NOT ALL QUIET ON D. WEST FRONT

AMERICAN BETRAYAL: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character

 (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, @ 2013)     by DIANA WEST

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            The US, Britain, China, and the Soviets all won WWII, but the USSR won the peace that followed.  The reason, according to Diana West, is that Communist infiltration of the American (and British and Chinese governments) led to major decisions that culminated in a longer war than necessary, the Soviet occupation of Eastern and Central Europe, and Soviet dominance in North Korea, Manchuria, and ultimately in a Communist regime victorious on the mainland of China.

            Her book has encountered fierce criticism, especially from former Left-wingers David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh, who became Reagan Republicans in the 1980s.  I learned much from this West volume, and yet I disagree with some of her major points.

            West contends that had it not been for Communist influence in the Roosevelt Administration, the Western allies could have made a deal with anti-Nazi generals in Germany who would have ousted Hitler, ceased the war in the West, closed the concentration camps, and joined with the West to protect Eastern Europe from Soviet advance.  Because this alternative would have prevented Stalinization of much of Europe, Communist agents in FDR’s government sought to prevent any consideration of this alternative.  Furthermore, this alternative policy would have ended the war in 1943 and saved the lives of millions of soldiers and civilians and victims in camps.  If only?!

            Nowhere in her book does West mention the “Dolchstoss” theory that grew to prominence in Germany at the conclusion of WWI.  She should have.  When “the Great War” ended in November 1918, there was not a single Allied soldier on German soil.  To many Germans, the armistice came as a shock.  Germany could have and should have won.  German troops were still in Belgium and France, and after Russia had been knocked out of the war, the Kaiser’s troops were also in many new states chipped from the old, huge Russian Empire.  How could Germany have lost?  The reason was the troops were stabbed in the back – by traitorous elements on the home front.  Socialists, Spartacists (soon to be Communists), strikers, the selfish, the plutocrats, and most especially, the Jews were the cause of Germany’s betrayal, Germany’s defeat.  The peace terms by the victors at Versailles brought greater grief to Germany.  Germany was condemned as guilty for starting the war, so it had to pay the cost of the war to the victors through enormous reparations.  By 1923 the German economy collapsed under the weight of massive inflation.  Poverty.  Humiliation.  Defeat.  And in 1929 Depression.  Germany could have won except for the stab in the back.  It should have won.  A new political leader promised to erase and reverse that defeat and to make the Left and the Jews pay for their treason of 1918.  Germany did not lose the First War.  If proper precautions were taken to curtail the traitorous factions, Germany would not lose a Second.

            So, in the early 1940s West suggests that American policy should have been to work with the German Army to overthrow Hitler.  Would this have ended the war in 1943?  Assuming there could be a truce on the eastern front with Stalin (a major assumption), assuming a free Poland was restored, assuming the other nations of Eastern Europe granted some democratic rights, how long might this peace last?  Surely some Germans would have felt their chance at victory under Hitler had again been thwarted, betrayed, this time by the elite nobility among the army officer corps.  In Germany there might rise a new Dolchstoss myth.  Might not a new Nazi movement develop and take hold of Germany once again?  Once again they could proclaim Germany was just about to win, when it was betrayed, this time by nobles among the politicians and general staff.  Their betrayal overthrew Hitler on the verge of victory!  Think again: Must the Western nations have to war with Germany every generation, 1914, 1939, 1964?  Or would it not be best to make the Germans realize that they did lose WWI, and make certain that they learn the lesson that they have fully lost it in WWII?  When Churchill and Roosevelt demanded “unconditional surrender” by the Axis, they were aware that many Germans had falsely assumed that they had not lost in 1918.  No more playing around; Germany will know without question that it has lost by the end of WWII.  Unconditional surrender!

            And who might be some of those involved in the anti-Nazi, anti-Hitler German Government that was to work with the Western allies?  Along with many generals, Ms. West notes the German Ambassador to Turkey was involved in these intrigues, Franz von Papen.(284, 304)  During the Weimar Republic von Papen was a member of the Catholic Center Party, and was even appointed Kanzler for a very short time in 1932 before being replaced by a general.  Von Papen then helped overcome Pres. Hindenburg’s aversion to Hitler, so that Hitler, leader of by far the largest party in the Reichstag, was named Kanzler in January 1933.  But the conservatives were confident they had tricked Hitler, for the majority of his Cabinet would not be Nazis.  Conservatives would be the vast majority of Hitler’s cabinet and von Papen would be Vice Chancellor.  Hitler would be a figure head.  The conservative Cabinet was going to tame and restrain the fanatical Hitler.  That was the plan.  One knows how well that worked.  Indeed, on the Night of Long Knives in 1934, von Papen himself was nearly among those killed when Hitler “cleansed” his regime.  So, in the midst of war in the 1940s against Germany, Churchill and Roosevelt are to place their hopes on the likes of von Papen to tame and restrain and overthrow Hitler and establish a more democratic Germany and, and…And for this the Western allies were to jeopardize their alliance with Stalin?  One need not be a Communist agent in the Roosevelt Administration to detect some problems with the approach advocated by Ms. West.

            Diana West also believes it was Communist influence in the Western alliance that pressed for a 2^nd front landing against the Nazis in northern France.  She argues a better strategy would have been through the Balkans and the Adriatic, using the Allied armies in Italy as the base.  By invading the Balkans the Western Allies would have liberated much of Eastern Europe before the arrival of Soviet troops.  Indeed, there would have been no need for Soviet troops in the area.  So the Balkans would not have fallen under Communist rule lost behind Stalin’s Iron Curtain.

            Ms. West contends that this strategy was therefore preferable to the one which consolidated much of the Allied forces into the invasion of northern and southern France – D Day in Normandy, and the smaller invasion of southern France from the Mediterranean.  Again she blames Communist influence for selecting these targets, which left Eastern Europe prey to advancing Soviet armies.

            Let me use some of the information West provides to refute one of her arguments.  Communists in the British MI5 and the American OSS were feeding misinformation to their higher ups concerning partisan activities in Yugoslavia.(293, and also in Evans/Romerstein’s Stalin’s Secret Agents(161-62)  When the Nazis first invaded that nation in 1941 Draga Mihailovic organized an anti-fascist resistance movement.  It was not until after the Germans attacked the Soviets in the summer of 1941 that a Communist resistance movement was organized, under the leadership of Tito.  Because of Communist influence in MI5 and OSS, massive disinformation spread.  The intelligence reports of efforts to subvert the various Axis authorