profession, as well as all the general public and official opinion, in all the countries involved, have clung grimly and tenaciously to almost the same views that were held at the height of the­ conflict itself. While there has been a substantial shift in the wartime view that all Germany is and was forever guilty of war there has been no shift in the wartime view of Hitler and his Administration, and of the supposedly sole guilt which they incurred. The extent of the stifling atmosphere is indicated by the automatic disreputability, the shock, and shame, which any deviation from this propaganda line incurs if expressed verbally or in print. Any raising of the semblance of a doubt over the official line that (a) Hitler was bent on conquering the world, and (b) the only way to meet the situation was to take a “firm” line and stop him, is to incur the automatic charge of being “pro-Hitler” or “pro-Nazi.” In the same way, the “historical blackout” operates today in the Cold War; any intimation that the Soviet is not solely responsible for the Cold War is met with the charge of being “pro-Communist” or “soft on Communism.” All this is immeasurably aided by the old propaganda trick of identifying a State’s domestic with its foreign policy; paint a government’s domestic policy as wicked enough (e.g., Hitler, Communism), and the ignorant and the superficial will automatically agree that this wicked government must be guilty, and uniquely guilty, of any wars or threats of war that might arise, and that conversely, the “good” United States (or Britain or France) will be uniquely innocent and virtuous. In the United States, even Pearl Harbor revisionism could only fight its way against heavy and oppressive odds, and its champions could be written off by the Establishment as either “mere journalists” (Morgenstern, Chamberlin) or as former isolationists and opponents of U.S. entry into the war (Barnes, Tansill, et al.) — although this was hardly a disqualification for the most enthusiastic praise lavished on such renegade ex-isolationists as Langer, Commager, et al. And, Pearl Harbor revisionism has faced no difficulties compared to revisionism on Hitler and Germany — for the wartime emotionalism whipped up here and abroad against Japan was nothing compared to the frenzy whipped up against Germany and against Hitler. Here the blackout war-born propaganda frenzy has been virtually total.

Into this miasma has stepped, almost like a miraculous deus ex machina, the widely-renowned Oxford professor, A.J.P. Taylor. The shock here is particularly notable and remarkable because Taylor has been distinctive, even among his fellow Establishment historians, for the venom and sweep of his Germanophobia, which he had applied to virtually every European war in addition to World War II. And now, after being widely heralded by the “blackout boys” as a great historian, Prof. Taylor has not only radically changed his mind but changed it to publish the first real revisionist work on 1939. The personal attacks on Taylor have been predictably numerous, vicious, and virulent. But the important thing is that Taylor was too prominent to ignore, and therefore his book is being, and will be, read, and marks the first great revisionist breakthrough on 1939. It is an inspiring lesson, this story, for it shows that regardless of how virulent and determined the suppression of truth, the truth will out, that from somewhere courageous and independent-minded intellectuals and scholars will seize upon it and publish it to the world. And it will be heard. Why the shift in Taylor’s entire orientation and approach to Germany? Perfervid personal smears have abounded (e.g., by Trevor-Roper and by Rowse), and it has been suggested that this is all angame, pour epater le bourgeois. None of this is worthy of comment. But one review that might be noted, and one of the most vicious, was by Prof. Stephen Tonsor in National Review. Tonsor, hardly mentioning the contents, hysterically charged that this was all a “presentist” tract, not about Hitler at all, but in the interests of “appeasing” Soviet Russia. But if this had been the reason for Taylor’s shift, then he would have shifted long ago, at the beginning of the Cold War. Any yet, as recently as 1958, Prof. Taylor, in his book The Troublemakers: Dissent Over Foreign Policy, 1792–1939 (Indiana University Press, 1958), while praising all the pro-peace dissenters from foreign policy in modern British history, praised the pro-war dissenters from the appeasement policy of the late 1930s. As late as 1958, then, Taylor clung as tenaciously as before to his Germanophobic line (the book incidentally is dedicated to the eminent Germanophobe, Alan Bullock). “Presentist” policy toward Russia, then, could hardly have been the motive. No, there is only one explanation. A.J.P. Taylor began to investigate the documents, and as he did so, he began to realize the truth. The power of the truth, and his courageous recognition of the truth swept away all of his own biases and preconceptions, and he next took the enormously courageous step to dare to publish these highly important findings to the world. Already, despite the volley of smears, Taylor has made a considerable impact; the distinguished and highly respectable History Book Club has picked the Taylor book as one of its books of the month, and in the History Book Club News the Taylor book received an amazingly favorable review from none other than Walter Millis, formerly one of the leaders of the “blackout brigade” (Millis did not grasp the full implications of the Taylor findings, but this is certainly an excellent beginning).

The central theme of Taylor is simply this: Germany and Hitler were not uniquely guilty of launching World War II (indeed they were scarcely guilty at all); Hitler was not bent on world conquest, for which he had armed Germany to the teeth and constructed a “timetable.” Hitler, in brief, (in foreign affairs) was not a uniquely evil monster or daimon, who would continue to gobble up countries diabolically until stopped by superior force. Hitler was a rational German statesman, pursuing — with considerable intuitive insight — a traditional, post-Versailles German policy (to which we might add intimations of desires to expand eastward in an attack on Bolshevism). But basically, Hitler has no “master plan”; he was a German intent, like all Germans, on revising the intolerable and stupid Versailles-diktat, and on doing so by peaceful means, and in collaboration with the British and French. One thing is sure: Hitler had no designs, no plans, not even vague intimations, to expand westward against Britain and France (let alone the United States). Hitler admired the British Empire and wished to collaborate with it. Not only did Hitler do this with insight, he did it with patience, as Taylor excellently shows; the legend (that perhaps all of us have accepted in one degree or another), is that Hitler annoyingly created one European crisis after another, in the late 1930s, proceeding hungrily onward from one victory to another; actually, the crises naturally arose, were developed from external conditions (largely from the breakup of the inherently unstable conditions imposed by the Versailles-diktat), and by others, and which Hitler patiently awaited the outcome to use to his and Germany’s advantage.

The European tragedy was that it was generally admitted, by most of the British, by the French (when their grandeur was not involved), and by world opinion, that the Germans were morally right, that the Versailles settlements deserved to be radically revised (e.g., the truncation, and then the prohibited Anschluss, of Austria; the geographical abortion under Czech despotism that called itself the “democracy of Czechoslovakia”; Polish tyranny over the Germans in the Corridor and Danzig, to say nothing of Upper Silesia, etc.). Being morally and generally realized as such, the Versailles settlement was also foredoomed to failure, as the suffering peoples continually would clamor for redress. Taylor points out that it was the great merit of the unsung Ramsay MacDonald to have realized this and to have set the “appeasement” line for Britain until 1939. It was the tragedy of Europe that once this was recognized as the right policy (the rational policy at once the most moral and the most expedient) what it was not pursued as rapidly and as determinedly as possible. Britain dawdled; and not all the British statesmen had the insight to approve “appeasement” as manifested by MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, or Sir John Simon. Locarno, the grudging end of reparations, etc., were steps taken dawdlingly, haltingly, and slowing. If appeasement had been pursued steadfastly by late 1920 perhaps Hitler would never have come to power at all. So the tragedy of Europe was, therefore, this: that Britain (the leader of the Anglo-French coalition) understood that appeasement was the only rational policy, but, being the country “on top,” a victor at Versailles over a vanquished Germany, inexcusably dawdled and delayed in putting this into execution. As a result, Hitler was forced to bluster and threaten, or to appear to do so, in order to win concessions which Britain should have granted a decade earlier. As a result, as each “crisis” developed in the late 1930s, it seemed — even to Chamberlain and the British — that Hitler was exacting, by vicious threats, and a step at a time, concessions from a grudging, frightened Britain and France. Hitler was put in the wrong in the eyes of Europe and the world, when he was eminently in the right, and all because the British refused to pursue its goal of rational appeasement quickly and single-mindedly

Taylor’s history of the various crises is fascinating; for one thing, it shows that, because of this dawdling, Hitler’s policy, actually prudent, moderate, and passive (and even pacifistic) was also made to look warlike and belligerent by the almost totally irrational and sudden decisions of the nations concerned (the Austrians, the Czechs, and Poles) to be tough, to take a “firm line” against the so-called “aggressor.” Time and time again, these countries were almost completely ruined by their own irrational “toughness” and their decisions to “stand firm.” In my review of the important Jakobson work on the Russo-Finnish War (Rothbard to Resch, March 21, 1962) I indicated that Finland almost destroyed itself by its irrationally “tough” policy against the moderate and reasonable demands of Soviet Russia (and was later saved by the courageous “appeasing” acts of President Paasikivi, author of the highly successful “Paasikivi Line” for peace and peaceful coexistence). A similar occurred with Hitler.

Let us first take “heroic little Austria,” whose Chancellor Schuschnigg was supposed to have been “bullied” into submission by Hitler, and where Hitler’s troops “invaded” the country. Austria was perhaps the most conspicuous sufferer from World War I and Versailles. Stripped of most of its territory, it found itself in a world of fluctuating currencies and tariffs and exchange controls, hardly a viable economic entity. For the first time reduced to being solely German, and it is eminently understandable that a strong movement for Anschluss with Germany should have developed. But conditions in Austria were troublesome, because Austria, in the 1930s, was run by a fascist dictatorship headed by Dollfuss and then Schuschnigg; the Austrian Nazis, who favored Anschluss, were forced into attempting revolts since the democratic route to power was precluded. Taylor points out, incidentally, a very important fact: that the Nazis in Austria, Sudetenland, Danzig, etc., were not, as has always been considered, mere “puppets” of Hitler, subject to his orders. (The same mistake has been made about domestic Communist parties subject to “orders from Moscow”; in the case of the Nazis, the mistake was even greater. These were ideological movements, which of course admired and were even influenced by Hitler, but could not be “controlled” by him. Indeed, most of the time Hitler was engaged in trying — often unsuccessfully — to restrain these indigenous Nazi movements from revolting, creating trouble, etc., so far from being mere puppet creations of Hitler were they.

To return, the indigenous Nazis had unsuccessfully revolted in 1934 and were generally restive. Schuschnigg, then, was happy to conclude a Gentleman’s Agreement with Germany, in July 1936, in which he acknowledged that Austria was a “German State,” and agreed to admit Nazis as members of his government. In return, Hitler acknowledged Austrian “sovereignty,” and contentedly believed that Austria was now a kind of subordinate state to Germany and that the Austrian Nazis would gradually, and peacefully, gain control of Austria. This, indeed, was the rational thing to expect from such an agreement. No coercive Anschluss or dramatic marching of German troops was contemplated.

The fool Schuschnigg, however, saw things differently; making the typical mistake that the Austrian Nazis were basically Hitler’s puppets, he assumed that his peaceful settlement with Germany, and his inclusion of Nazis in the cabinet, would mean an end to any further domestic agitation by the Austrian Nazis. Now this, as I’ve said, was totally unrealistic; an ideological movement cannot be “called off” from afar, and Taylor shows that the extreme Austrian Nazis defied Hitler’s suggestions to tone down their propaganda. And Schuschnigg assumed unrealistically that, when Austrian Nazi agitation had been publicized, Hitler would “call them off” and repudiate them (since Schuschnigg saw the continued agitation as a betrayal of the Gentleman’s Agreement). Taylor demonstrates that, contrary to general opinion, it was Schuschnigg who insisted on presenting his demands to Hitler and who wangled an invitation to see Hitler at Berchtesgaden; Hitler, understandably impatient with the whole affair, thus being pressed on him, insisted that Schuschnigg make the German nationalist Seyss-Inquart Minister of Interior, and agree to coordinate its economic and foreign policy with that of Germany, in return for which, Hitler would agree to repudiation of the Austrian Nazis. Schuschnigg agreed to this voluntarily; this was simply a further evolutionary step, from the Gentleman’s Agreement; Austria would become, in effect, a satellite of Germany, in return for which Schuschnigg would be spared revolutionary agitation by the Austrian Nazis. Hitler carried out his part of the bargain by bawling out the Austrian Nazis and insisting on the evolutionary, not revolutionary course.

Everything was now presumably nicely settled; in a peaceful and evolutionary manner, agreed upon by Hitler, Schuschnigg, and the more moderate, evolutionary Austrian Nazis. What happened? Schuschnigg, in effect, repudiated the voluntary Berchtesgaden Agreement of February 12, 1938. Suddenly, after two years of rational appeasement, he decided on a “tough” line; he decided to hurl a challenge to Hitler by dramatically announcing an Austrian plebiscite on Austrian independence, to be held almost immediately. Everyone recognized this as a challenge hurled at Hitler. Hitler saw no alternative to meet this with military action against Austria. When Schuschnigg finally agreed to postpone the plebiscite, after seeing that other countries would not come leaping to his rescue, Hitler now had, understandably, decided that Schuschnigg could not be trusted and that Seyss-Inquart should replace him. Schuschnigg wisely agreed and resigned, but then, another burst of irrational “toughness” occurred, and President Miklas of Austria refused to appoint Seyss-Inquart; finally Hitler marched in. He had not planned to march in; he had not wanted to march in. And even when he marched in, he only planned to insure Seyss-Inquart’s appointment and then withdraw. But the great excitement of the enthused Austrian crowds spurred Hitler on, to announce a total Anschluss, an act approved by the overwhelming majority of the Austrian people.

To understand the Czech crisis, it must be understood that Czechoslovakia was the most grotesque of all the abortive creations of the Versailles system. The Czechs, led by the idolized Masaryk, had managed to swindle Wilson into believing that the Czechs and Slovaks were one and the same; and then, of course, Bohemia must have its “natural frontiers,” thus dragging the Bohemian Germans into “Czechoslovakia,” a land of Czech minority despotism over the Slovaks, the Germans, the Ukrainians, et al. The Germans were particularly unhappy at being plunged from co-partners in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to sufferers under the Czechs. The Anschluss electrified them, and the Czech crisis was on. Actually, the very existence of “Czechoslovakia” virtually cried out for dismemberment, and yet Benes resolved to take a very “tough” line, to stand firm against Hitler’s “bluffs” and make him back down by inducing France and Great Britain to come to Benes‘ aid. Benes deliberately provoked the Sudeten Germans into demanding a transfer to Germany and not just autonomy, in order to drive the French and British to his side. Unfortunately, again, the British and French dragged their heels on appeasement; the French were still bemused by their irrational system of alliances with East European countries whom they could not physically support. Once again, the delay was so long that it looked as if the British were giving in to German pressure — whereas the British had been most eager for a rational settlement — and Chamberlain allowed himself to be dragooned into guaranteeing the rest of the Czech frontiers.

Munich, as Taylor courageously and perceptively declares, “was a triumph for all that was best and most enlightened in British life; a triumph for those who had preached equal justice between peoples; a triumph for those who had courageously denounced the harshness and short-sightedness of Versailles.” Yes, but there was one crucial thing wrong with Munich, as Taylor indicates: not that this was appeasement, but that appeasement had not been pursued quickly, eagerly, and thoroughly enough. Always there was the impression given by the West that the concessions were made out of fear of Hitler rather than for desire for justice; always there was only piecemeal rather than thoroughgoing solutions, so that the canker of unresolved problems still remained in central Europe. It should have been clear to any knowledgeable person that, once the Sudeten Germans had been reunited with their German brethren that Czechoslovakia was finished; the British-French guarantee of the rest of Czechoslovakia was the sheerest folly. Benes saw this, and skipped the country, from then on to proclaim against “appeasement” from a safe sanctuary. The Poles moved in on Tesin; the Hungarians, bitterly smarting from the Versailles-like Treaty of Trianon, moved in. Finally, the Slovaks, taking their cue, declared their much yearned-for independence. The Czechs, turning tough yet once more, prepared to march on Slovakia, whereupon Hitler recognized Slovak independence, to save Slovakia from the Czechs and Hungarians. The Czechs were now left with their own true section of Bohemia; surrounded by enemies, and faced with a Hungarian threat, Hacha, president of the Czechs, again voluntarily sought an audience with Hitler, and requested Hitler to adopt Bohemia as a protectorate. And yet, the world again saw this as a “betrayal” of Munich, German ruthless invasion of a noble, small country, etc. Again, Hitler had not bargained for open invasion, but only for slow, evolutionary disintegration of Czechoslovakia; events again presented him with (overly) dramatic gains.

If Benes was a fool for expecting Britain and France to defend the Czechs to the last when it was not even geographically possible, the same was all the more true of Poland’s Josef Beck. Poland was another grotesque — or rather swollen — creature of Versailles. For centuries, Poland had been caught between the millstones of the two great powers in central Europe, Germany, and Russia (also Austria-Hungary, which had now been “murdered” at Versailles). It should have been clear to any Pole that Poland could prosper, in fact, could exist as an independent country, only in alliance with either Germany, Russia, or both. Any other course would be fatal. But World War I had a very peculiar result, as Taylor perceptively points out at the beginning of his book; both Germany and Russia were defeated in Eastern Europe; Russia by Germany, and then by the fact that Communist Revolution lost Russia the gains it would have reaped from allied victory. With both Great Powers temporarily knocked out, room arose for a myriad of independent countries in Eastern Europe; this was artificial and only temporary room, but few realized this crucial fact. Poland was not only independent, it acquired enough territory to tyrannize over a large number of Germans (in the Corridor, Upper Silesia, and Danzig) and Ukrainians, and White Russians. Poland in alliance with either Germany or Russia might have held to its ill-deserved gains; Poland alone was doomed. And yet, Beck, though initially allied with Germany, elected to stand alone, a Great Power, triumphantly defiant of both Germany and Russia, taking a resolutely “tough,” firm line against anybody and everybody. And as a direct result, Poland was destroyed. Hitler’s “demands” on the Poles were almost non-existent; as Taylor points out, the Weimar Republic would have scorned the terms as a sell-out of vital German interests. Hitler at most wanted a “corridor through the Corridor” and the return of heavily-German (and pro-German) Danzig; in return for which he would guarantee the rest. Poland resolutely refused to yield “one inch of Polish soil,” and refused even to negotiate with the Germans, and this down to the last minute. And yet, even with the Anglo-French guarantee, Beck clearly knew that Britain and France could not actually save Poland from attack. He relied to the end on those great shibboleths of all “hard-liners” everywhere: X is “bluffing”; X will back down if met by toughness, resolution, and the resolve not to give an inch. (Just as in the case of Finland, and other “crackpot realists,” when the “X is bluffing” line of the hard-liners is shown to be sheer absurdity, and X has already attacked, the “hard-liner” turns, self-contradictorily, to the dictum that not “one inch of sacred soil” will be given up, no peace while the enemy is on our soil, etc., which completes the ruin of the country by its “hard-line” rulers. This is what Beck did to Poland.) As Taylor shows, Hitler had originally not the slightest intention to invade or conquer Poland; instead, Danzig and other minor rectifications would be gotten out of the way, and then Poland would be a comfortable ally, perhaps for an eventual invasion of Soviet Russia. But Beck’s irrational toughness blocked the path.

The real mystery of the book is Great Britain; from being the leader, if dawdlingly, of appeasement at Munich, Britain suddenly turned in early 1939, to the adoption of a “tough,” collective security, “hard line against aggression.” Britain guaranteed to Poland, a guarantee which of course could not be honored, failed to induce Poland yield to rational demands as it had prodded Czechoslovakia. Inducing Poland to yield would have been the rational conclusion to the English policy of appeasement; this would have written finis — at last — to Versailles. Instead, Britain suddenly became anti-“aggression” minded, and almost frantically tried to prop up the Poles. The question is, why? and here is the major spot in the book where Taylor’s discussion is weak and unsatisfactory. For Taylor asserts that British policy had not really changed to much, that Britain was mistakenly of the belief until the very last that Hitler would yield to the threats of a “hard line” and then negotiate, accept reasonable changes at Danzig, etc. Britain, says Taylor, wanted Hitler to agree to be “peaceful” after that. But this was the last place where revision was required! No, it seems clear that Britain’s frantic and radical about-face was not simply a bumbling, well-intentioned mistake; it seems clear, even from Taylor’s account, that Britain deliberately shifted its policy to a war, and that it was frantic in settling on Poland because Poland was the last place where Britain could precipitate a war, while making Hitler look like a monstrous defiler of small countries.

It was clear that if Poland was to actually be aided by Britain and France, it could only be done, geographically, through Russia. And so the wooing of Soviet Russia began, and Russia was brought back — by the British and French — for the first time since World War I, into the thick of European politics. (The previous Franco-Soviet treaty had done so to some extent.) Taylor wryly points out that anti-Hitler historians had always denounced Hitler for making the Hitler-Stalin pact as a prelude to launching his war of conquest; and that now to that has been added the denunciations by Western Cold War propagandists to denounce Russia for doing the same. Actually, it is absurd propaganda to denounce Russia, as is always done, for not concluding a pact with Britain and France, and concluding one with Germany instead. Taylor is excellent in his discussion of the Pact and its antecedents. Britain and France wanted Russia to agree to come leaping to the aid of either Poland or Rumania if either were attacked by Germany and if they requested it. In return for this surrender of its freedom of action, Russia was to get … precisely nothing. The clue to all of Soviet Russia’s foreign policy, as Taylor states, was fear; fear of attack by the West, fear of a repetition of the “international capitalist” invasion of Russia during its Civil War, which almost succeeded in destroying the Communist regime, fear of the ideological anti-Bolshevism of Hitler and of his allies in the “anti-Comintern” pact, fear of Japan which was already aggressing against it in Siberia. Soviet Russia’s foreign policy was defensive, fearful, and security-minded (far more defensive, it should be added, than the traditional policy of the Czar). Fearful of Hitler, and understandably so, Russia was eager to join an anti-Hitler alliance, but only if it was a firm one; its greatest fear was joining such an alliance and then — like Benes — to be left holding the bag by Britain and France. Russia wanted two things: the ability, in the case of a German war, to have its armies cross Poland to thrust at Germany, regardless of whether Poland agreed or not; and the ability to intervene against any pro-German regimes or bases that might be established in the Baltic states. In both cases, Britain, trumpeting the rights or small nations, refused to agree to any such free hand by Russia; and, in the case Poland, Poland flatly refused to have anything to do with Russian troops and a Russian guarantee. Poland would go it alone. In view of this, there was never any hope of a British-Russian alliance, and Taylor indicates that the British were always half-hearted in an attempt for alliance anyway.

Hitler had expected Beck to cave in likes Benes; but this time things were different. (We must remember that the Polish Army was greatly inferior to the Czech Army of 1938). Hitler then set out to conclude his own pact with Soviet Russia; if Russian neutrality were secured, he reasoned, surely Britain would give up any Polish guarantee — which would now be insanity — and Britain and Beck would listen to reason. Hitler offered Russia a non-aggression pact, with the added sweetener that, whatever happened, Germany would not advance beyond the Curzon line in Poland or in the Baltic states; at last, Russia had achieved the recognition which it could not get from the West — wedded to its small-power legalism — a Soviet Monroe Doctrine, a sphere of influence, in its security zone of Eastern Poland and the Baltic states. We should also not forget that Russia was left, like Germany, a “revisionist” power from World War I; this recognition of its sphere of influence was Russia’s revision of Brest-Litovsk. And, as Taylor points out, the Hitler-Stalin pact was not an agreement for partition of Poland, as Munich was an agreement for partition of Czechoslovakia; it was rather a mutual agreement for neutrality and non-aggression, plus a German agreement not to penetrate to the Soviet sphere of influence. Poland had no legitimate complaint since all it wanted from Soviet Russia was neutrality.

The Establishment historians have had a field day with the Hitler-Stalin Pact since here was an act by both of their bogeymen. Any action mutually agreed-upon by these two dictators is supposed to be a priori monstrous. And so the Pact was supposed to have been the wicked spark that began World War II and dismembered Poland. But, as Taylor shows, both Germany and Russia thought of this as an action for peace, as it rationally should have been. The danger of a German-Russian conflict was avoided; and, both Hitler and Stalin believed, that with all hope of Russian support of Poland gone Britain and France would finally induce Poland to soften up and peace would be preserved. As Taylor states moreover, “it is difficult to see what other course Soviet Russia could have followed,” given British adamance. We might go even further; in my view, the Hitler-Stalin Pact was one of the great deeds of European statesmanship — on both sides — in the twentieth century. It continued in the great tradition of Rapallo. The geographic facts are that peace can only be preserved in Eastern Europe if Germany and Russia are at peace, and therefore only a German-Russian policy of friendship or even alliance will keep the peace in that troubled section of the globe.

Certainly, if the British, French, or Poles had been in the slightest degree rational, the Hitler-Stalin Pact should have done precisely that, and the British should have thrown in the “tough” line towel. Instead, the British and Poles got even tougher if anything, and apparently British public opinion now reveled in an irrational orgy of warmongering for the sale of collective security, “democracy” for small nations and whatnot. Here again, Taylor is rather too kind to British willingness to negotiate. The fact is that Hitler, beginning to be taken aback by his opponents’ irrationality, began to urge negotiations, but the Poles remained adamant to the very end. But to me the clearest proof of British bad faith in the matter is that even after Hitler proved that he was serious and not “bluffing” by invading Poland, even then the British and the Poles would not negotiate; now, as we said above, the same “crackpot realists” who had ruined everything by proclaiming that the enemy was “bluffing” and would back down before toughness, were now demanding that no negotiations could possibly begin until the German troops had withdrawn from sacred Polish soil. And so Poland disappeared, and World War II began. Granted the imbecility of the policies of Benes and Beck; but the British, on Taylor’s own account, bear more responsibility for the outbreak of that tragic war than he is willing to concede. Surely more than incompetence was here involved.

There are two further, amplifying general observations of importance which I am moved to by this scintillating book. One is the perniciousness of the typical “hard line” mythology, a mythology that has been especially beloved in the United States and Great Britain. It is a mythology that has consistently failed and consistently plunged these “great democracies” into one war after another. This is the mythology of conceiving the enemy as, not only a “bad” guy; but a bad guy cast in the mold of Fu Manchu or someone from Mars. The bad guy is out, for some obscure reason, to conquer the world, or at the very least, to conquer as much as he can keep conquering. This is his only goal. He can be stopped only by force majeure, i.e., by “standing firm” on a “tough line.” In short, while irredeemably evil, the Bad Guy is a craven at heart; and if the noble Good Guy only stands his ground, the Bad Guy, like any bully, will turn tail. Rather than Fu Manchu, then, the Enemy is a Fu Manchu at heart but with all the other characteristics of the Corner Bully, or of a movie Western. “We” are the Good Guys, interested only in justice and self-defense who need only stand our ground to face down the wicked but cravenly bluffing Bad Guys. This is the almost idiotic Morality Play in which Americans and Britons have cast international relations for half a century now, and that is why we are in the mess we are today. Nowhere in this Copybook nonsense is it every conceived that (a) the Bad Guy might be afraid of our attacking him (But Good Guys never attack, by definition!); or (b) that the Bad Guy might, in his foreign policy demands, have a pretty good and just case after all — or at least, that he believes his case to be good and just; or (c) that, faced with the defiance, the Bad Guy might consider it loss of self-respect if he backed down — and so two war. Let us all give up this childlike game of international relations, and begin to consider a policy of rationality, peace, and honest negotiation.

The second general observation is that Eastern Europe seems to have been the cockpit — and in tragic folly — of every major war of the twentieth century: World Wars I and II, and the Cold War. Eastern Europe, as I have indicated above, is a land of many teeming nationalities, almost all small and divided. The reality of Eastern Europe is that it is always fated to be dominated by either Germany or Russia, or both. If East European politicians are to be rational, they must realize this and understand their fated subservience to one or both of these two Power; and, if there is to be peace in Eastern Europe, both Germany and Russia must be friends.

Now don’t misunderstand me; I have not abandoned moral principle for cynicism. My heart yearns for ethnic justice, for national self-determination for all people, not only in Eastern Europe but all over the world. I am a non-Ukrainian who would like nothing better than to see a majestic independent ethnic Ukraine, or of Byelorussia; I would to see and independent Slovakia, or a just settlement, at long last, of the knotty Transylvanian question. I still worry over whether Macedonia should properly be independent, or should be united to their presumably ethnic brothers in Bulgaria. But, to paraphrase Sydney Smith’s famous letter to Lady Grey, please let them work this out for themselves! Let us abandon the criminal immorality and folly of continual coercive meddling by non-East European powers (e.g., Britain, France, and now the U.S.) in the affairs of East Europe. Let us hope that one day Germany and Russia, at peach, will willingly grant justice to the people of East Europe, but let us not bring about perpetual wars to try to achieve this artificially.

I cannot refrain from quoting Smith’s famous passage, so a propos is it:

I am sorry for the Spaniards — I am sorry for the Greeks; I deplore the fate of the Jews; the people of the Sandwich Islands are groaning under the most detestable tyranny; Baghdad is oppressed; I do not like the present state of the Delta; Tibet is not comfortable. Am I to fight for all these people? The world is bursting with sin and sorrow. Am I to be a champion of the Decalogue, and to be eternally raising fleets and armies to make all men good and happy? We have just done saving Europe, and I am afraid that the consequence will be, that we shall cut each other’s throats. No war, dear Lady Grey! — No eloquence; but apathy, selfishness, common sense, arithmetic! … “May the vengeance of Heaven” overtake the Legitimates of Verona! But in the present state of rent and taxes, they must be left to the vengeance of Heaven. … There is no such thing as a “just war,” or, at least, as a wise war.

To return to Eastern Europe, we heard little of the various nationalities before 1914, for the region was dominated by Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. World War I was caused, primarily, by Czarist Russian expansionist ambitions in East Europe, particularly in the Balkans, and its egging on of one of the few independent nationalities, Serbia. Germany and Austria-Hungary opposed the Russian move for expansion; Britain, France, and eventually the U.S. naturally insisted on entering the war — why? to promote that expansion?! As I said above, World War I ended in a very “fluke” manner, because of the Communist Revolution; but let us never forget that, if the U.S. and its heroic ally Czarist Russia had won the war — if there had been any Communist Revolution — Czarist Russia would have, as confirmed by allied secret treaties — dominated all of Easter Europe, and taken Constantinople as well. The cant and moralizing of our present Cold Warriors against Soviet “domination” of Eastern Europe appears pretty ludicrous in view of this fact; actually, the Communist Revolution prevented Russian domination of “satellites” in East Europe for a generation, and even then this was only a result of Hitler’s attack on Russia. (Indeed, Finland was apparently permanently freed from Russian control by the Communist Revolution.) And yet, Americans would have consented to Czarist puppet states in Eastern Europe as long ago as 1918.

Thus, World War I was essentially a clash between Germany and Austria vs. Russia over who would dominate Eastern Europe, with Britain, France, and U.S. meddling into the fray. The peculiar defeat of both Germany and Russia in World War I, opened up, artificially, the path for national self-determination in Eastern Europe, a task which was terribly botched at Versailles. New injustices were created there, especially for the defeated countries. By 1939, Germany and Russia were at peace over Eastern Europe, and yet Britain precipitated war by leaping to war over a Poland which could not exist in defiance of both its great neighbors. Finally, as a result of Britain, and the U.S. meddling into a war over Eastern which did not properly concern them and Germany’s tragic blunder in attacking Russia, the conquest of Germany naturally left Russia in virtual charge over Eastern Europe, again its sphere of influence. (This domination has nothing to do with “communism” but is the result of these Russian, etc., power factors, and would have occurred whatever Russia’s social system may have been.)

And then after a record fatal meddling, twice, in East Europe, the U.S. and Britain precipitated the Cold War in order to eject Russia from her hard-won sphere of influence, in East Europe, again where none of the Western powers has any business in meddling!

There are various specific points about the Taylor volume that we might note further. There is a very good discussion at the start about why Revisionism has not been flourishing since the war; a good, if brief, a critique of the validity of the Nuremberg documents. Once in a while, Taylor slips back into his old Orthodox line; for example, he doesn’t seem to realize that the viper of “collective security” and therefore eternal war to preserve status quo boundaries was inherent in the League of Nations, and therefore that League-mindedness was an enormous obstacle in those years to realizing the morality and justice of an appeasement policy. Taylor also is surprisingly “soft” on Versailles, especially in the first part of the book, where he seems to hold that the only thing really wrong about Versailles was the continuing reparation question, which kept the situation irritated; and yet surely the whole last half of the book, with its discussion of the Austrians, Czechoslovakia, and Polish crises are testimony to the serious evils of Versailles. The importance of the fact that Germany won the war in the East (World War I) is noted, although Taylor erroneously puts the Treat of Brest-Litovsk in January, instead of March 1918. Taylor fails to mention that the Russo-Polish war of 1920 resulted from Polish aggression against the Russian Ukraine, and the territorial losses Russia suffered to Poland in that war (of ethnically Ukrainian and Byelorussian territory) made her even more eager for revision when she had the chance. Taylor also under weighs even ignores, the fact that, at Versailles, a disarmed Germany was supposed to be accompanied by disarmed Allies. By ignoring the persistent Allied violation of the pledge to disarm, Taylor fails to make the case for German rearmament as strong as it was, or rather the case against Allied suppression of German rearmament. Also, Taylor fails to mention either Litvinov’s or Hitler’s proposals for general and complete disarmament by all countries — proposals by Bad Guys which the Good Guy “democracies” ignored — because they were armed and the Bad Guys were not — a short-sighted view, to say the least. Taylor is very good in his understanding of the merits of the Japanese case in Manchuria; though somewhat more is needed about the later Japanese-Chinese war of 1937 on. Taylor is very good in deprecating the importance of Hitler’s — shifting — “dreams,” as in Mein Kampf, dreams, even then, which had nothing to do with “world conquest,” or even conquest of Britain. There is excellent Revisionism in deflating the much-trumpeted Hossbach Memorandum, purporting to be Hitler’s “plans for conquest. Taylor is also excellent in pointing out that, e.g., “in 1940 the German land forces were inferior to the French in everything except leadership.”

Taylor is also very good in criticizing the typical “moderate Revisionist” view of World War I, that no individual government or leaders were guilty because, wars are caused by the “international anarchy” — a view that ignores the actual causes and the actual guilt and blunders of any given war. Says Taylor properly: “‘International anarchy’ makes war possible; it does not make war certain.” There is also a criticism of the Leninist view that capitalism “inevitably” causes wars. In his proper critique of the Lebensraum argument of Germany and Italy for expansion, Taylor ignores the fact that the argument was much more cogent for overpopulated, tariff, and migration-excluded Japan. He is also good — and again courageous — in deprecating the much-inflated importance of the Spanish Civil War, or of the alleged threat which it was supposed to embody of “international fascism.” And yet, in some passages, it seems that Taylor is reverting to his old self, and calling for active British intervention in the Spanish Civil War.

Taylor also properly states another truth which too many have forgotten: that Soviet Russia has always been interested in its own preservation, beyond the interests of “international Communism,” which it has sacrificed for the sake of its peace and security time and again (Taylor mentions the case of Soviet failure to support the Chinese Communists as against Chiang).

Taylor does not exactly mention — it is outside of his province here — that the British, not the Germans, launched the barbaric policy of strategic bombing of civilians in cities, but he does say that the Germans had only planned for tactical fighter-bombing and not at all for strategic bombing of cities — which is testimony enough.

There are also some good pot-shots throughout at the tendency of the Soviet Union and the U.S. to stand aside from the quarrels and deliver moralizing lectures to the endangered parties concerned. Taylor wisely points out: “The experiment of calling in the New World to redress the balance of the Old had already been tried in the First World War. American intervention had been decisive; it had enabled the Allies to win the war. … In retrospect, would it not have been better if they had been forced to a compromise peace with the more or less moderate Germany of 1917?”

Taylor should point out that Schacht was dismissed, not, as he has it, for cavilling at increased armament spending, but for insisting on higher taxes rather than deficits to finance it. (See the work of Burton Klein.)

The major weakness in the book, aside from the “softness” on British motivations in 1939 discussed above, is — presumably a hangover from the Old Taylor — an almost frenzied denunciation and bias against Mussolini and Italy. Fortunately, this is a tangential matter for 1939 and is not as warping as Germanophobia in this context. Ramsay MacDonald, for example, is denounced for writing cordial letters to Mussolini “at the very moment of Matteoti’s murder — and the odd pit of moralizing for someone who, on the German question recognizes the differences between domestic and foreign affairs, and what is proper conduct in the latter. Also, in assessing Mussolini’s motives in attacking Ethiopia, Taylor states that it was simply unprovoked desire for conquest; no mention is made of continual Ethiopian provocation and aggression at Walwal. At the beginning of this book, Taylor brusquely dismisses American Revisionists as not being sufficiently “scholarly”; if he had paid more attention to American revisionists (such as Tansill’s discussion of Italy and Warwal) it would have improved his book considerably.

In style, the Taylor volume is typical of Taylor’s works: well-written, witty, abounding in facile generalizations that are grounded in speculation about various motives, and often too skimpily grounded in the documentary sources. The latter skimpiness is, as a matter of fact, all too typical of current British historical scholarship.

To sum up, A.J.P. Taylor’s The Origins of the Second World War is a great work, a memorable and path-breaking work, of enormous importance in providing, at last, a Revisionist history of the causes of 1939. It has also the corollary merit, in passing, of providing important ammunition for Cold War Book revisionism as well. If there were to be further National Book Foundation programs, I would unhesitatingly recommend it for NBF distribution. What is needed now is a follow-up to this path-breaking volume, a follow-up which, with more exhaustive thoroughness and documentation, will complement Taylor by providing the definitive account of the origins of 1939. Let us hope that the promised book by David Hoggan will perform this job.

In FDR: My Exploited Father-in-Law, Col. Curtis B. Dall writes from close personal experience concerning the famous four-time President, his family, political associates, and some of the momentous events which still strongly influence world history. A native of New York City, Col. Dall attended Mercersburg Academy and Princeton University. He was an ensign in naval aviation during World War 1, and served overseas. His wide investment experience began on Wall Street in 1920. He rose to become syndicate manager of Lehman Brothers, and later was named a partner in the firm now known as Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith. He also founded and initially headed the natural gas complex now called Tenneco, and engaged in exploration for oil and natural gas in Texas. During World War II he served in the Air Force, and held the rank of colonel in the Retired Air Force Reserve.

  • The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) -- Books and Documentary

Fallen Sparrows The International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War -- Book by Michael W. Jackson

The International Brigades were some 32,000 foreigners who fought in the Spanish Civil War. Prof. Michael Jackson peels away some myths that have long obscured them. Some of these concern facts such as their numbers, nations, classes, ages, & political affiliations. Others examine their commitment & motivation for taking part in a war that did not directly involve their native lands. The Brigaders were both more complex & simpler than portrayed in propaganda, myth, in history because the men in the ranks were far more varied than any ideological account can accommodate & simpler because theirs was the universal experience of war. The significance of the International Brigades lies less in the ideological convictions that recruited them than in the endurance they displayed once there. Jackson's goal is to expose some of the mythology & to interpret of the experiences of the Brigadiers

Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War -- Book by Ronald Radosh (Editor), Mary Habeck (Editor),Grigory Sevost (editor)

Excellent companion volume to the above book.

The Spanish Civil War has long been the stuff of legend. Thousands of brave young men from all over the Western world, most of them organised by their local Communist parties, rushed to Spain to support the democratic Republic against right-wing forces led by rebellious generals in the Spanish officer corps. Although the Republic was eventually defeated, some observers believed that the effort to defend it was a selfless undertaking of the international Communist movement and the Soviet Union - a noble crusade against Hitler, Mussolini, and their Spanish puppet Franco. This book presents a very different view of the role of the Soviet Union in this war. Based on previously unavailable Moscow archives, it provides the first full documentation of that country's duplicitous and self-serving activities. Documents in the book reveal that the Soviet Union not only swindled the Spanish Republic out of millions of dollars through arms deals but also sought to take over and run the Spanish economy, government, and armed forces in order to make Spain a Soviet possession, thereby effectively destroying the foundations of authentic Spanish anti-fascism. The documents also shed light on many other disputed episodes of the war: the timing of the Republican request for assistance from the Soviet Union; the rise and fall of the International Brigades; the internal workings of the Comintern and its influence on Spain; and much more. Authoritative and startling in the new information it offers, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in Soviet foreign policy or the Spanish Civil War.

The Spanish Civil War -- Documentary

Spanish Civil War, (1936–39), was a military revolt against the Republican government of Spain, supported by conservative elements within the country. When an initial military coup failed to win control of the entire country, a bloody civil war ensued, fought with great ferocity on both sides. The Nationalists, as the rebels were called, received aid from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The Republicans (or Loyalists) received aid from the Soviet Union, as well as from International Brigades, composed of volunteers from Europe and the United States. Many historians and observers view the Spanish Civil War as a precursor or "dress rehearsal" for the Second World War.

See also, The Birth of the Nazis: How the Freikorps Blazed a Trail For Hitler, by Nigel Jones, Foreword by Michael Burleigh

  • Walter Lippmann: Editorial Voice of the Northeastern Seaboard Elite Establishment -- Collection of Books and Biographical Information

Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Morals;

Walter Lippman, Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest;

Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion;

Walter Lippmann, The Good Society;

Walter Lippmann, Essays in the Public Philosophy;

Video Interview of Ronald Steel, author of Walter Lippmann and the American Century

Walter Lippmann began his career as a brilliant young man at Harvard—studying under George Santayana, taking tea with William James, a radical outsider arguing socialism with anyone who would listen—and he ended it in his eighties, writing passionately about the agony of rioting in the streets, war in Asia, and the collapse of a presidency. In between he lived through two world wars, and a depression that shook the foundations of American capitalism.

Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) has been hailed as the greatest journalist of his age. For more than sixty years he exerted unprecedented influence on American public opinion through his writing, especially his famous newspaper column “Today and Tomorrow.” Beginning with The New Republic in the halcyon days prior to Woodrow Wilson and the First World War, millions of Americans gradually came to rely on Lippmann to comprehend the vital issues of the day.

In his absorbing biography, Ronald Steel meticulously documents the philosophers and politics, the friendships and quarrels, the trials and triumphs of this man who for six decades stood at the center of American political life. Lippmann’s experience spanned a period when the American empire was born, matured, and began to wane, a time some have called “the American Century.” No one better captured its possibilities and wrote about them so wisely and so well, no one was more the mind, the voice, and the conscience of that era than Walter Lippmann: journalist, moralist, public philosopher.

Brief Biography of Walter Lippmann


Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940), nicknamed "The Fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye," was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. By the end of his career he had received 16 medals, five of which were for heroism. He is one of 19 people to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only person to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions. He became widely-known for his outspoken lectures against war profiteering, U.S. military adventurism and what he viewed as nascent fascism in the United States. In addition to his speeches to pacifist groups, from 1935 to 1937 he served as a spokesman for the American League Against War and Fascism. In 1935, he wrote the exposé War Is a Racket, a trenchant condemnation of the profit motive behind warfare.

Not Just Japanese Americans: The Untold Story of U.S. Repression During "The Good War"

JEFFREY ROGERS HUMMEL

I. Pre-Pearl Harbor

The sad saga of civil liberties in the United States during the Second World War begins well before Pearl Harbor. The popular impression is that the Japanese surprise attack in December 1941 caught the U.S. government totally unaware. In an effort to counter this impression, countless Revisionist historians have raked over the diplomatic events that proceeded the attack.[1] Yet, prior domestic developments within the U.S. probably belie the impression of U.S. unpreparedness much more forcefully. For the U.S. government was, without a doubt, better prepared to fight World War II than any previous war in its history.

This unprecedented military preparedness resulted from a massive prewar mobilization that involved 1 the U.S.'s first large peacetime foreign aid program: lend-lease; 2 an emergency peacetime military buildup; 3 the first peacetime draft in U.S. history to support that buildup; 4 an array of new and heavy emergency taxes to pay for the buildup; 5 the creation of a new and broad regulatory bureaucracy, supplementing New Deal agencies, to direct the economy toward war production; 6 the use of troops to enforce labor settlements within critical defense industries; and finally 7 the adoption of a peacetime sedition law to suppress disloyalty.[2]

This last is what concerns us. The pre-Pearl Harbor sedition law, the Smith Act, is more generally known for its postwar enforcement, in a period of tense U.S. relations with the Soviet Union. In fact, it was just the most glaring manifestation of the growing precariousness of civil liberties as the nation went on a war footing prior to its intervention in World War II. The deteriorating international situation brought a rash of related legislation, Congressional inquiries, executive harassment, and state government repression, all aimed at so-called subversive activities.[3]

Because of disillusionment with the First World War, Americans initially wished to stay out of the Second. An early generation of Revisionist historians had successfully debunked the official justifications for U.S. participation in World War I, and had overturned the judgment of exclusive German war guilt. In 1934 and 1935, a Senate committee, under the chairmanship of Gerald P. Nye, a progressive Republican, investigated the munitions industry. It concluded that American financiers and arms merchants had maneuvered the U.S. into the previous European conflict for their own profit. All of these trends coalesced into a powerful isolationist movement, opposed to any future U.S. involvement in European quarrels.

The debate between the isolationists and interventionists became intense and bitter with the onset of war in Europe. By 1940, a broad-based coalition of noninterventionists had joined together in the America First Committee. Among the committee's luminaries, supporters, and sympathizers were Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, the aviator hero of the twenties; General Robert E. Wood, chairman of the board of Sears, Roebuck; Colonel Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the conservative Chicago Tribune; ex-President Herbert Hoover, labor leader John L. Lewis, who had co-founded the militant Congress of Industrial Organizations as a rival to the American Federation of Labor, Norman Thomas, Socialist Party candidate for President; and progressive Democratic Senator Burton K. Wheeler from Montana.[4]

Although the isolationists were influential enough to prevent President Franklin D. Roosevelt from dragging the nation overtly into the war before Pearl Harbor, they were unable to prevent the prewar mobilization. Eventually their loyalty came under question, and the government subjected them to increasing harassment. But before that transpired, the State had already honed its repressive instruments upon much less prominent targets on the extreme Right and extreme Left.

Numerous American fascist groups, nearly all minuscule, had sprouted in the Great Depression's fertile soil. The two most vocal were the German-American Bund and the Legion of Silver Shirts. Both groups were violently anti-Jewish, with paramilitary trappings, and both received public attention grotesquely out of proportion to their numbers. The German-American Bund, virulently but not officially a U.S. branch of Germany's National Socialist Party, drew its fewer than 25,000 and probably closer to 8,500 members from among recent German immigrants. At its peak, the Bund packed Madison Square Garden in New York with 22,000 sympathizers for a George Washington's birthday rally in 1939. The Silver Shirts was an independent organization, headed by mystic William Dudley Pelley. Its membership may have reached 15,000 in 1934, but thereafter it declined to less than 5,000. None of the native fascist organizations, separately or in combination, ever approached the influence of the Ku Klux Klan in the twenties.[5]

The U.S. Communist Party had likewise experienced a surge during the depression decade, growing from 7,500 in 1930 to 30,000 in 1935. By the mid-thirties, the party had adopted the strategy of joining thousands of non-communists in popular front organizations, such as the American League for Peace and Democracy. Many party members found employment in the burgeoning bureaus of the New Deal. With the signing of the German-Soviet nonaggression pact in August 1939, the Communist Party also indirectly arrived at an isolationist foreign policy stance.[6]

Very early in the depression the House's Fish Committee had briefly looked into Communist propaganda. With this one lone exception, the precedent established during the post-World War I Red Scare of Congressional investigation into subversive activity had lain dormant until the German Reichstag granted absolute power to Adolf Hitler in March 1933, the same month as F.D.R.'s inauguration. Immediately, the internal threat to this country from the right received equal billing with the internal threat from the left, in what one historian has recently dubbed the "Brown Scare." The House established a new special committee to investigate these twin "foreign" dangers, with John W. McCormack as chairman and Samuel Dickstein as vice-chairman. The committee released a report in 1935 that branded the Communist Party, the Silver Shirts, and several other organizations as subversive.

The ultimate results of the committee's efforts was enactment in 1938, while events were reaching the boiling point in Europe, of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. This first of the pre-World War II repressive laws provided a maximum penalty of two years and $1000 (later increased to five years and $10,000) for anyone whom the U.S. government deemed a "foreign agent" but who failed to register as such with the Secretary of State.

At the time that the Foreign Agents Registration Act passed, the most significant loyalty legislation already on the books was the World War I Espionage Act. The Espionage Act had combined three features: 1 a true espionage law, which punished spying and wartime sabotage, 2 a neutrality law, which restricted the non-neutral acts of private citizens in foreign conflicts, and 3 a sedition law, providing up to twenty years in jail and a $10,000 fine for aiding the enemy with "false reports or false statements," for obstructing recruiting, or for causing insubordination, disloyalty, or mutiny in the U.S. armed forces. The act also empowered the Postmaster General to exclude from the mail issues of newspapers and periodicals that he felt were subversive.

The sedition portions of the Espionage Act, however, were inoperative in peacetime. During the infamous Red Scare, the Wilson Administration had sought a peacetime sedition act, but had failed. The Foreign Agents Registration Act represented a minor step toward closing that loophole.

Congress also implemented a second of the McCormack-Dickstein Committee's recommendations: an extension of the Congressional subpoena power beyond the District of Columbia A new Special House Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities, created in 1938 with Martin Dies of Texas as chairman, put this added power to effective use. Like its predecessor, the Dies Committee went after both domestic fascists and Communists. It paid greater attention to the latter, however, as Dies, an arch-foe of the New Deal, attempted to taint the Roosevelt Administration with Communist associations. Each succeeding House faithfully renewed the committee, and several states copied it, with their own "little Dies" committees.[7]

While the Dies Committee's spectacular hearings and voluminous reports gathered headlines, Congress approved an array of additional security laws: the Hatch Act of 1939, which generally restricted the political freedom of government employees and specifically prohibited Communists from working for the national government; an amendment of March 1940 to the Espionage Act, increasing the act's penalties for spying, neutrality violations, and other infractions that applied during peacetime; and finally the Smith Act of June 1940.

The Smith Act bore the somewhat misleading official title of Alien Registration Act. To be sure, provisions of the act affected the 3.5 million immigrants in this country who had not attained citizenship. It required their registration and fingerprinting, and it made deportation for revolutionary activities and beliefs easier. Several states had already foreshadowed these moves. With the outbreak of war in Europe, Georgia and Pennsylvania had both required aliens to register, and Pennsylvania had also forbidden them to hunt, fish, or own dogs.

The Smith Act's most far-reaching provisions, however, established a penalty of up to ten years in jail and a $10,000 fine for encouraging insubordination in the military, for advocating, in speech or writing, the forceful overthrow of the U.S. government, or for joining any organization that so advocated. Thus, the Smith Act was, in fact, a true peacetime sedition law of the same sort that had previously failed to pass at the height of the Red Scare. It took the approach of World War It to secure enactment.

Following the Smith Act, Congress added still more "security" legislation. The Selective Service Act of September 1940, which gave the U.S. its first peacetime draft, also carried penalties for urging resistance to the draft. The Nationality Act of October 1940 facilitated divesting naturalized immigrants of their citizenship for radical political beliefs. The Voorhis Act, passed later the same month, required registration with the Attorney General of all organizations subject to "foreign control," if involved in civilian-military activities or if advocating the overthrow of the government. (the previous Foreign Agents Registration Act applied to individuals.) The fact that the Voorhis Act could require members of the radical organizations to incriminate themselves under the Smith Act did not faze Congress. Just before the Pearl Harbor attack, another amendment to the Espionage Act made sabotage a national crime during peacetime as well as wartime. In short, the pre-Pearl Harbor period witnessed the most sustained outburst of repressive legislation in the nation's history.[8]

Executive-branch harassment of government opponents kept pace with Congress's steady prewar infringement of people's political liberty. At the van of this harassment was the national government's police force: the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). To fully appreciate the FBI's prewar politicization, we must take a brief retrospective look at that agency's evolution during the interwar years.[9]

In the midst of the Red Scare, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer had established within what was then called the Bureau of Investigation (it got its current name in 1935) a special section to investigate radicals: the General Intelligence Division, with the young J. Edgar Hoover at its head. The Bureau's subsequent raids and deportations had left it, however, with a severely tarnished reputation. As a result of further revelations that the Bureau had even spied upon Congressmen in order to suppress the Teapot Dome scandal, the supposedly reactionary Coolidge Administration ordered an abrupt halt to all the Bureau's political activities and abolished the General Intelligence Division.

Unfortunately, to clean up the Bureau, the Coolidge Administration made none other than J. Edgar Hoover its new director. Defenders of Hoover cite this as proof that his role in the Red Scare had been merely perfunctory. Detractors on the other hand speculated that Hoover got the promotion because, in the words of intelligence expert William Corson, "there was enough in his files to effectively sink the Republican Party in the upcoming Presidential election."[10] Whichever the case may be, recent documents secured by historians under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that Hoover secretly defied the Coolidge Directive against political surveillance and sporadically monitored such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), even to the point of illegal break-ins.

Nonetheless, the Bureau's low political profile coupled with its emphasis on catching criminals transformed its public image during the next decade. An extremely significant but oft-neglected feature of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal was a "war with the organized forces of crime," involving a new deal for the Bureau. Congress passed nine major anti-crime bills in 1934. These gave Bureau agents full arrest power and the authority to carry any kind of firearm, and they put a variety of crimes under its jurisdiction: robbing any bank insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, fleeing across state lines to avoid prosecution or subpena, extorting money by phone or mail, or transporting stolen property valued at $5000 or more across state lines. Among these new laws was the National Rearms Act of 1934, the first federal gun control law.

In his war on crime, as in most other respects, F.D.R. was fully anticipated by President Herbert Hoover. Hoover had appointed the national Wickersham Commission to study the problems of law enforcement. In his zest for increased bureaucratic efficiency in national crime control, he had created a separate Bureau of Prisons and a separate Bureau of Narcotics. He also had signed the bill that established the Bureau of Investigation's fingerprinting division in 1930 and the Lindbergh Bill, which made kidnapping a national crime, in 1932.

Most important for the future of civil liberties, Hoover was the first U.S. President to request formally that the Bureau of Investigation collect political intelligence. We have already observed that under J. Edgar Hoover, the Bureau continued throughout the twenties to monitor radical activities on its own. But President Hoover legitimized these transgressions by requesting Bureau reports on groups as diverse as the Sentinels of the Republic (a minor far right organization), the Navy League, the ACLU, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Foreign Policy Association.

Roosevelt, upon assuming the Presidency, expanded the Bureau's political surveillance. While continuing Hoover's precedent of soliciting PBI reports on his political adversaries, he secretly ordered the Bureau to look into the American Nazi movement in 1934, and he widened that general mandate to include all potentially subversive groups in 1936. In June of 1939, with concern about foreign spies and "fifth columnists" on the rise, Roosevelt centralized responsibility over all "espionage, counter-espionage, and sabotage matters" into the FBI's hands, with Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence playing supporting roles. This directive became public and was broadened to include "subversive activities and violations of neutrality laws," when the European war erupted later that year.

J. Edgar Hoover thereupon reactivated the dreaded General Intelligence Division and compiled a secret Custodial Detention list of persons to be jailed summarily during wartime. FBI officials opened first-class mail and regularly practiced, with Roosevelt's explicit blessing, wiretapping, despite the 1939 Supreme Court ruling that the Federal Communications Act of 1934 proscribed government wiretapping. The executive branch instituted a loyalty program for federal job holders, with FBI checks, to help implement the Hatch Act, and the Attorney General drew up his first list of subversive organizations.

At the same time, Roosevelt prepared other sections of the executive branch for the suppression of dissent. In the spring of 1940 he transferred the Immigration and Naturalization Service from the Labor to the Justice Department. Roosevelt thought the Labor Department too lenient; it was the Labor Department which in 1920 had initially called a halt to the Red Scare by refusing to deport the aliens that the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation had rounded up. Also within the Justice Department, a newly established Neutrality Laws Unit (which would become the Special War Policies Unit once the U.S. entered the war) assumed responsibility for sedition prosecutions. The Post Office invoked a strained interpretation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act to reinstitute its World War I practice of mail censorship. It seized and destroyed over fifteen tons of alleged foreign propaganda mailed to the U.S. from Japan, Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union.

The FBI invariably serviced White House requests for derogatory information on critics of Roosevelt's foreign policy. Roosevelt's press secretary, in May of 1940, turned over to J. Edgar Hoover for checking the names of persons who had sent telegrams critical of a Presidential fireside chat on national defense. The FBI furnished the President with reports on leading isolationists, including Senators Nye and Wheeler. After the America First Committee was organized, Roosevelt subjected it to the meticulous scrutiny of first the FBI and later the Internal Revenue Service. In an ironic twist of fate, F.D.R. even ordered ex-President Hoover put under FBI observation.

The Dies Committee, while continuing to harass the Roosevelt administration, also started a probe of the America First Committee, one month before Pearl Harbor. F.D.R., however, fully reciprocated Dies's enmity and ordered the FBI to investigate Dies and his supporters for election fraud and then, after Pearl Harbor, for fascist links. J. Edgar Hoover skillfully played both political foes off against each other. While investigating Dies for the President, he confidentially cooperated with the Dies Committee, feeding it FBI tips. This tactic generally induced Roosevelt to give Hoover wider leeway, so that the FBI could preempt the exposes of the Dies Committee.

The hardest hit victims of this labyrinth of political ploys and government intrigue were not major political figures, but usually less influential and sometimes insignificant dissidents. During the opening months of 1940, the FBI conducted two sets of widely publicized raids. The first picked up seventeen members of the Christian Front Sports Club in Brooklyn, New York - young rightists, unemployed or very poor, who were supposedly plotting to overthrow the government. The second, in Detroit, swooped down upon a dozen veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, all leftists who had fought against General Franco in the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and 1937 and were therefore charged with neutrality law infractions. The trial of the Christian Fronters resulted in an acquittal after revelations that the defendants had received drunken encouragement from an FBI agent provocateur, while the Justice Department, facing a public outcry, dipped its three-year-late charges against the Abraham Lincoln Brigade veterans.

The Justice Department was successful, however, in convicting Earl Browder, the Communist Party's General Secretary, of passport fraud in January, 1940, after his testimony before the Dies Committee. He received the ridiculously long and obviously political sentence of four years in prison and a $2000 fine. (Another person convicted of the same offense shortly thereafter received merely a $500 fine.) The government also initiated denaturalization proceedings against William Schneiderman, leader of the California Communist Party, and deportation proceedings against Harry Bridges, the left-wing leader of the west coast longshoremen.

A federal grand jury in October 1941 indicted pro-German publicist George Sylvester Viereck for infringement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Viereck was on the German government's payroll and was among the four hundred persons who had by March of 1940 dutifully registered under the act's provisions. But he was also involved in a Congressional scandal in which he had solicited isolationist writings for insertion by various legislators into the Congressional Record so that he could distribute them through mass mailings under Congressional franking privileges. The State's indictment charged him with not filling out his registration forms fully and properly. His was only the most noteworthy of a whole slew of cases brought against both leftists and rightists under the same act.[11]

The first to fall prey to the Smith Act was the Socialist Workers Party. The Socialist Workers Party was a Trotskyite splinter from the Communist Party. It was also one of the few leftwing groups still opposed to U.S. involvement in the war after Hitler attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The Trotskyites committed the additional political sin of gaining control over Teamster locals in Minnesota and challenging the leadership of union president Dan Tobias, a Roosevelt ally. Federal marshals raided the Minneapolis headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party on June 28, 1941, and indicted twenty-nine leaders. Eighteen were convicted and jailed for from one to one and a half years.

The national government did devote some effort to the persecution of genuine spies. Thus, the FBI cracked the two major German rings in 1941 and set in motion the process that would put their members behind bars. It also began, under F.D.R.'s direct orders, secretly collaborating with British Intelligence, in violation of U.S. neutrality laws. Although designed to keep the State out of war, neutrality laws ended up more often in practice being used by the State to harass private citizens.[12]

A most unusual prewar espionage case involved a code clerk at the U.S. Embassy in Great Britain: Tyler Kent. Kent was presumably responsible for a leak of embassy communications to the Axis. The U.S. government, in an unheard-of diplomatic irregularity, waived Kent's diplomatic immunity so that the British could apprehend him. It then pressured the British into trying Kent, rather than deporting him to the U.S. An American trial would have disclosed the existence of the major documents that Kent had purloined - the clandestine personal correspondence between President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, carried on prior to Churchill's becoming British Prime Minister, while he was still only a cabinet member in Chamberlain's war government. Such a patent exposure of F.D.R.'s unneutral designs would probably have outraged the American people and damaged F.D.R.'s bid for a third term in the 1940 Presidential race. The British trial, on the other hand, was conducted behind closed doors, under harsher statutes. Kent received a seven-year sentence, and the American public heard absolutely nothing about the case until four years later, long after the U.S. was fully committed to the war.[13]

Finding a legal basis for suppressing the German-American Bund before Pearl Harbor proved more difficult for the U.S. government. Back in 1933, it had indicted Spanknoebel, then Bund leader, for violating an obscure notification clause in the Espionage Act. But Spanknoebel fled to Germany, and after that, the Justice Department could find no grounds for further prosecution, despite all the new repressive laws. Not until June of 1941 did Roosevelt order the seizure of Bund assets as part of his general order freezing all Axis assets in the United States. Soon afterward, the government filed tax liens against the Bund.

The most telling blows against the Bund came from state and local governments. New Jersey passed an anti-Bund law, forbidding the wearing of foreign uniforms, as early as mid-1938, and several years later, confiscated the Bund's Camp Nordland. New York City's mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, bent upon imprisoning Bund leaders under any pretext, established an antisubversive squad in the city's police department and launched an investigation into Bund finances. The young and aggressive New York District Attorney, Thomas Dewey, secured a conviction of Fritz Kuhn, head of the Bund, for misuse of Bund funds, and sent him to Sing Sing Prison for two and a half years in December, 1939. By the summer of 1941, California had a comprehensive Subversive Organization Registration Law aimed at the Bund, while Florida had made membership in any "anarchistic, communistic, Nazi-istic or fascistic organization" a felony.

The Bund was not the only fringe organization to feel the sting of state and local repression. Pelley of the Silver Shirts, to give just one more example from the right, was constantly in trouble with North Carolina authorities from 1935 on. Several states made libel of racial, religious, and ethnic groups a criminal offense. To drive the Communist Party off the ballot, many states made their ballot requirements more stringent during the 1940 election or immediately thereafter. Four states, at the instigation of the Dies Committee, indicted over a hundred Communist petition circulators for election fraud. Oklahoma handed down sentences of ten years to four Communist leaders under the state's criminal syndicalism laws, while the Washington legislature refused to seat an elected state senator who was a former party member.

But it was neither fascists nor Communists who suffered most during the pre-Pearl Harbor hysteria. According to the ACLU's annual report for 1940-41, "the most numberous attacks on civil liberties of any single minority were directed against the Jehovah's Witnesses."[14] The Jehovah's Witnesses are a millenialist Protestant sect, founded in the last third of the nineteenth century and numbering a quarter of a million American adherents. Their theology is extremely anti-Statist, and it even opposes flag salutes. This opposition so enraged local authorities, the American Legion, and other protectors of patriotism that the Witnesses were the only group during the World War II period to endure the kind of vigilante violence that had been so prevalent during World War I. Mob attacks upon Witnesses occurred in 335 communities in 44 different states in the six months running from May to October 1940 alone. Many of the injured were women and children.

The Supreme Court defended the Witnesses' First Amendment right to distribute religious literature without restrictions from local ordinances beginning in 1938. But in the 1940 Gobitis case, the Court held that children could legally be expelled from government schools for not saluting the flag. "National Unity is the basis of national security," wrote Justice Felix Frankfurter in the majority opinion.[15] Massive expulsions were the result, followed sometimes by state prosecutions of Witness parents for violating compulsory attendance laws. A few attempts were made to take children from their Jehovah's Witness parents but were unsuccessful. Indiana, under its state sedition law, sentenced two elderly Witness women who refused to salute the flag to prison terms of two to ten years, although their convictions were later overturned on appeal.

II. Post-Pearl Harbor

All the aforementioned events, entailing enormous gains for State power, occurred, we should stress, at a time when the United States was technically at peace. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor merely accelerated the civil liberties trends already in motion. The awesome repressive machinery constructed by Congress and the President during the prewar period now became fully operational. The only well-known World War II civil liberties outrage is the internment of Japanese-Americans. Actually, the U.S. government amplified its harassment of aliens from all enemy nations at the first news of the Japanese attack. Within seventy-two hours of the attack, the FBI had 3,846 Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants in custody. A grand total of sixteen thousand were seized throughout the war and about four thousand of them were held for the duration. This was done under authority of the old Alien Enemies Act, which permitted alien internment during wartime. It was one of the four notorious Alien and Sedition Acts passed by the Federalists in 1798, and the only one of the four that President Jefferson had left on the books.[16]

The "enemy" aliens who were parched or who remained at large suffered numerous other infringements of their liberty. The national government forced more than ten thousand to leave their homes near defense installations, and it imposed rigid curfews upon others. They all needed permission to travel or move and could not possess firearms or short-wave radios. The Justice Department's only leniencies were to exempt Italian aliens from these restrictions after Columbus Day, 1942, and west coast Germans two months later.

Unlike the policies already mentioned, the State's treatment of the west coast Japanese made no distinction between native-born citizens (Nisei) and foreign-born aliens (Issei).[17] (None of the foreign-born Japanese were naturalized American citizens because they were legally ineligible.) As U.S. defeats in the Pacific mounted during the war's early days, west coast leaders intensified their demands that all Japanese be singled out for special treatment. These demands arose out of the area's deep-rooted racism, as well as from resentment at economic competition with this industrious minority. Many people were more than anxious to accept columnist Walter Lippmann's strained explanation for the complete absence of any act of sabotage by Japanese-Americans. According to Lippmann, this merely indicated that they were waiting with Oriental patience for the propitious moment to commit some massive coordinated atrocity.[18]

Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, empowering the army to exclude "any or all persons" from designated military zones. One month later, he signed a Congressional measure stipulating criminal penalties for disobeying this order. The War Department had already declared the western parts of California, Oregon, and Washington and the southern part of Arizona a "prohibited zone." No one was ordered to leave yet, but about nine thousand Japanese-Americans saw the handwriting on the wall and decided to move inland on their own. They encountered a very chilly reception. Officials from other western states objected to being made, in the words of the Governor of Arizona, "a dumping ground for enemy aliens," and violence threatened.[19]

The Army therefore forbade any more voluntary evacuation. Instead, it forcibly collected at race tracks, fairgrounds, and other makeshift assembly points all persons of Japanese ancestry residing not only within the original restricted zone but anywhere within California, Washington, Oregon, southern Arizona, and Alaska. Evacuees could only take clothing, bedding and utensils. The government offered to store their remaining personal property, but would assume no liability for it. So most evacuees sold their property on five-days' notice for what they could get. After they left, their leases expired and their farms were generally confiscated. Japanese-Americans suffered an estimated $350 million loss in property and income.[20]

The War Relocation Agency (WRA), a civilian agency created in mid-March, erected ten semi-permanent relocation centers in inhospitable regions of seven western states. By September, the army had turned over 110,000 Japanese-Americans to these camps. Nearly two-thirds of that total were native-born American citizens. Anyone with simply one Japanese great grandparent qualified for internment, although this rule was later relaxed. The relocation centers were, as F.D.R. admitted in a slip of the tongue, "concentration camps,"[21] ringed with barbed wire and armed guards. In at least one instance, a sentry shot and killed an elderly internee who wandered too close to the outer fence, in violation of camp regulations.

The WRA began granting leaves to those inmates who could prove that they were not disloyal, that they had a job waiting, and that the community would accept them. But only 35,000, mostly young Nisei, left the camps under this dispensation. Meanwhile, the War Department sought to register male internees for the drafts following Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson's announcement of the "inherent right of every faithful citizen regardless of ancestry, to bear arms in the nation's battle."[22] Of the 75,000 who were asked whether they would renounce allegiance to the Japanese emperor, however, 8,700 either refused or equivocated. Many of these were Issei who, being forbidden American citizenship, were afraid to put themselves in limbo, without any formal nationality. Riots also erupted in some of the camps. The worst took place at Camp Manzanar in California, where soldiers fired into unarmed crowds, killing two and wounding ten.

Congressional critics thought the WRA was too lenient, and forced the agency, beginning in the summer of 1943, to isolate those inmates who would not swear loyalty or who were troublemakers. The WRA consequently transferred about 18,500 to a special camp in Tule Lake, California. The Tule Lake inmates organized a campaign of passive resistance which turned into rioting, with the result that the government put the camp under military rule for two months and put two hundred internees in the stockade. After Congress passed the Denationalization Act of 1944, making it easier for Americans to renounce their citizenship, some eight thousand Japanese-Americans were eventually returned to Japan.[23]

The Roosevelt Administration conceded that, whatever the military justification for evacuation, it no longer applied in the spring of 1944. Roosevelt, however, continued Japanese internment to avoid any political repercussions from west coast voters. Only after he was safely reelected to a fourth term that November did he permit the inmates to leave the camps and return home. Some, their lives disrupted and fearing racist attacks, were reluctant to leave the camps. But the WRA all of a sudden became concerned about the $250 million that the camps had already cost taxpayers, and it booted out the last of the internees at the end of 1945.

The U.S. State extended its deprivations against people of Japanese ancestry beyond the borders. It pressured more than a dozen Latin American nations to implement similar policies and even interned two thousand of their Japanese residents right here in U.S. relocation centers.[24] Curiously, the Japanese in Hawaii, who numbered 250,000, one-third of the islands' population, were untouched by the internment program, except for about two thousand who were shipped to the mainland. Extensive internment would have disrupted Hawaii's economy. The government did, however, put Hawaii under strict martial law for the three years following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, suspending trial by jury, habeas corpus, and other procedural safeguards. Out of the over 22,000 military trials of civilians on the islands during 1942, 99 percent resulted in conviction.[25]

Internment was not the only consequence of F.D.R.'s Executive Order 9066, nor Japanese the only class of U.S. citizens affected. The vague phrasing of the order would have permitted the army to evacuate or incarcerate any American anywhere in the country, had it so chosen. Thus, even after the Japanese were free to leave the relocation centers, five thousand still faced individual exclusion from the west coast. The military also forcibly ejected, after secret deliberations, 250 citizens not of Japanese ancestry from the west coast, and an additional fifty from the east coast.[26]

Most historical accounts of the World War II homefront report that, except for Japanese-American internment, the U.S. civil liberties record was relatively clean. It never approached, this view argues, the repressive heights of World War I. The first observation we can make about this view is that Japanese-American internment is a pretty glaring exception. Even one of the early defenders of the Second World War civil liberties record, legal scholar Edward S. Corwin, has rated the treatment of the Japanese as "the most drastic invasion of the rights of citizens of the United States by their own government that has thus far occurred in the history of our nation."[27] During the First World War, the total number of victims of the Espionage and Sedition Acts, of alien internment and deportation, of state prosecutions, and of mob violence could not have exceeded fifteen thousand. Contrast that figure with 110,000 interned Japanese-Americans.

Then there is the internment and imprisonment of conscientious objectors during the Second World War. True, the options available to conscientious objectors were slightly improved over the First World War. About 25,000 accepted noncombatant military duty. Another 11,950 worked in civilian public service camps at tasks mainly involving conservation, forestry, and public health. The pacifist churches and organizations agreed to fund these camps, at an eventual cost of over $7 million.

But rigid military discipline prevailed, making the camps nothing more than outdoor prisons. The objectors in the camps received no pay for fifty hours per week of generally arduous and sometimes dangerous work. In the rare case where an objector was allowed to work outside the camps, the State confiscated his wages. About five hundred objectors volunteered for medical experiments in which they were infected with lice, bitten by mosquitoes to test typhus and malaria cures, or subjected to other potentially disabling or fatal procedures. Not until two years after the war ended did the government release the last of the objectors from these camps. Then, to add insult to injury, several states barred objectors from licensed professions, and the Supreme Court upheld these bars.

Whether one received conscientious objector status at all depended upon the vagaries of local boards. In any case, only religious objectors qualified under the Selective Service Act, and Selective Service Director General Louis B. Hershey ordered this provision interpreted strictly. Of the sixteen thousand men convicted for draft resistance of one kind or another during the war, six thousand were conscientious objectors whose status was not recognized, and three quarters of those were Jehovah's Witnesses. Although opposed to the war on religious grounds, the Witnesses were not consistent pacifists - they declared their willingness to fight in the battle of Armageddon -and draft boards routinely denied their requests for ministerial exemptions.

The Selective Service Act provided a maximum prison term of five years. This applied not only for refusal to serve but also for failure to register, which in World War I had been just a misdemeanor. In a few cases, objectors faced the World War I procedure of being forcibly inducted and then court-martialed, with much sterner penalties. The most severe case was that of Henry Weber, a conscientious objector who was married and the father of three children. He also belonged to the Socialist Labor Party, another Marxist splinter group. The army initially sentenced him to hang, then reconsidered, and changed that to life imprisonment. Only as the war drew to a close, after several appeals, was his sentence reduced to five years and a dishonorable discharge. Overall, the jailings of conscientious objectors during World War II, not counting those interned in civilian public service camps, ran at three times the World War I rate, even in proportion to the total drafted.[28]

If we somehow overlook Japanese-Americans and conscientious objectors, we still must appraise the State's respect for personal liberty during World War II in light of the virtual nonexistence of antiwar sentiment. After Pearl Harbor, Americans endorsed U.S. intervention with an eruption of patriotic unity unmatched in any previous war. The prewar isolationists universally abandoned their cause, closed up shop, and threw their hearts into the war. The country's organized peace movement disintegrated.[29] And on the extreme left, the Communist Party tried to outdo all others in its new-found American nationalism. In contrast, two powerful leftwing organizations, the Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World, had opposed World War I.

Despite the Second World War's unprecedented popularity, the national government still went out of its way to conduct sedition trials, initiate denaturalizations and deportations, and practice censorship. Sometimes, as the case of the Japanese-Americans amply illustrates, it created disloyalty out of thin air, where none initially existed. In other instances, it would prosecute the same individuals in several different proceedings under several different laws, because of the paucity of eligible scapegoats. Relative to the amount of dissent, there was clearly more repression during the Second World War then during the First. But since many of the victims were viewed as pathetic rightists with odious ideas, America's dominant liberals hardly noticed.

Repression of groups other than the Japanese-Americans during World War II required no new legislation. The prewar period provided all the necessary tools. A mass prosecution conducted under the Smith Act was to be the Roosevelt Administration's show trial. Attorney General Francis Biddle, facing constant prodding from F.D.R., indicted a heterogenous assortment of two dozen alleged native fascists in July, 1942. The faulty indictment had to be rewritten twice, however, so that the actual trial did not begin for almost another two years. The defendants, dragged from all corners of the country to stand trial in Washington, D.C., now numbered thirty. Most of them had never met each other. They were not even all overtly anti-Jewish; all they had in common was a hatred of President Roosevelt.[30]

The most prominent defendant was Harvard-educated Laurence Dennis, a former diplomat and author of The Coming American Fascism. Dennis's book was more prediction than prescription, and when told of his indictment, he exclaimed, "My prophecy is coming true. This is fascism."[31] Viereck, the German publicist indicted before Pearl Harbor under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, was also among the defendants, and while he stood trial, his son died in action with U.S. forces in North Africa. Other defendants included Elizabeth Dilling, author of The Red Network, a book that charged many liberals with being Communists; Pelley of the Silver Shirts; and four leaders of the German-American Bund.

The government's indictment charged the defendants with participating in a fantastic international Nazi conspiracy, dating from 1933, to establish a fascist regime in the U.S. by subverting morale in the armed forces. The defendants had purportedly asserted, among other scurrilous and dangerous doctrines, that "President Roosevelt is reprehensible, a war-monger, liar, unscrupulous, and a pawn of the Jews, Communists and Plutocrats" and that "[t]he Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was deliberately invited by the public officials of the United States, in order to involve the United States in a foreign war." The indictment named as co-conspirators forty-two books and publications and thirty-five organizations, including the German-American Bund, the Silver Shirts, the German Embassy in the U.S., and the National Socialist Party of Germany. The first indictment had even named the America First Committee, but that organization did not appear in the final document.

The defendants engaged twenty-two different lawyers, two-thirds of whom were court appointed to represent the indigent. The trial quickly degenerated into a circus. The defendants and their lawyers bickered among themselves, separately raised every conceivable objection, and regularly disrupted the proceedings. One lawyer concluded most of his objections with the exclamation "Your Honor, this is just another New Deal trick!" which invariably brought snickers from the jury. The presiding judge, in his efforts to maintain order, issued so many contempt citations that the cited lawyers and defendants formed a "contempt club," with badges. Some of the defendants wore masks to court and signs saying, "I am a Spy," until dissuaded by their lawyers. The judge finally kicked one lawyer off the case, while another resigned. The number of defendants fell by four, with one dying, two being severed from the case for illness, and one for unruly behavior.

After an eight-month marathon, and a trial record of 18,000 pages, the presiding judge died, and a mistrial was declared. The prosecution had still presented less than half its case, which failed to charge any overt acts, but relied solely on guilt by association and similarities between the defendants' prewar opinions and the Nazi "party line." The poorer defendants, having to either raise bail and support themselves in wartime Washington or remain in jail during the trial, suffered extreme hardships. The Justice Department pressed for a new trial for the next two years, until November of 1946, after the war was long over, when the courts at last dismissed the case, ruling that a retrial would be "a travesty of justice." Nevertheless, as Biddle coyly admits in his memoirs, "the propaganda had long since ceased." "In that sense, at least, the prosecution had accomplished the purpose the President had in mind."[32]

At the time that the mass sedition trial commenced, two of the defendants were already incarcerated without trial as dangerous enemy aliens, three more had suffered involuntary psychiatric commitment, and six were serving sentences arising out of other war-related prosecutions. Among the latter group were Viereck and Pelley. Viereck's indictment under the Foreign Agents Registration Act had resulted in a conviction, encouraging the government to use the act with telling effect upon several others who had been on the fringes of the isolationist movement. Pelley, in one of the first post-Pearl Harbor cases, had received a fifteen-year sentence, while his press was fined $5000, for articles critical of the U.S. war effort The national government had tried him under the sedition provisions of the Espionage Act, which had become operative with the declaration of war. All of this was on top of having his parole revoked in North Carolina.

Two other defendants in the mass sedition trial were leaders of the Friends of Progress, a group which had conducted a mock impeachment of Roosevelt and then found themselves facing no fewer than four wartime prosecutions. In addition to being entangled in the mass sedition trial, they had been convicted under both the national Espionage Act and California's Subversive Organization Registration Law (the state conviction was overturned on appeal) and charged with criminal libel in California for critical remarks about General Douglas MacArthur.

In a second mass trial, this one using the Selective Service Act, the Justice Department charged twenty-four members of the German-American Bund with counseling draft evasion. The two mass trials had much in common, including several of the defendants and many of the prosecution witnesses. The major difference was that the mass trial of the German-Americans resulted in a conviction.[33]

In all, more than two hundred different persons went through such sedition prosecutions under either the Espionage Act, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the Smith Act, or the Selective Service Act during the course of the war. The largest number of them were, interestingly enough, blacks. The FBI arrested about one hundred Black Muslims and members of other more ephemeral black religious cults that identified with the Japanese as kindred victims of white oppression. Robert Jackson, for example, the founder of the Ethiopian Pacific League, who had told a Harlem audience that the Japanese "wanted to help you and give you back your culture," received ten years' imprisonment and a $10,000 fine.[34]

After blacks, the German-American Bund provided the next largest number of sedition defendants. In addition, Biddle launched a crusade to revoke the citizenship of Bund members. This crusade had denaturalized forty-two by December 1940, three hundred suits were pending, and thousands of cases were under investigation. The courts, however, restrained the Justice Department, so that ultimately a total of only 180 Americans lost their citizenship.

Among them was Fritz Kuhn, the Bund leader jailed in New York before the war. His tale demonstrates the vindictive lengths to which the State carried its persecution of the Bund. Stripped of his citizenship, Kuhn was no sooner paroled by New York than he was put in a federal internment camp for enemy aliens. The U.S. deported him to Germany at the war's close, where the U.S. occupation government promptly arrested him again and finally sentenced him to ten years hard labor for associations with Hitler which Kuhn had, in fact, fabricated in order to increase his stature within the Bund. Kuhn was finally freed on appeal in 1950, and a year later, he died.

One clear difference between repression in the two world wars was the greater degree of centralization during the Second. The Roosevelt Administration, in conferences with state officials both before and after U.S. entry, reached an unpublicized gentleman's agreement that left state sedition laws nearly unenforced. Biddle, unlike Wilson's Attorney General during World War I, kept a tight reign on U.S. attorneys, who could not undertake sedition prosecutions without his approval. The national government also discouraged vigilantes and refused to revive any private loyalty organizations like the American Protective League.

Private violence and local repression did transpire, however. As in the prewar period, the Jehovah's Witnesses were the most frequent objects of mob attacks, being the only war opponents with any visibility. Mississippi arrested over fifty Witnesses for violating its new sedition law. Brutality against Witnesses did not recede until mid-1942, when the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division began to come to their aid. In one case, it secured a conviction of two West Virginia police officers for releasing several Witnesses into the eager hands of American Legionnaires, who had then forced the Witnesses to drink castor oil, tied them together with police department rope, and marched them out of town. The Supreme Court also succored the Witnesses. Although it upheld local peddlers' taxes, no matter how exorbitant, on the distribution of their literature, it overturned their Mississippi conviction and, in June 1943, reversed its previous mandatory flag-salute decision.

The Second World War also saw another upsurge in violence directed at racial minorities. The war boom and the market demand for labor, far more than the government's Fair Employment Practices Committee, opened up new economic opportunities for minorities. As blacks poured into industrial centers, north and south, racial antagonism intensified. Disorders first appeared on southern military posts, where white residents clashed with northern black soldiers, who did not proffer the customary subservience. But the most severe race riots occurred in the cities: Harlem; Philadelphia; Mobile, Alabama; El Paso and Port Arthur, Texas; Springfield, Massachusetts; Hubbard, Ohio. A two-day guerrilla war between blacks and whites in Detroit during the summer of 1943 left twenty-five blacks and nine whites dead, seven hundred of both races injured, and $2 million property damage.[35] The riot only ceased when six thousand troops occupied the city. Two weeks later, during the famous zoot-suit riots in Los Angeles, white servicemen terrorized the city's Mexican-American sections for four days as the city police, the Military Police, and the Shore Patrol all looked the other way.[36] The only factor which kept violence against Japanese-Americans at such a low ebb was their forcible removal.

As in World War I, the national government had an official propaganda agency. Roosevelt created the Office of Facts and Figures before Pearl Harbor and then replaced it in mid-1942 with the Office of War Information (OWI), under Elmer Davis from the New York Times. The OWI's first-year appropriation was nearly $40 million, but, from the outset, it had to be more circumspect than its World War I counterpart, the Committee on Public Information. It was continuously beset with controversy, emanating both from within the agency and from Congressional critics. Congress cut off practically all funding for the OWI's domestic operations in 1943, but expanded its overseas activities.[37]

More robust was the Office of Censorship, created by the First War Powers Act. It examined all forms of communication entering or leaving the country-letters, cables, telephone calls, even films. It went so far as to suppress private letters that painted a gloomy picture of the war. By 1944, it had detained 500,000 pieces of mail, occupying 10,000 square feet of storage space. The Office also drew up an ostensibly voluntary Code of Wartime Practices that applied to press and radio news reporting.[38] The military engaged in its own independent censorship covering the news it released, the mail sent and received by U.S. troops, the dispatches of war correspondents, and all media within conquered territories. When the isolationist Chicago Tribune innocently published too many details about the Battle of Midway, the Justice Department tried to prosecute. The grand jury refused to indict, however.

The Post Office banned single issues of domestic publications it judged subversive and then used that as justification for revoking their second-class mailing privileges altogether just as freely as it had in the first World War. This affected over seventy publications, ranging from the Trotskyite Militant to the Christian Pacifist Boise Valley Herald. The most important publication denied use of the mails was Father James Coughlin's Social Justice, with 200,000 subscribers. Father Coughlin was a radio priest from Michigan and probably the most influential native radical rightist. Biddle was afraid that a sedition trial would make Coughlin a martyr, so he persuaded the Catholic hierarchy to silence Coughlin instead. Social Justice, meanwhile, ceased publication in the face of the postal ban.[39] The Post Office also took advantage of the war to mount a fresh assault on obscenity. It barred about sixty additional publications from the mails for this reason, including Esquire magazine.

The government did not rely solely upon postal censorship, as in the previous war, to intimidate the domestic press. It confiscated outright publications put out by American citizens if it could even tenuously argue that they were financed by enemy funds. This is what befell all publications of the German-American Bund, as well as a few domestic Japanese newspapers. The Enemy Alien Property Division of the Treasury Department handled these seizures as part of its general takeover of enemy property.

Prosecutions for actual spying and treason, as opposed to sedition, made their first widespread appearance in this country during the Second World War. The national government convicted ninety-one persons of these offenses between 1938 and 1945, sixty- four of them U.S. citizens. Many of the sentences were blatantly excessive.

For instance, one of the earliest espionage prosecutions subsequent to Pearl Harbor ensnared one Max Stephen, an inconsequential Detroit tavern keeper who gave sanctuary to a German prisoner-of-war escaped from Canada. The State dusted off its until-then rarely used treason statute and sentenced Stephen to hang. Roosevelt commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.

The State dealt even more summarily with eight German saboteurs dropped off on U.S. shores by submarines in the summer of 1942. The Coast Guard and FBI quickly apprehended all eight. Since they had not yet committed sabotage, and since attempted sabotage was a minor felony, difficult to prove, the Roosevelt Administration decided against a civilian trial. In flagrant disregard of the Supreme Court's Ex Parte Milligan Civil War precedent, a military commission, even less bound by judicial safeguards than a court martial, tried the saboteurs in secret. Six were electrocuted within a month and a half of their apprehension, while the two who turned State's evidence received long sentences.[40]

In 1943, the U.S. secured treason indictments against eleven Americans making broadcasts from German, Italian, or Japanese radio stations. At the end of the war, when the government finally caught up with these renegade broadcasters, it convicted five. Probably the most egregious among these cases was that of Iva Ikuko Toguri d'Aquino. She was a native-born American of Japanese ancestry caught in Japan at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. She went to work for Radio Tokyo under duress, was only one of several women broadcasters known by the generic name "Tokyo Rose," and made mostly routine broadcasts devoid of political or military overtones. But she had the misfortune to be tried in California before an all-white jury, and was sentenced to 10 years and $10,000. Not until the Presidency of Gerald Ford did she receive a retroactive full pardon.[41]

Another of those broadcasters was Ezra Pound, the renowned poet. He had worked for Radio Rome. The government did not even bother formally to convict him. Instead, it incarcerated him without a trial in a mental hospital for thirteen years.[42]

Concomitant with the State's new attention to the crime of espionage was the birth of the U.S. intelligence community, with its ubiquitous influence upon policy. The number of FBI special agents swelled from 851 in 1939 to 5072 in 1944. The Bureau also moved into other countries, gaining responsibility for intelligence and counter-espionage in Latin America. To carry on covert actions elsewhere, Roosevelt created the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in July 1941, with the flamboyant General William "Wild Bill" Donovan at its helm. The OSS originated from the Coordinator of Information's office, created five months prior to Pearl Harbor. It grew prodigiously during the war and afterwards blossomed into the Central Intelligence Agency.[43]

The military intelligence services expanded their activities as well. Their most notable operation was the worldwide interception, decoding, and analysis of radio communications. Conducted primarily by the army's Signal Security Agency, this electromagnetic eavesdropping contributed significantly to many Allied military victories. It also sometimes provided sensitive information about American citizens. It did not cease with the war's end, but rather beginning in 1952 fell under the auspices of the National Security Agency, today the U.S.'s largest and most secret intelligence agency.[44]

Concern for loyalty within the State apparatus itself reached new levels. In this one area, Congress pushed the Roosevelt Administration further than the administration wished to go. The Communist Party's enthusiasm for the war brought a rapprochement with the administration, symbolized by F.D.R.'s pardon of Browder, tile party leader convicted before Pearl Harbor of passport fraud. Other Communists convicted under state law also received pardons. But the Dies Committee did not go along with this rapprochement and continued to attack the administration for harboring subversives. This induced the executive branch to augment its own loyalty program and lengthen the Attorney General's list of subversive organizations. As the war drew to a close, the House voted to convert the Committee on Un-American Activities from a special committee, requiring yearly renewal, to a permanent standing committee.

The one bright spot in the U.S. civil liberties record during World War II was the courts. They ultimately upheld convictions against only about one-fourth of all the seditionists prosecuted. The Supreme Court, in particular, thwarted many civil liberties transgressions, beginning in 1943, when the tide of battle shifted toward the Allies. Even so, nearly all the Court's favorable decisions turned on narrow procedural grounds. Only in protecting such victims of the state governments as Jehovah's Witnesses did it strike down any repressive laws.

Thus, the Court overturned Viereck's first conviction under the Alien Registration Act, but when the Roosevelt Administration retried him under the same act, the Court let his second conviction stand. In Hartzel v. U.S., it reversed the wartime Espionage Act conviction of a native fascist for distributing antiwar literature, and in Keegan v. U.S., it reversed the mass Selective Service Act conviction of German-American Bund members, but it refused to review the Smith Act conviction of the Socialist Workers Party, and later, in 1951, it upheld that act's constitutionality. It blocked the deportation of Harry Bridges, and the denaturalization of both a Communist and a Bundist in the Schneiderman and Baumgarter cases, but it sustained the denaturalization of another Bund member in the Knauer case.

It reinstated Esquire's second-class mailing privileges, but it left the Post Office's power to exclude single issues of publications intact. It also approved FBI wiretapping in two 1942 decisions. It overruled the treason conviction of one German-American who had sheltered the U-boat saboteurs, but in a related case, it sustained a treason conviction for the first time in its history, and in Ex Parte Quinn, it certified the extralegal railroading of the saboteurs. It conceded that aliens had some constitutional rights in Ex Parte Kuwate, but it upheld the Federalist Alien Enemies Act in Ludecke v. Watkins. It ruled that the military should not have closed the civilian courts in Hawaii, but only two years after marital law there had already ended.[45]

On the most grievous civil liberties violation of the war, the internment of Japanese-American citizens, the Court refused to rule at all. It skirted the issue, finding in the Endo case, on the one hand, that the government could not detain citizens who had proven their loyalty (and this only on the day after the government had opened the relocation centers). On the other hand, in Hirabayshi v. U.S. and Kormatsu v. U.S., the Court avowed the government to impose special curfews upon citizens of Japanese ancestry and to exclude them from certain areas.[46]

The Second World War is still today widely regarded as the U.S. State's last "good war."[47] The partiality of establishment liberals for Franklin D. Roosevelt is notorious, but amazingly, even his Attorney General, Biddle, has a reputation as a staunch advocate of civil liberties. The internment of Japanese-Americans is treated as an anomaly within an otherwise commendable performance.

The internment of Japanese-Americans was not an anomaly. It was representative of a wartime administration that respected civil liberties only so far as political expediency required. The repression of others whose enthusiasm for American participation in the Second World War was even slightly suspect differed in scale, not in degree. Furthermore, the repressive instruments established during this period would again be put to effective use during the McCarthy Era and the Vietnam War. The Roosevelt Administration established virtually all the precedents for Cold War political harassment.

If this is what we can expect from a "good war," we can only tremble at the thought of what the next "bad war" might bring.

Notes

[1]

The Revisionist interpretation of U.S. entry into World War II was presented in the immediate post-war period in Charles A. Beard, American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940 (New Havens Yale University Press, 1946), and President Roosevelt and the Coming of War, 1941: A Study in Appearances and Reality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948); George Morgenstern, Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War (New York Devin-Adair, 1947); William Henry Chamberlin, America's Second Crusade (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1950); Frederic R. Sanborn, Design for War: A Study of Secret Power Politics, 1937-1941 (New York: Devin-Adair, 1951); Charles Callan Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952); Harry Elmer Barnes, ed., Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath (Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1953); and Robert A. Theobald, The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor: The Washington Contribution to the Japanese Attack (New York: Devin-Adair, 1954).

After this initial outpouring, Revisionist scholarship fell dormant. The alleged reason- according to orthodox historiography-was that Revisionism had been discredited. In reality what happened was that the orthodox historians incorporated the salient features of the Revisionist account without admitting the fact. The early orthodox accounts of U.S. entry into World War II, such as Basil Rauch, Roosevelt: From Munich to Pearl Harbor (New York Creative Age Press, 1950), endeavored to portray the U.S. government as genuinely surprised by the Pearl Harbor attack. But such later orthodox accounts as William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The World Crisis and American Foreign Policy, 2v. (New York Harper & Brothels, 1952-3), and Robert A. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent: American Entry into the Second World War (New York: John Wiley, 1965), in contrast did not dispute the Revisionist factual claim that the Roosevelt administration both strongly desired and fully anticipated U.S. involvement in World War II. They instead merely argued that U.S. involvement was a worthy goal, and some went so far as to criticize Roosevelt for not achieving that goal rapidly enough.

One of the few recent Revisionist works to challenge the strategic necessity of U.S. intervention into World War II is Bruce M. Russett, No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the US. Entry into World War II (New York Harper & Row, 1972).

[2]

On the passage of the Lend-Lease Act, see Warren F. Kimball, The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939-1941 (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1969). On the peacetime introduction of conscription, see John O'Sullivan; From Voluntarism to Conscription. Congress and Selective Service, 1940-1945 (New York Garland, 1982), which is the published version of a dissertation written ten years earlier. The official overview of prewar mobilization in general is Bureau of the Budget, The United States at War: Development and Administration of the War Program by the Federal Government (Washington Government Printing Office,[1946]). The relevant sections of Paul A.C. Koistinen, The Military Industrial Complex: Historical Perspectives (New York: Praeger, 1980), offer a more critical survey.

[3]

Because so many authors have accepted the myth about the relative mildness of U.S. civil liberties' violations during World War II, the treatment of that subject is generally woeful. Even the highly competent and usually meticulous historian Harold M. Hyman, in his otherwise excellent overview of civil liberties in U.S. history, To Try Men's Souls: Loyally Tests in American History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), makes the glaring error on p. 329 of finding "only twenty- six" federal indictments under security statutes that "emerged from World War II." He is apparently counting just the mass sedition trial, in fact, just the initial indictment, and overlooks all the remaining 270 or so prosecutions for both sedition and espionage.

There are to my knowledge only three works, all devoted to broader subjects, that give reasonably complete pictures of State repression during World War II: 1 Robert Justin Goldstein's sprawling chronicle of U.S. civil liberties in the twentieth century, Political Repression in Modern America: From 1870 to the Present (Cambridge: Schenkman, 1978). Goldstein tries to be comprehensive, but his work is a somewhat uncritical compilation based on secondary sources, with a heavy emphasis on labor violence, and it ignores such other forms of civil liberty violations as obscenity laws. 2 Geoffrey Perrett's account of domestic events during World War It, Days of Sadness, Years of Triumph: The American People, 1939-1945 (New York Coward McCann & Geoghegan, 1973). Perrett always presents a provocative slant and forcefully overturns many myths about World War II, but he can sometimes be careless about details. 3 Leo P. Ribuffo's study of the prewar and wartime far right, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right froth the Great Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia Temple University Puss, 1983). It is Ribuffo who coined the term "Brown Scare," and I will have more to say about his work below.

Two other homefront accounts that look into civil liberties more briefly or more selectively are Richard Polenberg, War and Society: The United States, 1941-1945 (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott, 1972), and John Morton Blum, V Was For Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976). One article devoted specifically to this subject, Richard W. Steele, "Franklin D. Roosevelt and His Foreign Policy Critics," Political Science Quarterly, 94 (Spring 1979), 15-32, hardly scratches the surface. It is chiefly interesting for the trailing comment (pp. 33- 5) by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., who makes a pathetic attempt to salvage the civil liberties reputation of his presidential idol.

Thus, to get the full story, one must really piece it together from historical accounts of its component parts. A good place to start is with the Annual Reports of the American Civil Liberties Union, which have different titles, but which the N.Y. Times publishing house has compiled into convenient bound volumes. v. 3, July 1937-June 1944, and v. 4, July 1944- December 1950 (New York: Arno Press, 1970), cover the Second World War period. One should also examine In Brief Authority (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), the memoirs of Francis Biddle, F.D.R.'s wartime Attorney General. That alone should be sufficient to deflate Biddle's exaggerated reputation as a civil libertarian.

[4]

On the prewar isolationists, see Wayne S. Cole's definitive Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932-45 (Lincoln University of Nebraska Press, 1983). Cole fully exposes F.D.R.'s civil liberties transgressions during the contest with the isolationists. Cole's older America First: The Battle against Intervention, 1940-1941 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953) is the basic work on the America First Committee. An analysis of the battle between isolationists and interventionists in Congress is David L. Porter, The Seventy-Sixth Congress and World War II, 1939-1940 (Columbia University of Missouri Press, 1979). John E. Wiltz, In Search of Peace: The Senate Munitions Inquiry, 1934-36 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1963), covers the Nye Committee investigations.

[5]

Ribuffo's Old Christian Right is outstanding not only for its account of State repression, but also because it is one of the few really scholarly and objective studies of the World War II far right. It finally transcends the moral indignation, the pseudo-scientific reliance upon the concept of "extremism," and the amateurish psychologizing that cloud most of the literature on the subject. Geoffrey S. Smith, To Save a Nation: American Countersubversive, the New Deal, and the Coming of World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1973), is an equally important work that achieves the same level of historical detachment He shows how the far right changed from an anti-immigrant phenomenon at the end of World War I to an anti- Establishment one at the beginning of World War A, and in the process turned the countersubversive propaganda techniques used so effectively by the State during the Red Scare against the State.

Similarly dispassionate on the German-American Bund is Sander A. Diamonds The Nazi Movement In The United States, 1924-1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974). With useful facts on the same subject, but not at all dispassionate, is Leland V. Bell, In Hitler's Shadow: The Anatomy of American Nazism (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1973). Two older studies that lean toward the exposé approach, but that have information on organizations and individuals within the far right that more recent studies have not yet gotten to, are Donald S. Strong, Organized Anti-Semitism In America: The Rise of Group Prejudice during the Decade, 1930-1940 (Washington. American Council on Public Affairs, 1941), and Morris Schonbach, "Native Fascism during the 1930s and 1940s: A Study of Its Roots, Its Growth and Its Decline" (Ph.D. dissertation: University of California at Los Angeles, 1958).

[6]

The classic account of the growth of Communist influence during the popular-front era remains Eugene Lyons, The Red Decade: The Stalinist Penetration of America Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1941). A more modern study is Earl Latham, The Communist Controversy in Washington: From the New Deal to McCarthy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966). For the twists and turns in Communist Party policy, see Irving Howe and Lewis Closer, The American Communist Party: A Critical History (1919-1957) (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), and Philip J. Jaffe, The Rise and Fall of American Communism (New York: Horizon Press, 1975).

[7]

The Dies Committee and its predecessors are the subject of August Raymond Ogden, The Dies Committee: A Study of the Special House Committee for Investigation of Un- American Activities, 1938-1944 (Washington: Catholic University Press, 1945), and Walter Goodman, The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un- American Activities (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1968). The Ogden book, although older and dryer, is more scholarly.

[8]

It would be nice to have a book on passage and pre-Cold War enforcement of the Smith Act or one on all the World War II repressive legislation. Until then, we must be satisfied with the account of the Smith Act's passage contained in the first two chapters of Michal R. Belknap, Cold War Justice: The Smith Act, the Communist Party, and American Civil Liberties (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977). Schonbach, "Native Fascism during the 1930s and 1940s," is one of the few works to give reasonably complete coverage to the other prewar security laws.

[9]

The older works on the FBI, Fred J. Cook, The FBI Nobody Knows (New York: Macmillan, 1964), and Max Lowenthal, The Federal Bureau of Investigation (New York William Sloane Associates, 1950), are still useful for background. The Bureau's officially authorized history, Don Whitehead, The FBI Story: A Report to the People (New York: Random House, 1957), is less critical and far less informative. A better balanced defense of the Bureau that criticizes both the Cook and Lowenthal books is Harry and Bonaro Overstreet, The FBI. in Our Open Society (New York. W.W. Norton, 1969).

We have recently found out a lot about the FBI's operations during the World War II period with the help of the Freedom of Information Act. Of the works incorporating this information, the most important is Kenneth O'Reilly, Hoover and the Un-Americans: The FBI, HUAC, and the Red Menace (Philadelphia Temple University Press, 1983). It covers the FBI's relationship with the Dies Committee, and is also the first work to document the FBI's continued political surveillance of radicals through the twenties.

Other newer works on the FBI and political surveillance are Athan Theoharis, Spying On Americans: Political Surveillance from Hoover to the Huston Plan (Philadelphia Temple University Press, 1978); Athan G. Theoharis, ed., Beyond the Hiss Case: The FBI, Congress, and the Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982); and Frank J. Donner, The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980). Unfortunately, Theoharis and Donner, both being swept up unconsciously in the liberal Roosevelt cult, devote far too much energy to quibbling over whether the FBI went beyond F.D.R.'s prewar mandates in its domestic operations.

In a class by itself is Richard Gil Powers, G-Men: Hoover's FBI in American Popular Culture (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983). This ambitious study links a judicious political history of the FBI with a far-ranging cultural history of American attitudes toward crime and law enforcement. The mass media is, of course, the bridge between the two, and Powers exposes Hoover's very astute manipulation of the media

[10]

William R. Corson, Armies of Ignorance: The Rise of the American Intelligence Empire (New York: Dial, 1977), p. 69. Corson's book is a massive general history of the U.S. intelligence community with many details not found elsewhere. For instance, although the book was published before the incriminating documents were secured through the Freedom of Information Act, Corson reports the rumor that Assistant Attorney General William J. Donovan (later of OSS fame) informed Coolidge's Attorney General, Harlan Fisk Stone, about Hoover routinely violating the directive against political surveillance. Donovan's revelation, however, had no effect.

[11]

For a scholarly study of a prominent individual within the antiwar far right who was at the fringes of the isolationist movement and who was a defendant in not only the mass sedition trial but in other wartime sedition cases, see Niel M. Johnson, George Sylvester Viereck. German-American Propagandist (Urbana University of Illinois Press, 1972). Johnson's book is hostile to its subject, but still reliable. For a sensationalist - almost hysterical - contemporary "expose" of Nazi mail propaganda within the U.S. during World War II, see Henry Hoke, Black Mail (New York: Reader's Book Service, 1944).

[12]

The most thorough account of German espionage within the U.S. is Ladislas Farago, The Game of the Foxes: The Untold Story of German Espionage in the United States and Great Britain daring World War II (New York: David McKay, 1971), although Farago has a journalistic tendency to exaggerate the overall importance of his subject. There is also some coverage of World War II espionage and treason prosecutions in two books by Nathaniel Weyl: Treason: The Story of Disloyalty and Betrayal in American Wars (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1950) and The Battle against Disloyalty (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1951). The titles and publication dates give away the McCarthyite bias of these highly colored and unreliable studies. They at least show no favoritism to either the extreme right or extreme left; Weyl heartily endorses government suppression of both.

Even that virtue eludes a recent work in the same disreputable category: Charles Higham, American Swastika (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985). Professing to be a history of Nazi penetration of the U.S. up to the present day, the book dredges up and seriously advances the long- discredited allegations about Nazi collusion with respectable isolationists. It is astonishing in this day and age to find a new book that actually bemoans the fact that Roosevelt could not get authority "allowing for the incarceration of known enemy collaborators without trial." In deed, Higham makes this complaint on p. 31, with reference to the pre-Pearl Harbor period.

Another redeeming feature of Weyl's books is that they are not overly concerned with the somewhat arbitrary distinction between antiwar dissent and espionage. Most civil libertarians still treat espionage, at least during the Second World War, as beyond the pale. As a result, no serious scholar has yet approached World War II espionage prosecutions from a civil liberties perspective. Any historical accounts, like Farago's, focus on the spying and apprehension parts of the story and tell us little or nothing about the actual trials or the precise laws under which the prosecutions were conducted.

[13]

The best treatment of the Tyler Kent espionage case is contained in Richard J. Whalen's biography of the U.S. ambassador to England at the time, The Founding Father: The Story of Joseph P. Kennedy (New York: New American Library, 1964), pp. 309-20. An earlier brief for Kent is John Howland Snow, The Case of Tyler Kent (New York Domestic and Foreign Affairs Press, 1946). Farago, writing more recently than Whalen, finds positive confirmation that the documents stolen by Kent finally did reach German intelligence. Farago, however, also repeats as true some fabrications against Kent concocted by Ambassador Kennedy but exposed by Whalen.

[14]

ACLU 1941 annual report, "Liberty's National Emergency: The Story of Civil Liberty in the Crisis Year, 1940-1941," p. 27. David R. Manwaring, Render Unto Caesar: The Flag- Salute Controversy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), gives a full account of the war-engendered plight of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

[15]

Polenberg, War and Society, p. 59.

[16]

In contrast to Japanese-American internment, U.S. internment of "enemy" aliens during World War II is wide open for research. It only receives mention in passing from works on other subjects, and the government has still to release the documents on alien internment facilities within its World War II concentration camp system. Although the Justice Department was responsible for alien internment, the camps used for this purpose were run by the military as part of its POW system. For a brief wartime report, see J. Edgar Hoover, "Alien Enemy Control," Iowa Law Review, 29 (Mar 1944), 396408. Virtually the only scholarly attempt to open up this subject is a recent journal article, John H. Culley, "Trouble at Lordsburg Internment Camp," New Mexico Historical Review, 60 (Jul 1985), 225 17. Culley investigates the suspicious shooting and killing of two Japanese "enemy" aliens at one of the camps.

[17]

Japanese-American internment, of course, has received an inordinate amount of scholarly attention. The best introduction to the subject is Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps USA: Japanese Americans and World War II (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971). See also his collection of documents, The Decision to Relocate the Japanese Americans (Philadelphia J.P. Lippincott, 1975). It has a useful text and bibliographic note.

Fuller treatments, in order of publications are: Morton Grodzins, Americans Betrayed: Politics and the Japanese Evacuation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949); Jacobus tenBroek Edward N. Barnhard, and Floyd W. Matson, Prejudice, War and the Constitution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954); Audrie Girdner and Anne Loftis, The Great Betrayal: The Evacuation of the Japanese-Americans During World War II (New York. Macmillan, 1969); Allan R. Bosworth, America's Concentration Camps (New York: W.W. Norton, 1967); and Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps (New York William Morrow, 1976). The tenBroek Barnhart, and Matson work is best on legalistic details, the Bosworth book is mainly journalistic, and the Weglyn study is the most wide- ranging in its coverage.

[18]

Perrett, Days of Sadness, Years of Triumph, pp. 219-220.

[19]

Blum, V Was for Victory, p. 160.

[20]

The economic cost of internment to Japanese-Americans is evaluated in Leonard Bloom and Ruth Reimer, Removal and Returns The Socio Economic Effect of the War on Japanese Americans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949).

[21]

Daniels, Concentration Camps USA, p. 154.

[22]

Blum, V Was for Victory, p. 164.

[23]

Donald E. Collins, Native American Aliens: Disloyalty and the Renunciation of Citizenship by Japanese Americans During World War II (West- port, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985).

[24]

Weglyn, Years of Infamy, reveals the U.S. pressure for similar policies with respect to Japanese residents in the Latin American countries.

[25]

On martial law in Hawaii, see J. Gamer Anthony, Hawaii Under Army Rule (Stanford. Stanford University Press 1955).

[26]

ACLU Annual Report 1942-1943, Freedom in Wartime, pp. 30-32.

[27]

Edwin S. Corwin, Total War and the Constitution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), p. 91.

[28]

The definitive study on World War II conscientious objectors is Mulford Q. Sibley and Philip E. Jacob, Conscription of Conscience: The American State and the Conscientious Objector, 1940-47 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1952). An examination of resistance to the draft is James J. Martin, "A Look at Conscription, Then and Now," in Revisionist Viewpoints: Essays in a Dissident Historical Tradition (Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles Publisher, Inc., 1971). Martin suggests that resistance to the draft within the military, through AWOL malingering, and other passive techniques, was substantial. So far, no scholar has given this suggestion the serious investigation that it deserves.

[29]

Lawrence S. Wittner, Rebels Against War: The American Peace Movement, 1941-1960 (New York Columbia University Press, 1969), shows the devastating impact the war hysteria had on the organized peace movement.

[30]

The best account of the mass sedition trial is Leo P. Ribuffo, "United States v. McWilliams: The Roosevelt Administration and the Far Right," in Michal R. Belknap, ed., American Political Trials (Newport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), pp. 201-32. Essentially the same account appears in Ribuffo's book The Old Christian Right. Biddle's coy summation of the results of the trial is from p. 243 of In Brief Authority. The prosecuting attorney, O. John Rogge, updated and published the government's ludicrous case against the defendants in The Official German Report: Nazi Penetration, 1924-l942; Pan-Arabism, 1939-Today (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1961). The most prominent defendant and his lawyer meanwhile had published their own account (which reprints the entire government indictment): Lawrence Dennis and Maximilian St. George, A Trial on Trial: The Great Sedition Trial of 1944 ([?]: National Civil Rights Committee, 1945). Eric Scott Royce, "FDR's Mass Sedition Trial," New Libertarian Weekly, 3 (30 Nov. 1975), 4-7, offers a competent summary.

[31]

As quoted in Perrett, Days of Sadness, Years of Triumph, p. 361. Ronald Radosh, Prophets on the Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism (New York Simon and Schuster, 1975), devotes several chapters to Dennis and finds his reputation as a native fascist, to say the least, greatly exaggerated.

[32]

Biddle, In Brief Authority, p. 243.

[33]

Because it resulted in a conviction (albeit, one that was overturned by the Supreme Court), the mass trial of the German-American Bund members under the Selective Service Act deserves as much scholarly and journalistic attention as the mass sedition trial. But, alas, it has received very little.

[34]

The only places that give much detail about the black antiwar religious cults and about the government prosecutions of their members are chapter twenty-two of Roi Ottley, 'New World A-Coming': Inside Black America (Boston: Houghton Miffllin, 1943), and pp. 103-5 of Neil A. Wynn, The Afro-American and the Second World War (New York Holmes & Meier, 1975). Wynn's comments are based on more recent research, but he makes an unfounded distinction between prosecutions for sedition and for urging draft resistance. Washburn, A Question of Sedition, also discusses black seditionists on p. 172, and further reveals that, if not for Biddle, F.D.R. and J. Edgar Hoover probably would have shut down the entire black press during World War II.

[35]

Two works on the wartime Detroit race riot are Alfred McClung Lee and Norman D. Humphrey, Race Riot (New York Dryden, 1943), and Robert Shogan and Tom Craig, The Detroit Race Riot: A Study in Violence (Philadelphia Chilton Books, 1964).

[36]

The best discussion of the zoot-suit riots in Los Angeles is contained in Blum's V Was for Victory. Mauncio Mazon, The Zoot Suit Rusts: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984), although a more recent book-length treatment, is marred by its psycho-historic approach, which views the riots as mainly symbolic. Mazon does, however, point out the important fact that the zoot-suit riots generated a fairly tame level of violence, especially relative to the wartime violence directed against blacks.

[37]

Allan M. Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942-1945 (New Haven Yale University Press, 1978), is a solid study of that agency. Blum's V Was for Victory also contains a lengthy section on the Office of War Information.

[38]

Theodore Koop, Weapon of Silence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946), is an older study of the Office of Censorship.

[39]

Charles J. Tull, Father Coughlin and the New Deal (Syracuse Syria University Press, 1965). For a more general examination of postal censorship, consult the relevant section of Dorothy Ganfield Fowler, Unmailable: Congress and the Post Office (Athens: University of Georgia Press 1977).

[40]

The case of the U-boat saboteurs is the subject of Eugene Rachlis, They Came to Kill: The Story of Eight Nazi Saboteurs in America (New York Random House, 1961).

[41]

A Revisionist look at one of the renegade broadcaster cases is provided by James J. Martin, "The Framing of 'Tokyo Rose'," in The Saga of Hog Iska1d: And Other Essays in Inconvenient History (Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles, 1977); pp. 145-80.

[42]

Pound's incarceration is fully treated in E. Fuller Torrey, The Roots of Treason. Ezra Pound and the Secrets of St. Elizabeth's (New York McGraw-Hill, 1984). Torrey, himself a psychiatrist, believes that Pound was sane-but still a bona fide traitor.

[43]

For the emergence of the intelligence community during World War A, see Corson's The Armies Of Ignorance. There are two good works on the CIA's forerunner R. Hams Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley: University of California, 1972), and Bradley F. Smith, The Shadow Warriors: The OSS, and the Origins of the CIA. (New York Basic Books, 1983).

[44]

On the wartime roots of the National Security Agency, see James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace: A Report On America's Most Secret Agency, rev. ed., (New York Penguin Books, 1983).

[45]

For the ambivalent civil liberties role played by the Supreme Court and the Constitution, see Edwin S. Corwin, Total War And TV Constitution In Crisis Tunes, 1918-1969 (New York Harper & Row, 1972).

[46]

Peter Irons, Justice At War: The Story Of The Japanese-American Internment Cases (New York Oxford University Press, 1983), looks at the court cases that internment inspired, showing both that the government suppressed damaging documents and that ACLU lawyers, out of deference to F.DR., were remiss in representing their Japanese- Arnerican clients.

[47]

The common notion of World War II as "The Good War" has most recently been reaffirmed in the title of a book by Studs Terkel: "The Good War": An Oral History of World War Two (New York Pantheon 1984).

The following review is found in the Association of Contemporary Church Historians Newsletter- February 2000- Vol.VI, no. 2:

Eric Voegelin. Hitler and the Germans. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999.

This book is based on lectures Eric Voegelin gave at the University of Munich in 1964, that are being published now for the first time. The lectures were given in German, and they have been ably edited and translated into English by Detlev Clemens and Brendan Purcell. In this work, Voegelin seeks to address questions such as these: What were the spiritual conditions in Germany which allowed Hitler to rise to power and gain the support of so many average people?, Why did the Christian churches respond to Nazism so weakly?, How did a regime rooted in illegality and murder take over the legal system in Germany?, Why do intellectuals and academics in Germany after the war have such a poor understanding of Nazism as a spiritual phenomenon?, Why are many former Nazis who are war criminals living openly and prospering in Germany after the war?

Those who are already familiar with Voegelin's philosophy will find here the basic concepts which he has developed elsewhere: human existence occurs "in between" materiality and the transcendent realm of God; human beings have a marked tendency to avoid living honestly with this reality of the "between"; this leads them to create false "second realities" in which they attempt to exist autonomously, apart from God; the flight from reality has led to the modern neo-gnostic regimes of mass murder such as Stalinism and Nazism. In these lectures, Voegelin focuses on the historical circumstances of Nazism, making this volume more concrete and accessible than his other more abstract and philosophical writings, which have a tendency toward dense argument and complex terminology. This volume would serve very well as an introduction to Voegelin for someone who has not read him.

There is a clear undercurrent of anger animating this text, which is understandable given Voegelin's personal history of persecution at the hands of the Nazis. Voegelin doesn't allow his anger to derail his central purpose, however, which is to analyze the various dimensions of the "abyss" into which Germany descended: the academic abyss, the ecclesiastical abyss, and the legal abyss. In the academic realm, Voegelin's principal target of attack is P. E. Schramm, the historian who edited Hitler's Table Talk. Voegelin pillories Schramm for producing an "anatomy" of the dictator which reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of the subject. This lack of understanding is reprehensible in Voegelin's eyes because the intellectual tools needed for correct understanding were available to Schramm--in classical philosophy, biblical theology, and the writings of contemporaries such as Karl Kraus, Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, and Heimito von Doderer.

Voegelin comments on the ecclesiastical situation in two substantial chapters which are devoted to the Catholic and Protestant spheres. In each case his critique is very harsh, emphasizing the idea that most Christians knew of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis and either applauded it or did not care about it as long as they themselves were not being persecuted. When the reach of the Nazis' power did begin to negatively impact the churches, then Christians all of sudden began to realize that they should be concerned about their fellow human beings who are being murdered. Voegelin reveals the narcissism at the root of this morale debacle as a massive failure of the Christian church to hold fast to the central biblical teaching regarding the creation of all people in the image of God.

On pages 199-201, Voegelin puts forward a list of ten biblical and philosophical points which are necessary to teach German clerics and theologians "the elements of Christianity." His wish for the use of this list: "Lower clergy, copy it out daily ten times; bishops and theologians, daily a hundred times; theologians who have received a Cross of Merit from the Federal Republic, daily two hundred times until they have got it." Voegelin's anger and sarcasm make the book lively, but they don't set the stage for a balanced and comprehensive historical account. He pays very little attention to the Confessing Church, for example, mentioning Bonhoeffer only in passing and Karl Barth not even once. His judgment that there was "no good theology" being produced in Germany at the time seems very odd in light of Barth's works (162). But in hindsight, the impact of the Confessing Church was minimal in stemming the tide of Nazism, and Voegelin's portrait of the situation is generally accurate. I make this comment without being a historian of that period myself. I would be very interested to read a review of this work written by such a person. It may be that members of the historical guild will not be as favorable in their attitude toward this work as I am, representing the guild of theological ethics.

Charles Bellinger, Regent College, Vancouver

Recently uncovered footage, long buried in East German archives, reveals that television's first revolution was carried out under the Third Reich. From 1935 to 1944, Berlin studios churned out the world's first regular tv programming, replete with the evening news, street interviews, sports coverage, "racial programs," and interviews with Nazi officials. German technicians achieved remarkable breakthroughs in televising live events, including near instantaneous broadcasts of the 1936 Olympic Games. At the same time, German television's demand for continuous programming opened up camera opportunities far less controlled, and more candidly revealing, than Nazi propagandists would have liked, and official support for the new media waned after 1939. What remains is a remarkable trove of surviving footage, offering an intriguing new window onto the Third Reich. Television under the Swastika, drawing liberally from this footage, opens up a surprising chapter in media history!

The Nazis would later try to rewrite history to say that Hitler became Chancellor simply because it was his destiny, but in reality, Hitler had been helped by economic circumstance and the support and miscalculation of others.

In the Twenty-First Century, one historical question more than any other demands an answer.

How could a cultured nation at the heart of Europe be responsible for acts so heinous that they have altered concepts of what man is capable of.

How could the Nazis come to be? This series is the definitive television history of the rise and fall of the Nazis.

Helped Into Power - How was it possible that a cultured nation at the heart of Europe ever allowed Hitler and the Nazi party to come to power?

Chaos and Consent - If the Germans are famous for one quality it is efficiency. Yet the Nazi administration of Germany during the 1930’s was characterized by radical chaos.

The Wrong War - Hitler admired one country more than any other - Great Britain. His favorite film was the Bengal Lancers which told the story of the British in India. In Mein Kampf he spoke of expanding German territory to the East. How was it possible then that in 1939 he ended up fighting the one country that he had started out wanting as an ally, Great Britain, and allied to the one country he had intended to take land from, Russia?

The Wild East - Poland was to become the epicenter of Nazi brutality; the place were Nazism achieved its purest and most bestial form. This is the story of the first two years of the Nazi occupation of Poland and the vicious power battles between the Nazi barons.

The Road to Treblinka - How was it possible that the holocaust ever happened? With access to extraordinary new material from Lithuania including an interview with a member of the Nazi killing squads this program examines how the Nazi could commit acts which have caused estimates of how low human can sink for ever to be altered.

Fighting to the End - In the summer of 1943 the Italians, seeing which way the war was going, voted Mussolini out of office and declared the war over. Why couldn't the Germans do the same? Why did it take the near total destruction of their country for them to give in?


Were World Wars I and II—which can now be seen as a thirty-year paroxysm of slaughter and destruction—inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Were the bloodiest and most devastating conflicts ever suffered by mankind fated by forces beyond men’s control? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment? In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen—Winston Churchill first among them—the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations.

Among the British and Churchillian blunders were:

• The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France

• The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that muti- lated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler

• Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo- Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest

• The 1935 sanctions that drove Italy straight into the Axis with Hitler

• The greatest blunder in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939—that guaranteed the Second World War

• Churchill’s astonishing blindness to Stalin’s true ambitions.

Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War” is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned.

In this C-SPAN interview Patrick Buchanan talked about his book, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost its Empire and the and the West Lost the World, at his home in McLean, Virginia. In the book Mr. Buchanan argues that the World Wars were the result of diplomatic mistakes and focuses his criticism on British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Mr. Buchanan claims that the demise of the British Empire is a result of the country’s foray into the Wars and suggests that America may be following the same path.

Patrick Buchanan is the author of nine books, including The Death of the West and State of Emergency. He was the senior adviser to three U.S. presidents and ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996 as well as being the Reform Party candidate in 2000. Mr. Buchanan is currently a senior policy analyst for MSNBC and a syndicated columnist.

A re-examination of World War II and its outcome by the eminent historian author of Europe: A History poses key questions about the war's battles and political ideologies, evaluating established facts that can promote greater reader understanding about popular beliefs.

Americans call the Second World War “The Good War.” But before it even began, America’s wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens—and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness. Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single history, in the time and place where they occurred: between Germany and Russia, when Hitler and Stalin both held power. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands will be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history.

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale University, presents a history of the mass killings led by Hitler and Stalin. Mr. Snyder examines the region between Berlin and Moscow that he dubs, “The Bloodlands.” Here, over the course of twelve years, 1933 to 1945, fourteen million people were killed. Timothy Snyder discussed his book at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York City. He responded to questions from members of the audience.

An in-depth study of all the varied facets of the Nazi intelligence apparatus ranging from the dreaded Gestapo, the daring Brandenburg battalions through to the SD under the Central Security Service of the Reich. The history of each unit is examined in great detail including its formation, the missions that it carried out and its importance in the war as a whole. Explored is the phenomenon of the fractious rivalry that ran rife throughout the intelligence community and analysis is made on the effect that this had in damaging Germany's intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination, especially the rivalry between Canaris, head of Abwehr and the SS intelligence service. Firsthand accounts from the men who took part in Nazi espionage educates the reader into the mindset of a German agent and the book also shows how vital Hitler's espionage machinery was to him taking power and succeeding in conquering vast swathes of Europe. It also shows how the very same machine ultimately put a nail into the Nazi coffin with poor analysis, costly errors and downright inhumanity.

The Red Orchestra (German: Die Rote Kapelle) was the name given by the Gestapo to an anti-Nazi resistance movement in Berlin, as well as to Soviet espionage rings operating in German-occupied Europe and Switzerland during World War II.

The term 'Red Orchestra' was coined by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), the counter-espionage arm of the SS, which referred to resistance radio operators as 'pianists', their transmitters as 'pianos', and their supervisors as 'conductors'.

It can be argued that the Middle East during the World War II has been regarded as that conflictOCOs most overlooked theater of operations. Though the threat of direct Axis invasion never materialized beyond the Egyptian Western Desert with RommelOCOs Afrika Korps, this did not limit the Axis from probing the Middle East and cultivating potential collaborators and sympathizers. These actions left an indelible mark in the socio-political evolution of the modern states of the Middle East. This book explores the infusion of the political language of anti-Semitism, nationalism, fascism, and Marxism that were among the ideological byproducts of Axis and Allied intervention in the Arab world. The status of British-dominated Middle East was tailor-made for exploitation by Axis intelligence and propaganda. German and Italian intelligence efforts fueled anti-British resentments; their influence shaped the course of Arab nationalist sentiments throughout the Middle East.

A relevant parallel to the pan-Arab cause was Hitler OCOs attempt to bring ethnic Germans into the fold of a greater German state. In theory, as the Sudeten German stood on par with the Carpathian German, so too, according to doctrinal theory, did the Yemeni stand in union with the Syrian in the imagination of those espousing pan-Arabism. As historic evidence demonstrates, this very commonality proved to be a major factor in the development of relations between Arab and Fascist leaders. The Arab nationalist movement amounted to nothing more than a shapeless, fragmented, counter position to British imperialism, imported to the Arab East via Berlin for Nazi aspirations."

Basically, the frightfulness of Kolyma was due not to geographical or climatic reasons, but to conscious decisions taken in Moscow. For a few years before 1937, in fact, it was well administered and the death rate was low. The climate, though exceedingly cold, is a remarkably healthy one for men who are properly fed, clothed and sheltered. In this earlier phase, the main aim of the administration was to produce gold efficiently. In the later period ( as one commandant put it quite openly), though the gold remained important, the central aim was to kill off the prisoners. In the earliest period of the labour camp system, the Solovki camps on the islands of the White Sea were the symbol of the whole system, the worst killers. These were followed, in the mid-thirties, by the camps of the Baltic-White Sea Canal. Kolyma took their place just when the system was reaching its maximum expansion, and remained central to it for the next fifteen years, as (in Solzhenitsyn's words) 'the pole of cold and cruelty' of the labour camp system."

An ultra-rare Russian-language documentary about the most notorious of the Gulag death camps in frigid north-eastern Siberia. If sent to Kolyma, you had about a 10% chance of survival, death coming quickly from exposure, illness, disease, overwork, or inmate gangs. The common expression in Russia was, "Kolyma means death!"

Anything (or nothing) you did, had done, or might do would be enough to get you sent there. To quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - author of The Gulag Archipelago - on how very low the bar was to perceived "wrongdoing" in Stalinist Russia:

“Who among us has not experienced its all-encompassing embrace? In all truth, there is no step, thought, action, or lack of action under the heavens which could not be punished by the heavy hand of Article 58.”

The Kolyma (pronounced koh-lee-MAH) region (Russian: Колыма) is located in the far north-eastern area of Russia in what is commonly known as Siberia but is actually part of the Russian Far East. It is bounded by the East Siberian Sea and the Arctic Ocean in the north and the Sea of Okhotsk to the south. The extremely remote region gets its name from the Kolyma River and mountain range, parts of which were not discovered until 1926. Today the region consists roughly of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug and the Magadan Oblast.

The area, part of which is within the Arctic Circle, has a subarctic climate with very cold winters lasting up to six months of the year. Permafrost and tundra cover a large part of the region. Average winter temperatures range from -19°C to -38°C (even lower in the interior), and average summer temperatures, from +3°C to +16°C. There are rich reserves of gold, silver, tin, tungsten, mercury, copper, antimony, coal, oil, and peat. Twenty-nine zones of possible oil and gas accumulation have been identified on the Sea of Okhotsk shelf. Total reserves are estimated at 3.5 billion tons of equivalent fuel, including 1.2 billion tons of oil and 1.5 billion m3 of gas.[1]

The principal town, Magadan, with a population of 99,399 and an area of 18 square kilometers, is the largest port of north-eastern Russia. It has a large fishing fleet and remains open year-round with the help of icebreakers. Magadan is served by the nearby Sokol Airport. There are many public and private farming enterprises. Gold mining works, pasta and sausage plants, fishing companies, and a distillery form the city's industrial base.[1]

History

Under Joseph Stalin's rule, Kolyma became the most notorious region for the Gulag labor camps. A million or more people may have died en route to the area or in the Kolyma's series of gold mining, road building, lumbering, and construction camps between 1932 and 1954. It was Kolyma's reputation that caused Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, to characterize it as the "pole of cold and cruelty" in the Gulag system. The Mask of Sorrow monument in Magadan commemorates all those who died in the Kolyma forced-labour camps and the recently dedicated Church of the Nativity remembers the victims in its icons and Stations of the Camps.

Emergence of the Gulag camps

Gold and platinum were discovered in the region in the early 20th century. During the time of the USSR's industrialization (beginning with Stalin's First Five-Year Plan, 1928–1932) the need for capital to finance economic development was great. The abundant gold resources of the area seemed tailor-made to provide this capital. A government agency Dalstroy (Russian: Дальстрой, acronym for Far North Construction Trust) was formed to organize the exploitation of the area. Prisoners were being drawn into the Soviet penal system in large numbers during the initial period of Kolyma's development, most notably from the so-called anti-Kulak campaign and the government's internal war to force collectivization on the USSR's peasantry. These prisoners formed a readily available workforce.

Butugychag Tin Mine - A Gulag camp in the Kolyma area

The initial efforts to develop the region began in 1932, with the building of the town of Magadan by forced labor.[2] (Many projects in the USSR were already using forced labor, most notably the White Sea-Baltic Canal.) After a gruelling train ride (on the Trans-Siberian Railway, the longest in the USSR), prisoners were disembarked at one of several transit camps (such as Nakhodka and later Vanino) and transported across the Sea of Okhotsk to the natural harbor chosen for Magadan's construction. Conditions aboard the ships were harsh.[3]

In 1932 expeditions pushed their way into the interior of the Kolyma, embarking on the construction of the Kolyma Highway, which was to become known as the Road of Bones. Eventually, about 80 different camps dotted the region of the uninhabited taiga.

The original director of the Kolyma camps was Eduard Berzin, a Chekist. Berzin was later removed (1937) and shot during the period of the Great Purges in the USSR.

The Arctic Death Camps

In 1937, at the height of the Purges, Stalin ordered an intensification of the hardships prisoners were forced to endure.[4] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quotes camp commander Naftaly Frenkel as establishing the new law of the Archipelago: "We have to squeeze everything out of a prisoner in the first three months — after that we don't need him anymore." [5] The system of hard labor and minimal or no food reduced most prisoners to helpless "goners" (dokhodyaga, in Russian).

Robert Conquest, Yevgenia Ginzburg, Anne Applebaum, Adam Hochschild and others (see bibliography) describe the Kolyma camps in some detail. The suffering of the prisoners was exacerbated by the presence of ordinary criminals, who terrorized the "political" prisoners. Death in the Kolyma camps came in many forms, including: overwork, starvation, malnutrition, mining accidents, exposure, murder at the hands of criminals, and beatings at the hands of guards. A director of the Sevvostlag complex of camps, colonel Sergey Garanin is said to have personally shot whole brigades of prisoners for not fulfilling their daily quotas in the late 1930s.[6] Escape was difficult, owing to the climate and physical isolation of the region, but some still attempted it. Escapees, if caught, were often torn to shreds by camp guard dogs. The use of torture as punishment was also common. Soviet dissident historian Roy Medvedev has compared the conditions in the Kolyma camps to Auschwitz.

Prisoners at a Kolyma goldmine

Many of the prisoners in Kolyma were academics or intellectuals. Among them was Mikhail Kravchuk (Krawtschuk), a Ukrainian mathematician who by the early 1930s had received considerable acclaim in the West. After a summary trial, apparently for not being willing to take part in the accusations of some of his colleagues, he was sent to Kolyma where he died in 1942. "Hard work in the Soviet labor camp, harsh climate and meager food, poor health, and last but not least, accusations and abandonment by most of his colleagues, took their toll. Kravchuk perished in Magadan in Eastern Siberia, about 4,000 miles (6,000 km) from the place where he was born. Kravchuk's last article had appeared soon after his arrest in 1938. However, after this publication, Kravchuk's name was literally stricken from books and journals."[7]

The prisoner population of Kolyma was substantially increased in 1946 with the arrival of thousands of former Soviet POWs liberated by Allied forces or the Red Army at the close of World War II.[8] Those not summarily executed frequently received ten or twenty-five year prison sentences to a gulag, including Kolyma.[8]

There were, however, some exceptions. Léon Theremin, an inventor, who had been seized by Soviet agents in the United States and forced to return to the Soviet Union was, on Joseph Stalin's order, imprisoned at Butyrka and later sent to work in the Kolyma gold mines. Although rumors of his execution were widely circulated, Theremin was, in fact, put to work in a sharashka or secret research laboratory, together with other scientists and engineers, including aircraft designer Andrei Tupolev and rocket scientist Sergei Korolyov (also a Kolyma inmate). The Soviet Union rehabilitated Theremin in 1956.

The Kolyma camps were converted to (mostly) free labor after 1954, and in 1956 Nikita Khrushchev ordered a general amnesty that freed many prisoners.

Dalstroy officials

Dalstroy was the agency created to manage exploitation of the Kolyma area, based principally on the use of forced labour.

In the words of Azerbaijani prisoner Ayyub Baghirov, "The entire administration of the Dalstroy - economic, administrative, physical and political — was in the hands of one person who was invested with many rights and privileges." The officials in charge of Dalstroy, i.e. the Kolyma Gulag camps were:

Eduard Petrovich Berzin, 1932–1937

Karp Aleksandrovich Pavlov, 1937–1939.

Ivan Fedorovich Nikishev, 1940–1948.

Ivan Grigorevich Petrenko, 1948–1950.

I.L. Mitrakov, from 1950 until Dalstroy was taken over by the Ministry of Metallurgy on 18 March 1953.[9]

Calendar of historical events

A detailed calendar of events:

Dalstroy

4 February 1932: Eduard Berzin, Manager of Dalstroy, arrives with the first 10 prisoners.

1934: The headcount increases to 30,000 inmates.

1937: The number of inmates increases to over 70.000; 51,500 kg of gold mined

June 1937: Stalin reprimands the Kolyma commandants for their undue leniency towards the inmates.

December 1937: Berzin is charged with espionage and subsequently tried and shot in August 1938.

March 4, 1938: Dalstroy is put under the jurisdiction of NKVD, USSR.

December 1938: Osip Mandelstam, an eminent Russian poet, dies in a transit camp en route to Kolyma.

1939: Number of inmates now 138,200.

11 October 1939: Commandants Pavlov (Dalstroy) and Garanin (Sevvostlag) sacked from their posts. Garanin subsequently shot.

1941: Headcount of inmates reaches 190,000. Also some 3,700 Dalstroy contract workers.

May 23, 1944: US Vice President Henry A. Wallace arrives for a NKVD-hosted 25-day tour of Magadan, Kolyma, and the Russian Far East.

October 1945: Camp for the Japanese prisoners of war is established in Magadan, to provide extra labour.

1952: 199,726 inmates, the highest ever in the history of the Kolyma camps and Dalstroy.

May 1952: According to commandant Mitrakov, Sevvoslag is dissolved, Dalstroy transformed into the General Board of Labour Camps

March 1953: After Stalin's death, Dalstroy transferred to the Ministry of Metallurgy, camp units come under the jurisdiction of the Soviet Ministry of Justice.

September 1953: Dalstroy camp units taken over by the newly established Management Board of the North-Eastern Corrective Labour Camps. Harsh camp regime gradually relaxed.

1953–1956: Period of mass amnesties and the release of most political prisoners. Some camp closures begin.

1957: Dalstroy liquidated. Many of the former prisoners continued to work in the mines with a modified status and a few new prisoners arrived, at least until the early 1970s.

Post-Dalstroy developments

The Chukot Autonomous Okrug site provides details of developments after the official closure of the camps. In 1953, the Magadan Oblast (or region) was established. Dalstroy was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Metallurgy and later to the Ministry of Non-Ferrous Metallurgy.

Industrial and economic evolution

Industrial gold-mining started in 1958 leading to the development of mining settlements, industrial enterprises, power plants, hydro-electric dams, power transmission lines and improved roads. By the 1960s, the region's population exceeded 100,000. With the dissolution of Dalstroy, the Soviets adopted new labor policies. While the prison labor was still important, it mainly consisted of common criminals. New manpower was recruited from all Soviet nationalities on a voluntary basis, to make up for the sudden lack of political prisoners. Young men and women were lured to the frontier land of Kolyma with the promise of high earnings and better living. But many decided to leave. The region's prosperity suffered under Soviet liberal policies in the end of the 1980s and 1990s with a considerable reduction in population, apparently by 40% in Magadan.[10] A U.S. report from the late 1990s gives details of the region's economic shortfall citing outdated equipment, bankruptcies of local companies and lack of central support. It does however report substantial investments from the United States and the governor's optimism for future prosperity based on revival of the mining industries.[11]

Last political prisoners

Dalstroy and the camps did not close down completely. The Kolyma authority, which was reorganised in 1958/59 (31 December 1958), finally closed in 1968. However the mining activities did not stop. Indeed, government structures still exist today under the Ministry of Natural Resources. In some cases, the same individuals seem to have stayed on over the years under new management. There are indications that the political prisoners were gradually phased out over the years but it was only as a result of Yeltsin's far reaching reforms in the 1990s that the very last prisoners were released from Kolyma. The Russian author Andrei Amalrik appears to have been one of the last high-profile political prisoners to be sent to Kolyma. In 1970, he published two books: Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? and Involuntary Journey to Siberia. As a result, he was arrested for "defaming the Soviet state" in November 1970 and sentenced to hard labour, apparently in Kolyma, for what turned out to be a total of almost five years.[12]

Accounts of the Kolyma Gulag

During and after the Second World War the region saw major influxes of Ukrainians, Polish, German, Japanese, and Korean prisoners. There is a particularly memorable account written by a Romanian survivor, Michael Solomon, in his book Magadan (see Bibliography below) which gives us a vivid picture of both the transit camps leading to the Kolyma and the region itself. The Hungarian, George Bien, author of the Lost Years, also recounts the horrors of Kolyma.[13] His story has also led to a film.[14]

In Bitter Days of Kolyma, Ayyub Baghirov, an Azerbaijani accountant who was finally rehabilitated, provides details of his arrest, torture and sentencing to eight (finally to become 18) years imprisonment in a labour camp for refusing to incriminate a fellow official for financial irregularities. Describing the train journey to Siberia, he writes: "The terrible heat, the lack of fresh air, the unbearable overcrowded conditions all exhausted us. We were all half starved. Some of the elderly prisoners, who had become so weak and emaciated, died along the way. Their corpses were left abandoned alongside the railroad tracks."

A detailed description of conditions in the camps is provided by Varlam Shalamov in his Kolyma Tales. In Dry Rations he writes: "Each time they brought in the soup... it made us all want to cry. We were ready to cry for fear that the soup would be thin. And when a miracle occurred and the soup was thick we couldn’t believe it and ate it as slowly as possible. But even with thick soup in a warm stomach there remained a sucking pain; we’d been hungry for too long. All human emotions—love, friendship, envy, concern for one’s fellow man, compassion, longing for fame, honesty — had left us with the flesh that had melted from our bodies..."

A vivid account of the conditions in Kolyma is that of Brother Gene Thompson of Kiev's Faith Mission. He recounts how he met Vyacheslav Palman, a prisoner who survived because he knew how to grow cabbages. Palman spoke of how guards read out the names of those to be shot every evening. On one occasion a group of 169 men were shot and thrown into a pit. Their fully clothed bodies were found after the ice melted in 1998.[15]

One of the most famous political prisoners in Kolyma was Vadim Kozin, possibly Russia's most popular romantic tenor, who was sent to the camps in February 1945, apparently for refusing to write a song about Stalin. Although he was initially freed in 1950 and could return to his singing career, he was soon framed by his enemies on charges of homosexuality and sent back to the camps. Though released once again several years later, he was never officially rehabilitated and remained in exile in Magadan where he died in 1994. Speaking to journalists in 1982, he explained how he had been forced to tour the camps: "The Polit bureau formed brigades which would, under surveillance, go on tours of the concentration camps and perform for the prisoners and the guards, including those of the highest rank."[16]

Finally, Ukrainian prisoner Nikolai Getman who spent the years 1945-1953 in Kolyma, records his testimony in pictures rather than words.[17] But he does have a plea: "Some may say that the Gulag is a forgotten part of history and that we do not need to be reminded. But I have witnessed monstrous crimes. It is not too late to talk about them and reveal them. It is essential to do so. Some have expressed fear on seeing some of my paintings that I might end up in Kolyma again — this time for good. But the people must be reminded... of one of the harshest acts of political repression in the Soviet Union. My paintings may help achieve this." The Jamestown Foundation provides access to all 50 of Getman's paintings together with explanations of their significance.[18]

Estimating the number of victims

While comparatively complete lists of the prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps have survived, the amount of hard evidence in regard to Kolyma is extremely limited. Unfortunately, no reliable archives exist about the total number of victims of Stalinism; all numbers are estimates. In his book, Stalin (1966), Edvard Radzinsky explains how Stalin, while systematically destroying his comrades-in-arms "at once obliterated every trace of them in history. He personally directed the constant and relentless purging of the archives." That practice continued to exist after the death of the dictator.

In an account of a visit to Magadan by Harry Wu of Stanford University in 1999, there is a reference to the efforts of Alexander Biryukov, a Magadan lawyer to document the terror. He is said to have compiled a book listing every one of the 11,000 people documented to have been shot in Kolyma camps by the state security organ, the NKVD. Biryukov, whose father was in the Gulag at the time he was born, has begun researching the location of graves. He believed some of the bodies were still partially preserved in the permafrost.

It is therefore impossible to provide final figures on the number of victims who died in Kolyma. Robert Conquest, author of The Great Terror, now admits that his original estimate of three million victims was far too high. In his article Death Tolls for the Man-made Megadeaths of the 20th Century, Matthew White estimates the number of those who died at 500,000. In Stalin's Slave Ships, Martin Bollinger undertakes a careful analysis of the number of prisoners who could have been transported by ship to Magadan between 1932 and 1953 (some 900,000) and the probable number of deaths each year (averaging 27%). This produces figures significantly below earlier estimates but, as the author emphasizes, his calculations are by no means definitive. In addition to the number of deaths, the dreadful conditions of the camps and the hardships experienced by the prisoners over the years need to be taken into account. In his review[19] of Bollinger's book, Norman Polmar independently estimates there were more than 3,000,000 victims who died at Kolyma. As Bollinger reports in his book, the 3,000,000 estimate originated with the CIA in the 1950s and appears to be a flawed estimate. This number is also estimated by the last survivors.

Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize winner, carried out an extensive investigation of the gulags, and explained in a lecture in 2003, that it's extremely difficult not only to document the facts given the extent of the cover-up but to bring the truth home.[20]

Bibliography

Applebaum, Anne, Gulag: A History, Broadway Books, 2003, hardcover, 720 pp., ISBN 0-7679-0056-1.

Bardach, Janusz / Gleeson, Kathleen Man Is Wolf to Man : Surviving the Gulag, University of California Press, c1998, 392 p., ISBN 0520213521

Bollinger, Martin J., Stalin’s slave ships : Kolyma, the Gulag fleet, and the role of the West, Praeger, 2003, 217 p., ISBN 0275981002

Conquest, Robert: The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties. 1968.

Conquest, Robert: The Great Terror: A Reassessment, Oxford University Press, May 1990, hardcover, ISBN 0-19-505580-2; trade paperback, Oxford, September, 1991, ISBN 0-19-507132-8

Conquest, Robert: Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps, Viking Press, 1978, 254 p. ISBN 0670414999

Getman, Nikolai: The Gulag Collection: Paintings of the Soviet Penal System, The Jamestown Foundation, 2001, 131 p., ISBN 0967500915

Ginzburg, Eugenia, Journey into the whirlwind, Harvest/HBJ Book, 2002, 432 pp., ISBN 0156027518.

Ginzburg, Eugenia, Within the Whirlwind, Harvest/HBJ Book, 1982, 448 pp., ISBN 0156976498.

Hochschild, Adam, The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), 304 pp., paperback: ISBN 0-618-25747-0

Kizny, Tomasz, Gulag, Firefly Books, 2004, 495 p. ISBN 1552979644

Khlevniuk, Oleg, The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror, Yale University Press, c2004, 418 p., ISBN 0300092849

MacCannon, John: Red Arctic: Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0195114361

Radzinsky Edvard, Stalin: the first in-depth biography based on explosive new documents from Russia's secret archives, Hodder & Stoughton, 1996, 594 p., ISBN 0340606193

OstEuropa, various authors (in German): Das Lager schreiben, Varlam Šalamov und die Aufarbeitung des Gulag. Berlin (BWV) 2007 (= Osteuropa 6/2007), 440 p., ISBN 978-3-8305-1219-6

Medvedev, Roy: Let History Judge: the origins and consequences of Stalinism, New York, Vintage Books 1973, c1971, ISBN 039471928X

Shalamov, Varlam, Kolyma Tales, Penguin Books, 1995, 528 pp., ISBN 0-14-018695-6.

Solomon, Michel, Magadan, Princeton, Auerbach Publishers, 1971, 243 p. ISBN 0877690855

External links

Kolyma; the Land of Gold and Death A personal on-line account in nine chapters by Stanislaw J. Kowalski, a Polish prisoner in Kolyma, with numerous references

The Soviet Gulag Era in Pictures, 1927-1953 Photographs, several of Kolyma, collected by James Duncan

Crimes of Soviet Communists Wide collection of sources and links about GULAG also in Kolyma

The White Crematorium Background information on the Gulag and the Kolyma camps by Jens Alstrup who cycled across Russia to Magadan in 1997 and has frequently returned to continue his research. Retrieved 26 February 2008.

Kolyma, Mikhail Mikheev's 1995 documentary film winner of both the Amsterdam and Berlin film festivals

Work in the Gulag from the Stalin's Gulag section of the Online Gulag Museum with a short description and images of Kolyma

GULAG: Many Days, Many Lives, Online Exhibit, Center for History and New Media, George Mason University

Virtual Gulag Museum The Saint-Petersburg Research and Information Centre “Memorial” linking to museums in Russia, eastern Europe and Asia on the history of Soviet Terror, the Gulag and the resistance

Gulag prisoners at work, 1936-1937 Photoalbum at the New York Public Library's Digital Gallery

Kolyma - Off to the Unknown - Stalin's Notorious Prison Camps in Siberia by Ayyub Baghirov (1906-1973)

Italian-American artist Thomas Sgovio (1916–1997) created a series of drawings and paintings, based on his life as a prisoner in the Soviet Gulag

Russian-language history of Dalstroy from Kolyma.ru

Links to Maps

Detailed Russian map of the Kolyma Gulag from the site Jewish Community in Magadan

Russian Map of the Gulag camps across the Soviet Union from the Memorial site

The Book of Books: Rasequin’s Chronicles dark fantasy novel involving details from camp life

Footnotes

^ a b Magadan Region from Kommersant, Russia's Daily Online. Retrieved 22 January 2007.

^ Ludwik Kowalski: Alaska notes on StalinismRetrieved 18 January 2007.

^ According to a 1987 article in Time Magazine: "During the 1930s the only way to reach Magadan was by ship from Khabarovsk, which created an island psychology and the term Gulag archipelago. The prison ships were crowded hell-holes in which thousands died. One survivor's memoir recounts that the prison ship Dzhurma was caught in the autumn ice in 1933 while trying to get to the mouth of the Kolyma River. When it reached port the following spring, it carried only crew and guards. All 12,000 prisoners were missing, left dead on the ice." It turns out that this incident, widely reported since it was first mentioned in a book published in 1947, could not have happened as the ship Dzhurma was not in Soviet hands until mid 1935. A detailed analysis of this legend can be found in the book Stalin's Slave Ships: Kolyma, the Gulag Fleet, and the Role of the West (Praeger, 2003). James O. Jackson on a visit to Magadan, Time Magazine, April 20, 1987, article entitled Soviet Union. Retrieved 18 January 2007.

^ Case Study: Stalin's Purges from Genderside Watch. Retrieved 19 January 2007.

^ Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, p. 49.

^ Campo di detenzione speciale "La Kolyma" 1931 – 1955 Alexander Langer Foundation (in Italian). Retrieved 17 January 2007.

^ Kravchuk story : How a scientist received a job offer from the American Mathematical Society, was accused of being a foreign spy, and sent to GULAG by Ivan Katchanovski, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia

^ a b Conquest, Robert, Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps, Viking Press, (1978), ISBN 0670414999, pp. 228-229

^ (Russian) История Дальстроя (History of Dalstroy) from the kolyma.ru website. Retrieved 14 February 2007.

^ Yakutia ASSR and the Sakha Republic from Cosmic Elk. Retrieved 23 January 2007.

^ Magadan Region Update by Bisnis Vladivostok Representative Svetlana Kuzmichenko, 1998, U.S. & Foreign Commercial Service and U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 23 January 2007.

^ John Keep: Andrei Amalrik and "1984", Russian Review, Vol. 30, No.4. (Oct., 1971), pp. 335-345. Retrieved 21 January 2007.

^ George Bien, Gulag Survivor in the Boston Globe, June 22, 2005

^ Documentary film Walk on Gulagland Kolyma by Zoltan Szalkai. Retrieved 17 January 2007.

^ Br. Gene Thompson: The Road to Death- Retrieved 17 January 2007

^ Vadim Kozin, One Way Trip from Petersburg to Magadan from the Little Russia in US site. Retrieved 13 February 2007.

^ The Gulag Collection: Paintings of the Soviet Penal System by Former Prisoner Nilolau Getman

^ Nikolai Getman: The Gulag collection. Retrieved 13 February 2007.

^ Norman Polmar "Stalin's Slave Ships: Kolyma, the Gulag Fleet, and the Role of the West (review)", Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 9, no. 3, Summer 2007, pp. 180-182

^ Gulag: Understanding the Magnitude of What Happened, 16 October 2003. Retrieved 23 January 2007.

The TCM original documentary The Tramp and the Dictator (2002), co-directed by Kevin Brownlow and Michael Kloft and narrated by Kenneth Branagh, compares the parallel lives of Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hilter. Born within four days of each other in April 1889, Chaplin and Hitler became, respectively, the most-loved and most-hated men of their time. The two lives intersected when Chaplin made The Great Dictator (1940), a satire of Hitler and his Nazi empire. "Here was this huge artist standing up against this gargantuan monster," film critic Stanley Kauffmann says in the documentary.

Among others interviewed are Chaplin' s son, Sydney Chaplin; politician/historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.; film directors Bernard Vorhaus and Sidney Lumet; and caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, who served as publicity artist for The Great Dictator. The documentary includes never-before-seen color film shot by Chaplin's brother, Sydney, during the making of The Great Dictator and recently discovered at the Chaplin villa in Switzerland.

Producer: Thorsten Pollfuss

Director: Kevin Brownlow, Michael Kloft

Screenplay: Kevin Brownlow, Christopher Bird

Music: Timothy Brock

Film Editing: Christopher Bird

Narration: Kenneth Branagh

BW/C-55m. Closed Captioning.

by Roger Fristoe

In his controversial masterpiece, The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin offers both a cutting caricature of Adolf Hitler and a sly tweaking of his own comic persona. Chaplin, in his first pure talkie, brings his sublime physicality to two roles: the cruel yet clownish “Tomainian” dictator and the kindly Jewish barber who is mistaken for him. Featuring Jack Oakie and Paulette Goddard in stellar supporting turns, The Great Dictator, boldly going after the National Socialist leader before the U.S.’s official entry into World War II, is an audacious amalgam of politics and slapstick that culminates in Chaplin’s famously impassioned speech.

The Autobiography of a 'Jeep' is a 1943 propaganda film produced by the US Office of War Information. As its name might suggest, it is the story of parts of World War II told from the perspective of a Jeep.

The Jeep tells us he comes from a country with many roads and cars. He mentions pre-war plans for highways and cities that had to be scrapped because of the war, and the sacrifices the personalized Jeep is making for the war effort.

The Jeep then makes his first appearance before the servicemen, his experience in the desert and passing rivers and his nervousness in front of more experienced vehicles like the tank. Finally the Jeep proves his mettle and is put in general production, ridden by presidents and royalty. All this time he is accompanied by his friend, the American soldier.

How "weed" will win the War.

Hemp for Victory is a United States government film made during World War II and released in 1942, explaining the uses of hemp, encouraging farmers to grow as much as possible.

The film was made to encourage farmers to grow hemp for the war effort because other industrial fibers, often imported from overseas, were in short supply. The film shows a history of hemp and hemp products, how hemp is grown, and how hemp is processed into rope, cloth, cordage, and other products.

Before 1989, the film was relatively unknown. The United States government denied ever having made such a film. The United States Department of Agriculture library and the Library of Congress told all interested parties that no such movie was made by the USDA or any branch of the US government. Two VHS copies were recovered and donated to the Library of Congress on 19 May 1989 by Maria Farrow, Carl Packard, and Jack Herer.

The only known copy in 1976 was a 3/4" broadcast quality copy of the film that was originally obtained by William Conde in 1976 from a reporter for the Miami Herald and the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church of Jamaica. It was given in trust that it would be made available to as many as possible. It was put into the hands of Jack Herer by William Conde during the 1984 OMI (Oregon Marijuana Initiative). The film 20 years later is now available in numerous locations on the Internet.

As it was made by the US Government, it is public domain and is freely available for download from the Internet Archive.

MORE THAN TWO YEARS before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the research staff of the Council on Foreign Relations had started to envision a venture that would dominate the life of the institution for the demanding years ahead. With the memory of the Inquiry in focus, they conceived a role for the Council in the formulation of national policy.

On September 12, 1939, as Nazi Germany invaded Poland, Armstrong and Mallory entrained to Washington to meet with Assistant Secretary of State George S. Messersmith. At that time the Department of State could command few resources for study, research, policy planning, and initiative; on such matters, the career diplomats on the eve of World War II were scarcely better off than had been their predecessors when America entered World War I. The men from the Council proposed a discreet venture reminiscent of the Inquiry: a program of independent analysis and study that would guide American foreign policy in the coming years of war and the challenging new world that would emerge after.

The project became known as the War and Peace Studies. ”The matter is strictly confidential,” wrote Bowman, “because the whole plan would be ’ditched’ if it became generally known that the State Department is working in collaboration with any outside group.” The Rockefeller Foundation agreed to fund the project, reluctantly at first, but, once convinced of its relevance, with nearly $350,000.

Over the coming five years, almost 100 men participated in the War and Peace Studies, divided into four functional topic groups: economic and financial, security and armaments, territorial, and political. These groups met more than 250 times, usually in New York, over dinner and late into the night. They produced 682 memoranda for the State Department, which marked them classified and circulated them among the appropriate government departments.

The European war was only six months along when the economic and financial group produced a lengthy memo, ”The Impact of War upon the Foreign Trade of the United States.” This was followed by a contingency blueprint in case the British Isles fell to German occupation; Churchill and his ministers would relocate to Canada, the Council analysts concluded, where Anglo-American cooperation in trade would only intensify. In April 1940 and for nine months following, with American entry into the war still only hypothetical, the study group proposed a more tolerant stance toward Japan, hoping thereby to contain Tokyo’s expansionist designs on the Pacific islands and the Asian mainland.

As the world edged yet again toward war, Armstrong enlisted his Princeton friend Allen Dulles (shown here at the right with the shah of Iran and Council Director and J. P. Morgan partner Russell C. Leffingwell) to ex U.S. neutrality in the face of fascist aggression.

The views of the Council group on security and armaments provoked less interest in Washington. Shortly before Pearl Harbor, the group, led by Allen Dulles, outlined the possible need for an American occupation force in defeated Germany, a project that attracted little attention. The territorial group, chaired by Bowman, debated the status of Chiang Kai-shek’s China, relative to Japan and the Soviet Union. After a Japanese defeat, the group concluded, China could be opened to American exports and the United States would have access to the raw materials of a vast virgin territory.

Bowman’s territorial group registered the one immediate impact of the War and Peace Studies upon evolving foreign policy. On March 17, 1940, the Council submitted a memo, “The Strategic Importance of Greenland,” advising that, since the Danish outland was properly a part of the Western Hemisphere, it should be covered by the Monroe Doctrine. President Roosevelt promptly invited Bowman for a discussion at the White House, and one day after Nazi Germany occupied Denmark in April, Roosevelt declared American policy along the lines proposed by the Council group, including the intent to establish military bases in Greenland.

The work of the fourth, political, group was largely superseded by the State Department’s own postwar policy planning staffs. Nonetheless, the Council group’s members were active in the 1944 Dumbarton Oaks conference on world economic arrangements and in the preparations for the 1945 San Francisco conference to establish the United Nations.

Once the United States entered the war, most of the guiding spirits of the War and Peace Studies accepted mobilization into government service, in uniform, in the State Department, or in the fledgling intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services. Allen Dulles, for instance, became a pivotal figure in the OSS from a clandestine base in neutral Switzerland, where he had an influential role in implementing the idea he had presented to the Council for an American occupation force in defeated Germany. His brother, John Foster, remained at his New York law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, throughout the war, but he was active in assisting State Department planning for the future United Nations.

The overall record of the Council’s War and Peace Studies can only compare favorably with the performance of its conceptual predecessor, the Inquiry of World War I. Yet its practical contribution to the U.S. war effort, and the political planning for the era following, remains unclear in the judgment of history.

A perennial problem for historians of government is tracing the initiative for any particular political decision within a government, to say nothing of the more tangential outside influences. Clearly, the Council’s War and Peace Studies were not as important as Armstrong, for one, chose to regard them in his own retrospect. Yet even the most myopic of diplomatic officials would have difficulty sustaining the argument that American foreign policy could have evolved as effectively without the independent provocation of knowledgeable outsiders. William P. Bundy, who straddled the two worlds in the postwar era, as a Pentagon and State Department official and later as Armstrong’s successor at Foreign Affairs, concluded, ”It has been wisely said that no contingency plans are ever adopted as written, but that the exercise is often invaluable in flagging the questions that must be faced. So it was for this extraordinary exercise, I am sure.” 1

Such were the effects of the upheavals of war upon the habits of society. The primary function of the Council on Foreign Relations during World War II proceeded in rigid secrecy, remote from the slightest awareness of most of the Council’s 663 members, who were not themselves personally involved.

Notes:

1. William P. Bundy, The Council on Foreign Relations and Foreign Affairs: Notes for a History (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1994), p. 22.


Sixty million people died in the Second World War, and still they tell us it was the Peoples War.

The official history of the Second World War is Victors History. This is the history of the Second World War without the patriotic whitewash.

The Second World War was not fought to stop fascism, or to liberate Europe. It was a war between imperialist powers to decide which among them would rule over the world, a division of the spoils of empire, and an iron cage for working people, enslaved to the war production drive.

The unpatriotic history of the Second World War explains why the Great Powers fought most of their war not in their own countries, but in colonies in North Africa, in the Far East and in Germany's hoped-for Empire in the East. Find out how wildcat strikes, partisans in Europe and Asia, and soldiers mutinies came close to ending the war. And find out how the Allies invaded Europe and the Far East to save capitalism from being overthrown.

In The People as Enemy: The Leaders' Hidden Agenda in WWII John Spritzler considers World War II not as the "good war," but, essentially, as the "class war." More than forty-six million soldiers and civilians perished in World War II, not counting more than five million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Whole cities were bombed for the express purpose of killing civilians by the hundreds of thousands. And yet this war is known as "the good war" on the grounds that the aim of the Allied nations of Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and China, and the outcome of the war, was to save the world from being enslaved by the Axis (Fascist) nations of Germany, Italy and Japan who intended to establish a "master race" tyranny worse than anything the world had ever seen. That is the official view of the war--the one we have all been taught--but presented here in The People As Enemy, is a very different, and disturbing view. This alternative view argues that the aims of the national leaders were not to defend democracy and self-determination, but to suppress class rebellion--to intimidate working people everywhere from rising up against elite power.

A groundbreaking history of ordinary soldiers struggling on the front lines, The Deserters offers a completely new perspective on the Second World War. Charles Glass—renowned journalist and author of the critically acclaimed Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation—delves deep into army archives, personal diaries, court-martial records, and self-published memoirs to produce this dramatic and heartbreaking portrait of men overlooked by their commanders and ignored by history.

Surveying the 150,000 American and British soldiers known to have deserted in the European Theater, The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II tells the life stories of three soldiers who abandoned their posts in France, Italy, and Africa. Their deeds form the backbone of Glass’s arresting portrait of soldiers pushed to the breaking point, a sweeping reexamination of the conditions for ordinary soldiers.

With the grace and pace of a novel, The Deserters moves beyond the false extremes of courage and cowardice to reveal the true experience of the frontline soldier. Glass shares the story of men like Private Alfred Whitehead, a Tennessee farm boy who earned Silver and Bronze Stars for bravery in Normandy—yet became a gangster in liberated Paris, robbing Allied supply depots along with ordinary citizens. Here also is the story of British men like Private John Bain, who deserted three times but never fled from combat—and who endured battles in North Africa and northern France before German machine guns cut his legs from under him. The heart of The Deserters resides with men like Private Steve Weiss, an idealistic teenage volunteer from Brooklyn who forced his father—a disillusioned First World War veteran—to sign his enlistment papers because he was not yet eighteen. On the Anzio beachhead and in the Ardennes forest, as an infantryman with the 36th Division and as an accidental partisan in the French Resistance, Weiss lost his illusions about the nobility of conflict and the infallibility of American commanders.

Far from the bright picture found in propaganda and nostalgia, the Second World War was a grim and brutal affair, a long and lonely effort that has never been fully reported—to the detriment of those who served and the danger of those nurtured on false tales today. Revealing the true costs of conflict on those forced to fight, The Deserters is an elegant and unforgettable story of ordinary men desperately struggling in extraordinary times.

Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men is an action drama focusing on an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys - seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 - possibly hope to succeed? But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1000 years of culture, they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankind's greatest achievements. From director George Clooney, the film stars George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, and Cate Blanchett.

Watch the excellent documentary, The Rape of Europa, on this same subject.

Amazon book list about the relationship between the British Secret Service, the WWII Office of Strategic Services --America’s first intelligence agency and the direct precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

During World War II, the newly-created Office of Strategic Services was tasked to conduct intelligence gathering and analysis, and wage unconventional warfare. OSS chief, Major General William J. Donovan, divided his organization into functional branches depending on the specialized task that each was to perform. OSS recruits would be briefed on the information contained within each of these manuals that pertained to their branch assignment. Thus, these field manuals represent the functions of each of the OSS branches that are relevant to ARSOF today.

In addition, the OSS produced detailed graphic booklets for some of the OSS branches to explain to policy makers what that element did and what it had accomplished. Those graphic booklets that are available have been included in this collection. The original copies of these manuals are in the holdings of the National Archives II in College Park, MD. There, as part of Research Group 226, they represent just a small portion of the records of the OSS that are now open to researchers.

Drawing from newly declassified documents, the author chronicles the story of codebreaking during the last world war, from cat-and-mouse games with Nazi U-boats to the invasion of Normandy.

Preface

CODEBREAKING is the most important form of secret intelligence in the world today. It produces much more and much more trustworthy information than spies, and this intelligence exerts great influence upon the policies of governments. Yet it has never had a chronicler.

It badly needs one. It has been estimated that cryptanalysis saved a year of war in the Pacific, yet the histories give it but passing mention. Churchill's great history of World War II has been cleaned of every single reference to Allied communications intelligence except one (and that based on the American Pearl Harbor investigation), although Britain thought it vital enough to assign 30,000 people to the work. The intelligence history of World War II has never been written. All this gives a distorted view of why things happened. Furthermore, cryptology itself can benefit, like other spheres of human endeavor, from knowing its major trends, its great men, its errors made and lessons learned.

I have tried in this book to write a serious history of cryptology. It is primarily a report to the public on the important role that cryptology has played, but it may also orient cryptology with regard to its past and alert historians to the sub rosa influence of cryptanalysis. The book seeks to cover the entire history of cryptology. My goal has been twofold: to narrate the development of the various methods of making and breaking codes and ciphers, and to tell how these methods have affected men.

When I began this book, I, like other well-informed amateurs, knew about all that had been published on the history of cryptology in books on the subject. How little we really knew! Neither we nor any professionals realized that many valuable articles lurked in scholarly journals, or had induced any cryptanalysts to tell their stories for publication, or had tapped the vast treasuries of documentary material, or had tried to take a long view and ask some questions that now appear basic. I believe it to be true that, from the point of view of the material previously published in books on cryptology, what is new in this book is 85 to 90 per cent.

Yet it is not exhaustive. A foolish secrecy still clothes much of World War II cryptology—though I believe the outlines of the achievements are known—and to tell just that story in full would require a book the size of this. Even in, say, the 18th century, the unexplored manuscript material is very great.

Nor is this a textbook. I have sketched a few methods of solution. For some readers even this will be too much; them I advise skip this material. They will not have a full understanding of what is going on, but that will not cripple their comprehension of the stories. For readers who want more detail on these methods, I recommend, in the rear of this book, some other works and membership in the American Cryptogram Association.

In my writing, I have tried to adhere to two principles. One was to use primary sources as much as possible. Often it could not be done any other way, since nothing had been published on a particular matter. The other principle was to try to make certain that I did not give cryptology sole and total credit for winning a battle or making possible a diplomatic coup or whatever happened if, as was usual, other factors played a role. Narratives which make it appear as if every event in history turned upon the subject under discussion are not history but journalism. They are especially prevalent in spy stories, and cryptology is not immune. The only other book-length attempt to survey the history of cryptology, the late Fletcher Pratt's Secret and Urgent, published in 1939, suffers from a severe case of this special pleading. Pratt writes thrillingly—perhaps for that very reason—but his failure to consider the other factors, together with his errors and omissions, his false generalizations based on no evidence, and his unfortunate predilection for inventing facts vitiate his work as any kind of a history. (Finding this out was disillusioning, for it was this book, borrowed from the Great Neck Library, that interested me in cryptology.) I think that although trying to balance the story with the other factors may detract a little from the immediate thrill, it charges it with authenticity and hence makes for long-lasting interest: for this is how things really happened.

In the same vein, I have not made up any conversations, and my speculations about things not a matter of record have been marked as such in the notes in the full-length version. I have documented all important facts, except that in a few cases I have had to respect the wishes of my sources for anonymity.

The original publisher submitted the manuscript to the Department of Defense on March 4, 1966, which requested three minor deletions—to all of which I acceded—before releasing the manuscript for publication.

DAVID KAHN

Windsor Gate

Great Neck, New York

Paris

This is an extraordinary, meticulously-detailed, two-hour documentary on how the British developed an ongoing capability to decipher the German ENIGMA code. Apart from the cipher setbacks and triumphs, for the historian, the most significant insights are how ENIGMA breakthroughs affected key military operations in the European and North African theaters of World War II. Comments from former employees of Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking center, enhance the authenticity of this seminal historical account

Published between 1946 and 1948 by the Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, NCA is a collection of documentary evidence and guide materials prepared by the American and British prosecuting staffs for presentation before the International Military Tribunal at Nurnberg (Nuremberg), Germany. Because the binding on the original hardcover edition is red, they are sometimes referred to as "the red volumes" (the IMT series are "the blue volumes," and the Doctors’ Trials series are "the green volumes").

The contents consist of official papers in archives of the German government and the Nazi Party, diaries and letters of prominent Germans, captured reports, etc. There are six folding charts inserted. This collected documentation is more complete than any official record or transcript of the proceedings, because at the outset of the trial the Tribunal ruled that it would treat no written evidence unless read in full in court. For this reason, the documentation gathered was trimmed considerably for presentation in court. In this collection, the documents are reprinted in their entirety, which makes NCA the most complete and detailed publication of the evidence prepared for the trial.

Volumes

[File listing]

World War II was the largest and most violent armed conflict in the history of mankind. However, the half century that now separates us from that conflict has exacted its toll on our collective knowledge. While World War II continues to absorb the interest of military scholars and historians, as well as its veterans, a generation of Americans has grown to maturity largely unaware of the political, social, and military implications of a war that, more than any other, united us as a people with a common purpose. Highly relevant today, World War II has much to teach us, not only about the profession of arms, but also about military preparedness, global strategy, and combined operations in the coalition war against fascism. During the next several years, the U.S. Army will participate in the nation’s 50th anniversary commemoration of World War II. The commemoration will include the publication of various materials to help educate Americans about that war. The works produced will provide great opportunities to learn about and renew pride in an Army that fought so magnificently in what has been called “the mighty endeavor.” A Brief History of the U.S. Army in World War II highlights the major ground force campaigns during the six years of the war, offers suggestions for further reading, and provides Americans an opportunity to learn about the Army’s role in World War II. This brochure was prepared at the U.S. Army Center of Military History by Wayne M. Dzwonchyk (Europe) and John Ray Skates (Pacific). I hope this absorbing account of that period will enhance your appreciation of American achievements during World War II.

"Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future."

-- Adolf Hitler"

Summarize and evaluate the impact of World War II in Europe.

Hitler Lives (also known as Hitler Lives?) is a 1945 American short documentary film directed by Don Siegel, who was uncredited. The film won an Academy Award at the 18th Academy Awards in 1946 for Documentary Short Subject. Earlier the same year, Siegel made his directorial debut on another short film Star in the Night (1945), which also won an Academy Award.

Hitler Lives is based on the film Your Job in Germany, which was produced shortly before the end of the Second World War. Your Job in Germany was written by Theodor Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss).

While retaining some of the original film footage, Hitler Lives was written by Saul Elkins. The film warns that the defeated German population still contains Nazi supporters and that the world must stay ever vigilant against the prospect that a new Hitler will arise within Germany. The film combines dramatized content mixed with archive footage. The end of the film warns against fascism in America.

Six months after Allied Forces liberated German concentration camps, a military tribunal formed at Nuremberg to prosecute Nazi war criminals. Some of the most dangerous were brought to justice - but not all. Documentary Conspiracy? reveals how over 4,000 former Nazis went to work for the U.S. government, without the public's knowledge, to help fight the Soviet Union. Reinhard Gehlen, an intelligence officer for Hitler's General Staff, was tapped to head the U.S. intelligence program in West Germany to spy on the Russians. At the same time, former Nazi scientists and engineers were welcomed onto American soil. But the extent of these operations is only now becoming clear: In 1998, a law was passed mandating declassification of documents concerning recruitment of former Nazis. CIA AND THE NAZIS examines these files to see how far the U.S. went in recruiting its former enemy to fight its new one.

The truth is, thousands of former Nazis, some of whom committed atrocities, went to work for the United States government without the public's knowledge. During the war, their crimes ranged from overseeing slave labor camps to sending orphans to their deaths. After the war, they were on the US payroll either as scientists in America or as intelligence agents in Europe.

Why did Japan decide to fight the United States? This video traces the progress of Japanese grand strategy from the end of WWI to the beginning of WWII. The key strategic question Japan sought to address during this period was the challenge of total war - how to militarily survive in a world dominated by industrial behemoths. From internationalism to traditionalism to totalism, from the Manchurian Incident to the US oil embargo, Japanese strategymakers attempted to find solutions amid a deteriorating international environment, ultimately resulting in Pearl Harbor.

In December 1937, the Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking. Within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered—a death toll exceeding that of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Using extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents, Iris Chang has written the definitive history of this horrifying episode.

China has endured much hardship in its history, as Iris Chang shows in her ably researched The Rape of Nanking, a book that recounts the horrible events in that eastern Chinese city under Japanese occupation in the late 1930s. Nanking, she writes, served as a kind of laboratory in which Japanese soldiers were taught to slaughter unarmed, unresisting civilians, as they would later do throughout Asia. Likening their victims to insects and animals, the Japanese commanders orchestrated a campaign in which several hundred thousand--no one is sure just how many--Chinese soldiers and noncombatants alike were killed. Chang turns up an unlikely hero in German businessman John Rabe, a devoted member of the Nazi party who importuned Adolf Hitler to intervene and stop the slaughter, and who personally saved the lives of countless residents of Nanking

Nanjing Massacre, conventional Nanking Massacre, also called Rape of Nanjing, (December 1937–January 1938), mass killing and ravaging of Chinese citizens and capitulated soldiers by soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army after its seizure of Nanjing, China, on December 13, 1937, during the Sino-Japanese War that preceded World War II. The number of Chinese killed in the massacre has been subject to much debate, with most estimates ranging from 100,000 to more than 300,000.

The destruction of Nanjing—which had been the capital of the Nationalist Chinese from 1928 to 1937—was ordered by Matsui Iwane, commanding general of the Central China Front Army that captured the city. Over the next several weeks, Japanese soldiers carried out Matsui’s orders, perpetrating numerous mass executions and tens of thousands of rapes. The army looted and burned the surrounding towns and the city, destroying more than a third of the buildings. In 1940 the Japanese made Nanjing the capital of their Chinese puppet government headed by Wang Ching-wei (Wang Jingwei). Shortly after the end of World War II, Matsui and Tani Hisao, a lieutenant general who had personally participated in acts of murder and rape, were found guilty of war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and were executed.

"Court Historians" are the intellectual bodyguards of the State. They shape and defend the "official line" or interpretation on the State's wars, its presidential regimes, or other key historical events and public policies. As a result they enjoy high esteem and recognition in the mainstream media and academia. As defenders of the status quo they frequently attack and label their critics as "conspiracy theorists," "revisionists," "isolationists," "appeasers," "anti-intellectuals," or other boogie men, rather than engage in civil discourse or discussion.

As the late economist/historian Murray N. Rothbard noted:

“All States are governed by a ruling class that is a minority of the population, and which subsists as a parasitic and exploitative burden upon the rest of society. Since its rule is exploitative and parasitic, the State must purchase the alliance of a group of “Court Intellectuals,” whose task is to bamboozle the public into accepting and celebrating the rule of its particular State. The Court Intellectuals have their work cut out for them. In exchange for their continuing work of apologetics and bamboozlement, the Court Intellectuals win their place as junior partners in the power, prestige, and loot extracted by the State apparatus from the deluded public. The noble task of Revisionism is to de-bamboozle: to penetrate the fog of lies and deception of the State and its Court Intellectuals, and to present to the public the true history of the motivation, the nature, and the consequences of State activity. By working past the fog of State deception to penetrate to the truth, to the reality behind the false appearances, the Revisionist works to delegitimize, to desanctify, the State in the eyes of the previously deceived public."

The 30 items in this list addressing the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor are by noted critics of the official "establishment consensus" point of view as well as by hagiographic "court historians."

This documentary produced by the BBC offers a revisionist look at the attack on Pearl Harbor, and it raises some tantalizing questions. It makes the incredibly serious and controversial claim that the U.S. government had definitive knowledge of the imminent Japanese attack, yet Franklin D. Roosevelt and other American leaders deliberately sacrificed Americans lives so they would have an excuse to enter World War II.

A president faced an economic depression that wouldn't go away, and a deeply disgruntled electorate. Not for the first or last time, the option of entering a war seemed politically appealing. How badly did FDR want a war and to what lengths was he willing to go to get one? The questions have vexed historians for many decades.

Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy by Percy Greaves, Jr. (1906-1984), published for the first time in 2010, blows the top off a 70-year cover-up, reporting for the first time on long-suppressed interviews, documents, and corroborated evidence.

The first section (the seeds) provides a detailed history of pre-war U.S.-Japan relations, thoroughly documenting the sources of rising tension. The second section (the fruits) shows that the attack on December 7, 1941 was neither unexpected nor unprovoked. Nor was it the reason that Franklin Roosevelt declared a war that resulted in massive human slaughter. Instead, in exhaustive detail, this book establishes that Pearl Harbor was permitted as a public relations measure to rally the public, shifting the blame from the White House, where it belonged, to the men on the ground who were unprepared for the attack.

For 70 years, Greaves's documents have been the primary source of revisionist scholarship on Pearl Harbor. These documents were prepared under his leadership as main counsel for the Republican minority on the Joint Congressional Committee that investigated Pearl Harbor from 1945 to 1946.

More than any other person, he was qualified to speak on this subject. He possessed encyclopedic knowledge and had access to research available to no one else. He conducted in-person, detailed, comprehensive interviews with all the main players at Pearl Harbor and many people in the security apparatus. The contents of these interviews are further corroborated by military records.

However, for many reasons, the documents were not published. He continued to work on this book for many years before his death in 1984. At that point, his wife Bettina Bien Greaves took up the project. The result is absolutely astonishing.

Much of Greaves’s research has never appeared in print—effectively suppressed for 70 years. Even the censored minority report did not include it all. But at long last, the fullness of this report is revealed. The result is this monumental book, completed and edited by Bettina Greaves and published by the Mises Institute. Pearl Harbor is a 937-page indictment of the Roosevelt administration, one that finally and devastatingly rips the lid off a case that has been shrouded in mystery for generations.

Because of the astonishing source material and thoroughness of the argument, Robert Stinnett, the leading authority on the topic and the author of Day of Deceit, calls Greaves's book "explosive!"

Indeed, it is. The author writes in a guarded tone, carefully backing up every statement with massive evidence, provided in a level of depth never before seen. The prevailing consensus is that the fault for Pearl Harbor attack belongs to General Walter Short and Admiral Husband Kimmel, while the major political and military figures in Washington should be completely exonerated.

Greaves turns this conventional wisdom on its head. "It is now apparent also that the president himself, even before the attack, had intended to order the U.S. armed forces to make a pre-emptive strike against the Japanese in the southwest Pacific in order to assist the British in southeast Asia. But the Japanese 'jumped the gun' on him by bombing Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941."

Greaves's conclusion is dramatic: "It must be said also that the evidence revealed in the course of the several investigations leads to the conclusion that the ultimate responsibility for the catastrophe inflicted on the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, must rest on the shoulders of President Roosevelt.... It was thanks to Roosevelt’s decisions and actions that an unwarned, ill-equipped, and poorly prepared Fleet remained stationed far from the shores of the continental United States, at a base recognized by his military advisers as indefensible and vulnerable to attack.... Thus the attack on Pearl Harbor became FDR’s excuse, not his reason, for calling for the United States’s entry into World War II."

Greaves provides comprehensive coverage here on the history of U.S. and Japanese relations, the actions of the Roosevelt administration, the attack and the response on the ground, the investigations and cover-ups that began almost immediately and continue to this day. Today the "back-door-to-the-war" theory has become mainstream historiography, even if those who admit it say that the lies were necessary for the good of the country. That is a difficult opinion to maintain in the face of the fullness of the evidence against FDR.

It is a remarkable fact that Greaves, who later became a close confidant of Mises himself throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and who is known mainly for his monetary work, has left us an amazing revelation 70 years after the fact and 26 years after his own death. It is proof that the wheels of justice can grind slowly but also very finely.

“Percy Greaves was chief of the minority (Republican) research staff of the (1945-1946) Joint Congressional Committee to Investigate the Pearl Harbor Attack. He attended all its hearings, interviewed many Army, Navy, and Washington principals involved in the attack and in the investigations. He researched diplomatic documents, studied reports and accounts of the event published during the years that followed. This book is not about the attack itself. It is about never before presented pre-attack and post-attack events, from the Washington point of view. Without name-calling, innuendo, or slander, Greaves simply presents the pertinent, significant and relevant facts which led the Japanese to attack and the political administration to want to cover-up its involvement.” - Bettina Bien Greaves

George Morgenstern’s Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War has to be one of the bravest books ever written. It’s a wonder it came out at all, but it did, in 1947, just as the war ended and FDR had died. It argues that the bombing was not unexpected, but provoked—and even wanted—by the administration as a “backdoor to the war” that FDR really desired as a means to rescue his presidency. This was not an unknown fact a few years earlier but the war victory led to a situation where it as considered unpatriotic and downright nasty to look back and say what was widely known only a few years earlier.Such is the way war scrambles people’s brains. Nonetheless, the book appeared and created an incredible frenzy of denunciation and hysteria; it has been the template for war revisionism ever since. Since that time, however, more and more books have come out that only reinforce the point that Morgenstern was making, among which is Percy Greaves’s Pearl Harbor.

Horror in the East: Japan and the Atrocities of World War II (2000) is a two-part BBC documentary film that examines certain actions, including atrocities, and attitudes, of the Imperial Japanese Army in the lead up to and during World War II. The film also examines attitudes held by the British and Americans, toward the Japanese. It was written and produced by Laurence Rees and narrated by Samuel West.

Part One - Turning Against the West

In the opening decades of the twentieth century Japan appeared enthusiastically to adopt western values, 'from dancing to democracy'. As far back as 1885 a Japanese academic had coined what became a popular slogan - Abandon Asia, go for the West. Crown Prince Hirohito had visited London in the early 1920s.

"In the 1920s the Japanese were being taught that their emperor was more than just a mere human, he was a living god - it was in the interests of one group more than any other that the Emperor be perceived as an all-powerful living god - the armed forces."

Like the rest of the country, the Japanese monarchy was changing too - but not in a way that made it resemble Western royalty. In the 1920s the Japanese were being taught that their emperor, living in a 280-acre (1.1 km) park in central Tokyo, was more than just a mere human being - he was called a living god. Children were educated to think of the emperor as a god in the form of a human being. In Japan it was in the interests of one group more than any other that the emperor be perceived as an all powerful living god - the armed forces. Only ultimately accountable to their supreme commander Hirohito, as long as they acted in the name of their 'divine' emperor, elected Japanese politicians found it almost impossible to control them - and by the late 1920s many within the army thought that Japan should act decisively, and expand. Masatake Okumiya (Japanese Imperial Navy): "Japan's population was increasing - its natural resources could not sustain such an increase. Ideally we hoped to receive co-operation from other countries to solve the problem but, back then, the world was under the control of the west and a peaceful solution seemed impossible. We decided, as Britain, America and France had done in the past from time to time, to use force to solve the problem." By the early 1930s western countries had colonized much of Asia.

By the early 1930s western countries had colonized much of Asia.." photo: French soldiers in the Tonkin circa 1890

Britain - Hong Kong, Burma, Malaya; Holland - Dutch East Indies; U.S - Philippines; France - French Indochina.

Japan, late on the scene, only had under its control, Taiwan, a few islands in the Pacific, and Korea. In 1931, the Japanese army launched an attack on Manchuria. At the League of Nations in Geneva the Japanese actions were condemned. Japan left the League accusing the Western powers of hypocrisy. In Japan, in face of growing economic depression and a sense of the West's double standards, the call was to expand even further and conquer more territory within Asia. By 1937 the Japanese army was five times what it had been around 1900. Many in the military thought that in an army that had grown so much, to maintain discipline, it was necessary to make the training of recruits more brutal. If the soldiers made the smallest mistake they were beaten, with fists or bamboo sticks. Recruits were instructed also to hit each other. And the Japanese military did not just want to mould their own soldiers but the general population too. Japanese who adopted western values were ridiculed, women who rejected a tradition of subservience were attacked. Many ordinary Japanese, as well as politicians and businesspeople, now supported the drive toward a bigger empire on the Asian mainland, and the minority who openly opposed military expansion risked assassination. Seven prominent Japanese, including two Prime Ministers, were murdered by army officers during the 1930s. Seeking to create a giant colony the Imperial army moved in 1937 into eastern China. The Chinese were not worthy of the land according to the dominant ideology; they were called bugs, animals, below-human. Yoshio Tsuchiya, (Japanese Secret Military Police):" The Chinese were inferior - didn't belong to the human race. That was the way we looked at it." In December 1937 the Japanese Army reached the then capital of China, Nanking. (Film taken by John Magee is shown). Men were set on fire, women beaten, bayoneted, raped. After Nanking atrocities followed in the Chinese countryside - the Chinese used for bayonet practice. Yoshio Tsuchiya (imprisoned 1950-56 for war crimes): " The first time you still have a conscience and feel bad, but if you are honoured and given merit and praised, that will be the driving power for the second time - after the second time I didn't feel anything." A soldier is asked why he felt no guilt or shame raping and killing women. He replies : " Because I was fighting for the emperor. He was a god; in the name of the emperor we could do whatever we wanted against the Chinese." Meanwhile the god-emperor of Japan spent most of his time secluded behind the walls of his palace. Even today opinion is divided among historians as to the extent the emperor knew of the barbaric crimes his soldiers were committing in China. " What is certain is that no evidence has surfaced that he ever attempted to hold his soldiers to account for their vicious conduct in China" Rees's film concludes.

Representative examples are then given of pre-Pearl Harbor attitudes towards the Japanese amongst the British and Americans. Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, overall Commander in Chief of the British in the Far East is quoted, and Gene La Rocque (USS Macdonough (DD-351) :" Our concept of the Japanese prior to Pearl Harbor was that they were a weak, not very sophisticated people..so foreign to us ..just of small stature, not a very friendly but also not a very intelligent group of people - obviously, of course, we were wrong."

Robert Brooke-Popham (at left) writing in January 1941 - " I had a good view across the barbed wire of various sub-human specimens which I was informed were Japanese soldiers. If these represent the average of the Japanese army I cannot believe they would form an intelligent fighting force."

But there was another western nation which did value the Japanese - Nazi Germany. Indeed, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan wanted to form an alliance. A formal treaty of alliance was signed between Germany, Japan and Italy on 27 September 1940. Japan used the moment to move into northern Indo-China. This had been a French colony but the Germans had just overrun France so for the Japanese it was ripe for the picking. Japan wanted to create a greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere. The slogan was Asia for the Asians - in essence the locals were swapping one colonial master for another. In Washington the American government, nervous about Japanese colonial intentions, announced that fuel sales to Japan would be suspended if Japan did not reconsider her aggressive actions. With no fuel resources of its own Japan believed it could now either give up its imperial ambitions, or fight the Americans. They attacked Pearl Harbor and, moments after, attacked Hong Kong. As the Japanese advanced into Hong Kong the Chinese inhabitants of the city became a particular target. Rees's film interviews too a British nurse who tells of how, on 25 December 1941, the day of the British surrender, - nurses at the makeshift hospital at the Hong Kong Jockey Club were raped.

By the spring of 1942 - Singapore (above), Burma, Malaya, and the Philippines were under Japanese control.

By the spring of 1942, Singapore, Burma, Malaya, and the Philippines all fell to the Japanese. Japanese newsreel and commentary :" 60,000 prisoners were lined up along the road so that they could have the honour of seeing the great commander Yamashita. The prisoners consisted of soldiers from Britain, Malaya, Australia, India, a parade of mongrel troops." About 350000 POWs eventually fell into Japanese hands in south-east Asia. More than one in four died in captivity.

Horror in the East: Japan and the Atrocities of World War II (2000) is a two-part BBC documentary film that examines certain actions, including atrocities, and attitudes, of the Imperial Japanese Army in the lead up to and during World War II. The film also examines attitudes held by the British and Americans, toward the Japanese. It was written and produced by Laurence Rees and narrated by Samuel West.

Part Two – Death before Surrender

Writer-producer Laurence Rees looks at the Kamikaze phenomenon - " What could be more impossible to understand?" [yet] he says, "one of the most extraordinary things which making the series has done is this - I think I understand now why some of them did it, down to a meeting with a kamikaze pilot, he actually volunteered to become a pilot - he explained the dreadful social pressure that he and his family were living under - if he didn't go to volunteer he knew his family would be ostracised, shunned, - from his point of view it was a sensible, sane thing to do."

When U.S. Marines tried to re-take Japanese-held islands like Tarawa in 1943, the ferocious way in which the Japanese were prepared to fight to the death did not make the Americans respect them more. To many Americans, their refusal to surrender, like their attack on Pearl Harbor and their mistreatment of prisoners, became another sign they were a dishonourable foe. Michael Witowich: "I thought they were very cruel, sadistic, and they wanted to die for their emperor and we had to go on and help them die for their emperor." (The film soundtrack plays an excerpt from We're gonna have to slap, the dirty little jap, recorded New York, 18 February 1942). Gene La Rocque (USS MacDonough): "We had been taught that the Japanese were sub-human when we got into the attack, but of course we had no love for Hitler, or the Nazis - but we also had many people in America of German descent, Italian - it was an entirely different view we had of the Italians, of the Germans, than we had of the Japanese." Rees's documentary shows a photo published in the war in Life – the girlfriend of an American sailor next to a souvenir from him – the skull of a Japanese signed by her boyfriend's comrades.

Japanese savages fighting the Australians in New Guinea committed cannibalism. Japanese forces were sent to New Guinea in 1942 but without sufficient preparation – they were simply abandoned. In late 1943, forbidden to surrender and cut off from their supplies, they began to starve – some resorted to cannibalism of their own and enemy dead. According to Professor Yuki Tanaka: "The cannibalism was organised group practice, rather than individually practised." A Japanese major-general wrote an order prohibiting the eating of human flesh but this meant flesh "excluding enemy flesh".

The first signs that large numbers of civilians as well as soldiers might be prepared to die for their emperor rather than surrender came in 1944, 1,400 miles (2,300 km) south of the home islands of Japan, on the island of Saipan. Japanese propaganda about Saipan emphasised the nobility of dying in the struggle against the British and Americans. With the capture of islands like Tinian and Saipan, heavy bombers were now in easier range of targets on the home islands of Japan and the Allies now launched the biggest aerial bombardment the world had ever seen - more than 160000 tonnes of bombs were dropped on Japan in an effort to make the Japanese accept unconditional surrender.

With the capture of islands like Saipan, heavy bombers were now in easier range of targets on the home islands of Japan - the Allies now launched the biggest aerial bombardment the world had ever seen.

On 10 March 1945 Tokyo was fire bombed. Over 300 Boeing B-29 bombers dropped incendiaries which caused a fire storm. About 100,000 died. Despite the destruction in Tokyo opinion was still divided in the Japanese government in the months that followed about what should be done. Accepting unconditional surrender might, some feared, mean the elimination of the institution of the emperor itself. Hirohito and his military leaders believed that, in order to negotiate a more advantageous peace, Japan needed to win one big victory - and the Kamikaze would provide the means. Sporadic isolated kamikaze attacks had occurred in 1944 - now in the spring of 1945 kamikazes were to sortie en masse for the first time. A student from Tokashiki Island: "I didn't think that they were wasting their lives, I believed they were sacrificing their lives for their country. The Japanese people belonged to the emperor - we were his children." The testimony of a pilot suggests that not all kamikaze volunteered as freely as the propaganda sometimes suggested. Kenichiro Oonuki: " All the fighter pilots, about 150 of us at the training base, were called in - a senior officer told us they were recruiting people for a special mission. They said, 'If you go on this mission, you won't come back alive.' Everyone thought this was ridiculous and nobody really was ready to go. We wanted to answer, 'No, I don't want to go'..But later on we thought, 'Wait, if we want to say no, can we really say it, can we say no to this officer?..We told each other that we should calm down and think about the consequences..if people rejected the offer they might be shunned and sent to the most severe battlefront in the south and would meet certain death anyway - then when their family was informed of this, how would they feel? They would be ostracised from the community...so nobody wanted to volunteer but everybody did.." The biggest kamikaze assault of the war was on the British and American fleets during the battle for Okinawa in the spring of 1945.

The biggest Kamikaze assault of the war was on the British and American fleets during the battle for Okinawa in the spring of 1945

The British warships with their armoured decks did not suffer as much under kamikaze attacks as the Americans. In March 1945 as the kamikaze flew around them, the Americans landed on the small island of Tokishiki. As on Saipan, the civilians were told by the Japanese army that the Americans would rape and murder them and encouraged them to adopt kamikaze tactics. To some they gave two hand grenades – one to throw at the Americans, the other to blow themselves up with. Shigeaki Kingjou, a student in 1945, looking back in the year 2000: "I think we were dreadfully manipulated - as I got older, my soul started to suffer. 55 years since the end of the war and I still suffer today." By the spring of 1945, the Japanese empire had been pulled apart. Now the Imperial Japanese Army ordered a heroic stand to be made on Okinawa, less than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Tokyo.

The Americans expected the Japanese to defend the beaches on Okinawa - but on 1 April 1945 when 50000 American troops came ashore they found their arrival virtually unopposed.

The Americans expected the Japanese to defend the beaches on Okinawa but on 1 April 1945 when 50000 American troops came ashore they found their arrival virtually unopposed. But more than 80000 Japanese troops were dug into the fabric of the island interior, some in concrete pill boxes underneath the trees. In Okinawa, as the Americans pushed to the south of the island there were many civilian suicides, some thousand at Cape Kyan. Once more the Japanese military played a crucial role in encouraging the civilian population to kill themselves – on nearby islands where there were no Japanese soldiers there were no mass suicides. Around 8000 American troops, 60000 Japanese soldiers, and 150000 Japanese civilians died on Okinawa.

The Looting of Asia

Chalmers Johnson

Gold Warriors: America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold by Sterling Seagrave and Peggy Seagrave

Verso, 332 pp, £17.00, September 2003, ISBN 1 85984 542 8

It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20 million Russians; the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions and exploited them as forced labourers – and, in the case of the Japanese, as prostitutes for front-line troops. If you were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand or Canada (but not Russia) you faced a 4 per cent chance of not surviving the war; the death rate for Allied POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30 per cent.

The real differences between the two nations, however, developed in the years and decades after 1945. Survivors and relatives of victims of the Holocaust have worked for almost six decades to win compensation from German corporations for slave labour and to regain possession of works of art stolen from their homes and offices. Litigation continues against Swiss banks that hid much of the Nazi loot. As recently as July 2001, the Austrian Government began to disburse some $300 million out of an endowment of almost $500 million to more than 100,000 former slave labourers. The German Government has long recognised that, in order to re-establish relations of mutual respect with the countries it pillaged, serious gestures towards restitution are necessary. It has so far paid more than $45 billion in compensation and reparations. Japan, on the other hand, has given its victims a mere $3 billion, while giving its own nationals around $400 billion in compensation for war losses.

One reason for these differences is that victims of the Nazis have been politically influential in the US and Britain, forcing their Governments to put pressure on Germany, whereas Japan’s victims live in countries that for most of the postwar period were torn by revolution, anticolonial movements and civil wars. This has begun to change with the rise of Sino-American activists. The success of Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking (1997), a book the Japanese establishment did everything in its power to impugn, heralded the emergence of this group.

More significant, however, are differences in US Government policies towards the two countries. From the moment of Germany’s defeat, the United States was active in apprehending war criminals, denazifying German society, and collecting and protecting archives of the Nazi regime, all of which have by now been declassified. By contrast, from the moment of Japan’s defeat, the US Government sought to exonerate the Emperor and his relatives from any responsibility for the war. By 1948, it was seeking to restore the wartime ruling class to positions of power (Japan’s wartime minister of munitions, Nobusuke Kishi, for example, was prime minister from 1957 to 1960). The US keeps many of its archives concerned with postwar Japan highly classified, in violation of its own laws.

Most important, John Foster Dulles, President Truman’s special envoy to Japan charged with ending the occupation, wrote the peace treaty of 1951 in such a way that most former POWs and civilian victims of Japan are prevented from obtaining any form of compensation from either the Japanese Government or private Japanese corporations who profited from their slave labour. He did so in perfect secrecy and forced the other Allies to accept his draft (except for China and Russia, which did not sign). Article 14(b) of the treaty, signed at San Francisco on 8 September 1951, specifies: ‘Except as otherwise provided in the present Treaty, the Allied Powers waive all reparations claims of the Allied Powers, other claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals arising out of any actions taken by Japan and its nationals in the course of the prosecution of the war, and claims of the Allied Powers for direct military costs of occupation.’ As recently as 25 September 2001, three former American Ambassadors to Japan – Thomas Foley, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Michael Armacost, the president of the Brookings Institution, and Walter Mondale, Carter’s Vice-President – wrote a joint letter to the Washington Post denouncing Congress for its willingness even to think about helping former American slave labourers get around the treaty.

Why do these attitudes protecting and excusing Japan persist? Why has the US pursued such divergent policies towards postwar Germany and Japan? Why was the peace treaty written in the way it was? Many reasons have been offered over the years, including that Japan was too poor to pay, that these policies were necessary to keep postwar Japan from ‘going Communist’, and that the Emperor and Japanese people had been misled into war by a cabal of insane militarists, all of whom the occupation had eliminated from positions of responsibility. The explanation offered in the Seagraves’ book is considerably more sinister. It concerns what the United States did with Japan’s loot once it discovered how much of it there was, the form it took, and how little influence its original owners had.

Almost as soon as the war was over, American forces began to discover stupendous caches of Japanese war treasure. General MacArthur, in charge of the occupation, reported finding ‘great hoards of gold, silver, precious stones, foreign postage stamps, engraving plates and . . . currency not legal in Japan’. His officials arrested the underworld boss Yoshio Kodama, who had worked in China during the war, selling opium and supervising the collection and shipment to Japan of industrial metals such as tungsten, titanium and platinum. Japan was by far the largest opium producer in Asia throughout the first half of the 20th century, initially in its colony of Korea and then in Manchuria, which it seized in 1931. Kodama supplied heroin and liquor to occupied China in return for gold coins, jewellery and objets d’art, which the Japanese melted down into ingots.

Kodama returned to Japan after the surrender immensely rich. Before going to prison he transferred part of his booty to the conservative politicians Ichiro Hatoyama and Ichiro Kono, who used the proceeds to finance the newly created Liberal Party, precursor of the party that has ruled Japan almost uninterruptedly since 1949. When Kodama was released from prison, also in 1949, he went to work for the CIA and later became the chief agent in Japan for the Lockheed Aircraft Company, bribing and blackmailing politicians to buy the Lockheed F-104 fighter and the L-1011 airbus. With his stolen wealth, underworld ties and history as a supporter of militarism, Kodama became one of the godfathers of pro-American single-party rule in Japan.

He was not alone in his war-profiteering. One of the Seagraves’ more controversial contentions is that the looting of Asia took place under the supervision of the Imperial household. This contradicts the American fiction that the Emperor was a pacifist and a mere figurehead observer of the war. The Seagraves convincingly argue that after Japan’s full-scale invasion of China on 7 July 1937, Emperor Hirohito appointed one of his brothers, Prince Chichibu, to head a secret organisation called kin no yuri (‘Golden Lily’) whose function was to ensure that contraband was properly accounted for and not diverted by military officers or other insiders, such as Kodama, for their own enrichment. Putting an Imperial prince in charge was a guarantee that everyone, even the most senior commanders, would follow orders and that the Emperor personally would become immensely rich.

The Emperor also posted Prince Tsuneyoshi Takeda, a first cousin, to the staff of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria and later as his personal liaison officer to the Saigon headquarters of General Count Hisaichi Terauchi, to supervise looting and ensure that the proceeds were shipped to Japan in areas under Terauchi’s control. Although assigned to Saigon, Takeda worked almost exclusively in the Philippines as second in command to Chichibu. Hirohito named Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, his uncle, to be deputy commander of the Central China Area Army, in which capacity he commanded the final assault on Nanking, the Chinese capital, between 2 December and 6 December 1937, and allegedly gave the order to ‘kill all captives’. The Japanese removed some 6000 tonnes of gold from Chiang Kai-shek’s treasury and the homes and offices of the leaders of Nationalist China. All three princes were graduates of the military academy and all three survived the war; Chichibu died in 1953 of tuberculosis but the other two lived to a very ripe old age.

With the Japanese capture in the winter and spring of 1941-42 of all of South-East Asia, including the Philippines and Indonesia, the work of Golden Lily increased many times over. In addition to the monetary assets of the Dutch, British, French and Americans in their respective colonies, Golden Lily operatives absconded with as much of the wealth of the overseas Chinese populations as they could find, tore gilt from Buddhist temples, stole solid gold Buddhas from Burma, sold opium to the local populations and collected gemstones from anyone who had any. The gold was melted down into ingots at a big Japanese-run smelter in Ipoh, Malaya and marked with its degree of purity and weight. Chichibu and his staff inventoried all this plunder and put it aboard boats, usually disguised as hospital ships, bound for Japan. There was no overland route to Korea, the closest point on the mainland to Japan, until very briefly in late 1944.

A lot of gold and gems were lost as a result of American submarine warfare; and by early 1943, it was no longer possible for the Japanese to break through the Allied blockade of the main islands except by submarine. Chichibu therefore shifted his headquarters from Singapore to Manila and ordered all the shipments to head for Philippine ports. He and his staff reasoned that the war would end with a negotiated settlement, and they believed (or imagined) that the Americans could be persuaded to transfer the Philippines to Japan in return for an end to the war. From 1942, Chichibu supervised the building of 175 ‘Imperial’ storage sites to hide the treasure until after the war was over. Slave labourers and POWs dug tunnels and caves and then were invariably buried alive, often along with Japanese officers and soldiers, when the sites were sealed to keep their locations secret. Each cache was booby-trapped, and the few extant Golden Lily maps are elaborately encoded to hide exact location, depth, air vents (if any) and types of booby trap (e.g. large aerial bombs, sand traps, poison gases). In Manila itself, Golden Lily constructed treasure caverns in the dungeon of the old Spanish Fort Santiago, within the former American military headquarters (Fort McKinley, now Fort Bonifacio), and under the cathedral, all places the Japanese rightly assumed the Americans would not bomb. As the war came to an end, Chichibu and Takeda escaped back to Japan by submarine.

Soon after the liberation of the Philippines, American special agents began to discover a few of the hidden gold repositories. The key figure was a Filipino American born in Luzon in either 1901 or 1907 named Severino Garcia Diaz Santa Romana (and several other aliases), who in the mid-1940s worked for MacArthur’s chief intelligence officer, General Willoughby. As a commando behind the lines in the Philippines he had once witnessed the unloading of heavy boxes from a Japanese ship, their being placed in a tunnel, and the entrance being dynamited shut. He had already suspected what was going on. After the war, Santa Romana was joined in Manila by Captain Edward Lansdale of the OSS, the CIA’s predecessor. Lansdale later became one of America’s most notorious Cold Warriors, manipulating governments and armies in the Philippines and French Indo-China. He retired as a major-general in the Air Force.

Together, Santa Romana and Lansdale tortured the driver of General Tomoyuki Yamashita, Japan’s last commander in the Philippines, forcing him to divulge the places where he had driven Yamashita in the last months of the war. Using hand-picked troops from the US Army’s Corps of Engineers, these two opened about a dozen Golden Lily sites in the high valleys north of Manila. They were astonished to find stacks of gold ingots higher than their heads and reported this to their superiors. Lansdale was sent to Tokyo to brief MacArthur and Willoughby, and they, in turn, ordered Lansdale to Washington to report to Truman’s national security aide, Clark Clifford. As a result, Robert Anderson, on the staff of the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, returned to Tokyo with Lansdale and, according to the Seagraves, then flew secretly with MacArthur to the Philippines, where they personally inspected several caverns. They concluded that what had been found in Luzon, combined with the caches the Occupation had uncovered in Japan, amounted to several billion dollars’ worth of war booty.

Back in Washington, it was decided at the highest levels, presumably by Truman, to keep these discoveries secret and to funnel the money into various off-the-books slush funds to finance the clandestine activities of the CIA. One reason, it has been alleged, was to maintain the price of gold and the system of fixed currency exchange rates based on gold, which had been decided at Bretton Woods in 1944. Just like the South African diamond cartel, Washington’s plotters feared what would happen if this much ‘new’ gold was suddenly injected into world markets. They also realised that exposure of the Imperial household’s role in the looting of Asia would destroy their by now carefully constructed cover story of the Emperor as a peaceful marine biologist. Washington concluded that even though Japan, or at least the Emperor, had ample funds to pay compensation to Allied POWs, because of the other deceptions, the peace treaty would have to be written in such a way that Japan’s wealth would remain secret. The treaty therefore gave up all claims for compensation on behalf of American POWs. To keep the Santa Romana-Lansdale recoveries secret, MacArthur also decided to get rid of Yamashita, who had accompanied Chichibu on many site closings. After a hastily put-together court martial for war crimes, Yamashita was hanged on 23 February 1946.

On orders from Washington, Lansdale supervised the recovery of several Golden Lily vaults, inventoried the bullion, and had it trucked to warehouses at the US Naval base at Subic Bay or the Air Force base at Clark Field. According to the Seagraves, two members of Stimson’s staff, together with financial experts from the newly formed CIA, instructed Santa Romana in how to deposit the gold in 176 reliable banks in 42 different countries. These deposits were made in his own name or in one of his numerous aliases in order to keep the identity of the true owners secret. Once the gold was in their vaults, the banks would issue certificates that are even more negotiable than money, being backed by gold itself. With this seemingly inexhaustible source of cash, the CIA set up slush funds to influence politics in Japan, Greece, Italy, Britain and many other places around the world. For example, money from what was called the ‘M-Fund’ (named after Major-General William Marquat of MacArthur’s staff) was secretly employed to pay for Japan’s initial rearmament after the outbreak of the Korean War, since the Japanese Diet itself refused to appropriate money for the purpose. The various uses to which these funds were put over the years, among them helping to finance the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries in their attacks on the elected government in Managua (the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan Presidency), would require another volume. Suffice it to say that virtually everyone known to have been involved with the secret CIA slush funds derived from Yamashita’s gold has had their career ruined.

Santa Romana died in 1974, leaving several wills, including a final holographic testament, naming Tarciana Rodriguez, a Filipina who was the official treasurer of his various companies, and Luz Rambano, his common-law wife, as his main heirs. They set out to recover the gold since, after all, it was in his name in various banks and they had custody of all the account books, secret code names, amounts, records of interest paid, and other official documents proving its existence. Using the famous San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli as her representative, Rambano actually filed a suit against John Reed, then CEO of Citibank in New York and today president of the New York Stock Exchange, charging him with ‘wrongful conversion’: that is, selling $20 billion of Santa Romana’s gold and converting the proceeds to his own use. The Seagraves vividly describe the extraordinary meetings that took place between Rambano and Reed, with phalanxes of lawyers on both sides, in Citibank’s boardroom in New York. Reed apparently ordered the gold moved to Cititrust in the Bahamas.

Santa Romana and Lansdale by no means discovered all the Golden Lily sites. Over the years, a cottage industry developed of treasure hunters digging holes in obscure places in Luzon, often claiming they were looking for the remains of family or lovers. A regular feature of life in the village of Bambang, in the Cagayan Valley, Nueva Viscaya province – one of the places where Takeda was most active – is the appearance of elderly Japanese ‘tourists’ bearing not the usual bag of golf clubs but sophisticated metal detectors. This area of the Philippines is one where guerrillas of the New People’s Army are active, and it has no major tourist attractions. Many local Filipinos have gone into business as professional ‘pointers’, telling gullible visitors, for a fee, where to search, before skipping town.

Twenty years after Santa Romana stopped searching in 1947, a secondary – and quite violent – hunt for gold began, carried out by Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos recovered at least $14 billion in gold – $6 billion from the sunken Japanese cruiser Nachi in Manila Bay, and $8 billion from the tunnel known as ‘Teresa 2’, 38 miles south of Manila in Rizal province. During 2001, Philippine politics were rocked when the former solicitor-general Francisco Chavez alleged that Irene Marcos-Araneta, Marcos’s youngest daughter, maintained an account worth $13.2 billion in Switzerland. Its existence apparently came to light when she tried to move it from the Union Bank of Switzerland to Deutsche Bank in Düsseldorf. Marcos, who personally supervised the opening of at least six sites and routinely used his thugs to steal any treasure that local peasants happened to find, died in exile in Honolulu in 1989. In 1998, the Supreme Court of Hawaii affirmed a judgment against his estate for the astonishing sum of $1.4 billion in favour of a Filipino who retrieved a solid gold Buddha and then had it stolen from him by Marcos, who also had him tortured for protesting.

The key to Marcos’s discoveries was the services of one Robert Curtis, a Nevada chemist, metallurgist and mining engineer, whom Marcos hired to resmelt his gold, to bring it up to current international requirements for purity so that it could be marketed internationally. Curtis proved to be the only person who could decipher the few Golden Lily maps that survived, in the possession of Takeda’s former valet, a Filipino youth from Bambang. The Seagraves describe very thoroughly Curtis’s activities, including his narrow escape from death on the orders of Marcos’s henchman General Ver, after he struck gold at Teresa 2.

The Seagraves’ narrative is comprehensive, but they are not fully reliable as historians. They have a tendency to overreach, exaggerating the roles of Japanese gangsters and ex-military American bit-players when the bankers, politicians and CIA operatives are scary enough. They know the Philippines well, but are unreliable on Japan and do not read Japanese. The book is full of errors that could easily be corrected by a second-year student of the language – the ship they repeatedly call the Huzi is accurately romanised Fuji; the important Japan Sea port is Maizuru, not Maisaru; tairiki is not a Japanese word: they mean tairiku ronin (a ‘Continental adventurer’ or a ‘China carpetbagger’); and their mysterious Lord Ichivara is an absurdity – no one was ever called ‘Lord’ in postwar Japan and Ichivara is an impossible name (it is surely Ishihara).

The authors seem to sense that they might have a credibility problem, and have therefore taken the unusual step of making available two CDs containing more than 900 megabytes of documents, maps and photographs assembled in the course of their research. The CDs can be ordered from their website (www.bowstring.net). These are invaluable, particularly in what they reveal of the US Government’s vicious sting operation against a former American deputy Attorney General, Norbert Schlei. Schlei represented about sixty Japanese people on whom the Japanese Government had unloaded huge promissory notes in an attempt to hide the M-Fund after the former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was convicted of bribery. The Government persisted in calling these notes forgeries (thus engaging in another form of illegal conversion) and Schlei’s career was ruined. Gold Warriors is easily the best guide available to the scandal of ‘Yamashita’s gold’, and the authors play fair with their readers by supplying them with massive amounts of their raw research materials.

The Seagraves end their ‘authors’ note’ with these words: ‘As a precaution, should anything odd happen, we have arranged for this book and all its documentation to be put up on the Internet at a number of sites. If we are murdered, readers will have no difficulty figuring out who “they” are.’ Unfortunately, the list of potential killers from this book alone would include at least several thousand generals, spies, bankers, politicians, lawyers, treasure hunters and thieves from half a dozen countries. So I wish the Seagraves a long life. Meanwhile, a substantial portion of the treasure stolen by the Japanese from East Asian countries remains buried in the Philippines.

Vol. 25 No. 22 · 20 November 2003 » Chalmers Johnson » The Looting of Asia

pages 3-6 | 3751 words

The power of the yakuza, Japan's legendary crime syndicates, reaches into all areas of Japan's economic life and politics. Composed of some 3,000 separate, tightly-knit gangs, with over 80,000 members, the yakuza survive despite Japan's 1992 Anti-gang law and other government measures. While the range of their traditional activities has been somewhat reduced, they have compensated by turning to more sophisticated types of crime and by expanding their operations abroad - mostly to Southeast Asia, parts of Latin America, and the U.S. Estimates of their annual income from criminal activities and their 25,000 legitimate "front" organizations run to as high as 70 billion dollars, with some 500 million dollars traced to the U.S. The author examines the history, societal context, organizational structure, activities and tactics of the yakuza and concludes with an assessment of how, and the extent to which their power and criminal operations can be curbed.


Opium and the Politics of Gangsterism in Nationalist China, 1927-1945

By Jonathan Marshall

Introduction

No political system can be adequately analyzed without

reference to the sources of power which supply the motor

force for political action. Traditional accounts of Republican

Chinese politics, in terms of shifting, competing personalist

cliques within the state bureaucracy, too often emphasize the

form and not the tools of conflict. Without a further

understanding of the sources of power which these cliques

sought to tap, the significance of much of the history of

Republican Chinese politics will be lost.

Opium was a key well-spring of power in the Republican

period. When properly tapped, the opium traffic-so large that

it supplied perhaps 5% of the Chinese population-provided a

vast pool of liquid profits with which to wage war or buy

organization and influence. By manipulating the traffic,

leaders could both penalize enemies (who also depended on its

profits) and extend their own political and economic

influence. Greater centralization of the traffic inevitably

meant greater centralization of national political power.

Opium impinged upon the whole fabric of China's

political economy, including peasant agriculture, provincial

warlordism, "bandit suppression," and intra-Guomindang

(KMT) political and military struggles. The national and local

bureaucracy was so dependent on profits from the traffic that

opium could not be eflidicated without a near social

revolution.

Chiang Kai-shek, who relished neither the traffic nor the

disunity it brought China, came to power under such

conditions. Refusing to break with the past or to challenge the

pattern of dependence on foreign capital and the traditional

class structure, Chiang pragmatically forged alliances with

provincial bosses and urban gangsters who demanded

protection for their stake in the opium traffic. Chiang himself

soon learned the political potential of the traffic and used it to

finance his wars against the Japanese, Communists, and rival

warlords. By moving to centralize the traffic under his

personal control, under the guise of "suppression," he sought

to extend his regime's control. As a result, corruption and

gangsterism, part of Chiang's unhappy inheritance, thrived as

never before.

This study, then, is an investigation of the way in which

rightist politicians and criminals collaborated in exploiting the

traffic as a lever to entrench their own position at the expense

of social reform. Unraveling the politics of opium in

Republican China is thus not only important to understanding

modern Chinese history, but also suggests ways of interpreting

the management of political economy in other pre-revolutionary

societies.

Opium:. From Anarchy to Monopoly

Few friends of China ever realized the important role the evil

of narcotic drugs played in ruining this great nation. The

constructive efforts made by her good elements in the past

decades to I build up] this country were nullified by the

destructive influence exerted by opium and its allied drugs

serving as a check to hold China back from developing into a

modern state. In fact, opium has been the source of official

corruption, civil strife, famine, banditry, poverty, military

tyranny, and other kindred social and economic vices which

handicap China's progress. The lack of morality, the

weakening of the race and the rapid increase of various social

evils can in the last analysis be traced back to their source in

opium.

-Garfield Huang, Secretary General

National Anti-Opium Association of China

21 October 1935

Opium poppies grew even in ancient China, but the

country faced a serious narcotics problem only in the late 18th

century when British merchants began flooding China with

Indian opium. Following the Opium War, Westerners took

advantage of their supremacy to expand the enormously

profitable market for opium in China. By 1880, China

consumed 13 million pounds of foreign opium every year.

Over time, however, local Chinese production, which reached

45 million pounds in 1900, vastly outdistanced foreign

imports. Soon the Chinese product began entering world

markets.

As China reversed the tide, Britain, the United States,

and other Western powers proposed the suppression of the

opium traffic in China. In 1906 the Chinese Government

launched a major campaign to cut consumption of opium,

which more than a third of the population smoked

occasionally. Britain agreed in 1908 to phase out the

importation of Indian opium (which it did by 1913). A

number of international narcotics conventions reinforced

world opinion in favor of gradual, but total suppression of

narcotics. Despite the political turbulence of post-Qing China,

the country had nearly eradicated the cultivation of opium by

1917. Almost immediately, however, provincial warlords

reintroduced the poppy to raise revenue. The Peking

government itself clumsily attempted to license opium sales

for tax profit. And massive smuggling of morphine from Japan

replaced the declining Western traffic. Almost overnight all of

China's suppression efforts were nullified. 2

The British Minister to Peking reported in 1921 on the

disturbing recrudescence of opium cultivation throughout

China:

In Hunan, cultivation has enormously increased and

appears to be more or less general under the aegis of the

military authorities in the province . ... The Governor of

Kansu, according to information which has reached Peking,

recently convened a conference of officials, leading gentry

and merchants, at which he publicly announced that, in

view of the state of the provincial exchequer, he had

determined, following the example of the authorities in

Hsinchiang, Shensi, and Szechuan, to encourage the

planting of poppy all over the province. He is reported to

have said, in explanation of his policy, "I'm at a loss to find

another means to stop the financial panic, and it is difficult

to prevent mutinies of troops.3

By 1923, according to one estimate, China produced 30

million pounds of opium a year, compared to 2 million for

India and 1.15 million in the rest of the Far East and Near

East. 4

The widespread renewal of opium cultivation resulted

from political chaos and the chance for high profits. The

collapse of national government in China fostered the rise of

provincial warlords. These generals financed their armies by

land taxes which forced peasants to grow cash crops, of which

opium was by far the most profitable. Frontier provinces such

as Yunnan and Sichuan cultivated opium most extensively

because of their independence from the central government

and because of the high value of opium relative to its transport

costs,

The successes of ~he Kuomintang in the latter half of the

1920s raised the possibility of an end to China's political

divisions and with it the suppression of opium. But the

Nationalists, like the warlords, were pragmatic about military

finance. In 1923, Sun Yat-sen's Canton regime set a precedent

by licensing opium dens and brothels. 6 Under Chiang Kai-shek,

the Nationalists established opium monopolies in Canton,

Hanko, Nanjing, Shanghai, and other major cities. One

Western doctor decried the fact that "absolutely no attempt

has so far been made to restrict, control, or suppress opium

cultivation or use. Millions have been raised out of opium for

military operations and civil propaganda. '" Revolution

demanded funds, and reforms have been relegated to a

shadowy future." Indeed, within the space of a year, the

Nationalists raised Chinese $40 million from their monopoly. 7

By 1928, China's narcotics problem seemed hopeless.

The Kweichow Chamber of Commerce adopted opium as an

official standard of value; in Yunnan, ninety percent of adult

males smoked, and many babies were born as addicts, having

acquired their habits in the wombs of addicted mothers. In

Hankou alone, the "Special-Tax Purification Bureau" collected

Chinese $3 million a month in opium revenue; half went to

Nanjing, 30 percent financed the Hubei government, and the

Sichuan militarist who supplied the drug took 20 percent. 8

The KMT opium monopoly schemes seriously antagonized

Chinese intellectuals and Westerners whose support the

Nanjing regime sought. Chiang bowed to their demands and

outlawed the sale, possession, transportation, and exportation

of opiates. On August 20, 1928, he organized the National

Opium Suppression Committee, under Dr. J. Heng Liu,

Minister of Public Health, to enforce the new opium laws. In

early November Chiang Kai-shek told the Committee, "The

National Government will not attempt to get one cent from

the opium tax. It would not be worthy of your confidence if it

should be found to make an opium tax one of its chief sources

of income.9

The "prohibition" effort proved none too effective. In

1929, Hubei, Shaanxi, and Guangxi provinces alone raised $17

million in "opium prohibition revenue."JO In 1930, Shanghai

imported 130,000 pounds of opium a month from Persia and

India. Yunnan and Sichuan supplied hundreds of tons more via

China's "opium highway," the Yangtze River. "Hardly a ship

comes down the river that does not carry a hundred weight or

more or opium on board," commented one journalist long

resident in the city. These shipments were guarded by large

contingents of Chinese soldiers. In one notorious incident,

Shanghai police and provincial military forces fought a minor

war for control of 20,000 ounces of opium brought in by

steamer. The military won and took the opium for sale. ll In

the city of Canton, British police seized a stray Chinese vessel

and discovered two tons of opium on board. They released the

shipment when the captain showed a "permit" from the local

Opium Suppression Bureau and the Mayor of Canton

demanded its release. 12 A number of provincial governments

admitted earning at least a quarter of their revenue from

opium. 13

By 1931, China produced seven-eighths of the world's

narcotics. Chinese opium flooded world markets through Hong

Kong, Macao, and Shanghai. 14 British journalist H. G. W.

Woodhead summed up the situation after an exhaustive

investigation.

In general it may be stated that throughout China today,

with the exception of isolated instances, no effort is or can

be made by the National Government to control the sale or

smoking of opium. It can be purchased without difficulty,

in practically every town and village of any size throughout

the country. And the traffic is controlled by the military

and big opium rings.

The Nationalist government, intent on profiting from

the trade rather than suppressing it, favored the establishment

of an opium monopoly to force out competitors. Public

opposition to such a course, however, forced Nanking to move

cautiously. In 1931, Dr. Wu Lien-teh, who had represented

China at the Hague Opium Conferences of 1912 and 1918,

called for creation of a monopoly for the ostensible purpose of

ultimately wiping out opium use. Behind this trial balloon was

T. V. Soong, Minister of Finance, who secretly encouraged

J. Heng Liu, head of the Opium Suppression Committee, to

support the monopoly. Liu brought onto the Committee Wu

Lien-teh and Li Chi-hung, former head of the Hankou opium

monopoly. Nanjing also dispatched experts to Formosa and

Hong Kong to study opium monopoly administration. The

government actually did establish a monopoly in 1931, but

hastily abandoned it in the face of an outburst of abuse from

the press. Garfield Huang of the National Anti-Opium

Association of China called it "a glaring violation of the

Government's anti-opium laws." However, T. V. Soong's

powerful allies, including a number of Western-trained officials

close to the Rockefeller Foundation (the "Oil Group"), still

pressed for centralization of the traffic. 16

On June 18, 1932, the Nanjing regime officially ordered

all provincial and local officials to observe government laws

prohibiting the sale and cultivation of opium. Nelson T.

Johnson, the American Ambassador, called the move

"pathetically naive and a little ridiculous. It was undoubtedly

prompted by considerations of political expediency and a

desire to impress the League [of Nations] Commission.17

Also, the government hoped to distract its critics just before

T. V. Soong's belated public announcement of support for a

national opium monopoly, which he expected would raise an

additional $100 million in revenue. But once again the press

denounced Nanjing's attempts to renege on previous

assurances that opium would be forcefully suppressed. 18

On June 27, 1932, Wang Jing-wei, President of the

Legislative Yuan, joined the ranks of monopoly supporters. 19

Two weeks later, T. V. Soong, who had resigned the month

before after failing to raise enough money for the Communist

suppression campaign, hinted that he would return to office if

a new source of revenue-such as opium-could be found. 20 He

picked up the support of the influential H. G. W. Woodhead

who, probably reflecting the sentiment of the British business

community, argued that only such a monopoly could solve

China's financial crisis. An opium monopoly was a small price

to pay to protect the stability of China's business climate. I

Official opium sales agencies sprang up in a number of

provinces. When Chinese anti-opium forces charged that laws

were being broken, the Nanjing government made only

perfunctory investigations. In preparation for a full-fledged

monopoly, the government set up warehouses to store the vast

quantities of opium accumulating at Anjing, Datong, and

Wuhu. The Special Tax Bureau, not opium suppression

officials, controlled the warehouses. In Hankou, focal point of

the new monopoly, Chiang Kai-shek rescinded his previous

orders forbidding opium smoking. Over one hundred opium

dens reopened their doors, subject to taxation by the

Nationalist military. 22

T. V. Soong, once again Finance Minister, in January

1933 put the Hankou Special Tax Bureau under the

jurisdiction of Chiang Kai-shek's General Headquarters as part

of a larger effort by Nanjing to centralize its administration of

the country. In February, the government handed complete

control of all opium suppression operations directly to Chiang

as Chairman of the Military Affairs Commission; the

Generalissimo also controlled the River Police, who guarded

opium shipments as they came down the Yangtze and foiled

attempts by militarists to make independent shipments. 23

Chiang next moved against the Forty-Eight Houses, the

independent opium middlemen of Hubei province. Working

through his agent Li Tsu-ch 'eng, Chiang established at Hankou

a General Warehouse to store incoming opium. He planned to

monopolize the collection of opium and then license existing

sellers and middlemen. The trade would carry on much as

before, but with the government taking a good chare of the

profits. Although Nanjing defended the scheme as a first step

towards suppression, Li admitted, "The establishment of

warehouses not only does not adversely affect the opium

traffic, but it will afford various facilities." 24 The independent

opium merchants at first resisted, but by May 1 Chiang'S

opium monopoly was in operation. Xin Min Bao reported

from Hankou that month that "During the past month the

opium merchants have benefitted by the facilities of the

warehouse and the opium tax revenue has increased. Now

General Chiang Kai-shek has formally appointed Mr. Li to be

General Manager and has instructed him to establish branch

warehouses at Yizhang, Shaxi, Laoheguo, Jiujiang, Anjing, and

Wuhu .25

Chiang's monopoly-officially referred to as "suppression"-was

widely criticized. In Hubei, 100 Chinese signed

an open letter attacking Ch'en Hsi-tseng, director of the Public

Safety Bureau and local head of Chiang's terrorist Blue Shirt

Society, for not enforcing the anti-opium laws. "This action

not only disregards the proclamations," they charged, "but

will lead our compatriots to death. This act is tantamount to

permitting wild beasts to destroy human lives, and his evil

intentions are unquestionable." The prestigious Tianjin daily,

Da Gong Bao, upon learning of Nanjing's attempts to extend

the monopoly into the Peking-Tientsin area, demanded to

know "what policy does [the government] really hold

concerning this big question of the destruction or the

existence of the race? Can it be that it is because of the single

word 'money' that this business is going forward so silently.,,26

Chiang did issue strict orders prohibiting the cultivation

of poppies in several provinces under his control (to prevent

local competition with his Hankou monopoly, which

purchased from Yunnan and Sichuan). But he extended his

distribution monopoly. In Fujian, branch offices of the

Inspectorate for the Prohibition of Opium collected regular

opium taxes; in Hubei, new branches of the Agricultural Bank

of the Four Provinces (financed by opium revenues) acted as a

clearing house for the new tax receipts. In Hankou alone, by

the end of 1933, the Special Tax Bureau had collected well

over $16 million. 27 One expert estimated the income of all

opium tax bureaus under Nationalist control at $30 million

each month. 28

Chiang's regime grew increasingly bold in its public

hypocrisy. On November 1, 1933, Shun Bao published the

text of an order from the General Headquarters calling for a

suppression of unauthorized trade in opium. It began with this

admission:

As the Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the

Anticommunist forces of Honan, Hopeh and Anhwei are

enforcing the six-year opium suppression scheme, control is

exercised over the sale, transportation and taxation of

opium before the consummation of the scheme. Inasmuch

as the income derivable from opium tax has long been the

chief source of revenue from which the monthly

administration expenses of Hupeh Provincial Government,

and the Hupeh Dyke Construction and the emergency

expenses of the anti-Communist campaign within the three

Provinces are drawn, it has been designated as proper

government revenue as distinguished from illegitimate

extortion for selfish purposes so characteristic of the

former militarist regime. 29

Indeed, opium prohibition bureaus in ten provinces under

Nanjing's control routinely delivered opium revenues to the

Agricultural Bank of the Four Provinces for use by Nanchang

Headquarters in anti-communist "bandit suppression" operations.

Communist suppression came before opium . 31 suppression.

In the spring of 1934, while the League of Nations held

hearings on the world opium problem, Chiang publicly banned

opium smoking in public dens. Opium consumption rose all

the same. In the first five months of 1934, the official opium

trade through Hankou amounted to 42,000 piculs, a

substantial increase over 1933. (One picul = 13 3 Ibs.) Annual

revenue exceeded $100 million, reinforcing the government's

disinclination to suppress the traffic. As Walter Adams,

American Consul in Hankou, argued:

Inasmuch as the Nanking Government has for several years

been piling up a mounting deficit by reason of Chiang's

tremendous military expenditure, it is not believed that the

latter is prepared to cut off a lucrative source of revenue

such as he has in the opium monopoly merely for the

promotion of the common good, even though he like other

Chinese leaders is beginning to realize that some steps, as

yet undefined, must be taken to check the progressive

collapse of China's economic structure. 32

Opium, and the revenues derived from it, had become

essential to the fabric of Chinese government and society. "In

the central provinces of China, especially in Hubei and Hunan,

nearly every government organization has c9me to depend on

opium revenue for maintenance," observed one expert. "Even

law courts, Tangpus (Kuomintang organizations), and schools

are no exception." Thus in one locality, authorities charged

one picul of opium $320 for general taxes, $32 for Communist

suppression, $3.20 for national revenue, $1.50 for the

Chamber of Commerce, $2.50 for Special Goods (opium)

Association fees, $2.50 for the Hsih-tsun Girl's School, and

$7.00 for protection fees. Later, highway maintenance and

more school taxes were added. When the opium finally

reached Hankou, monopoly authorities added another $920

tax. The original cost of the opium was only $400. 33

Western observers, some of whom were sensitive to the

real difficulties of eradicating opium from China, were

nevertheless dismayed by the open program of the Nanjing

Government to exploit its own citizens while publicly blaming

the foreign powers' for China's narcotics problem. Thus

H. G. W. Woodhead, a sharp observer of Chinese politics,

commented with his usual understatement:

It is rather curious to read in the newspapers on the same

morning a report from one Chinese news agency stating

that altogether 204 opium traffickers have been executed in

China during the current year; from another that at present

there are about 30,000,000 opium and drug addicts in the

country; and from a correspondent in Poseh (Kwangsi) a

description of the arrival in that city of a caravan carrying

1,800, 000 ounces of opium, which was stored in the offices

of the Opium Suppression Bureau until it had paid the

required taxes, previous to shipment by motor boat to

Nanning and beyond. 34

American officials, concerned that over 90 percent of

the world's opium grew in China, were particularly critical of

Nationalist policies. Some State Department officials were less

concerned that the drugs were entering the United States than

that the opium trade was diminishing China's potential to

absorb American goods. 3s O. Edmund Clubb, then a foreign

service officer in China, objected to Chiang's use of the opium

traffic to further his designs for a "Nazi" style dictatorship.

Both Clubb and his colleague in Hankou, Walter Adams,

emphasized the enormously corrupting influence of the opium

trade on Chinese politics. Adams even charged that Chiang

Kai-shek was breaking the anti-opium laws not just for military

expenditures, but for personal enrichment as welL 36

A study of China's narcotics situation in early 1935

written by an obscure American military attache named

Joseph Stilwell only confirmed these opinions. Stilwell

estimated that half the population "regularly or occasionally

partake of drugs" and that fully one person in five abused

them. (Other estimates ranged from 7 to 70 million addicts.)37

Heavy use of narcotics was physically debilitating, but Stilwell

saw a more common, and insidious, effect: "The resulting

indifference toward work, constructive thought and ambition,

plus the inertia produced by the physical action of the drug,

tend to reduce the social value of the victim more and more

according to the degree of his addiction." Moreover, the

opium traffic diverted resources from more productive

economic sectors. Huge numbers of Chinese were employed in

the growing, transportation, and retailing of opium; thus when

Chiang Kai-shek cut into independent Sichuan opium

production he forced 20,000 people out of work in Chengdu

and Choneqing alone. 38

Such conditions did not deter Chiang. On May 29, 1935,

he abolished the Opium Suppression Commission and

appointed himself Opium Suppression Superintendent. "This

change is expected to simplify the administration but of

course puts greater power than ever in the hands of the

Generalissimo," commented an American diplomat. At least

the change would simplify matters: "Persons connected with

the opium suppression work have stated that it was difficult to

have a suppression bureau while other bureaus were publishing

regulations for the growing and taxing of opium." 9 J. Heng

Liu, head of the disbanded commission, became Director of

the Health Administration. 40 Old (and unenforced) regulations

for opium suppression were discarded, and "suppression"

officials talked openly of their duty to realize more opium

revenue for the government. 41

Even as Chiang attempted to extend his monopoly, he

faced a new competitor: Japan. Areas of North China

infiltrated by Japan were described by Stilwell as "one vast

poppy field."42 Cheap Japanese narcotics produced in Tianjin

and Manchuria threatened to disrupt Chiang'S planned opium

sales network in the region.

Back in October 1935, Chiang sent an emmissary to

Tianjin to lay the groundwork for an opium suppression

committee which would register (and collect fees from) all

addicts and smokers. Work towards an official monopoly

accelerated in late December 1935 when the government

announced that clandestine trade .would be suppressed by

means of a tax on all imports and by forced storage of opium

in public warehouses. The local monop61y agency expected to

open no less than 50 official sales agencies in Tianjin alone,

under the guise of "prohibition by means of taxation.,,43

The Peiping-Tientsin Opium Suppression Inspectorate

was formally inaugurated on February 18, 1936. Without any

pretense of restricting consumption, its rules for controlling

the opium trade, in the words of the American ambassador,

authorize the establishment of an unofficial opium monopoly

similar to thaI which is now operating in the area under

direct control ofthe National Government as a direct result

of the program first initiated by Chiang Kai-shek in

1933.... evidently the Hopei-Chahar Political Council [in

charge of the inspectorate} goes on the theory that it need

adhere no more closely to the letter of the National

Government's mandates of "opium suppression" than that

Government itself does. 44

As a compromise with Japan-which could break the

monopoly by smuggling its own product-the Peiping-Tientsin

monopoly purchased its opium from nearby Rehe, opium

shipping point for the Japanese opium monopoly in Manchukuo.

American publisher John B. Powell observed that

most persons regard [the Inspectorate} as a branch of the

Manchukuo Opium Monopoly, as all supplies will come

either from Jehol or areas further west which the Japanese

now control . ... This means that the Japanese, in addition

Opium and Famine

Peasants did not always cultivate the opium poppy

by choice. Independent militarists frequently imposed

high taxes on land ("lazy taxes") which forced peasants

to grow profitable cash crops such as opium, rather than

food. Peasant livelihood then depended entirely on the

market; when prices fell but taxes remained high,

peasants borrowed to meet their payments. Once in

debt, the peasant could not revert to subsistence

farming.

As a result of this process, millions of acres of land

were taken out of food production. In food-short China,

this reduced the margin of peasant survival. In a more

localized sense, the problem was aggravated by poor

transportation, since opium-exporting regions depended

on reliable food imports. In China, local starvation was

common even when other parts of the country enjoyed a

food surplus.

Such forced cultivation of opium contributed to

the massive 1925 famine in central China and to the

1934 Sichuan famine. But the most notorious case of

famine brought on by overcultivation of opium occured

in Shaanxi province between 1928 and 1933. It took as

many as six million lives in four provinces, wiping out

perhaps a third of the entire popUlation of Shaanxi

province. 2

Edgar Snow reported on the role of opium in the

famine:

Shensi has long been a noted opium province. During

the great Northwest Famine which a few years ago

took a toll of 3,000,000 lives, American Red Cross

investigators attributed much of the tragedy to the

cultivation of the poppy, forced upon the peasants by

to their other acquisitions in North China in recent weeks

have succeeded in obtaining complete control of the North

China opium revenues, China's chief 'cash crop,' and that

the amalgamation of North China with the Manchukuo

Opium Monopoly will provide Japan with enormous

revenues and economic advantage with which to control

this section of the Chinese Republic. 45

But Ambassador Johnson pointed out that the Nationalists

were sharing the new bounty through transport and

consumption taxes and by relieving the central government of

any administrative expenses it would face if the Hopei-Chahar

Political Council were unable to find other revenues. Thus did

Nanjing quietly cooperate with the "enemy" even while

complaining of Japan's "narcotics war" in North China. 46

Competition between China and Japan for revenues in

North China did not disappear, however. On January 1,1937,

Chiang announced strict new laws aimed at punishing users of

refined opium derivatives. Inspector Papp of the Shanghai

Municipal Police explained the decree as part of "a contest

between China and Japan for control of the drug and/or

opium traffic in China." He explained that

the tax-greedy militarists. The best land being

devoted to the poppy in years of drought, there is a

serious shortage of millet, wheat and corn, the staple

cereals of the Northwest. 3

While most of the world remained ignorant of the

massive starvation occuring in Shaanxi and neighboring

provinces, the China International Famine Relief Commission,

supported by American and British charities,

stepped in to ease the peasants' plight. Under the

direction of its chief engineer, Oliver J. Todd, the

Commission organized a major irrigation project on the

Wei-Bei river to irrigate farmland in Shaanxi and relieve

the famine. Governor Yang Hu-cheng, who was quick to

grasp the project's potential for strengthening his rule,

put together a 5,000-man workforce which got the job

done quickly.4

But the undertaking had some unexpected side

effects. First, the irrigation project and related programs

of road improvement simply shored up the power of

local warlords, helping them control Communist guerrillas.

Moreover, as the China International Famine

Relief Commission itself observed in 1930, "Land during

the famine of 1928-30 was bought at extremely cheap

rates by landowners who, since that period, have realized

fortunes by the execution of the Wei Bei irrigation

project. "5

Worst of all, the introduction of irrigation-at a

cost of over $1 million-actually encouraged more

poppy production at the expense of food. Following the

project, militarists forced peasants to grow poppies on

most of the land; one observer estimated that eight out

of every ten mou of land reached by irrigation had come

under poppy cultivation. 6

The Chinese Government had a monopoly in the opium

trade in China while japanese subjects were dominant in

the narcotic drug traffic. Therefore, the concerted efforts

taken by China to eradicate the narcotic drug traffic and

habit principally affected japanese subjects whose traffic

was on the decline; meanwhile, fearing extreme punishment

if apprehended trafficking or consuming narcotic drugs,

Chinese subjects were tending to turn from narcotic drugs

to opium, with the result that opium consumption is bein~

increased and Government revenues thereby benefitted. 7

Indeed, the new laws could hardly have been aimed at

suppressing opium since soon thereafter Chiang appointed as

Shanghai Opium Suppression Commissioner Chen Ling-yun,

who had worked with the Blue Shirts in 1932 to destroy the

National Anti-Opium Association and who later helped

organize the official opium monopoly in Zhejiang. 48

Japanese political and military successes in North China

ultimately compelled Chiang to give up his hopes of fully

controlling the opium trade in that region. He had greater

success in breaking his Chinese competitors in the southwestern

provinces.

Opium and Regional Struggle in Southwest China

By means of secure domination of the opium traffic [Chiang

Kai-shek hopes} to increase the political power of the National

Government over provinces whose allegiance is doubtful. ...

opium is the chief prop of all power in China, both civil and

military. No local government can exist without a share ofthe

opium revenues. If the central government can control the

opium supply of a frovince, that province can never hope to

revolt successfully. 4

Joseph Stilwell report, 1935

Chiang Kai-shek's maneuvers to monopolize China's

narcotics traffic stemmed directly from his dream of unifying

and bringing all of China under his personal control. To unify

the country he needed to finance military operations against

A missionary returning from Shaanxi in September

1933 reported that rain had finally fallen on the

province, but that famine conditions were unrelieved

due to the widespread cultivation of poppies. To prevent

further disaster, the provincial government exported vast

quantities of opium to the rest of China in return for

food shipments. 7 A 1935 report on Shaanxi noted that

"Since the advent of the irrigation system the production

of opium has increased 27% .... In the past three

years the amount of opium revenues collected is

estimated at $270,000 per annum compared with the

income from cotton which is about $180,000 per

annum. At present about 32% of the fertile land is

devoted to poppy cultivation ... 8

Thus opium proved as much a curse to the peasant

growers as to the consumers.

The Communists and provincial warlords while undermining

the financial base that supported his opponents. Opium

provided the key. If Chiang could centralize the opium traffic

at Hankou and suppress illicit opium cultivation in the

outlying provinces, his political and military position would be

tremendously enhanced. Chiang proceeded to test these tactics

in his struggle with the Southwest China warlords in the period

following the Northern Expedition of 1926-28.

By 1929, Chiang dominated the provinces around the

lower Yangtze, but most other regions lay outside his grip.

Generals Li Zong-ren and Bai Chong-xi exercised power in

Hubei and Hunan, while Li Ji-shen controlled Guangdong.

When these generals asserted their independence from Nanjing

in 1929, the KMT Third National Congress called for their

complete suppression and ordered a punitive expedition

against Wuhan. After heavy fighting, Chiang defeated Bai and

Li Zong-ren, forcing them to withdraw all the way to Guangxi

Province, so far south that Nanjing could no longer challenge

them. The southern provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi,

and Guangdong thus remained independent. But as long as

these provinces remained independent, with the rich port of

Canton and the remittances of Guangdong-born overseas

Chinese to finance them, the warlords would be a political

threat.

The economies of the southwestern provinces depended

heavily on opium: Yunnan and Guizhou as producers, Guangxi

and Guangdong as shippers and consumers. Yunnan alone

produced 100 million taels of opium a year, so much that it

had to import much of its rice from French Indochina.

Perhaps 40 percent of the adult males of Yunnan were addicts.

The provincial government in 1931 raised 35 percent of its

revenue from opium taxes, not including export taxes. Opium

was, in fact, the principal commercial product of the

provinces. 52

Opium export from Yunnan was highly organized. When

General Long Yun became Chairman of the provincial

government in 1928, he made a fortune issuing new bank

notes through the Fu Dian Xin bank. With the profits, he and

the bank officials organized a central opium export firm, the

Nan Seng company, with branches in Hong Kong, Shanghai,

Hankou, Canton, Chengdu and Guilin, financed by the Fu

Notes

1. WaIter Mallory, China: Land of Famine (New York:

American Geographical Society, 1926), 8('81: "The Omnipotence of

Opium in Fow-Chow Villages," Agrarian China (London: George Allen

& Unwin Ltd., 1939), 125: Owen Lattimore, Manchuria: Cradle of

Conflict (New York: Macmillan, 1932), 189·90.

2. Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China (New York: Random

House, 1936), 205-7; Mark Selden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary

China (Harvard U. Press, 1971),6.

3. Snow, 25-26.

4. Selden, 49-50.

5. Snow, 208.

6. Peking & Tientsin Times, 12 May 1932, 21 June 1932, 2 June

1932; Chicago Daily News, 27 June 1932: China Yearbook, 1931,599.

7. O. E. Clubb, "The Opium Traffic ...," 64.

8. NR "Poppy Cultivation in the Shensi Irrigation Area,"

893.114 Narcotics/1340.

Dian Xin bank. Although the government faced some

problems from smugglers, these arrangements proved successful:

even in 1934, during the Depression, the Shanghai

Branch of the Fu Dian Xin bank made a profit of $1,500,000.

By 1937, Yunnan opium dominated the Shanghai market. 53

Yunnanese opium took four major routes: north into

Sichuan for transport down the Yangtze river, through

Guizhou to Jiangxi, through Guangxi to Guangdong, and

through the port of Haiphong in Tonkin to the coast of China.

Yunnan was famous for its gigantic caravans of opium. On

February 23,1930, a convoy of 2,350 coolies, 230 horses, and

365 soldiers left Yunnan to cross Guangxi. On April 30, 1931,

an expedition arrived at Longzhou consisting of 10,000 armed

coolies carrying 10,000 chests (390 tons) ordered by a trading

firm in Canton. And in December 1933, one caravan allegedly

brought 750 tons of opium to Poseh, the chief opium market

in Guangxi. 54

Transport by land was always dangerous and expensive.

In 1933 a new route opened-by air. Guangxi and Guangdong

provinces established Southwest Aviation Corporation to fly

between Longzhou and Canton, both reflecting and reinforcing

the independence of the southwestern provinces. The

airline extended its services into Guizhou and Yunnan, linking

the provinces together for the purpose of transporting opium.

Yunnan authorities, to minimize weight, sometimes loaded the

planes with morphine. The airline naturally proved highly

profitable until the Japanese grounded it in 1938. 55

Guizhou, like Yunnan, was a major center of opium

production. The provincial government earned $3,500,000 on

an annual output of 7,500,000 taels. It raised another

$3,000,000 from consumption and transport taxes on Yunnan

opium. Opium revenue accounted for up to one-half of the

government's income. As in Yunnan, the provincial bank

backed its note issues with opium. Thus opium played a key

role in the politics of the province. 56

Although Guangxi produced little opium itself, it earned

considerable revenue by taxing opium shipped on its extensive

road system from Yunnan and Guizhou to Guangdong, the

major southwest market. This traffic accounted for between a

third and a half of the government's revenue. One American

intelligence report explained the role of opium in Guangxi's

relations with Yunnan:

During the year 1930, as a result of a hostile relationship

between Kwangsi and Yunnan, General Lung Yun, Yunnan's

military governor, prohibited the exportation of

Yunnan opium into Kwangsi. The following year, Kwangsi's

provincial finance was greatly affected and the situation

soon became intolerable. Finally, the authorities of

Kwangsi realized the necessity of reaching a compromise

with Yunnan, and General Lu Tao, formerly a commander-in-chief

of Kwangsi Army, was requested by

Kwangsi authorities to proceed to Yunnan and negotiate

for a truce. Through Lu Tao's able appeal and clever tactics,

General Lung Yun of Yunnan agreed to export opium

through Kwangsi on condition that the latter would

undertake to disband the troops of General Hu Tze Chia

whose rebellious army of Yunnan had sought refuge in

Kwangsi. Since this request was carried out, the export of

Yunnan opium through Kwangsi has continued and has

become one of the chief sources ofKwangsi's revenue. 57

The Southwestern Political Clique, led by Bai and Li,

derived their strength not only from their distance from

Nanjing, but also from the relatively stable revenues opium

provided. The existence of a large, independent opium market

in Guangdong and nearby regions frustrated Chiang's efforts to

undermine the clique.

Chiang saw his chance to move in the spring of 1935,

when the Communists, forced out of Jiangxi, began their Long

March to the west and entered Guizhou. Despite the efforts of

the Guizhou militarists to draw support from Guangxi and

Guangdong provincial forces, Chiang seized the excuse to

move his armies into Guizhou and force a reorganization of

the provincial government-and its opium monopoly-in line

with his interests. 58 General Wang Jia-lie, governor of the

province, fled south with his troops towards Guangxi when

pressed by Chiang's armies.

Chiang hoped to force Guangxi into submission by

diverting Guizhou opium away from the southern transit route

in retaliation for Kwangsi's strong opposition to General

Chiang Kai-shek during the past few years.

As Kwangsi depends almost solely for revenue derived

from transportation taxes on Yunnan and Kweichow opium

en route to the South China Coast, General Chiang's action

has seriously handicapped the pr01Jincial government in the

matter of revenue. Consequently Kwangsi has aligned

herself with General Wang Chia-lieh's troops against the

Central Government and it is expected that if General

Chiang persists in maintaining a blockade against opium

through Kwangsi, actual warfare will take place between

General Chiang and the Kwangsi troops. 59

Chiang sent his trusted emissary, Li Zhong-gong (a native

of Guizhou), to study the provincial opium monopoly. After

Chiang's armies conquered Guizhou, Li became Commissioner

of Finance to manage the opium revenues. 60 With Li in charge,

the Nanjing governme:1t ordered Guizhou opium diverted

north to the Yangtze (L,r shipment to the Hankou monopoly)

rather than through Guangxi; it also pressed Yunnan to follow

suit. As Joseph Stilwell reported, "It was done with the intent

of making Canton more tractable by reducing its sources of

revenue and the result was highly successful." Guangxi began

experiencing an economic crisis. 61

Without control of Yunnan's opium exports, however,

Chiang'S leverage was limited. His orders to Governor Long

Yun carried little weight when they conflicted with Yunnan's

self-interest. Thus, against Chiang's express orders, the Yunnan

opium monopoly in early 1935 made "enormous shipments"

of opium through Guangxi and accumulated millions of

ounces more in its stocks which, if exported through Guangxi,

could undercut Chiang's plans.62

The Generalissimo tempted Yunnan into an alliance by

providing alternative profitable transport routes and markets

for opium. In April 1935, while his armies occupied Guizhou,

the Nanjing government began a massive program of highway

construction-not just for use against the Communists, as one

American diplomat stationed in Yunnan explained:

It is reported that military labor is being utilized in the

construction of highways radiating from Kweiyang to

Szechuan, Yunnan and Hunan. {Chiang Kai-shekJ appeared

to be particularly anxious to complete the Yunnan,

Kweichow, Hunan highway as soon as possible. The eastern

terminus will be Hengchow, in Eastern HUnan, where it will

connect with the as yet uncompleted Hankow-Canton

Railway . ... It will furnish a new and convenient route for

the opium caravans from Yunnan to centers of consumption

at Hankow and Canton. It will then be quite

possible for them to avoid Kwangsi altogether, and Nanking

will be in a position to exert considerable pressure on the

hitherto recalcitrant rulers ofthat province who derive fully

50 percent of their revenue from transit taxes levied on

opium caravans from Yunnan and Kweichow. 63 .

Chiang completed the Yunnan-Guizhou highway in

autumn 1935. However, unbeknown to the Generalissimo,

Guizhou began charging such high taxes on the Yunnan

caravans that Yunnan authorities realized no profit at all on

that route. Guangxi learned of this predicament and secretly

negotiated a large reduction its transit tax to induce the Nan

Seng company (in charge of official Yunnan opium exports) to

change its shipping route. When Chiang learned that the two

provinces had signed a treaty, threatening all of his schemes,

he fired Li Zhong-gong as Commissioner of Finance. 64 Soon

the squeeze began again.

Although Guangxi continued to receive some opium

from the nine counties of Guizhou it controlled, "the amount

is very much less than before and Guangxi and Guangdong

suffer tremendous loss in this respect," an American narcotics

expert noted in mid-1936. "It is, therefore, true that opium

revenue plays an important part in the present dispute

between Kwangtung-Kwangsi and Nanking.,,65 Guangdong

collapsed in July 1936, and Guangxi gave in shortly

thereafter. 66

Chiang had succeeded through his "opium blockade" in

strangling the Southwest Clique financially. The abortive 1936

Guangxi revolt reflected in part the desperation of the

southwestern warlords. From this point on Nanjing exercised

control over both the opium traffic and the politics of central

and southern China.67

Chinese Opium and the International Market

One of the results of the development of an organized drug

traffic in China is the increasing export of opium and its

derivatives (morphine and heroin) from China to foreign

countries, including the United States. It is reported that

important members of the international drug ring now reside

in Shanghai to control this traffic. It is not known whether or

not Chiang Kai-shek's organization has connections with the

international ring, but in view of his old connections with the

Ch'ing-Hung Pang (Shanghai underworld gang dealing in

everything from opium to blackmail to assassination) it is

thought entirely possible. 68

U.S. Consular dispatch from Hankow, 11 April 1934

China's emergence in the twentieth century as the

world's leading opium producer fundamentally transformed

the structure of the world narcotics traffic. With an output of

more than 12,000 tons annually, China dwarfed all other

producing countries combined. The small fraction of Chinese

opium that entered international markets hit the consuming

countries like a flood. By the late 1920s China was a net

exporter of opium, and within a few years it replaced the Near

East as the world's opium smuggling center. By the mid-1930s,

Chinese heroin dominated the American market, which may

explain the obvious concern with which officials in the

Department of State and Bureau of Narcotics kept tabs on

opium developments in China.69

As early as the 1920s, British authorities in Hong Kong

seized an average of about 20,000 taels of Chinese opium

illegally smuggled into the colony each year; no one knows

how much more made it past the customs authorities. In the

first ten months of 1931, customs officials in Macao seized

19,900 taels of Chinese opium. Clearly, China could not

confine within its borders the vast quantities of opium it

produced. 70

The U.S. Bureau of Narcotics reported in 1931 that

most of the opium smuggled into the United States entered

Pacific ports such as Seattle and San Francisco. The exact

source was unknown, but the "greater bulk" was "manufactured

and packed somewhere in the Far East ....,,71 The

traffic was almost impossible to stop because, in the words of

one agent, "the smuggling of opium into the United States is

conducted on a huge scale by well organized highly financial

[sic] gangs." 72

In 1933, opium seizures in the U.S. doubled those of

1932, thanks to a "marked recrudescence" of opium

smuggling and smoking. By now the Bureau of Narcotics knew

that "Practically all of the prepared opium seized came from

China," and expressed concern that Chinese opium production

was on the rise. 73

Even more serious, the Bureau of Narcotics discovered

by 1933 that "heroin manufactured clandestinely in China and

Darien is also entering the United States in considerable

quantities ...,,74 By 1935 most of America's heroin originated

in Shanghai and Tianjin laboratories. 75 Harry Anslinger, head

of the Bureau, reported in 1934 that Chinese heroin

production had "increased tremendously":

further, confidential police information and statements of

traffickers indicated that a considerable proportion of this

heroin was being smuggled into the United States, either

directly from the Far East or by transshipment from

European ports. Although in 1934 a number of notorious

international narcotics traffickers transferred their headquarters

from China, Darien and Manchuria to Europe,

most of them continued to maintain contact with former

associates in the Far East. These persons were reported to

be actively engaged in smuggling heroin into the United

States, and confidential police information indicated that

their sources of supply were in China, Darien and

Manchuria. Other notorious foreign traffickers remained in

China, keeping in touch with heroin smugglers in the

United States, 'and certain Chillese traffickers .. , were

known to continue to be immune from prosecution . .. 76

Even as America bore the brunt of this international

traffic, China insisted before the League of Nations that its

narcotics problem still resulted from foreign smuggling into

China. The United States, in response, attempted to shame the

Nanjing government into action by publishing its findings on

China's own responsibility with the additional comment: "The

American Narcotics Administration regards this development

with acute anxiety and looks to the Chinese National

Government to take more effective action to curb the

smuggling ... of prepared opium out of China, and to reduce

the cultivation of the poppy in China, at least south of the

Great Wall." 77 In private, American diplomats told Chinese

officials "that the American Government was greatly concerned

over the apparent increase in smuggling of prepared

opium from China to the United States and the large

quantities of manufactured derivatives of opium supposed to

be in China available for smuggling to the United States,," 78

But the situation only worsened; neither the Chinese

government, which profited from opium, nor the Japanese,

who manufactured heroin in North China, were willing to

suppress narcotics merely to please the United States. In a

single seizure in 1936, American officials took 54 pounds of

heroin from a Chinese passenger on a Hong Kong vessel; the

drug had been refined in Tianjin (probably in the Japanese

concession) and packed in Shanghai. Customs officials that

year also discovered large quantities of Chinese "red pills,,­

mixtures of morphine, strychnine, and other drugs meant for

smoking. Although street prices doubled following the

outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, narcotics officials reported

that "heroin continues to be brought to the United States

from Tientsin, via Shanghai, Marseilles, and Cherbourg." Some

of the opium smuggled in even bore the official stamp of the

Shanghai Opium Suppression bureau. 79

The flow of Chinese opium into the U.S. during the

1930s was encouraged by the easy availability of narcotics in

such international ports as Shanghai and Tianjin, the willingness

of Chinese seamen to smuggle opium in small consignments,

and above all, by the high profits. But without the

active connivance of many Chinese officials, the traffic could

hardly have been sustained on such a large scale.

In 1934, for instance, the Bureau of Narcotics heard that

the Director General of Chinese Posts, Wong Nai San, had

attended a meeting of Pacific Coast opium dealers held in San

Francisco, allegedly as a personal representative of Chiang

Kai-shek. The Bureau later learned that other high-level postal,

customs, and military officials in the Nanjing regime were part

of a major drug ring led by Japanese, Formosan, and Chinese

racketeers based in Fujian and Shanghai, in league with the

Shanghai secret societies. According to one report, Chiang

Kai-shek himself condoned or even backed the operation. 81

Frequently, Nationalist officials personally smuggled

narcotics. Many took "official" trips to the United States

during the 1930s ostensibly to inspect American advancements

in the aviation industry, mining, finance, or the postal service.

They took advantage of the special courtesies offered them as

officials to bring narcotics into the country. Since a number of

these officials received no expense allowance, American

narcotics representatives in China openly wondered at the

source of their income until this ploy was discouraged. Chang

Siao-Ioh, who visited Europe and America in the early 1930s

as head of China's Industrial Mission, was known to have

transacted considerable business in narcotics. 82 Among the

worst offenders, however, were Chinese consular officials in

North and South America, many of whom had ties to

international drug rings in China and who exploited their

contacts in local Chinese communities and secret societies. The

Nanjing Government's Consul General in San Francisco, Huang

Chao-chin, only barely avoided conviction on narcotics charges

in the late 1930s. He subsequently became a member of the

KMT Central Committee and chairman of the First Commercial

Bank of Taiwan. 83

Within China, of course, international drug rings

cultivated contacts among Nationalist officials. Wong Sui, the

leading Cantonese opium merchant in Shanghai, customarily

sold about $400,000 worth of opium a year to his American

contacts, primarily in New York and San Francisco. He

received his supplies from none other than Tong Hai-ong

("Tommy" Tong), Superintendent of Chinese Maritime

Customs in Shanghai, who owed large gambling debts to Wong.

In December 1934, for example, Tong turned over to Wong

4,000 pounds of Opium, worth $12\),000,000 (Chinese) at

Shanghai, which Wong prepared and packed, tripling its value.

Tong, described in an intelligence report as a "former protege

of T. V. Soong," had simply delivered over previously

confiscated opium. One Bureau of Narcotics informant alleged

that "H. O. Tong is acting as agent for Chiang Kai-shek in

arranging for the preparation and shipment of the stuff to the

United States." 84

Of course, Chinese were not the only participants in the

China-based narcotics traffic. Even after massive Western

smuggling into China ended, British and American steamship

companies regularly carried loads of opium down the Yangtze

under the averted eyes of Chinese officials. In 1914 a Shanghai

newspaper reported that "practically every foreign bank is

involved" in narcotics. 85 Fifteen years later, American officials

suspected National City Bank (which leased its Cuban

racetracks to Meyer Lansky) and other "reputable banking

institutions" of financing drug transactions or acting as

middlemen in the transportation of the physical drugs. 86

One of the biggest Western smuggling rings was led by

Shanghai-based Judah and Isaac Ezra. Edward Ezra, their

brother, headed the Shanghai Opium Combine (an organization

of Western opium merchants) before he sold his property

to the U.S. Government in 1915. 87 The Ezra brothers'

operation first came to ligh t in 1924 when someone hijacked

one of their huge opium shipments from Turkey and news

leaked out. 88 Their downfall followed a routine narcotics

arrest in April 1933 which led U.S. narcotics agents to Judah

Ezra, who had arrived in San Francisco a few months earlier to

do business for a narcotics factory processing drugs from the

Far East. Police arrested Judah and his brother in mid-May.

Agents discovered an entire warehouse full of drugs possibly

worth $50 million. Sentenced to 12 years in prison and a

$12,000 fine, both were released in 1940. Judah returned to

Japanese-occupied China. Their case drew attention again in

1947 when workmen renovating a building owned fifteen

years earlier by the Ezras discovered a huge stash of narcotics

hidden in the ceiling. As late as 1954 the Bureau of Narcotics

accused Judah of supplying a large narcotics ring out of Hong

Kong. 89

The Ezra brothers' chief Shanghai collaborator was Ye

Ching Ho (alias Yih Tsing Pao, alias Paul A. Yip, alias Paul

Yap). Ye held a share of the Ezras' narcotics front, the

Dahloong Tea Company, and headed the United Drug

Company which supplied narcotics to the ring. Ye handled the

finances of this operation through K. P. Chen's Shanghai

Commercial & Savings Bank (which bankrolled Chiang

Kai-shek during the Northern Expedition).90

Ye Ching Ho's narcotics record dated back to 1925,

when a Chinese court in Shanghai convicted him of trafficking

in opium and sentenced him to 18 months in prison. In June

1932 he was arrested for operating a morphine factory in

Shanghai. While out on bail the Ezra case broke and Ye was

forced to flee. 91

Ye emerged in 1934 as Managing Director and chief

shareholder in the Amoy-based Lu Tung company, capitalized

at $300,000. In mid-1934 the Fujian Opium Suppression

Office turned over to the Lu Tung company the provincial

opium monopoly. Ye proceeded to establish so many new

smoking houses that they outnumbered the rice shops.92

Ye imported much of his opium from the Hankou

Opium Suppression Bureau. This pleased Chiang Kai-shek, who

overlooked Ye's record as an international smuggler. The only

"suppression" Chiang wanted to see was of local Fujianese

opium, to prevent competition with Hankou opium. 94

Under Ye's guidance, the Fujian market grew so fast that

new supply sources were needed. In league with other

traffickers, he imported red Persian opium into the province

(usually on Douglas Line steamers). Much of this flavorful

opium he converted into morphine. 95

Ye also purchased opium from the Japanese, who played

a major role in the Persian opium trade in the Far East. In

1934, Ye visited the Formosan opium monopoly bureau to

purchase thousands of chests of Persian opium. Japan hoped

to unload the opium following its embarrassing discovery by

League of Nations officials, and in the process raise money to

finance the Japanese army. Ultimately Ye became so closely

allied with the Japanese that he became a naturalized Japanese

citizen (under the alias Nakamura Taro), presumably to

protect himself from Chinese law. With such connections, he

forced even the well organized Formosan ronin smugglers to

cooperate with him.100

Ye Ching Ho did not neglect international operations.

Apparently Ye, in his Shanghai days, had become a good

friend of the notorious Shanghai gangster leader Du YueslJeng,

whose factories flooded the American market with

narcotics. Moreover, Ye operated a major drug ring with Dr.

Lansing Ling (of Leubbert's Pharmacy) and Dr. T. Chan (of

Lester Chinese Hospital), whose connections in the Chinese

Navy proved valuable. Lansing Ling supplied narcotics to

Chinese officials travelling abroad, such as Huang Ching-tao,

head of the Department of Mining in the Nanjing Government's

Ministry of Interior who visited the U.S. in 1934.97 In

1938 Ling became head of the Narcotics Control Department

of the National Health Administration thanks to his friend Dr.

F. C. Yen, Director of the National Health Administration following

the resignation of Dr. J. Heng Liu on corruption

charges. (Until Japanese troops occupied the city, Yen had

been a member of the Shanghai Opium Suppression Com

mittee and a business partner of Ling in the narcotics

traffic).98

Ye himself continued to profit handsomely from

ever-increasing opium sales in Fujian. He also gained control of

the salt monopoly.99

He lost favor with Chiang Kai-shek,

however, by selling Japanese morphine rather than Hankou

opium, and was forced to flee when full-scale war broke out

between Japan and China in 1937. Soon he was back working

for the Japanese. 100

Not surprisingly, American-organized crime also had a

hand in the international traffic based in China. Arnold

Rothstein, perhaps the premier American crime figure of the

early twentieth century, was probably the first American to

organize a major smuggling ring from China to the United

States. A financial genius and constant innovator, Rothstein

was best known for his "fix" of the 1919 World Series. He

made a fortune from gambling, loan sharking, bootlegging,

extortion, prostitution, labor racketeering, and narcotics.

Rothstein launched the careers of such men as Charles

"Lucky" Luciano and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter.

As early as 1925, Rothstein had a small fortune tied up

in international narcotics operations. He used to good

advantage the network of criminal contacts he developed in

Europe while beating Prohibition. In 1925 Rothstein sent one

of his agents, Sid Stajer, to China, Formosa, and Hong Kong to

make drug buys for the American market. Another Rothstein

agent, George Uffner, followed in 1926. Uffner later became a

drug purchaser for Luciano and Frank Costello. 101

Luciano and Buchalter took over Rothstein's narcotics

operations in 1928 when he was assassinated by a rival. For

supplies, Buchalter turned to the notorious Eliopoulos ring

operating out of Paris. In 1928, Elie Eliopoulos, a Greek

national, travelled to China to study the narcotics traffic, and

apparently became convinced that large profits could be made.

He returned to Paris with a signed contract with John

Voyatzis, a narcotics trafficker in Tianjin. With his brother

George, Elie proceeded to monopolize most of the world's

narcotics distribution by 1929-31. His ring smuggled literally

tons of opium and morphine into the United States. Their

Paris headquarters held stores of thousands of kilos of opium,

heroin, morphine, and cocaine. In eight months alone,

Voyatzis remitted to Paris a quarter of a million pounds,

through the American Express Company, Chase National

Bank, and National City Bank.

The Elipoulos brothers maintained their near-monopoly

by denouncing rivals to the authorities. The strategy backfired

in 1931. An Eliopoulos intermediary, David Gourievidis, lost

£50,000 worth of opium in a Shanghai opium seizure which he

suspected had not been accidental. He denounced the

Elipoulos ring to the French police. Elie was arrested in 1932 a

few months after American authorities captured his confederate,

August Del Gratio. Although Del Gratio was

convicted, the Elipoulos brothers found a haven in Greece

(thanks to their citizenship), then fled to North Africa, and

finally to the United States during World War II, where they

finally were arrested and convicted. As one narcotics official

rejoiced in 1931,

The smashing of the ELIOPOULIS organization is believed

to be the heaviest blow ever struck in the campaign against

the illicit narcotics traffic. Its effects are bound to be far

reaching; it means that an entirely new organization will

have to be built up in Europe; or new methods devised in

order to supply the American market. 102

The new rings did not take long to emerge. The Luciano

syndicate approached members of the Hip Sing Tong in New

York and gained the cooperation of the national organization

in smuggling narcotics. The Tong members obtained refined

European narcotics from the Mafia partners of top Luciano

lieutenant Thomas "The Bull" Pennacio in return for raw

Chinese opium. It took Federal narcotics officials two years to

penetrate the secret society, but in 1937 they smashed the

ring, said to be the largest in the United States. The

government obtained convictions of Ye On Li, president of the

Hip Sing Tong, the head of Montana's Chinese communities,

and prominent Tong members in Chicago, San Francisco, New

York, Pittsburgh, and other cities. 103

Another major narcotics ring centered around Louis

Buchalter and Meyer Lansky aide Jasha Katsenberg, a one-time

bootlegger and narcotics supplier for Arnold Rothstein.

Katsenberg and his confederate Jacob Lvovsky sent emissaries

to Shanghai to purchase heroin. From there, they shipped the

drugs to France and then to New York, where Buchalter's

organization took over. In the space of a year and a half they

smuggled 648 kg. of pure heroin into the U.S., enough to

satisfy 10,000 addicts for a year.

Katsenberg developed the novel technique of smuggling

drugs in the baggage of ostensible "around-the-world" tourists.

So great was his notoriety that a League of Nations committee

called him an "international menace." But before he had a

chance to test out any new techniques, he and his fellows,

including Lepke, were indicted. Buchalter escaped capture

until August 1939, after which he was convicted for narcotics,

murder, and anti-trust violations. Buchalter was executed on

March 4, 1944. 104 These convictions, and the onset of World

War II in the Pacific, marked a temporary end to the

involvement of American organized crime in narcotics smuggling

from the Far East.

All of these international traffickers displayed unusual

ingenuity and enthusiasm in their line of work. But none could

match the extraordinary success of China's leading criminal

organization which for years enjoyed the protection of Chiang

Kai-shek's regime for its nationwide opium smuggling activities.

Crime and politics in China became inextricably linked

with the issue of opium.

Opium and the Politics of Gangsterism in China

The complexity of politics in the Nationalist period

reflected the diversity of power centers in China: the landed

gentry, the' coastal commercial and comprador elite, the

Western-educated "modernizers," and the communists. But

there was another political force in China that played a critical

role: the organized underworld, dominated by the Green Gang

(Qing Bang-also Ch'ing Pang), China's most powerful secret

society. "The influence of the Ch'ing Pang upon Chinese

politics is very great, and can hardly be overestimated," wrote

one respected newspaper in 1934:

It has figured, directly or indirectly, in almost every

political upheaval, local disturbance, or labour agitation.

Towards the close of the Ch'ing Dynasty, Dr. Sun Yat Sen

and General Huang Hsing sought to enlist the support of

this powerful Society for the revolutionary movement, but

without any great success. After the Revolution of 1911

the Peiyang militarists were able to induce a number of

'Green' men to support them, and with the assistance of

this group dominated the southern part of the Yangtze

Valley for more than ten years. In 1924 the Kuomintang

leaders in Canton, desirous of enlarging their sphere of

influence, again found it necessary to make use of this

organization in launching the Northern expedition, and it is

now an open secret that the Ch'ing Pang rendered great

service to the cause of national unity under the guidance of

the Kuomintang. 104.5

The story of the Green Gang is really the story of opium.

The origins of the Green Gang, like all Chinese secret

societies, are murky. According to most accounts, it was

organized in the early 18th century to protect laborers and

rice transporters along the Grand Canal from bandits and

pirates. During the Taiping rebellion, when the Grand Canal

fell into disrepair, its members scattered, later to regroup along

the Yangtze. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, its name

became Qing Bang ("qing" now referred to green, not the

dynasty) .104. 7

The Green Gang became a major force in Chinese

politics-and crime-under the leadership of Huang Chin-jung

("Pockmarked Huang"), a wealthy businessman, opium merchant,

and chief of detectives in the Shanghai French

Concession. Huang built the society into a citadel of organized

crime, notorious for its control of gambling, opium, gold

smuggling, prostitution, kidnapping, extortion, and murder.

Hundreds of thousands of laborers, merchants, and officials

cooperated with its schemes. Politicians, military officers and

businessmen joined for the power and protection it could

bring. Businessmen, awed by its tight control of Wharfmen,

workers, and gangs of armed thugs, paid for protection and did

the Green Gang's bidding.

The Green Gang's influence centered on the Yangtze

basin, extending as far west as Chongqing. But its power

reached its height in Shanghai, that island of Western dominated

affluence in a sea of Chinese poverty. The

environment of dependent capitalist development that reached

its most exaggerated and uncontrolled form in Shanghai

fostered the growth of this criminal society. The gang's rise to

power was not accidental, but reflected the easy wealth and

aggressive, frontier spirit of wealth accumulation that pervaded

the city. Like its more respectable counterparts in the Chinese

commercial community, the Green Gang seized the opportunity

to appropriate Shanghai's riches without producing any

of its own. Its unprecedented success in this enterprise made

the Green Gang the dominant force in Shanghai, and one

whose influence extended to other parts of China as well.

The Green Gang's power extended beyond the financial

and human resources at its immediate disposal, for it

magnified its power by making alliances with politicians. The

Green Gant understood well that social reformers and

Communists would attack its power, expropriate the wealth it

tapped, and create alternative labor organizations; rightist

politicians, anticommunist in ideology and grateful for

financial support, turned naturally to work with such

grass-roots organizations as the Green Gang, capable of

controlling labor and wielding political clout in the big cities.

In return for protection of its rackets, therefore, the Green

Gang joined rightist politicians in destroying rival leftist

political movements. Such alliances of crime and right-wing

politics have played important roles most notably in the

United States, France, and Japan, but they reached their most

exaggerated form in Republican China.

While the Green Gang reigned supreme in the field of

crime, its political power was originally limited by the absence

of a strong central government through which it could exercise

influence. The rise of Chiang Kai-shek as unifier of China

changed all that and led to the most extraordinary alliance of

criminals and politicians in Chinese history.

Chiang's ascent to power began in 1906 when he met

General Chen Ch'i-mei (whose nephews later formed the

powerful right-wing CC-Clique). Chen introduced Chiang to

Sun Yat-Sen after Chiang jointed the revolutionary society,

the Tong-meng-hui. Chen had tremendous influence within the

Shanghai secret societies, which he delivered to the cause of

the Revolu tion in 1911.

Chiang returned to Shanghai sometime soon after 1911

(the dates are uncertain). With backing from millionaire

banker-merchant Chang Ching-chiang and Green Gang associate

Yu Ya-ching, a banker and "premier of the Chinese

comprador world," Chiang became a Shanghai stockbroker

and commodity exchange trader. Most importantly, he was

introduced to Huang Chin-jung, who initiated Chiang into the

realm of the Shanghai underworld. Shanghai police records

reportedly listed Chiang as a criminal associate of the gang. 105

The political alliance between Chiang and the Green

Gang became crucially significant in the mid-1920s, when

Chiang took over leadership of the KMT following Sun

Yat-sen'sdeath. Almost immediately, the Green Gang began

aiding the KMT's search for reliable allies, and helped

transport Chiang's emissaries up the Yangtze, through warlord

territory, to Shanghai. 106 In November 1926, Huang Chin-jung

travelled up-river to meet the Nationalist forces in secret, to

re-establish contact between the KMT and the Shanghai

commercial elite. Huang offered Chiang the formidable

support of his society in return for the destruction of

communism and an end to foreign business competition in

China. 107 Following this conference, Chiang decided to oppose

the Left-KMT as well as the communists.

Chiang arrived in Shanghai on March 26 at the head of

his National Revolutionary Army. Already communist-led

strikes paralyzed the city; 150,000 workers were in the streets

in a massive show of force. 108 The Shanghai bankers and

merchants, terrified at the thought of a communist insurrection,

demanded that Chiang crush the communists in return

for financing which the KMT required. The first person to call

on the General when he reached Shanghai was Huang

Chin-jung, representing the Shanghai capitalists now as head of

the Federation of Commercial and Industrial Bodies. Huang

offered Chiang huge loans in return for a promise to break the

unions. Altogether, the bankers advanced Chiang three loans,

totalling $48 million. 109

The Shanghai Green Gang leadership-Huang Chin-jung,

Chang Hsiao-lin, and Du Yue-sheng-began preparing for the

day when Chiang's armies would actually occupy the city. Du

Yue-sheng, a former fruit vendor who rose to the top of the

Shanghai underworld thanks to his extraordinary organizing

ability and his friendship with Huang, consolidated the

Shanghai secret societies into an anti-communist front called

the Common Advancement Association, with the approval of

Western officials. Then, in opposition to the leftist General

Labor Union, he helped sponsor a gangster-dominated

'Worker's Trade Alliance," managed by Chang Hsiao-lin's

secretary and head of the Shanghai KMT Political Department,

Chen Chuen. By March and early April, the Green Gang and

KMT agents were busy assassinating key labor union officials

and disrupting strike activities in cities occupied by the

Nationalists, preparing for the showdown in Shanghai. IIO

To thoroughly "clean up" the city, the Green Gang

needed more arms and ammunition. Thanks to Chiang, the

French Concession' authorities, and Stirling Fessenden, the

American in charge of the International Settlement, the Green

Gang forces received five thousand new rifles, and the

unprecedented right to transport their men and weapons

through the International Settlement.

Early in the morning of April 12, armed gangsters

wearing white armbands, led by Chang Hsiao-lin, passed

through the International Settlement. They "fell upon and

shot down the Communists," in the words of George

Sokolsky, and initiated a reign of terror and bloodshed that

took the lives of over five thousand workers, destroyed the

Communist leadership, and smashed the Shanghai General

Labor Union. Green Gang "execution squads" dealt so

efficiently with their enemies that independently organized

labor never fully recovered in the city as long as the

Nationalists remained in power. 11I The "white terror" broke

the back of the Communist strategy of winning the cities and

ultimately forced them to retreat to the countryside.

In recognition of the Green Gang's contribution to the

success of the Northern Expedition, Chiang Kai-shek hastened

to confer titles and favors on the major gang leaders.

Immediately following the Shanghai massacres, Chiang made

all three-Du Vue-sheng, Huang Ching-jung, and Chang

Hsiao-lin-"Honorary Advisors" with the rank of Major

General. In this way, the Generalissimo formally recognized

their power, legitimized their position, and gave them an

enormous boost in status. 112

Chiang made more substantive concessions to the Green

Gang leaders as a reward for their service. In 1927 the

Nationalist Ministry of Finance began organizing an official

opium monopoly to raise revenue from areas of China

captured by the KMT armies. The National Anti-Opium

Bureau extended the monopoly into the Zhejiang-Jiangsu area

on August 20, 1927. Immediately, however, the scheme ran

into opposition from the Da Gong Si, Du Yue-sheng's

company that handled most of the city's opium sales. Within

about two months, the Nationalists disbanded the official

monopoly and turned over opium rights to a subsidiary of the

Da Gong Si, the Zi Xin Company. Nationalist military

authorities even guarded a shipment of 502 cases of Persian

opium imported by Qing Bang leaders for sale in Shanghai. 113

The pattern of cooperation between Chinese naval and

police officials with the Green Gang, sanctioned by the

Nanjing regime, only strengthened with time. In 1930,

according to reliable Shanghai police reports, Finance Minister

T. V. Soong arranged with Du Vue-sheng to deliver 700 cases

of Persian opium to Shanghai, under Chinese military

protection. The Navy and Finance Ministry received fees for

arranging and protecting the shipment; Du received the profits

through his sales organization. It was hardly surprising, in the

words of one British official, that "the settlement police

increasingly feel that their work of opium suppression is an

expensive, thankless and rather humiliating farce ..." 114

To satisfy Du Yue-sheng's hunger for status and keep the

Green Gang on his side, Chiang appointed Du in May, 1931, to

the post of Chief Communist Suppression Agent for Shanghai.

Chiang honored all three Green Gang leaders by inviting them

to attend the anti-communist National Emergency Conference

at Loyang in April, 1932. Even Du Yue-sheng's personal

secretary was given important responsibilities by the Nanjing

regime. 116

Proof of the rising status of the Green Gang leadership

came in June, 1931, when Du Vue-sheng opened an ancestral

temple at his birthplace near Shanghai, across the Whangpoo

river in Kaochiao village. Altogether, eighty thousand visitors

came to pay their respects to Du during the three day

extravaganza. Thousands of fellow gangsters, businessmen, and

high government officials joined the procession through the

city to his temple. British, French, and Chinese police and

military units took part. Besides $600,000 in gifts, Du received

eulogistic scrolls from Chiang Kai-shek, Wang J ing-wei, Zhang

Xue-liang, Foreign Minister C. T. Wang, and Shanghai Mayor

Chang Chun, among others. Operatic troupes and major artists

attended the festivities in honor of the man North China Daily

News now called "the Chinese philanthropist." 116 Ironically, it

was at this sacred temple that Du chose to locate his largest

Shanghai morphine factory .117

American officials were naturally disturbed by Du

Yue-sheng's unusual access to the highest levels of government

in China. One American diplomat stationed in Nanjing,

observing that Chiang always met with Du when visiting

Shanghai, questioned a Chinese official about their relationship:

The informant stated that "of course" Tu had called on

General Chiang; that as a matter of fact whenever General

Chiang went to Shanghai the first thing he did was to send

Tu his card; that while Chiang "used to be a gangster

himself," the present relationship between the two men

involved merely an arrangement whereby Tu and his

gangster colleagues were to keep the Communists and other

lawless elements in order, in return for freedom of action

with respect to what can best be described by the American

slang term "rackets" connected with gambling, the opium

traffic, and vice.

Each could supply the other with an important source of

power. Moreover, they respected the history of their mutual

dealings. As Hu Shi once pointed out as justification for

Chiang's alliance with gangsters, "General Chiang owed to Du

the fact that he was able ... to control the communist group

at Shanghai. It is a simple fact of life," he continued, that "in

politics one of the first axioms is that you must stick by your

friends. Du had been a friend to Chiang then, and Chiang was a

friend to Du now." 118

Occasionally, however, the Nanjing government required

a reminder of its Shanghai ally's strength and independence ..

In May 1931 Chiang called Du to a conference in Nanjing,

where the Generalissimo offered the Shanghai boss $1,000,000

to organize an extensive Communist suppression program in

an area under Green Gang domination. But then the two men

reached an agreement on the establishment of a government

opium monopoly to magnify the already immense profits from

the opium traffic. The Green Gang, which already operated

the country's most extensive and best organized smuggling ring

along the Yangtze river, would take a share of the profits and

have a say in appointing the monopoly officials, as well as

enjoying full official protection. In return, the secret society

paid the Nanjing government 6 million yuan. Yet the opium

monopoly T. V. Soong set up in 1931 lasted only briefly.

When Green Gang leaders angrily demanded their money back,

Soong overplayed his hand and offered them only worthless

public bonds. Soon thereafter, an unknown assassin widely

assumed to be one of Du's agents nearly killed Soong in

Shanghai; the aide accompanying Soong was less lucky. Du

and Soong soon became reconciled, however. Later, when

Nanjing did establish a permanent monopoly, Chiang appointed

Du to head the Shanghai Opium Suppression

Bureau! 119

Du and his allies faced a more formidable challenge from

the Japanese. Between January and April 1932, the Japanese

military attempted to seize Shanghai. Their attack provoked

stiff Chinese resistance and an intense and bloody struggle

ensued. Du Vue-sheng rallied his "army" of followers and

organized urban guerrilla warfare. His snipers cut down the

Japanese in the streets, and Green Gang forces even damaged

the Japanese Navy. In conjunction with another secret society,

the Hong Bang or Red Gang, Green Gang leaders formed the

Shanghai Citizens' Emergency Committee to provide relief to

war victims. Du also sponsored the campaign to supply the

Chinese Nineteenth Route Army with arms and ammunition

with which to carry out its stubborn and successful resistance

(even as he allegedly sold the Japanese rice and flour on the

side).12o Perhaps Du's aid to the army went beyond mere

patriotism, for the Nineteenth Route Army was notorious for

its extensive trafficking in opium. In 1933 Nanjing forces

seized from it several hundred tons of Persian opium. Most of

it was turned over for "disposal" to Du Vue-sheng, who

converted it into heroin at his Kaochiao village morphia

factory. 121

Up until this time, Du Yue-sheng's organization, while

powerful throughout the Yangtze valley, had been headquartered

with the Shanghai French Concession, where he

could enjoy legal protection by a friendly foreign power. Du

was, in fact, indispensable to French authorities. With only

2,000 French officials to govern a municipality of upwards of

a million Chinese, the Concession relied on the well-disciplined

Green Gang to control the population in return for protection

of their rackets. The French particularly favored Du after he

engineered a seemingly miraculous strike settlement. Moreover,

out of the $6,500,000 Du's organization brought in each

month from opium revenue, French Concession police and

government officials received $150,000 in bribes. As a result,

the Green Gang's presence within the Concession was not only

tolerated, but actively encouraged, by appointments of the

leadership to official positions. Huang Chin-jung, long-time

chief of Chinese detectives in the French Concession,

efficiently suppressed rival criminals, while Du Vue-sheng and

Chang Hsiao-lin made policy from their seats on the Municipal

Council. 122

This mutually profitable relationship depended on the

corruptibility of local French officials and the toleration of

higher French authorities in Hanoi and Paris. The former

condition was easily met. In return for services rendered

during the White Terror of 1927 (as well as a cut of the

profits), Police Captain Etienne Fiori (a Corsican), and his

superior, Consul General Koechlin, agreed to protect Du's

organization and the opium trade. French political critics also

charged that Du's organization diverted large sums of money

to Paris to influence the French government against investigating

the Shanghai situation. In any case, the Green Gang got

the sanctuary it needed to become the unrivalled focus of

opium smuggling in China.

The "Shanghai Incident" and a change of administration

in France upset this relationship. Apparently, a disgruntled

legislator in the French colonial government at Hanoi

complained about the extraordinary corruption infecting the

Shanghai French Concession; his protests reached Paris where

the government ordered an investigation. The French government

sent an admiral to Shanghai to enforce cleanup

operations. In the meantime, sensing his time was up, Koechlin

dismissed Du from the Municipal Council and prohibited

gambling and opium in the Concession. Consul General

Meyrier took Koechlin's place, while an incorruptible chief of

police, M. Fabre, replaced Fiori. With the help of French naval

forces they enforced Du's ouster and suppressed anti-French

demonstrations that arose "spontaneously" to oppose these

moves.

Such sweeping changes were not easily made. Du sent a

delegation of Chinese to Paris, armed with bribes, to get

himself reinsqted. Members of the Chinese government,

including Mrs. Wellington Koo, approached French Concession

authorities to reopen the opium trade. And M. Fabre had to

dismiss over half his detectives whom Du had corrupted.

Du's final blow fell one evening that summer, during a

dinner held by retiring Consul-General Koechlin and Fiori to

mark their departure from the Concession. Poison placed in

the food killed all but Fiori, who was violently ill. The deaths

sent shockwaves through the French community in Shanghai.

Whether or not Du was really to blame, as most long-time

foreign residents believed (as retribution for Kochlin's doublecross),

such rumors illustrate the magnitude and nature of Du's

reputation. Certainly the incident frightened the new consul,

who graciously provided a police escort to ensure the safe

transport of Du's opium stocks out of the Concession rather

than confiscating them. Both Meyrier and Fabre resisted Du's

efforts to remain in the Concession, and forced his extensive

operations underground. 123

Despite this setback, Du Yue-sheng remained a dominant

figure in China's opium traffic. Even in the French Concession

his organization flourished. Du merely moved the bulk of his

forces into the Chinese district of Shanghai, rebuilt an

elaborate organization, and protected it all with lavish bribes

to Chinese officials. Every month, Du spent $200,000 in

payoff money to Chinese police, judges, and KMT officials. He

subsidized friendly newspapers with another $70,000. These

same newspapers were notable for their support of Chiang

Kai-shek's new opium monopoly in Hankou, for a good

reason. In late 1932 Du went personally to Hankou to seek

official permission to run an opium monopoly in Shanghai in

return for the payment of $3,000,000 monthly to the Finance

Ministry. His offer was accepted. Now opium grown in

Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou came down the Yangtze, taxed

and protected along the way by Green Gang and government

authorities, until it reached Hankou where Du's men picked it

up for distribution in Shanghai and neighboring cities. 124

Du Yue-sheng's tentacles now reached most parts of

China, due to his control of China's "opium highway" (the

Yangtze) and China's biggest opium market, Shanghai. In

Guizhou an opium combine organized by Du contracted for

sole opium exporting rights in early 1935 thanks to his

organization's efficient transportation system along the Yangtze

River. 125 Likewise in Sichuan, where local militarists

jealously hoarded the province'S morphia plr nts, a number of

drug factories came under Green Gang control in Chongqing

and Yizhang "to insure their cooperation in the smuggling and

distribution of opium and drugs owned by these up-river

militarists." Moreover, only Du's skilled chemists could

attempt the final refinement process of the crude drugs sent

down from Sichuan. 126

Du's influence spread as Green Gang members migrated

out of the Yangtze valley. Thus his old narcotics smuggling

associate Ye Ching-ho moved to Fujian province where he

headed up the provincial opium monopoly. And by the 1930s,

the Green Gang had become firmly established as far north as

Tianjin, where it competed favorably with other gangs in

gambling, prostitution, and opium. The Green Gang leader in

Tianjin, Pan Tzu-hsin, was a sort of grandfather figure who

mediated between the city's rival criminal factions. Perhaps

the gang's presence in the city explains the lively narcotics

traffic maintained between Tianjin and Shanghai. Most of the

heroin entering the U.S. market in the 1930s was manufactured

in Tianjin and then shipped to Shanghai for packing and

export. Du Yue-sheng played a leading role in these

international operations. 127

Du naturally did not neglect his base area. Shanghai,

with its 100,000 addicts, provided a highly profitable market.

Besides selling opium, Du's men operated 10 morphine

factories in the Shanghai vicinity, which serviced not only the

local population, but the rest of China and the world as well.

Two of the larger factories alone produced a daily output

worth Shanghai $40,000. The Green Gang paid the Nationalists

$400,000 a month for the protection of the morphine

factories. 128

In 1933, however, the gang defaulted on its payments,

until it owed almost a million dollars. Moreover, a number of

criminals talked too openly of Chiang Kai-shek's complicity

with their operation. Angered, Chiang ordered the largest

factory raided. His men seized $1,500,000 (Mex.) worth of

opium and derivatives. The mayor of Shanghai, Wu Teh-chen,

attempted unsuccessfully to prevent the punitive raid, and

nearly had to resign. He flew to see the Generalissimo in

person to patch things up. Ultimately, Chiang Kai-shek's chief

secretary, Yang Yung Tai, negotiated a new agreement with

Du Yue-sheng and the factories opened again. The Nationalists

needed the money. (Yang was later implicated in a major

attempt to defraud Chiang's headquarters of opium tax

receipts}. 129

Shanghai's opium merchants, led by Du, bought

protection not only from the Nanjing government (which

supplied opium from its Hankou monopoly), but also from the

Police Commissioner, who nonnally received $250,000 per

month for distribution among the city's law enforcement

officers. But when General Tsai Ching-tsun assumed office as

Commissioner, he demanded another $100,000 a month.

When the merchants refused, General Tsai closed down the

opium dens. For three days the deadlock remained. Finally,

the merchants approached Du to negotiate a settlement with

the Commissioner.

On May 5, 1935, Du hosted a dinner at the Ta Si-yang

restaurant in the International Settlement, in honor of General

Tsai. A number of leading opium merchants attended to pay

their respects. Over the meal, Du quietly arranged a

compromise with the Commissioner to raise to $300,000 a

month the bribes required for protection. All parties approved

the deal. The next day General Tsai issued an order reopening

the dens and releasing from jail all den owners who had been

arrested during the shake-down. 130

It was not unusual for the opium merchants to call on

Du to settle disputes, for his prestige rested on more than his

relationship with Chiang Kai-shek or his ability to crush

strikes. He was also head of the Opium Merchants Combine

(euphemistically called the Special Goods Association), a huge

holding company consisting of all the large narcotics

manufacturers and retailers in the city. The combine levied a

ten cent tax on each tael (one tael =1-113 ounces) of opium

imported from Hankou to create a fund for bribery. On the

business end, this organization handled the production,

purchase, transportation, distribution, and sale of all narcotics

in the city. The Association even purchased a steamer for the

sole purpose of shipping crude morphine down the Yangtze

from manufacturing laboratories in Sichuan. 131

Thanks to its lavish and well-placed bribes, the Special

Goods Association placed its members on all suppression

authorities, from the police to the Shanghai Opium

Suppression Committee. When Chiang Kai-shek organized this

suppression bureau on July 1, 1935, Du was appointed to its

Standing Committee, ostensibly to represent the Chinese

Ratepayers' Association (of which he was chairman). To head

the Committee, Chiang appointed the narcotics smuggler Dr.

F. C. Yen, Superintendent of the Red Cross Society of China,

and member of the informal Rockefeller Foundation-related

"oil group" which produced other advocates of opium

monopoly, including J. Heng Liu and Wu Lien-teh. Du had no

trouble dominating the Shanghai opium suppression bureau. 132

The Shanghai opium monopoly, enforced by opium

"suppression" authorities and Du's opium combine, generally

prevented "destructive" competition from eroding the

handsome profits accruing to both the Nanjing government

and the Green Gang. But one market lay outside their total

control-the foreign settlements. Together with Du, Chiang

boldly challenged the foreign authorities by attempting to

extend his monopoly into the heart of their territory.

narcotics traffic, Chiang and his subordinates usually blamed

the foreign concessions for allowing smuggling and narcotics

use within areas untouched by Chinese law. In 1937, Chiang

wrote a letter presenting this argument to the Acting Mayor of

the Municipality of Greater Shanghai, insisting that the foreign

concessions follow China's strict laws regarding opium. But he

asked that "cooperation should also be given in the matter of

compliance by opium addicts with regulations to purchase and

smoke opium on the basis of permits," explaining that such

permits were available to foreign concession residents who

wished to buy opium in the Chinese districts. His further

accusation that the concessions fostered the traffic in "illicit

opium bearing no revenue stamps," laid bare his schemes.

Chiang was attempting nothing less than the extension of his

system of licensing and taxation of opium retailing and

consumption throughout the whole of Shanghai. By

suppressing the "illicit" traffic in opium "bearing no revenue

stamps," 'he hoped to centralize the entire traffic under his

own control. "In short," remarked one American diplomat,

"the real motive appears to be to increase revenues by drawing

within the orbit of the Opium Suppression Bureau the opium

traffic in the Setdement and French Concessions." 133

Du Vue-sheng was only too happy to go along with the

plan, since the entire monopoly would be farmed out to his

men anyway. Indeed, Du and other top Chinese "opium

suppression" officials lobbied vigorously to extend Chiang's

monopoly regulations into the foreign areas. 134

Chiang's plans evoked a storm of protest from the

concessions when his demands leaked out. Foreign newspapers

unanimously opposed his licensing plans. All realized that the

Chinese plan would simply legalize the traffic to the sole

benefit of the Nationalists and their Green Gang allies.

Clarence Gauss, the ranking American diplomat in Shanghai,

wired home his conviction that "if success attends these

Chinese efforts, we will have underworld activities here of a

most distressing and dangerous character." Ironically, Chiang'S

plans fell through with the outbreak of hostilities with Japan,

an event that led ultimately to the imposition of a Japanese

narcotics monopoly throughout the city. 135

Despite his leadership of the Chinese underworld, Du

remained dissatisfied until he acquired a new reputation of

respectability. With a fortune estimated at $40 million, a

favorable image was the only thing left to buy. He brought all

his assets to bear: his friendship with Chiang, his hold over the

Shanghai capitalists, his control (through bribes and

intimidation) of large segments of the press, and finally, his

public beneficence. Shanghai residents generally, not just his

favored associates, admired Du Yue-sheng's generosity.

Perhaps for this reason a conservative British publication

referred to China's most notorious criminal as a "well known

public welfare worker." Even tough crime veteran "Pockmarked

Huang" came to be known as a "philanthropist and

business magnate." 136

Du Vue-sheng worked hard to gain this image. He sat on

innumerable boards of directors, controlled companies, and

aided a wide variety of public relief agencies and private

charities. Along with Green Gang compatriot Chang Hsiao-lin,

he served for many years on the French Concession Municipal

Council, ran two Shanghai banks (Chung Wai and Tung Wai),

and sat on the board of directors of the highly profitable

China Merchants' Steamship Navigation Company, which

smuggled some opium on the side down the Yangtze. Du was

also chairman of the board of the Pootung and Chunghui

banks.

More indicative of his influence was Du's position as a

director and later chairman of the board of the prominent

China Commercial Bank. His "disciple" Lo Ching-hua, Deputy

Manager, handled the routine administrative work and actually

ran the bank. Lo joined the powerful CC-Clique in 1927.

Organized by the brothers Chen Li-fu and Chen Kuo-fu, both

top KMT politicians and nephews of Chiang's mentor Chen

Chi-mei (himself a close ally of the Shanghai secret societies),

the CC-Clique was an arch-conservative faction within the

KMT whose views increasingly appealed to Chiang Kai-shek

during the late 1930s and 1940s. Lo and Du also worked

closely together in the Commercial Society, an adjunct of the

Shanghai Municipal Chamber of Commerce. This alliance

strengthened Du's influ important, it tied the CC-Clique closely to narcotics traffickers

(several of whom sat on the board of the CC-controlled China

Industrial & Mining Bank) and to opium-related enterprises,

such as the Farmer's Bank, which was backed by opium

revenues. Many of the KMT leaders in Shanghai closest to Du

such as P'an Kung-chan, Wu Shao-shu, and Wu K'ai-hsien, were

also top CC personnel.

Du's other commercial dealings were numerous. A

member of the Supervisory Committee of the Shanghai

Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, Du headed the

Chinese Cotton Goods Exchange in Shanghai (which had a

virtual monopoly on the Chinese cotton industry), helped

direct the Chartered Stock and Produce Exchange, the

Shanghai Chinese Electric Power Company, the Hua Fong

Paper Manufactory in Hangzhou, the Kiangsu and Cheki~ng

Bank in Shanghai, and most importantly, the Bank of Chma

and the Amortization Fund Committee on National Loans. His

charities included the Shanghai Emergency Hospital and the

Jen Chi Hospital in Ningpo. (He became president of both). He

founded and chaired the board of directors of the Cheng Shih

Middle School in Shanghai. He supported orphanages and · . 137

sponsored a model farmer community.

Occasionally, when bribery or intimidation failed to

insure a favorable press, Du simply bought himself a publicity

organ. Thus in May 1935 a Chinese newspaper ran this small

The Green Gang and the Nationalist Air Force

Throughout the 1930s, the Nanjing regine (and to

some extent, the Canton government) pursued an

aggressive policy of military aircraft purchase to

modernize the Chinese air force for use against the

Communists, warlords, and Japan. Between 1932 and

early 1934, the Chinese purchased almost $5 million

worth of planes from Curtiss-Wright and United Aircraft

corporations. In 1939, an American arms dealer named

William Pawley admitted that he alone had sold the

Chinese a total of $31 million in planes. I

The extent of Nationalist aircraft purchases

astounded outside observers who recognized the

precarious state of Nanjing's finances. Willys Peck, head

of the American legation in Nanjing, commented in

1936:

I was somewhat ''floored'' by [Pan American Airways

official] Mr. Bixby's information that within the last

three weeks Dr. Kung had signed orders with the

Curtis Wright Company for 120 military air planes. It

is possible that I have overlooked information

reaching this office reporting this important transaction.

Not only did Mr. Bixby assert that there is no

doubt about the matter, but since my conversation

with him I have obtained partial confirmation from a

person close to Dr. Kung, who has told me that two

weeks ago a contract for the first eighty Curtis Wright

planes, of two varieties costing about $20,000 U.S.

currency per plane, was ready for signing.

The importance of this large purchase of 120 military

planes in its bearing on China's relations with Japan.

How Dr. Kung has managed to finance it seems a

mystery, for the price must amount to roughly

$8,000,000 in Chinese currency.. .. We have seen

reports from Shanghai that General Chiang is

straining every effort to further his preparations to

put China in condition for military resistance to all

forms of foreign aggression, but this caps the climax. 2

How, then, did the Finance Ministry come up with the

money for the planes, considering that the government

story:

Succeeding Mr. T. B. Chang, who has resigned because of ill

health, Mr. Tu Yueh-sen, well-known Shanghai banker and

business man, yesterday assumed the post of managing

director of The China Press, The China Times, The China

Evening News, and the Shun Shih News Agency, four allied

journalistic organizations.

Actually, Chang's illness was purely political. The Nanjing

government had banned the three newspapers in order to force

Chang, a critic, out of business. Du Yue-sheng represented the

pro-government group, headed by H. H. Kung's son David,

which took over the newspapers. Thus the Nanjing government

was so impoverished that it had to borrow money from

the United States to buy food?

Chiang Kai-shek raised funds for military aviation

through a gigantic, nationwide lottery. He also

established a number of patriotic organizations to handle

fund raising, such as the "Mass Salvation Association" in

Yunnanfu and the "China Aviation Salvation Association"

in Shanghai, founded in 1933. Companies and

organizations, such as the Green Gang-controlled Ningpo

Boatman's Association, the Shanghai Chinese Chamber

of Commerce, and the Shanghai Bankers' Association

cooperated in the campaign and took up collections.

Public subscriptions to the aviation fund brought in

Yuan $1,500,000 in Yunnanfu alone. Considering that

the Green Gang dominated the major Shanghai

organizations, and that Yunnan's only real source of

wealth was opium, it is clear that once again the Nanjing

Government was relying on opium revenues for its

financing. 3

Actually, the Green Gang's role in aviation

financing was open and direct. Du Vue-sheng personally

spent millions of dollars to purchase American airplanes

and once donated an entire squadron of planes to the

Nanjing air force. As a present on Chiang Kai-shek's

fiftieth birthday (1936), Du presented the generalissimo

with a new airplane. 4 A year earlier, Chiang had

decorated Du Yue-sheng, Chang Hsiao-lin, and Huang

Chin-jung for "munificent contributions towards ...

purchase of aeroplanes." 5 Their role in financing the

Nationalist air force during the 1930s illustrates once

again the importance of opium to the viability of the

Nanjing regime.

Remittances from overseas Chinese represented

the last major source of revenue and foreign exchange

upon which Chiang'S air force was built. In some years,

the Chinese communities in San Francisco, New York,

Havana, the Philippines, Singapore, and elsew~ere sent as

much as $12,000,000 a month back to China.

The overseas Chinese originated primarily in

Guangdong province, near the capital of Canton. While

the Guangdong government remained independent of

Nanjing in the early 1930s, Chiang Kai-shek lost much

potential revenue from overseas Chinese remittances.

But the Canton government was quick to take advantage

of the opportunities for fund raising. In March 1932 it

sent a special aviation mission to the U.S. to inspect

aircraft factories and "advise the San Francisco Chinese

regarding airplane purchases for presentation to China."

Brigadier General Woo G. Garr of the Canton Aviation

Bureau and Col. S. K. Yee, Director of the Cantonese

Intelligence Bureau, headed the mission. (As we have

seen, the Bureau of Narcotics suspected such semiofficial

missions of covering narcotics smuggling

operations). They visited Seattle, San Francisco, Los

Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Washington, New York, and

Boston. In each city they contacted local Chinese

communities for funds. Their chief agent, however, was

the Six Companies combine which ran San Francisco

Chinatown for the KMT, as one American official

explained:

You will be interested to learn that there is in San

Francisco a joint committee of the Chinese Chamber

of Commerce and six Chinese trading companies

which requested our San Francisco office to help

make a preliminary survey for the use of the mission

of pursuit bombing and observation planes. This joint

committee has raised some funds from Chinese Americans

for the purchase of planes. Whether the

Chinese-Americans in other cities who are reported to

have raised, or be be raising, funds for this purpose

will see the delegation is unknown. It is assumed that

the officers will survey this field while here, if these

activities have not already been consolidated by the

San Francisco committee, since, as you know over 80

percent of the Chinese-Americans are Cantonese. 7

Aggressive American airplane manufacturers, such

as the Curtiss-Wright corporation, were well aware of the

importance of overseas Chinese communities in the

United States. "As we are one of the largest suppliers of

aircraft in this country," wrote one Curtiss-Wright

official to a knowledgeable missionary, "we are naturally

anxious to get in touch with the leaders of such

movements and to ascertain whether or not it is a fact

that steps are being taken by Chinese residents in this

country to furnish aircraft for use in China." 8 As

another such official confided to the head office in New

York, "Large funds contributed by San Francisco

Chinese controlled by various factions and tongs. We are

working very closely and confidentially with them and

recent arrivals from China reputedly representing the

nationalists." 9

The tongs that Curtiss-Wright worked with were

independent branches of the Triad organization, a loose

coalition of secret societies encompassing southern

Chinese and their overseas counterparts. Sometimes

known by their generic name, "Hong Men," these

societies actively raised funds for the Nationalist regime,

and on one occasion during the Sino-Japanese war

presented 20 planes to the government. 10 Frequently,

the opium traffic provided the financial base for the

organization structure that held these societies together.

ll The exposure of the nationwide Hip Sing Tong

in the late 1930s as one of America's leading narcotics

syndicates only emphasized this fact. These tongs were

probably also the distributors of opium smuggled into

the United States by Chinese officials and Consuls

General whom the Bureau of Narcotics pinpointed as

traffickers.

The tongs were not the only conduit of overseas

Chinese opium revenue into the Nationalist air force.

Peter Dale Scott has already shown that a prominent San

Francisco Chinese-American, Dr. Margaret Chung, who

was a major supporter of American flyers hired by the

Chinese air force, trafficked in narcotics with leading

American Syndicate representatives. 12 It now appears

that the Nationalist government actively encouraged

international smuggling to generate foreign exchange

required for aircraft purchases. Thus the sole source of

supply for one of the leading West Coast traffickers,

Lock Wing Bong of San Francisco, was Commissioner

General of Emigration Yim Ben Jue. Yim, a former

Chinese interpreter for the U.s. Immigration Service in

San Francisco before his deportation on a narcotics

offense, in turn got his opium from the Nationalists in

return for arms and ammunition. 13 This sort of network

probably helps explain the mystery of China's ability to

finance massive aircraft purchases during the 193 Os.

Notes

1. Stanley K. Hornbeck memorandum, 24 April 1934,

Hornbeck mss., box 16; Memorandum'of Conversation between

Hornbeck, Pawley, and George Sellett, 26 September 1939,

Hornbeck mss., box 16.

2. Willys Peck (Nanking) dispatch to Nelson T. Johnson

(Peiping), 26 January 1936, enclosure in 811.7960 Pan

American Airways/47o

3. Percy Finch, Shanghai and Beyond, 82-83; Nye

Hearings, 1449-50; Lincoln C. Reynolds (Tientsin), "Aviation in

China," 14 March 1935, 893.796/197.

4. Percy Finch, Shanghai and Beyond, 83-83, 296; Ilona

Ralf Sues, Shark's Fins and Millet, 71.

5. China Yearbook, 1935, 357, 381, 409.

6. Finch, 83-83; Nye Hearings, 1449-50; Wu Chung-hsi,

Dol/ars, Dependents and Dogma (Stanford: Hoover Institution,

1966),79,81,83,158.

7. Leighton Rogers, Chief, Aeronautics Trade Division,

Department of Commerce, to C. W. Webster, President,

Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 12 March 1932, Nye Hearings,

977-978.

8. Letter of 20 February 1932, exhibit no. 352, Nye

Hearings, 778.

9. Bartlett telegram to Curtiss-Wright Export

Corp., 11 March 1932, Nye Hearings, 778.

10. Tien Tsung, "Chinese Secret Societies," Orient, III

(November 1952), 57.

11. W. Morgan, Triad Societies in Hong Kong (Hong

Kong: Government Press, 1961); Wilfred Blythe, The Impact of

Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya (London: Oxford U. Press,

1969).

12. P. D. Scott, "Opium and Empire," Bulletin of

Concerned Asian Scholars, V (September 1973), 51-52; cf. Jack

Lait and Lee Mortimer, U.S.A. Confidential (New York, 1952),

145-46.

13. Memorandum of Harry D. Smith, Pacific Division

narcotics agent, 12 September 1930, 811.114 N 16 China/124;

J. W. Ballantine dispatch, 20 February 1931, 811.114 N 16

China/136; R. R. Miller to American Consul in Peking, 26 May

1934, 811.114 N 16 China/272. There was some dispute as to

the legitimacy of Vim Ben Jue's title.

37 lost a critic and Du gained a new mouthpiece. 138

Following Chiang Kai-shek's example, Du added the

finishing touches to his new image by "converting" to

Christianity. He attended regular prayer meetings at the house

of Finance Minister H. H. Kung and in 1936 was actually

baptized. Madame Chiang Kai-shek reportedly told an

American bishop that "Tu Yueh-sheng is becoming a real

Christian because ever since he was baptized there has been a

marked decrease in kidnapping cases in Shanghai." An

American treasury agent was more inclined to the view that

Du was simply "trying to build up his influence among

missionary and Christian circles" as Chiang had done. "Before

long, it is believed Mr. Tu will occupy a high seat in the church

..." That event, mercifully, never came to pass. 139

Du and his fellow Green Gant leaders won their greatest

renown for contributing liberally towards public relief causes.

In 1935 the Nationalist government decorated Du Vue-sheng,

Chang Hsiao-lin, and Huang Chin-jung with Third Class

Flowery Jade medals for fund raising for famine relief. As

befitting his leadership of the Shanghai community, Du raised

slightly more money then his compatriots-$86,636. 140

Du Vue-sheng, "well-known public welfare worker,"

Huang Chin-jung, "philanthropist," and Chang Hsiao-lin,

"prominent resident, French Concession," were now widely

respected, although not wholly respectable. At Chang

Hsiao-lin's birthday party in June 1936,40,000 friends turned

out to pay their respects and watch the three-day theatrical

performances. 141 But Du and Chang had one last wish: to be

given high appointments in the Nanjing regime. In return for

Du's cooperation in rooting out Chiang Kai-shek's enemies

during the 1936 Shanghai elections, the Generalissimo

promised to support Du's campaign for mayor of that city in

the next election. Chiang also promised to appoint Chang

Hsiao-lin as Garrison Commander of Shanghai and Woosung.

"They believe that these high government posts will enable

them to cover up their past," wrote one American intelligence

official. "With General Chiang's understanding in these issues,

these two men have become ardent supporters of the

generalissimo. They are doing their best to help clean out all of

General Chiang's enemies in town." 142

Unfortunately for these Green Gang leaders, the

Japanese invasion threw China into chaos and disrupted their

plans for advancement in the Nationalist hierarchy. The war

opened up new opportunities for service and achievement,

however, which the Green Gang leaders were quick to grasp.

Opium, the Green Gang, and the Sino-Japanese War

The Sino-Japanese war spread to Shanghai by August

1937. While Chinese troops resisted on the battlefield, Du

Vue-sheng once again organized anti-Japanese guerrilla

resistance around the old Shanghai Civic Federation, first

formed during the 1932 "Shanghai Incident." He offered to

sink the ships owned by his Ta-ta Steamship Company to

blockade the lower Yangtze, and he donated his bullet-proof

car to the Chinese general defending Shanghai.

The Japanese Army onslaught overwhelmed Chinese

resistance. In November, Du fled Shanghai to Hong Kong

along with T. V. Soong and other high officials. There, he

forged an alliance with other anti-Japanese secret societies.

Meanwhile, in Shanghai, Du's forces conducted terrorist

activities against the Japanese and their Chinese collaborators.

With $500,000 a month from the Nationalist government, Du

also organized a program of bribing potential collaborators to

prevent their cooperation with Japan. Du was in large part

responsible for the theft of documents revealing Wang

Jing-wei's secret agreement with the Japanese. And he

arranged the escape from Japanese territory of George Yeh,

later Foreign Minister in the Republic of China.

After Japan attacked Hong Kong in late 1941, Du

moved permanently to Chongqing, where he headed a number

of relief agencies, managed his banks and businesses, and

continued to coordinate, with the Chinese secret service under

Tai Li, the resistance activities of his underground secret

society. 143

Most traditional histories of Du Yue-sheng's activities

during the Sino-Japanese War conform to this brief outline.

Chinese biographies portray him as a fervently patriotic, even

honest and selfless, supporter of China's war of national

resistance. Du did, in fact, actively support the Chongqing

government. But the history of the war cannot easily be fit

into such simple categories. Some Chinese became collaborators,

switched sides again, and waited for a winner. Japanese

formed tacit alliances with Chinese for profit and security.

Spies assassinated enemy officials and then traded with the

enemy for mutual profit. It was in this murky environment

that Du Vue-sheng, General Tai Li, and the Japanese operated.

And opium played a major role in defining their operations.

Despite Du's flight to Hong Kong, the Green Gang boss

maintained a powerful presence in Shanghai. From his new

residence, he directed the traffic of opium into Shanghai and

influenced opium distribution in the city by frequently

consulting with leading Shanghai opium merchants who came

to Hong Kong specially to see him. 144

Du also had a number of personal opium representatives

in the city. One of these, Ching Ting-sun, was a former protege

of Huang Chin-jung. Ching and his closest associates were

major importers of opium from Tianjin and Swatow. They also

managed several gambling establishments licensed by the

Japanese. Ching's men (and formerly Du himself) smuggled

opium in clearly numbered cars, which two Chinese officers on

the Municipal Council, Chiang Fu-tien and Chao Ping-seng, had

instructed French Concession police not to interfere with.

Chiang Fu-tien, Du's subordinate and chief of detectives in the

French Concession, was himself a leader of one opium ring in

the Concession. 145

From his new base in Hong Kong, Du Vue-sheng

widened his contacts with China's narcotics traffickers. He

developed close ties to Hong Kong's opium king and

underworld leader, a man named Pen (alias Tsoei-Kung-tze),

who controlled most of the opium merchants of Macao and

Swatow, where Du now purchased much of his opium. l46 Du

also sent Cheng Sui-tze, former director of the Shanghai

Opium Suppression Supervisory Bureau and uncle of one of

Shanghai's leading opium merchants, Cheng Tze-chia, to

Swatow in order to arrange for the purchase and transport of

opium into Shanghai. To facilitate these transactions, Du

managed to swing Cheng's appointment as director of the

Swatow Opium Suppression Supervisory Bureau. 147

With the help of Cheng Sui-tze and the leading Shanghai

opium merchants Du had contacted in Hong Kong, the Green

Gang leader forged a gigantic opium combine dealing in

Yunnan and Guizhou opium which it smuggled into

Japanese-occupied territory. In Shanghai, the chief distributor

of the ring's opium was Wang Shao-tseng, proprietor of the

Tung Chang opium firm. In Hong Kong, Lo Hong-yi, a former

Shanghai opium merchant, handled the purchase and

transshipment of opium up the coast; helping him were a

number of other merchants including Du's close ally, Ling

Lao-fu, owner of the San Shing opium company (founded by

the Green Gang triumvirate a number of years earlier). Cheng

Tze-chia, pre-war chairman of the opium combine in Shanghai,

operated out of Guiyang where he directed the purchase of

Guizhou opium. His uncle, Du's partner Cheng Sui-tze,

coordinated the entire ring by supervising the traffic between

Chongqing, Kunming, Hong Kong, and Swatow. 148

With his traditional sources of supply disrupted, Du

Vue-sheng also turned to India and Persia for opium, despite

the extra expense and greater danger of discovery. In late

1938, he began arranging for the direct shipment of Persian

opium to Shanghai. Du's right-hand man in this deal was none

other than Ye Ching-ho, alias Paul Yip, whom the

Nationalists had reportedly executed the year before for his

traitorous narcotics dealings with Japan. Mr. Ye, of course,

had known Du back in the early 1930s when he was still

supplying the Ezra ring with narcotics; later, as head of the

Fujian monopoly, he cooperated with Du's Shanghai

syndicate. Although Opium Suppression authorities in

Shanghai had confirmed Ye's demise, Nanjing military

authorities had secretly pardoned him in the fall of 1937. Du

Vue-sheng reportedly handed over to the Nationalist military

huge sums to secure Ye's release. (The other Fujian officials

involved with Ye were, however, executed). With Japanese

backing, Ye was back at work with Du in Hong Kong, in

collaboration with a number of Formosan ronin who formerly

dealt in the illicit narcotics traffic around Amoy and Fuzhou.

Meanwhile, one of Ye's brothers, Ye Chien-shoon, was serving

as a secret agent in Hong Kong of the Japanese Special Services

Section, while his other brother, Ye Ching-hwa, once

implicated in a dope smuggling case in Shanghai, was serving as

Paul Yip's representative in Shanghai. 149

Thanks to Ye, Du Yue-sheng's Persian opium schemes

received Japanese military backing. But the Japanese also

cooperated, through Chai Cheng-jen, a Formosan politician

and close associate of General Doihara, head of Special

Services, in giving Du important gambling licenses in

Shanghai. ISO Moreover, with another Formosan, Hsi Fan-chi,

Du began a rice-smuMling scheme from Japanese-occupied

Wuhu to Hong Kong. I Du came dangerously close in these

operations to becoming a Japanese collaborator instead of a

heroic resistance fighter. Thus an American official learned

from reliable Chinese intelligence circles that "Mr. Tu

Yueh-seng is playing a double game in dealing at the same time

with the Chinese Government and the Japanese. He has

succeeded in making the Chinese Government believe that in

dealing with the Japanese he could render service to the

Government. So under this cover Mr. Tu carries on with the

Japanese without fear of being watched." 152 Du's game was

clever, but extraordinarily dangerous. Ultimately it was

successful because his cooperation was essential to both sides

and because flagrant double-dealing was too widespread a

phenomenon to stamp out.

The Japanese learned of Du's influence the hard way.

When they took over Shanghai, they attempted to set up an

opium monopoly simply by registering and regulating the

eXlstmg opium firms. But the large, well-established hongs

refused to cooperate, knowing full well that the Japanese

would in time bring them under complete control. Moreover,

their proprietors had to consider the consequences of

collaboration if the Nationalists ever reoccupied the city.

Finally, they stalled on the direct orders of Du Yue-sheng. 153

The Japanese desperately needed to raise funds to

finance military operations. While the Shanghai situation

remained in flux, they moved with puppet officials in Nanjing

to create a regional opium monopoly for Jiangsu, Zhejiang,

and Anhui provinces. Half of its expected $6,000,000 monthly

take would go to the Japanese military, and the other half to

the Nanjing Reformed Government. Significantly, the

Suppression Bureau was slated to come under the jurisdiction

of Interior Minister Chen Chun, a principal figure in the

puppet regime. Between 1933 and 1938, Chen served as

Principal of the Cheng Shih Middle School-founded and

financed by Du Vue-sheng. Chen was considered a close ally of

the gangster, 154

Conflict between opium merchants and Japanese

authorities, as well as rivalries between Japanese officials

themselves over the allocation of revenues delayed practical

implementation of the Shanghai opium monopoly. Chinese

and Formosan traffickers and ex-monopoly officials began

competing fiercely for the top positions in the planned agency.

The Japanese were looking for someone with experience in the

opium trade, expert in financial management and, most of all,

with political influence in the secret society underworld. To

find the perfect individual, the Japanese would need Du

Yue-sheng's advice. In this way the Green Gang leader

obtained further leverage in Japan's Shanghai opium deals.

One contender for the opium monopoly directorship

was Ku Chia-chai, a powerful Shanghai gangster and Du

Vue-sheng subordinate. In mid-December 1938, he approached

General Doihara's Formosan agent, Chai Chen-jen, for help in

winning the post. Ku told him that with Du in Hong Kong, he

(Ku) was now the most powerful figure in Shanghai's Green

Gang and could put his men at Japan's disposal if needed. He

said he could do so as Du's representative in the city .155

It soon became clear that Ku was acting on behalf of a

larger syndicate, led by the notorious lawyer and Du

Vue-sheng associate, Theodore C. Chang. Besides Ku, the

group included such figures as Chang Ching-hu and Chen

Shih-chang. Wang Shao-tseng, Shanghai opium merchant and a

partner in Du Yue-sheng's southwest opium combine, provided

financial backing. T. C. Chang was close to Chang Vi-sheng,

formerly director of the Hankou Opium Tax Bureau and now

a puppet official in the Sino-Japanese Economic Bureau. Chen

Yih-sheng was also a close friend of Chen Chun; his son,

formerly assistant manager of Lubbert's Pharmacy (a narcotics

front of Paul Yip, Dr. Lansing Ling, and F. C. Yen) was now

an assistant of the puppet Interior Minister. T. C. Chang's

syndicate hoped to convice General Doihara's Special Services

Section to grant them the monopoly license in return for a

down-payment of $1,000,000 and $200,000 a month

thereafter. 156

For some reason, the Japanese distrusted T. C. Chang,

but not because he represented Du Vue-sheng. For the Special

Services Section approached Ching Ting-sun, one of Du's

personal representatives in Shanghai, an opium smuggler and

gambler, to secure Du's cooperation in the opium monopoly.

The Japanese guaranteed Du's safety and promised to let him

recommend the heads of the "public safety bureaus" of

Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui provinces, on condition that he

return to Shanghai and mobilize the Green Gang to work for

Japan. Du refused, and thereafter his influence over Japanese

policy regarding opium waned. 157

The direction of Japanese policy after this time is not

entirely clear. Apparently the Japanese decided against

centralizing the Shanghai opium trade under one man and

opted instead for a Special Services Section-dominated

coalition of the city's opium merchants. Chen Chun

sanctioned the formation by reliable former "suppression"

officials and opium combine leaders of a new Shanghai Opium

Merchants' Union. 1S7•S A pro-Japanese "opium king" independent

of Du Vue-sheng, named Sheng Yu-an, emerged at the

head of this new combine. In 1940, however, the Nanjing

Reformed Government appointed to its regional opium

suppression bureau one of Du's most trusted followers, Chang

Ping-hwei, over Sheng's head. Sheng had to settle on a

compromise with Du whereby Chang would take the post but

not upset the status quo. 1SS Moreover, Sheng and Du

continued to cooperate on large-scale opium deals. In 1941,

Sheng sent Lo Hong-yi, a committee member of the Shanghai

Opium Merchants' Union and member of Du's Yunnan Guizhou-Shanghai

opium smuggling combine, to Hong Kong

to arrange with Du for the importation of opium from

southern China into Shanghai. Thus while Du remained

nominally anti-Japanese, he worked closely with his

collaborationist associates. 159

Realities of power and the possibilities of mutual profit. Until

they could consolidate their rule over Shanghai, the Japanese

needed Du's cooperation, for they were impressed by the size

and influence of the Green Gang. The Nationalists tapped the

power of the secret societies by creating a "united front" of

Chinese secret societies against Japan in the spring of 1940.

The Japanese also had success in using some societies for

intelligence, including some of the southern Triads and the

Green Gang-associated Tsai Li organization in Shaanxi

province. 16O But they knew from the start that the Green Gang

could be their greatest prize-or their most dangerous enemy.

An American intelligence official explained the reasons

behind Japan's special interest in the Green Gang in Shanghai:

On the part of the Japanese, they have been wanting to

secure the cooperation of the underworld influences for a

long time. They believe this is the best way to secure

control of the foreign areas for once they can secure these

underworld forces, they will be able to create disturbances

to harass the police, arrest anti-Japanese elements and

Chinese Government agents, attack Chinese Government

banks, law courts, and anti-Japanese newspapers and

damage the stability of the Chinese currency. This means

they could control the foreign areas through these gangsters

without resorting to occupying them by force. The only

weapons left for the Japanese to secure the cooperation of

these gangsters are opium and gambling business. 161

Long before Japan occupied Shanghai, it began to study

the structure of the city'S secret societies. Even after August

1937, the Japanese moved carefully, respectful of the Green

Gang's power and mindful of the need to gather more

complete data on its structure and scope. By cooperating in

the establishment of new gambling houses and opium dens, the

Japanese hoped to win the confidence of the underworld and

at the same time gather information on its organization.

After failing to convince Du Vue-sheng to switch sides,

the Japanese grew bolder. Japanese police put Huang

Chin-jung under house arrest after he refused to cooperate

with them. But Chiang Hsiao-lin proved more pliable. He

helped organize the Citizen's Union as a popular collaborationist

front. Many Green Gang members were also absorbed into

the Japanese-sponsored Chung-hua Huang Tao Hui (Chinese

Imperial Way Society), organized in January 1938. Ch'ang

Yu-ch'ing, a former wharf coolie who had risen to a position

of leadership in the Jianbei Clique of the Green Gang, headed

this new society. Back in 1932, Ch'ang had emerged as head of

the Japanese-backed "Peace Preservation Society," but with

the signing of the Shanghai truce was forced to flee to Dalian.

He returned to Shanghai in 1937 with the Japanese army to

head the Huang Tao society, which became notorious for its

terrorist practices.

evil reputation that Ch'ang Yu-ch'ing was put to work in

Nanjing organizing a new Green Gang-dominated amalgam of

secret societies (including the powerful Hong Bang) called the

An Qing Hui (Peaceful Life Society). With branches in 40

occupied cities, its purpose was to transfer political power

away from independent secret society leaders and to put the

underworld forces to work for Japan in intelligence gathering,

penetration of the foreign concessions, assassination, or simply

profitable smuggling operations. To lend it an air of

respectability, the Japanese formally inaugurated the An Qing

League in Nanjing on May 14, 1940. In attendance were a

number of important puppet officials, including Ting

Mo-ts'un, Minister for Social Affairs and head of Wang

jing-wei's Special Services Section. Three top Green Gang

leaders presided over the ceremonies: Ch'ang Yu-ch'ing, Zhang

Ying-hua, president of China Inland Shipping, and Chang

Teh-ch'in, otherwise known as Dr. Theodore C. Chang, the

notorious American-trained lawyer and narcotics smuggler.

These three leaders formed the Standing Membership of the

An Qing League Consolidation Committee; its chairman,

General Hsu Nai, commanded military units in central and

North China. 162

Du Yue-sheng's organization was thus being engulfed as

the Japanese consolidated their rule in Shanghai. To counter

this trend, Du called his forces into action. His agents

terrorized collaborators and Japanese officials to prevent them

from supplanting Du's influence. Among the figures Du had

assassinated were Chou Feng-chi, defense minister of the

Nanjing Reformed Government; Chen Lu, the Foreign

Minister, Fu Xiao-an, the mayor of Shanghai, and Lu Lian-gui,

chief of detectives in the International Settlement (though Lu

may have been assassinated by Ch'ang Yu-ch'ing's organization).

Du also did away with his old ally Chang Hsiao-lin and

the two Green Gang leaders who followed him as head of the

Citizen's Union, Chi Yun-ch'ing and Kao Chin-pao.

Wang Jing-wei's Japanese-sponsored terror organization,

the Special Services Section, fought back with reprisal

assassinations against friends of the Chongqing government

until by 1941 both sides finally called a halt and arran led a

truce. There were no more important political murders. 16

However, with the successful incorporation of local

Green Gang leaders into the An Qing Hui, Du rapidly lost

influence in Shanghai. The Special Services Section (and later

the China Affairs Bureau) took control of the opium traffic.

And with the outbreak of war everywhere in the Pacific in

December 1941, Du had to abandon Hong Kong for the

backwater Nationalist war capital, Chongqing. Shanghai's

foreign concessions fell under direct Japanese rule, so Du's

agents no longer found haven in Shanghai. Du's men could

therefore collect only limited intelligence from the occupied

areas. 164

The Communists (for obviously self-serving reasons)

were the first to reveal these facts to American observers in

China. When queried about the Shanghai underground by John

Stewart Service in 1944, a Communist general admitted that

some nationalist guerrillas still operated in the area but

"according to Communist intelligence reports these forces had

for some time had such close connections with puppets and

Japanese that they were now considered to be puppets

themselves." (An independent American intelligence report

said of Du's chief agent in Shanghai, Hsu Pien-ch'eng, "He

keeps up his good standing with the Japanese by supplying

them with considerably more information than he gives his

boss, [Dul, in Chungking." 165) The general pointed to

admissions of Chongqing officials that their secret service

apparatus in the area "had been pretty well broken up by the

Japanese," explaining that Guomindang underground forces

were more often motivated by profit than ideology and had

simply been bought off. His opinion of the "patriotic" secret

societies was no higher: "He pointed out that the Japanese and

puppets had made great use of the gangster elements in the

societies, and that these same elements had relations with such

Kuomintang groups as Tai Li [head of the Nationalist secret

service." 166

Du's intelligence-gathering and "covert operations"

capabilities may have been limited, but he had unparalleled

skill in an area that both the Nationalists and the Japanese

valued highly: smuggling and opium traffic. Massive smuggling

between the ostensibly blockaded sectors of "Free" and

Occupied China was one of the salient characteristics of the

Sino-Japanese War. It began during the 1930s when Japan

smuggled enormous amounts of goods through North China to

raise revenue and undermine the Chinese economy. 167 More

viciously, they instituted a massive narcotics smuggling

program against China. Using opium supplies from vast poppy

fields in Manchuria, Japanese-controlled factories in Tianjin

flooded the Chinese market with heroin. The Japanese

financed a large part of their war effort this way. 168

Japanese smuggling reached increasingly serious proportions

as its armies moved inland from China's coast. Moreover,

after their move to Chongqing, the Nationalists were left

without any significant industry and had to exchange scarce

foodstuffs for even scarcer manufactures, supplied by the

Japanese. By mutual necessity, therefore, a sort of

semi-official smuggling apparatus was set up. Even through the

censorship, reports leaked out of China on the vast organized

trade between Japan and China of gold and strategic materials.

Upwards of half a million men were employed simply in

smuggling gasoline. In 1940 alone, the Japanese smuggled into

"free" China an estimated US $120,000,000 worth of

manufactured consumption goods, and the figures rose in

1941. 169 The existence of such smuggling reflected not only

the ubiquitous tendency towards profiteering and wartime

collaboration (as long as the outcome remained uncertain), but

also the economic desperation of both sides during the long

stalemate.

The key Nationalist figure behind this organized

smuggling was General Tai Li (universally known as the

"Chinese Himmler"), who led a secret police force of over

100,000 men, many recruited out of the ranks of Du

Yue-sheng's Green Gang. Accountable only to Tai Li, these

men, with their enemy contacts, systematized the trade

between Japan and the Chongqing government, without the

embarrassment of turning to "official" channels. As head of

the Smuggling Prevention Bureau, Tai Li was in a perfect

position to eliminate competition and centralize the trade

under his control. l70

Opium was a key commodity in the smuggling trade

because of its high value per unit of weight. The Chongqing

government authorized Du Yue-sheng (under Tai Li's

supervision) to take charge of opium smuggling in order to

raise vitally needed revenues. The Nationalists shipped opium

from Sichuan and Yunnan to his agents for sale in

Japanese-held territories. (Much of this opium returned in the

form of heroin.) When the Japanese seized Hong Kong, Macao,

and other coastal ports in 1941, Du moved inland but

continued to manage the opium trade to these newly occupied

territories. 171

The Chongqing government supported Du's operation

whole-heartedly, putting the four banks of issue and CNC

$150,000,000 at his disposal to finance the trade.172 The

Nationalists also allowed him to use a number of "relief"

agencies he controlled, such as the Chinese Red Cross, to front

for his opium smuggling. And Du was allowed to branch into

other commodities, including tungsten, wool, rice, tung oil,

and precious medical supplies like quinine. 173

The Japanese were happy enough to cooperate, since

Chinese opium kept their Shanghai and Tianjin narcotics

factories well supplied. But independent militarists and secret

societies, such as the Ko Lao Hui (Elder Brothers Society),

wanted a piece of the action and posed an obstacle to this well

organized traffic. When Chiang Kai-shek moved inland to

Chongqing, the heart of Ko Lao Hui territory, he and Tai Li

attempted to monopolize for themselves the opium trade and

other profitable commercial activities. In 1939, Chiang

instituted an "opium suppression" program in Sichuan to

wrest control of the traffic from the Sichuanese militarists and

their secret society allies. By 1943, with the help of Du

Yue-sheng's agents, Tai Li had managed to suppress Ko Lao

Hui resistance. l74 Still, the Ko Lao Hui kept a hand in some

opium transactions in Sichuan; thus their support proved

essential to General Liu Wen-hui, warlord of Xinjiang province,

who supported his army until 1949 through the export of

large caravans of opium under military guard into Sicl;lUan for

distribution throughout China. 175

On account of these independent threats to the opium

traffic through China, 175.5 Du Yue-sheng traded the use of his

underground forces in occupied China for protection from Tai

Li's men along the opium transport routes, down the Yangtze,

or south through Guizhou and Guangdong provinces. Heavily

armed Tai Li agents accompanied Du's huge truck convoys

with a laissez passer from the Executive Yuan authorizing free

passage of the shipment as if it carried "essential military

goods." In one such shipment, carrying 4 7Yz tons of Sichuan

opium to Guangdong, Du reportedly took $50,000,000 as his

share of the profits (February 1943 dollars). Tai Li must have

received at least as large a share, since his secret service was

primarily funded with profits from the opium traffic. 176

Since American military and intelligence forces chose to

cooperate closely with Tai Li and Du Vue-sheng, they fully

tolerated this pattern of semi-collaboration and opportunism.

To coordinate intelligence and guerrilla operations, for

example, the U.S. established the Sino-American Cooperation

Organization (SACO), directed jointly by Tai Li and Navy

Commander Milton Miles. (In practice, Tai Li controlled the

organization, but was supplied with American men, materiel,

and training.) In conjunction with Tai Li, Miles worked closely

with Du Vue-sheng. The Office of Strategic Services, a rival

American intelligence agency operating in China, also

established close contact with Du Vue-sheng through Quentin

Roosevelt (Theodore Roosevelt's grandson). 177

Obviously, the United States could not expect to work so closely with men

like Du Vue-sheng, and still suppress the opium traffic and

other forms of smuggling. Just as the Central Intelligence

Agency later protected the Mafia in return for help in

assassinating Castro, or protected the narcotics traffic in

Southeast Asia in order to bolster anti-communist guerrillas, so

did SACO and OSS become involved with China's

anti-Japanese criminal forces. The best example of this

"detente" was SACO's decision to support the pirate smugglers

who infested the China coast in return for

intelligence and military support.

Chinese pirates operated freely in the coastal waters

between Fujian and Jiangsu. Their forces controlled and

exacted heavy tolls on trade and transportation in those

waters. Travellers paid a standard fee of $1,000 for passage

rights; goods were taxed $2,000 per 100 pounds. To win their

cooperation (and because they lacked a coastal navy), the

Japanese granted the pirates a monopoly on smuggling in

return for information and coastal patrolling. The pirates

smuggled medical supplies, tung oil, gold, salt-and opium. The

Japanese sold it to them for $60 an ounce (raw) or $1,300 an

ounce (prepared); they in turn could sell it along the coast for

$6,000 an ounce. 178

The profits from collaboration were high. On the other

hand, the pirates were known to be "favorably disposed"

towards the Americans and "secretly aligned" with Chongqing

-to hedge their bets in case the Japanese lost. Japan knew this

well and trusted the pirate leaders only as long as they could

be bought off. Moreover, according to one immediate

observer, "the smuggling and the piracy which the Japanese

navy sanctioned had corrupted it to the core. From Japanese

admirals down to the jetty sentries, each collected a tribute

from the smuggling traffic." Under these circumstances, the

Japanese were bound to overlook minor indiscretions on the

part of the pirate leaders. 179

One such pirate leader was Chang Vi-Chou, called

"General" by his men, who acted as commander of the

Japanese-sponsored Peace and National Salvation Army in

Fujian province from 1944-45. Leader of a 4,000-man force

based on Matsu Island (offshore from Fuzhou), Chang

controlled a sizeable section of the coast to the north. The

Japanese gave him official rank, paid him handsomely-and

assigned several Japanese officers to his staff to keep an eye on

him. 180

Chang Kwei-fong was a Green Gang pirate leader with a

direct following of perhaps 2,500, headquartered on

Tsungming Island off Woosung, at the mouth of the Yangtze

River. He controlled another 18,000 Green Gang operators

engaged in smuggling and employed as merchants, inspectors,

cargo carriers, or laborers, extending along the coast and

inland up the Yangtze as far as Kiukiang in northern Jiangxi

province. "So powerful was this somewhat vagIely organized

outfit that it more or less controlled the coast throughout the

three-hundred-mile section that extended from Shanghai south

to Wenchow," Milton Miles later recalled. Although Chang

Kwei-fong was a collaborator and a member of the Japanese

general's staff at Woosung, he also made contact with Du

Yue-sheng's and Tai Li's agents in Shanghai. 181

As early as 1942, the Coordinator of Information (OSS's

predecessor) began evaluating plans to organize the Chinese

pirates for operations against Japanese fishing. But U.S.

intelligence officials had learned of the pirates' collaboration

with the Japanese and the profiteering and corruption that

surrounded their activities. Rather than hastily supporting the

pirates, the U.S. Army sent a young employee of the Office of

War Information named John C. Caldwell, who had grown up

in Fujian, back to China to gather information on pirate

activities and sympathies. After meeting with the pirates-and

apparently with Du Yue-sheng as well, who sold opium to the

pirates-Caldwell reported that the pirates could be induced to

switch their loyalties. In return for intelligence they provided,

Caldwell convinced Chongqing to call off 14th Air Force

attacks against the smugglers' junks in order not "to

antagonize potential allies." As Caldwell later put it, "The

basis for an understanding with the pirates had been laid." 182

SACO heads Tai Li and Milton Miles convinced their

respective governments to cooperate fully in a program of

weaning the pirates away from Japan. SACO provided the

piractes-euphemistically referred to as the "overseas Guerrilla

Corps"-with guns, ammunition, training, and money. The

pirates in turn collected weather information, laid mines, and

rescued downed American flyers-even as they provided

similar services to Japan. 183

The pirates thus successfully

played both sides. There is no way of knowing whether their

assistance to the Allied war effort really amounted to much,

but they certainly profited handsomely from Allied aid (and

protection from bombing). After the war, the pirates carried

on a lively trade in gold, opium, and luxury goods using the

modern diesel-powered junks they were given during the war

for guerrilla operations. 184

As a final service to the Chongqing government, the

pirates assisted in retaking Shanghai before the Communists

could establish a foothold. In the summer of 1945, Du

Vue-sheng left Chongqing with Tai Li and traveled to Zhejiang

province. When the Japanese capitulated in August, Du, Tai Li,

the SACO, and Chang Kwei-fong moved into the city to

establish contact with members of the underground and

"sanitize" the city. In particular, Du's forces battled

Communist labor and protected American-owned public

utilities from sabotage attempts. Their rapid deployment

against the Communists was one of the first moves in the

postwar civil war. 185

Soon after his return to Shanghai, Du Vue-sheng granted

an interview. "I am a simple citizen," he said. "I have no titles

from the Government, and my work, as before the war, is to

assist the Government in spreading benevolence to the

people." 186 Little is known of his postwar success in spreading

"benevolence to the people." 187 But Du had done well enough

during the war, on top of his prewar earnings, to support a life

of philanthropy in his waning years. He had profited not only

from the opium trade, but also from his control of the

lucrative (and illicit) traffic in luxury goods along the Burma

Road, and by vastly profitable insider deals on U.S. Dollar

Savings certificates and bonds. 188

After the war, he almost certainly took part in the black marketing of scarce relief

supplies and in profiteering on Yellow River shipping. 189

For a while, Du's influence remained as great as ever.

The British Embassy invited him as an honored guest, along

with distinguished diplomats, to celebrate the ending of the

war. 190

Many of his former associates took government jobs,

while Du himself held literally scores of positions in business,

finance, education, and public social organizations. 191 Du

strengthened his hand by allying with the dominant KMT

faction, the "CC Clique." 192

But with Dai Li's death in March 1946-Du attended the

memorial service as a representative of the Shanghai Provincial

City Council, Shanghai Land Association, and Shanghai

Chamber of Commerce-Du lost a powerful friend and ally. 193

Du's position was first threatened in late 1946, when his chief

labor ally, Chu Hsueh-fan, narrowly escaped assassination, and

was forced to step down as chairman of the Chinese

Association of Labor and as a city council member of

Shanghai. 194

Du, sensing the changing political climate, left for

Shanghai in early 1947 "to recuperate his health." 195

By 1948, Du's influence had so waned that the KMT

actually permitted the arrest of Du's son, Wei-ping, on charges

of stock manipulation. The scandal naturally reflected on Du

Yue-sheng himself, since he headed the Shanghai Stock

Exchange. 196 The government, worried that Du might organize

a "spontaneous" riot, reduced charges, and the whole affair

ultimately blew over. 197

But Du, although still regarded as "Public Celebrity

No. 1,,,193 sensed where the winds were blowing. He sold his

palatial French Concession mansion to the American

government and retired to Hong Kong, where he died in

1951. 199

Du's demise symbolically capped an era officially closed

by the victory of the Chinese Communists. That victory

brought an end to rule by opium, just as it ended the rule of

warlords, landlords, and urban capitalists.

For over a century, millions of Chinese had been

sacrificed to the opium poppy to satisfy the imperial

ambitions of the Western powers, and then to support the

rising power of provincial warlords who financed entire armies

out of opium revenues. Peasants forced to grow the poppies, as

well as the addicts, were the victims.

Chiang Kai-shek shifted only the direction, not the

fundamental character, of this traffic. Rising shakily to

national power in 1927, having financed his armies, like those

of the warlords, out of opium revenues, Chinag cemented an

alliance with powerful underworld gangs which dominated the

narcotics traffic and could deliver urban populations to his

side. The quid pro quo-protection of the traffic-ensured that

China's addicts would get no relief. But more important, this

alliance reinforced the political character of the regime. For

the urban gangs, like the Shanghai and Nanjing bankers who

supported Chiang, ultimately drew their wealth from

privileged foreign capital which built the coastal cities into

wealthy enclaves. To the underworld and the bankers, Chiang

was an instrument for suppressing Communism and fundamental

reform.

But Chiang's regime was not merely allied with

corruption, it was based on corruption. Once in power, Chiang

moved to strengthen his position by taking control of the

opium traffic away from the independent warlords, depleting

their finances and adding to the central government's revenues .

With T. V. Soong's help, Chiang organized an opium

monopoly at Hankou. Extending this monopoly through

"suppression" campaigns, Chiang effectively extended his

political power, as he did when he battled to subdue the

independent southwestern provinces.

Ultimately, however, Japan's menacing expansion in

Manchuria and northern China frustrated his plans, diverting

his armies from the campaigns to suppress Communists and

warlords. Just as seriously, the Japanese introduced an

unwelcome source of competition into the narcotics trade.

The Japanese occupation of Shanghai in 1937 touched off a

fierce struggle for control of that huge opium market. China

and Japan, through Du Yue-sheng and Dai Li, finally reached

an effective compromise. Their collaboration in the opium

traffic was only a natural extension of other forms of

collaboration, but it revealed the fundamental contempt of

both regimes for the Chinese people. The liberation of the

Chinese people from opium after 1949, while only one of

many achievements, is therefore symbolic of a new era in

Chinese history.

Notes

This study relies heavily on intelligence reports sent to the State

Department by Foreign Service officers in China and by the Treasury

Department's chief narcotics agent in China, M. R. Nicholson. File

numbers refer to State Department archives, record group 59, in the

National Archives, Washington, D. C. Reports from Nicholson are

prefixed by NR. Wherever possible, the substance of these reports have

been checked with alternative sources, such as newspapers. Narcotics

trafficking is a secretive business and some of these reports may not be

correct. However, Nicholson had a high reputation for accuracy and

was widely respected in the US government. For testimony as to his

career, see John Pal, Shanghai Saga (London: Jarrolds, 1963),161-62.

1. G. Huang article in Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury, 21

October 1935.

2. For general history, see Leonard Adams, "China: The

Historical Setting of Asia's Profitable Plague," in Alfred McCoy, The

Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York: Charles Scribner's

Sons, 1953), 278-280; Eugene Ming Shu Shen, "History of the Opium

Question With Reference to China Since 1913," Harvard, 1924.

On international conferences and opium, not dealt with here, see

Arnold H. Taylor, American Diplomacy and the Narcotics Traffic,

1900-1939 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1969).

The Peking government opium scandal may be traced in news

reports: The Peking Times, 5 June 1918, The Peking Leader, 19 June

1918, 21 June 1918, Peking & Tientsin Times, 5 December 1918,

North China Star, 5 December 1918. See also Mr. B. Alston to Lord

Balfour, 26 February 1917, and enclosures, in The Opium Trade,

1910-1914 (London: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1974), IV, xi, 11-15;

"Memorandum Respecting the Opium Problem in the Far East," ibid.,

VI, xxvi, 22-23. Basically, the scandal involved the government's

attempt to purchase excess opium stocks from the former Shanghai

merchants for resale to the public.

On the general recrudescence of opium poppy cultivation

throughout China, see North China Star, 19 January 1919, on Fukien;

North China Daily News, 10 December 1918, on Anhui; North China

Daily News, 9 January 1919, on Yunnan and Kweichow; The Peking

Leader, 1 April 1919 on Shensi; and The Peking Leader, 1 April 1919

and New York Times, 29 November 1918 for the general picture.

Massive Japanese smuggling of narcotics was widely reported by

the newspapers in northern China. See North China Daily News, 15

September 1915. and the major North China newspapers for December.

1918-February 1919; also Peking & Tientsin Times, 5 April 1920,

Chicago Daily News, 3 November 1921; also Herbert Phillips

(Foochow) to B. Alston, 22 December 1921, The Opium Trade, V, xvii,

36-37; "Memorandum Respecting the Opium Problem in the Far East,"

ibid., VI, xxvi, 25.

3. Sir B. Alston to Earl Curzon, 15 May 1921, quoted in Yip

Tin Lee, "Opium Suppression in China," unpublished MA thesis,

Stanford, 1942, 31-2.

4. O. Edmund Clubb, "The Opium Traffic in China," 24 April

1934, in National Archives Record Group 59, file no. 893.114

Narcotics17 38.

5. John L. Buck, Land Utilization in China (New York:

Council on Economic and Cultural Affairs, Inc., 1956), 206, 323. On

the widely reported use of high land taxes to force peasants to grow

opium rather than food crops, see NR, 17 October 1935, 893.114

Narcotics/1381.

6, Sir R. MacLeay to Mr. MacDonald, 1 October 1924, The

Opium Trade, V, xxi, 26; Harley Farnsworth MacNair, China in

Revolution (New York: Howard Fertig, 1968), 72.

7. Report of Dr. W. H. Graham Aspland, Secretary of the

International Anti-Opium Association in Peking, in China Yearbook,

1928,524-25; Leonard Adams, 381; O. E. Clubb, 29-32.

8. O. E. Clubb, 36-38; China Yearbook, 1928, 526.

9. Yip Tin Lee, 69-70; "Opium Conference in Nanking," North

China Herald, 10 November 1928; Frank Buckley, "China's Failure to

Suppress Opium Traffic," Current History, XXXV (October 1931),78.

10. China Yearbook, 1929-30, 4,.50.

11. Frank Buckley, 78-9; H. G. W. Woodhead, The Truth About

Opium in China (Shanghai: The Mercury Press, 1931), 55; "Opium in

Shanghai," report enclosed with Edward Cunningham dispatch from

Shanghai, 3 March 1930, 893.114 Narcotics/l05; Diana Lary, Region

and Nation (Cambridge University Press, 1974), 137-38.

12. League of Nations document C.577.M284.1932.XI, 32-33,

36; Frank Buckley, 78.

13. C.577.M284.1932.XI, 32-34.

14.Boston Evening Transcript, 19 November 1931.

15. Woodhead,13.

16. Clubb, 43-46; George Sokolsky, The Tinder Box of Asia

(Garden City: Doubleday, 1932), 203; Wilbur Burton, "China's

New-Old Road to Ruin," Asia, XXXIV (November 1934), 676; New

York Times, 1 April 1931,9 August 1931; Garfield Huang, "Opium:

Absolute Suppression vs. Monopoly," Opium: A World Problem, IV

(April 1931), 2; NR, 19 May 1932, 893.114 Narcotics/339.

17. N. T. Johnson dispatch from Peking, 6 July 1932, 893.114

Narcotics/370.

18. Le Journal de Pekin, 30 June 1932; Peking & Tientsin

Times, 2 July 1932; The Peiping Chronicle, 5 July 1932; New York

Times, 17 July 1932.

19. Peking & Tientsin Times, 4 July 1932.

20. Letter of Garfield Huang in Yenching Gazette, 4 August

1932.

21. N. T. Johnson dispatch, 14 June 1932, 893.114 Narcoticsl

368; Washington Post, 13 March 1931; State Department circular, 29

January 1934,893.114 Narcotics/625.

22. O. E. Clubb, 48-50.

23. O. E. Clubb, 57-8.

24. Walter Adams (Hankow) to SeeState, 31 March 1933,

893.114 Narcotics&483.

25. O. E. Clubb, 59-60; Adams dispatch, 12 May 1933, 893.114

Narcotics/496. Cf. Adams report 317, 10 June 1933, 893.00 PR

Hankow173. Adams notes that the monopoly even permitted refined

morphine from Liu Hsiang's Szechuan factories to pass through to

Shanghai-after taxation.

26. O. E. Clubb, 63-65.

27. Clubb, 66~67; Adams (Hankow) dispatch, 14 November

1933,893.00 PR Hankow178.

28. State Department circular, 29 January 1934, 893.114

Narcotics/625.

29. Ibid.

31. Adams (Hankow) dispatch 7 February 1934, 893_114

Narcotics/656; Ilona Ralph Sues, Shark's Fins and Millet (Boston:

Little, Brown & Co., 1944), 65, 91; Economic Information Service,

How Chinese Officials Amass Millions (New York, 1948),4.

32. Adams (Hankow) dispatch, 13 June 1934, 893.114

Narcotics1786.

33. NR, 16 April 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1131.

34. Woodhead, "The Opium Traffic," Shanghai Evening Post

and Mercury, 29 December 1934.

35. Far Eastern Division memorandum to Stanley Hornbeck, 7

September 1934; Address of Stuart Fuller, assistant chief of FE, 26

February 1935, Stanley K. Hornbeck papers, Hoover Library, box 93.

36. O. E. Clubb, 90-91; Adams (Hankow) dispatch 11 April

1934,893.114 Narcotics!708.

37. Francis L. K. Hsu, Americans and Chinese (Garden City:

Doubleday & Co., 1970),62.

38. Stilwell (Peiping) G-2 report no. 9316, 5 March 1935,

893.114 Narcotics/1547.

39. Atcheson (Nanking) dispatch, 12 June 1935, 893.00 PR

Nanking/88; Japan Advertiser, 20 June 1935 (datelined June 3).

40. The China Press, 6 July 1935.

41. NR, 14 June 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1231; NR 29 June

1935,893.114/1226.

42. Stilwell report, 5 March 1935,893.114 Narcotics/1547.

43. Peking & Tientsin Times, 29 January 1936.

44. N. T. Johnson dispatch, 21 March 1936, 893.114

Narcotics/1547.

45. China Weekly Review, 8 February 1936.

46. N. T. Johnson dispatch, 21 March 1936, 893.114

Narcotics/1547.

47. Sokobin dispatch, 5 February 1937,

893.00 PR Tsingraol C. Y. W. Meng, "China's Determination to

Abolish Opium and Narcotics," China Weekly Review, 28 January

1937, 264-65. Papp quoted in Memorandum of Conversation by Vice

Consul Drumwright (Shanghai), 8 February 1937, 893.114 Narcotics/1886.

48. NR 30 March 1937, 893.114 Narcotics/1933.

49. Stilwell Report, 5 March 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1547.

52. "Poppy Growing on the Yunnan Plateau," Agrarian China

(London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1939), 120-21; J. C. S. Hall,

"The Opium Trade in Yunnan Province, 1917-1937," Papers on Far

Eastern History, X (September 1974), 1-28; Wilbur Burton in Baltimore

Sun, 20 September 1933; Wilbur Burton, "Tin and Opium in the

Economy of Yunnan," China Weekly Review, 28 September 1933,148;

Reed dispatch (Yunnanfu), 13 March 1934, 893.114 Narcotics/698

cites a production figure for 1933 of 130,000,000 ounces.

53. NR 2 February 1937, 893.114 Narcotics/1908; NR 29 April

1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1135; NR 7 October 1935, 893.114

Narcotics/1347; NR 25 February 1937,893.114 Narcotics/1921.

54. China Yearbook, 1931, 600; League of Nations document

C.577.M.-284.1932.XI, 37-38; New York Times, 11 February 1934.

55. On early plans for an opium airline, see J. c. S. Hall, 14-15;

and "Translation ...," enclosure 3, in The Opium Trade, VI, xxv, 100.

On its actual formation see N. T. Johnson (Peiping), 23 August 1933,

893.796/165. On later developments see NR 15 February 1935,

893.114 Narcotics/1038; NR 10 April 1935; Ringwalt (Yunnanfu)

dispatch, 9 April 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1124; "Summary of Civil

Air Transportation Developments in China," 3 May 1944,

800,79615-344.

56. NR 9 October 1953, 893.114 Narcotics/1347; Diana Lary,

Region and Nation, 94, 191.

57. NR 12 April 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/l113. See also NR 18

February 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1 067; The Peiping Chronicle, 12

February 1935.

58. NR 19 March 1935,893.114 Narcoticsl1100.

59. Ibid.; NR 26 April 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1139.

60. NR 9 October 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1347.

61. Stilwell Report, 5 March 1936, 893.114 Narcoticsl1547;

Diana Lary, Region and Nation, 191.

62. Ringwalt (Yunnanfu) dispatch, 1 July 1935, 893.00 PR

Yunnan/81.

63. Ringwalt dispatch, 16 May 1935,893.114 Narcotics/1208.

64. NR 9 October 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1347.

65. NR 14 July 1936,893.114 Narcoticsl1679.

66. Diana Lary, Region and Nation, 199; John Gunther, Inside

Asia, 197.

67. J. C. S. Hall, 26, cf. 28.

68. Walter Adams (Hankow) dispatch 11 April 1934,893.114

Narcotics1708.

69. Harry Anslinger letter, 19 January 1934, 811.114 N 16

Chinal250; Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, 15.

70. League of Nationa document C.577.M284.1932.XI, 32-34;

C.621.M.243.1930.XI,24-25.

71. Treasury Department, Bureau of Narcotics, Traffic in

Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, Report for the Year Ended

December 31, 1931 (USGPO, 1932). (Hereafter referred to as "Bureau

of Narcotics [1931] ",)

72. Special report by Agent Hanks, 12 April 1930,811.114 N

16 China/113.

73. Bureau of Narcotics (1933),5, 35.

74. Bureau of Narcotics (1933), 7; Bureau of Narcotics (1934),

6-7, confirms this judgment.

75. Alfred McCoy, 15; United Nations document E/C.S.7/9 (27

November 1946),6.

76. H. Anslinger letter to Stuart Fuller, 3 August 1936, 893.114

Narcotics/1654.

77. Bureau of Narcotics (1935), 6-7.

78. Willys Peck memorandum of conversation with J. Heng Liu,

20 October 1934, 893.114 Narcotics/911. Peck spoke with Liu on

Gauss's orders.

79. Bureau of Narcotics (1936), 18-19; Bureau of Narcotics

(1937),14, 16, 17.

81. NR 17 October 1934, 893.114 Narcotics/917.

82. Ibid.

83. Ibid.; Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy (New York:

Bobbs-Merrill, 1972),204.

84. NR 23 April 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1159; NR 18 April

1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1130; NR 21 January 1935, 893.114

Narcotics/l008.

85. Frederick T. Merrill, japan and the Opium Menace in China

(New York: IPR, 1942), 24; Percy Finch, Shanghai and Beyond, 278.

86. Nelson T. Johnson dispatch circular, 18 January 1929,

811.114 N 16 China/20; cf. Opium: A World Problem I (July 1, 1927),

15.

87. Ernest O. Hauser, Shanghai: City for Sale (New York:

Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1940), 119; John Pal, Shanghai Saga, 27.

88. John Pal, 36-40.

89. G. E. Miller (pseud.), Shanghai: The Paradise ofAdventurers

(n.p., n.d,), 153-54; Bureau of Narcotics (1933), 18-20; Bureau of

Narcotics (1947), 18; 800.114 N 16 Ezra, Judah/file; Bureau of

Narcotics (1954),22.

90. Shanghai Io'vening Post and Mercury, 11 July 1933;

CUf\ningham (Shanghai) dispatch 30 September 1933, 800.114. N 16

Ezra, Judah/32; Bureau of Narcotics report, "Ezra Case," 28

September 1933, 800.114 N 16 Ezra, Judah/36.

91. William Phillips dispatch to N. T. Johnson, 14 August 1936;

893.114 Narcotics/1674; Bureau of Narcotics, "Ezra Case,'; North

China Herald, 26 July 1933.

92. NR 25 January 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/l058; NR 9

October 1935,893.114 Narcotics/1348; NR 31 October 1935, 893.114

Narcotics/1402.

94. NR 9 October 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1348; Shanghai

Evening Post and Mercury, 23 October 1935.

95. Gordon L. Burke (Foochow) dispatch, 14 October 1935,

893.114 Narcotics/1355; NR 27 February 1936, 893.114 Narcotics/1528;

NR 25 January 1935, 893.114 Narcoticsll058; NR 26

August 1936, 893.114 Narcotics/l718; Haldore Hansen, "FukienDrug

Rackets Not Japanese Run," North China Herald, 2 September 1936.

On Ye's secret Amoy red pill factories, see NR 30 November 1936,

893.114 Narcotics/1819. The significance of Shanghai and Amoy as

principal Persian opium racket centers is described in Edwin

Cunningham (Shanghai) dispatch, 17 October 1935, 893.114

Narcotics/1359; and League of Nations, Traffic in Opium and Other

Dangerous Drugs, A nnual Reports by Government for 1935, China,

0.C./A.R.1935/51.

96. NR 9 November 1934, 893.114 Narcotics/927; NR 9

October 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1348; NR 18 September 1936.

97. NR 9 October 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1348; cf. "List of

Chinese Officials Visiting Foreign Countries on Government Missions,

January to September 1934," enclosure in 893.114 Narcotics/917.

98. NR 30 December 1938, 893.114 Narcotics/2429.

99. Dick dispatch, 3 August 1936, 893.00 PR Amoy/l07; Burke

dispatch, 3 September 1936, 893.00 PR Foochow/l03; NR 18

September 1936; NR, 21 September 1936, 893.114 Narcotics/l729;

NR 26 August 1936, 893.114 Narcoticsll718.

100, NR 17 March 1937; Dick dispatch, 6 July 1937,893.00

PR Amoy/118; Altaffer dispatch, 7 August 1937, 893.00 PR

Amoy/119; North China Herald, 30 June 1937.

101. Marvin Miller, Organized Crime Behind Nixon (City of

Industry: Therapy Productions, Inc., 1974), 34-39.

102. Bureau of Narcotics(1931), 43; Bureau of Narcotics (1932),

38; Bureau of Narcotics (1941), 14-15; Bureau of Narcotics (1943),

23-25; Memorandum of 13 April 1931, 900.114 N 16 Eliopoulos,

Elie/1; Gauss dispatch from Tientsin, 18 June 1931, 800.114 N 16

Eliopoulos, Elie/5; Harry Anslinger, The Murderers (New York, 1961),

56-73; quote is from undated memorandum, 4 May 1931, 800.114 N

16 Eliopoulos, Elie/2. For brief biographies of the ring members, see

The Opium Trade, VI, xxx, 6-8.

103. Bureau of Narcotics (1937), 32-33; New York Times, 21

November 1937. Anslinger, 125-31; Will Oursler and Laurence Smith,

Narcotics: America's Peril (Garden City, N.Y., 1952), 83-91.

104. Miller, 39; Bureau of Narcotics (1937),20-21; Bureau of

Narcotics (1938), 53-54; Bureau of Narcotics (1941),16-18; Bureau of

Narcotics (1944),28-29; Anslinger, 46ff.

104.5 Peking & Tientsin Times', 26 October 1934; cf. "The Rise

and Growth of the 'Ch'ing Pang,' " People's Tribune, VII (1 August

1934),115.

104.7 For a general overview of Ch'ing Pang origins, see Jean

Chesneaux, Secret Societies in China in the Nineteenth and Twentieth

Centuries (Ann Arbor: Universiry of Michigan Press, 1971), 47-51.

Other useful sources include "The Rise and Growth of the 'Ch'ing

Pang,''' 115-20; James Hutson, "Chinese Secret Societies," China

journal, X (January 1929),12; Tien Tsung, "Chinese Secret Societies,"

Orient, III (October 1952), 48-50; Suemitsu Takayoshi, Shina No

Himitsukessha To jizenkessha (Manshu: Hyoronsha, 1932),5-6.

105. Boorman, Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, I,

319-21; Harold Isaacs, Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (Stanford,

Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1951), 81; Theodore H. White and

Annalee Jacoby, Thunder Out of Chilla (New York: William Sloane

Associates, Inc., 1946), 120-21; Ernest O. Hauser, Shanghai: City for

Sale (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1940), 170-71, 285; China

Forum, May 1932, 16; Mark Gayn, journey from the East (New York:

Alfred A. Knopf, 1944), 336; Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China, 17;

O. E. Clubb, Twentieth Century China (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1972), 144; Paul Linebarger, The China of Chiang

Kai-shek (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1941),261; Percy Flinch,

Shanghai and Beyond, 148-49; Agnes Smedley, The Great Road (New

York: Monthly Review Press, 1956), 156, 179; Carl Glick and Hong

Sheng-hwa, Swords of Silence (New York: McGraw Hill, 1947),251-51;

China Yearbook, 1928, 136; Willys Peck to C. E. Gauss, 23 January

1935,893.114 Narcoticsll024.

106. Hung-mao Tien, The Government and Politics of Kuomintang

China, 1927-1937 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,

1972), 48n.

107. Mark Gayn, Journey from the East, 138; Harold Isaacs,

Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, 143.

108. Robert C. North, Moscow and the Chinese Communists

(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1963),92-93. 108. C. 'E.

Gauss dispatch, 21 February 1927, 893.00/8299; Gauss dispatch, 23

March 1927,893.00/8421.

109. Isaacs, 145; Gayn, 148, 151; Gauss dispatch, 8 April 1927,

893.00/8624; China Yearbook, 1928, 1361.

110. Isaacs, 143-45, 152-53; Boorman, Biographical Dictionary

of Republican China, III, 328-29; Y. C. Wang, "Tu Yueh-sheng

(1888-1951): A Tentative Political Biography," Journal of Asian

Studies, XXVI (May 1967), 437; Nym Wales, The Chinese Labor

Movement (New York: John Day Co., 1945),53.

111. Isaacs, 175; Harold Isaacs, "Gang Rule in Shanghai," The

China Forum, May 1932, 17; John B. Powell, My Twenty-five Years in

China, 154, 158-59; Agnes Smedley, The Great Road, 191; George

Sokolsky, "The Kuomintang," China Yearbook, 1928, 1362; John Pal,

Shanghai Saga, 50; Jack Belden, China Shakes the World (New York:

Harper & Brothers, 1949), 148; Suemitsu Takayoshi, 4; Percy Finch,

Shanghai and Beyond, 160; Nym Wales, The Chinese Labor Movement,

73, 75-76, etc.; OSS, Political Implications of Chinese Secret Societies

(R&A 2254, 1945), 33-35. Tu gained much of his prestige by his

continued ability to control strikes and destroy communist remnants in

Shanghai. See Y. C. Wang, 438-39, 44()'41; Isaacs, I'Gang Rule in

Shanghai," 18. Moreover, Tu Vue-sheng protege Chu Hsueh-fan was

president of the Chinese Association of Labor which represented

Chinese labor before the International Labor Organization. See Nym

Wales, 122n; Randall Gould, China in the Sun, 358; Yang Wei, I tai

hao-hsia Tu Yueh-sheng, 32. It was probably because of his ability to

control labor that Shanghai Power, the subsidiary of American and

Foreign Power, put Tu on its payroll. See Edgar Snow, The Battle for

Asia (New York: Random House, 1941), 79.

112. Isaacs, "Gang Rule in Shanghai," 18; Boorman, Biographical

Dictionary of Republican China, III, 329; Y. C. Wang, 438.

113. Sir S. Barton, UK Consul-General, Shanghai, to Sir M.

Lampson, 1 December 1927, The Opium Traffic, 1910-1941, VI, xxv,

;-7; "Memorandum Respecting the Opium Problem in the Far East,"

The Opium Traffic, 1910-1941, VI, xxvi, 38-39; "Confidential Report

on the Traffic in Opium at Shanghai," ibid., 65-66.

114. Shanghai International Settlement police intelligence reports,

May 25 and 28, 1930, The Opium Trade, 1910-1941, VI, xxvii,

72; Consul-General Brenan to M. Lampson, 29 May 1930, ibid., 67;

Brenan to A. Henderson, 30 July 1930, and enclosure, ibid., 94-95.

115. Isaacs, "Gang Rule in Shanghai," 18; Agnes Smedley, The

Great Road, 191-92.

116. Isaacs, "Gang Rule in Shanghai," 18; Y. C. Wang, 44()'41;

Boorman, III, 329; John Pal,ShanghaiSaga, 51; Chang, Tu Yueh-sheng

Chuan (Taipei, 1967),284-314.

117. O. E. Clubb, "The Opium Traffic in China," 84n; NR 27

March 1934, attached to 893.114 Narcotics1713. This fact alone should

cast doubt on Wang's assertion that Tu got out of the opium trade by

1931. Cf. Carroll Alcott, My War with Japan (New York: Henry Holt

and Co., 1943),99.

118. Willys Peck (Nanking) dispatch, 23 January 1935, 893.114

Narcotics/1024; cf. Willys Peck personal letter to Stanley Hornbeck, 19

January 1935, Hornbeck paper, box 336 (Hoover Library, Stanford,

Calif.). Quote from Hu Shih in N. T. Johnson memo of conversation, 3

July 1934,893.114 N 16/802.

119. Issacs, "Gang Rule in Shanghai," 18; NR 19 May 1932,

893.114 Narcotics/359; Suemitsu Takayoshi, 27-28; Wilbur Burton,

"China's New-Old Road to Ruin," 676; Ilona Ralf Sues, Shark's Fins

and Millet, 70-71; Frederick T. Merrill, Japan and the Opium Menace

(New York: IPR, 1942), 34; John Pal, Shanghai Saga, 82; Randall

Gould, China in the Sun, 54. Y. C. Wang, following Tu's laudatory

Chinese biographers, denies Tu's involvement in Soong's near demise:

Y. C. Wang, 433n, 439. He may be correct, since Tu's involvement was

only widely rumored and never proven. See also Chang, Tu Yueh-sheng

Chuan, 46-48. Indication of the reconciliation between T. V. Soong and

Tu Yueh-sheng was the outspoken support given Soong for the position

of Finance Minister by such groups as the Shanghai Labor Union,

Chinese Ratepayers Association, and Shanghai Citizens Federation, all

of which Tu controlled. China Weekly Review, 4 November 1933.

120. Y. C. Wang, 441; Boorman, III, 329; John B. Powell, My

Twentyjive Years in China, 157; Glick and Hong, Swords of Silence,

253; Tadao Sakai, "Le Hongbang (Bande Rouge) aux XIXe et xxe

siecles," in Jean Chesneaux, ed., Mouvements Populaires et Socitittis

Secretes en Chine aux Xlxe et xxe siecles (Paris: Francois Maspero,

1970), 328; Isaacs, "Gang Rule in Shanghai," 18. When the "Shanghai

Incident" ended with a Japanese withdrawal, the Shanghai Citizens

Emergency Committee was renamed the Shanghai Civic Federation. It

continued to gather secret intelligence on the Japanese. Its first

chairman, Shih Liang-ts'ai, was assassinated and Tu Yueh-sheng took his

place. See Boorman, III, 329; Y. C. Wang, 441; John Gunther, Inside

Asia, 267.

121. Burke dispatch, 2 August 1933, 893.00 PR Foochow/67;

NR 27 March 1934, 893.114 Narcotics1713; Frederick T. Merrill,Japan

and the Opium Menace, 26.

122. Percy Finch, Shanghai and Beyond, 297; China Yearbook,

1931; China Yearbook, 1933, 460; Suemitsu Takayoshi, 23; Y. C.

Wang, 438-39; John Pal, Shanghai Saga, 41; Barton to M. Lampson, The

Opium Traffic, 1910-1941, VI, xxv, 110; P. H. Lee, "Opium and

Extraterritoriality," Opium: A World Problem, II (April 1929),36.

123. Percy Finch, Shanghai and Beyond, 297-300; John B.

Powell, My Twenty-five Years in China, 137; Isaacs, Gang Rule in

Shanghai," 18; La Lumiere (Paris), 18 June 1932; Arch Carey, The War

Years at Shanghai (New York: Vantage Press, 1967), 225-26; Peking &

Tientsin Times, 28 June 1932; H. G. W. Woodhead, "The Local Opium

Situation: The Foreign Areas," Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury, 24

July 1933; Woodhead interview with M. Wilden, French Minister in

Peking, 21 October 1932, in The Opium Trade, 1910-1941, VI, xxx,

8-9, also in Cunningham (Shanghai) dispatch, 2 December 1932, JA

893.114 Narcotics/444; Brenan dispatch to Ingram, 7 November 1932,

The Opium Trade, 1910-1941, VI, xxx, 2-3; Report of Treasury

representative Irving S. Brown, 28 September 1933, enclosed in

Treasury Department memorandum to Secretary of State, 9 November

1932,893.114 Narcotics/420.

124. Treasury Department memorandum to Secretary of State, 9

November 1932, 893.114 Narcotics/420; Cunningham dispatch, 2

December 1932, JA 893.114 Narcotics/444; Cunningham report, 31

July 1933, 893.114 Narcotics/528; Peking & Tientsin Times, 28 June

1932; Peking & Tientsin Times, 11 November 1932; H. G. W.

Woodhead, "The Local Opium Situation," Shanghai Evening Post and

Mercury, 24,25 July 1933. See also Y. C. Wang, 440n on Tu's control

of the newspapers.

125. NR, "Opium Export Rights in Kewichow and Yunnan," 12

April 1935,893.114 Narcotics/1118.

126. NR 16 April 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1131.

127. Peking and Tientsin Times, 26 October 1934; F. P. Lockhart

(Tientsin) dispatch, 29 October 1934, 893.00112883; Bureau of

Narcotics (1936), 18-19; Bureau of Narcotics (1937), 20-21. On Tu's

international operations, see Ilona Ralf Sues, Shark's Fins and Millet,

69.

128. NR 9 October 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1367.

129. Treasury Department report on Shanghai narcotics traffic,

20 February 1934, 893.114 Narcotics/669; Cunningham (Shanghai)

dispatch, 19 February 1934, 893.114 Narcotics/653; O. E. Clubb, "The

Opium Traffic in China," 70; Adams (Hankow) dispatch, 9 April 1934,

893.00 PR Hankow/83.

130. NR 29 June1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1224.

131. NR 11 February 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1016; NR 14

September 1936,893.114 Narcotics/1731; Frederick T. Merrill, Japan

and the Opium Menace, 34-35; Ilona Ralf Sues, Shark's Fins and Millet,

92-93.

132. NR 14 September 1936, 893.114 Narcotics/1731; Cunningham

dispatch, July 1935, 893.00 PR Shanghai/82; Cunningham

dispatch, 17 October 1935, 893.114 Narcotics/1359; NR, 19 May

1932,893.114 Narcotics/359.

133. Gauss (Shanghai) dispatch, 18 May 1937, 893.114

Narcotics/1971; Gauss dispatch, 21 June 1937, 893.114 Narcotics/1999.

134. This was confirmed by C. S. Franklin, Chairman of the

Shanghai Municipal Council; see Clarence Gauss dispatch, 22 June

1937,893.114 Narcotics12013.

135. "Co,:!ncil May Stop Opium License Scheme in Settlement,"

China Weekly Review, 17 July 1937; Gauss dispatch, 24 June 1937,

893.114 Narcotics/2014 and attachments; Gauss dispatch 17

September 1937, 893.00 PR Shanghai/107.

136. China Yearbook, 1933, 460; China Yearbook, 1935, 381.

On the size of his fortune, see China Week~v Review, 10 July 193?

137. China Yearbook, 1933, 46().61; China Yearbook, 1936;

China Handbook, 1937-1943 (New York: MacMillan, 1943); Who's

Who in China, 5th ed. (China Weekly Review, 1936), 8, 237-38;

Economic Information Service, How Chinese Officials Amass Millions,

4, 18, 20; Biographies of Kuomintang Leaders (Harvard, mimeo.,

1948); Percy Finch, Shanghai and Beyond, 296. China Press Weekly

noted on 15 June 1935 that when he formally assumed his duties in the

Commercial Bank of China, he was "literally bombarded with

congratulatory messages."

138. The China Press Weekly, 11 May 1935; State Department

memorandum to Bureau of Narcotics, 8 July 1935, 893.114

Narcotics/1191; Cunningham (Shanghai) dispatch, 10 June 1935,

893.114 Narcotics/1199; Julian Schuman, Assignment China (New

York: Whittier Books, Inc., 1956), 26. China Press had formerly been

owned by the famous opium merchant Edward Ezra. John Pal,

Shanghai Saga, 27.

139. NR 24 October 1936, 893.114 Narcotics/1753; Ilona Ralf

Sues, Shark's Fins and Millet, 71.

140. China Press Weekly, 11 May 1935; China Yearhook, 1935,

357,381,409.

141. China Yearbook, 1936,215.

142. NR 14 September 1936, 893.114 Narcoticsl1731.

143. Y. C. Wang. 443-44; Yang Wei, I tai hao-hsia Tu Yueh-sheng,

passim; Boorman, III, 329; Percy Finch, Shanghai and Beyond, 301,

301; John Hunter Boyle, China and Japan at War, 1937-1945: The

Politics of Collaboration (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,

1972), 278-79; Carl Glick and Hong Sheng-hwa, Swords of Silence,

253-54; Tadao Sakai, "Le Hongbang ...," 332-33; K. M. Pannikar, In

Two Chinas (London: Allen & Unwin, 1955), 31.

144. NR 21 October 1938, 893.114 Narcoticsl2379.

145. Ibid.

146. NR 28 November 1938, 893.114 Narcotics/2400.

147. NR 21 October 1938,893.114 Narcotics/2379.

148. NR 1 July 1939, 893.114 Narcotics/2606~; NR 21 October

1938,893.114 Narcotics/2379.

149. NR 25 November 1938, 893.114 Narcotics/2399; NR 25

November 1938, 893.114 Narcotics/2393; NR 8 December 1938,

893.114 Narcotics/2395.

150. NR 25 November 1938, 893.114 Narcotics/2399.

151. Ibid.

152. Ibid.

153. Frank Lockhart dispatch, 21 June 1938, 893.114

Narcotics/228 7.154. NR 27 December 1938, 893.114 Narcotics/2426; OSS R&A

2565.1, "Who's Who in the Nanking Puppet Regime," 30 March 1945.

155. NR 16 December 1938, 893.114 Narcotics/2417.

156. Ibid.; NR 29 December 1938, 893.114 Narcotics/2427.

157. NR 19 January 1939, 893.114 Narcotics/2450.

157.5. NR 9 February 1939,893.114 Narcotics/2495.

158. NR 1 March 1940, 893.114 Narcotics/2748; NR 7 March

1940,893.114 Narcotics/2747; Y. C. Wang, 445.

159_ Ellen Jacobsen (Nicholson aide) report, 28 July 1941,

893.114 Narcotics/3074.

160. Christian Science Monitor,S June 1940; W. Blythe, 31-32;

Edward R. Rice (Sian) to Patrick Hurley (Chungking), 20 February

1945, Amerasia Papers, 11,1550-51.

161. NR 16 December 1938, 893.114 Narcotics12417.

162. OSS R&A 2254, "Political Implications of Chinese Secret

Societies"; G-2 memorandum, "Occupation of Shanghai," 8 October

1943, Amerasia Papers, 1,273-4; OSS CID 46914; Wilfred Blythe, 31;

Mark Gayn, Journey From the East, 414; OSS R&A 2565.1.

163. Blythe, 31; Y. C. Wang, 444·5; Rhodes Farmer, Shanghai

Harvest, 247; John Pal, Shanghai Saga, 19,186,188; OSS CID 46914;

Y. C. Wang, 444-5. The OSS document attributes Lu's slaying to Ch'ang

Yu-ch'ing.

164. Y. C. Wang, 446.

165. G·2 memorandum, "Occupation of Shanghai," 8 October

1943.

166. John S. Service memorandum, 4 August 1944, Amerasia

Papers, I, 734; John Davies memorandum, "The Shanghai Underground,"

19 November 1944, file #110, box 10, Stilwell papers,

Hoover library.

167. Smuggling in China-A Danger to World Trade (Peiping:

Peiping National University, 1936); P. T. Chen, The North China

Smuggling Situation: A Documentary Review (Chinese Yearbook

Publishing Co., 1936); Barbara Tuchman, Stilwell and the American

Experience in China, 1911-1945 (New York, Macmillan, 1970), 199;

Randall Gould, China in the Sun, 151; John Powell, My Twenty-five

Years in China, 288-9.

168. According to one estimate, Japan's revenue from the drug

trade was sufficient to finance its entire army in Manchuria. Carrol

Alcott, My War With Japan, 225 (cf. also chapters 11 and 13 on the

drug trade). An indication of the quantities of heroin produced in

Tientsin is the fact that in nine months of 1935, Tientsin imported

14,705 kg. of acid acetic anhydride (essential for refining heroin),

compared to 4 kg. for Nanking, which also had morphine factories.

Memorandum to Bureau of Narcotics, 3 December 1935, 893.114

Narcotics/1393. After the war, U.S. Occupation authorities in Japan

seized 47,838 kg. of opium, not including narcotics, as of 19 January

1946. UN document E/C.S.7/60, 5.

The best reports on Japan's narcotics activities in North China are

the reports of Treasury agent Nicholson, found in the State

Department's 893.114 Narcotics/files. Some of these became exhibits

in the Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far

East (lMFTE). See testimony and exhibits in IMFTE Proceedings,

2648·75, 2676-91, 4407ff, 4663-4908. Also see Yip Tin Lee, "Opium

Suppression in China," 53-65. Among the many published sources are

C. D. Alcott's articles in China Press, 4, 5, 6, 7 December 1938;

Frederick T. Merrill, Japan and the Opium Menace; Hunter Boyle,

China and Japan at Wa~, 99-100; Willard Price, "The New Narcotics

Peril," Asia, XXXVIII (October 1938), 575·578; S. J. Fuller article in

China Quarterly, V (Winter 1939), 113-127; Bureau of Narcotics

(1938),69-75; Bureau 'of Narcotics (1942), 6-9; Bureau of Narcotics

(1946), 4-5; SeeS tate to Joseph Grew, 12 September 1938, Foreign

Relations of the United States, 1938, IV, 561-7; "Heroin Racket

Flourishing in Shanghai," North China Herald, 27 May 1936; American

Information Committee, Narcotic Trafficking and the Japanese Army,

8 March 1939; Marcus Mervine, "J apanese Concession in Tientsin and

the Narcotics Trade," International Bulletin (Nanking), III (11

February 1937), 83-97; Bingham Oai, "The Opium Condition in

Manchuria," Opium: A World Problem, III (April 1930), 1-23; M.S.

Bates, "Reports on Narcotics in Nanking," China Information Service,

no. 35,21 December 1939,3-5.

169. Theodore H. White and Annallee Jacoby, Thunder Out of

China, 72; Graham Peck, Two Kinds of Time, 18-21; Gauss dispatch, 27

November 1942, Amerasia Papers, 1,223-227; OSS CID 106327; OSS

R&A branch, "Trade Between Occupied China and Free China,"

situation report no. b, 16 June 1942, box 323, Hornbeck papers.

170. On Tai Li's smuggling, see Graham Peck, Two Kinds of

Time, 140; Ringwalt (Kweilin) dispatch, 8 August 1944, FR, 1944, VI,

138-9; John P. Davies memorandum, ibid, 726; Han Suyin, Birdless

Summer, 116. On Tai Li's recruitment from Ch'ing Pang, see Ernest O.

Hauser, Shanghai: City for Sale, 295; Randall Gould, China in the Sun,

356.

171. Y. C. Wang, 445-6; Yang Wei, 39ff.

172. Yang Wei, 66; G-2 Report, "Tu Yueh-sheng," 8 October

1943.

173. Graham Peck, Two Kinds of Time, 549; Han Suyin, Birdless

Summer, 84; Boorman, III, 329; Yang Wei, 22; Randall Gould, China in

the Sun, 359.

174. Han Suyin, 85-7, 116; Liao T'ai-ch'u, "The Ko Lao Hui in

Szechuan," Pacific Affairs, XX (June 1947), 170; G. Atcheson

(Chungking) dispatch, 9 July 1943, 893.114 Narcotics/3168; OSS

report, "Political Implications of Chinese Secret Societies," 37-38.

175. Lincoln C. Brownell MID report, "Chinese 24th Army," 6

July 1944, in Amerasia Papers, I, 654-655; OSS report, "Political

Implications of Chinese Secret Societies," 38; China Press, 5 August

1947.

175.5 Yunnanese troops also posed a threat. For an account of a

major battle fought over opium between Yunnanese and central

government troops, see Troy Perkins (Kunming), 21 July 1942,

893.114 Narcotics/3156.

176. Arthur Ringwalt (Kweilin) dispatch, 7 June 1943, attachment

to 893.114 Narcotics/3168; Y. C. Wang, 451-2; Yang Wei, 66-9;

Han Suyin, 86; P. L. Thyraud de Vosjoli, Lamia (Boston: Little Brown,

1970), 86.

177. Miles describes his activities in A Different Kind of War

(Garden City: Doubleday, 1967); cf. Roy O. Stratton, SACO: The Rice

Paddy Navy (1950).

178. P. L. T. de Vosjoli, Lamia, 86; Mark Gayn and John C.

Caldwell, American Agent (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1947),90,

104ff, 108; John C. Caldwell, "General Report on Fukien Province,"

September 1944, Amerasia Papers, 11,956-957.

179. Gayn and Caldwell, 90.

180. Milton Miles, A Different Kind of War, 248, 249-50; OSS

R&A 2565.1.

181. Miles, 247-48.

182. On COl program, see M. P. Goodfellow memorandum to

General Le, box 3, Goodfellow papers, Hoover library. On Caldwell's

activities, see Gayn and Caldwell, 91, 103, 133-34. Caldwell later

became known as an anti-communist spokesman, and joined the

American branch of Chiang Kai-shek's Asian People's Anti·Communist

League, the American Afro·Asian Educational Exchange.

Caldwell was not the only one lobbying for allied use of the

pirates. Col. Gilbert Stuart, an Australian soldier of fortune and the

only Westerner in the Chinese army, was a major force behind the

organization of the pirates for intelligence and behind Chungking's

acceptance of the plan. See his manuscript au tobiography in Stuart

papers, Hoover library.

183. Miles, 250-51.

184. New York Times, 20 November 1946.

185. Miles, 508·9, 527, 533; Graham Peck, Two Kinds of Time,

645; Y. C. Wang, 449; Randall Gould, China in the Sun, 105; Percy

Finch, 305.

186. Carl Glick and Hong Sheng-hwa, Swords of Silence, 254.

187. He did, however, donate 100,000,000,000 (highly inflated)

Chinese dollars to the Shanghai Special Relief Levy Committee. Sin

Wen Pao, 3 August 1948.

188. "Memorandum for A-7 files," 3 July 1945, Milton Miles

papers, Naval History Division; 21 April 1945 memorandum from Coe

to Morgenthau, in Morgentbau Diary (China), III, 1486-1488.

189. Tu's Chung Wai bank was one of 15 Chinese banks in

Shanghai which handled UNRRA flour sales (Nortb Cbina Daily News,

26 February 1946). Most of these supplies were diverted to the black

market. Tu was also a director of China Merchants Steamship

Navigation Company which took part in excessive profit·making on

Yangtze River shipping; see "China in Travail," Tbe Round Table,

December 1947, 441.

190. John Pal, Sbanghai Saga, 120.

191. Graham Peck, Two Kinds of Time, 683; Lih Pao, 29 August

1947, lists Du's affiliations.

192. In 1945, Du was reported to be one of the promoters of

193. ShunPao, 27 May 1946.

194. Wen Hui Paa, 9 December 1946; Sin Min Wan Pao, 2

Deceml:er 1946,6 January 1947; Cbung Yan Jib Pao, 27 July 1947.

195. Sbun Pao, 1 February 1947.

196. Y. C. Wang, 449-453; Ta Cbung Yeh Paa, 2 September

1948; Sin Wen Pao, 8 September 1948; Ta Kung Paa, 5 November

1948.

197. Christopher Rand, "Letter from Shanghai," New Yorker, 6

November 1948,93.

198. China Personalities (CC-connected), No.2, 28 December

1948.

199. Arch Carey, The War Years at Shanghai (New York:

Unit 731 (Japanese: 731部隊 Hepburn: Nana-san-ichi Butai) was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) of World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japan. Unit 731 was based at the Pingfang district of Harbin, the largest city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (now Northeast China).

It was officially known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army (関東軍防疫給水部本部 Kantōgun Bōeki Kyūsuibu Honbu). Originally set up under the Kempeitai military police of the Empire of Japan, Unit 731 was taken over and commanded until the end of the war by General Shiro Ishii, an officer in the Kwantung Army. The facility itself was built between 1934 and 1939 and officially adopted the name "Unit 731" in 1941.

Some historians estimate that up to 250,000 men, women, and children —from which around 600 every year were provided by the Kempeitai —were subjected to experimentation conducted by Unit 731 at the camp based in Pingfang alone, which does not include victims from other medical experimentation sites, such as Unit 100.

Unit 731 veterans of Japan attest that most of the victims they experimented on were Chinese while a small percentage were Russian, Mongolian, Korean, and Allied POW's. Almost 70% of the victims who died in the Pingfang camp were Chinese, including both civilian and military. Close to 30% of the victims were Russian. Some others were South East Asians and Pacific Islanders, at the time colonies of the Empire of Japan, and a small number of Allied prisoners of war. The unit received generous support from the Japanese government up to the end of the war in 1945.

Instead of being tried for war crimes, the researchers involved in Unit 731 were secretly given immunity by the U.S. in exchange for the data they gathered through human experimentation. Others that Soviet forces managed to arrest first were tried at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials in 1949. Americans did not try the researchers so that the information and experience gained in bio-weapons could be co-opted into the U.S. biological warfare program, as had happened with Nazi researchers in Operation Paperclip. On May 6, 1947, Douglas MacArthur, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, wrote to Washington that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii probably can be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'War Crimes' evidence." Victim accounts were then largely ignored or dismissed in the West as communist propaganda.

It was August 1945, and American Marines were being slaughtered by the thousands as they advanced on the islands surrounding Japan. What the U.S. needed was a secret weapon that would end the war swiftly. Or did it? Investigate the disturbing events that led to the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan alongside leading historians and military experts. Hear why Japan's ability to fight effectively had largely been eliminated before the bomb was dropped. Examine new evidence that has come to light in the 50 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Did President Truman order the attack despite knowing Japan was willing to surrender? Was it political motivation that drove him to defy his closest advisors? Find out for yourself in this powerful program.

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trials or the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was convened on April 29, 1946, to try the leaders of the Empire of Japan for three types of war crimes. "Class A" crimes were reserved for those who participated in a joint conspiracy to start and wage war, and were brought against those in the highest decision-making bodies; "Class B" crimes were reserved for those who committed "conventional" atrocities or crimes against humanity; "Class C" crimes were reserved for those in "the planning, ordering, authorization, or failure to prevent such transgressions at higher levels in the command structure".

Twenty-eight Japanese military and political leaders were charged with waging aggressive war and with responsibility for conventional war crimes. More than 5,700 lower-ranking personnel were charged with conventional war crimes in separate trials convened by Australia, China, France, The Netherlands, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and the United States. The charges covered a wide range of crimes including prisoner abuse, rape, sexual slavery, torture, ill-treatment of labourers, execution without trial and inhumane medical experiments. China held 13 tribunals, resulting in 504 convictions and 149 executions.

The Japanese Emperor Hirohito and all members of the imperial family, such as career officer Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, were not prosecuted for involvement in any of the three categories of crimes. Herbert Bix explained, "the Truman administration and General MacArthur both believed the occupation reforms would be implemented smoothly if they used Hirohito to legitimise their changes". As many as 50 suspects, such as Nobushttp://www.umbc.edu/che/tahlessons/pdf/Japanese_American_Internment_During_World_War_II(PrinterFriendly).pdfhttp://www.umbc.edu/che/tahttp://www.umbc.edu/che/tahlessons/pdf/Japanese_American_Internment_During_World_War_II(PrinterFriendly).pdfhlessons/pdf/Japanese_American_Internment_During_World_War_II(PrinterFriendly).pdfuke Kishi, who later became Prime Minister, and Yoshisuke Aikawa, head of Nissan, were charged but released in 1947 and 1948. Shiro Ishii received immunity in exchange for data gathered from his experiments on live prisoners. The lone dissenting judge to exonerate all indictees was Indian jurist Radhabinod Pal.

The tribunal was adjourned on November 12, 1948.

  • Archive Collection of World War II Pamphlets, Brochures, Newspapers, Newsletters, and Other Publications

Collection of World War II Pamphlets, Brochures, Newspapers, Newsletters, and Other Publication

Collection of World War II Books, Radio Broadcasts, Films, Cartoons, and Other Items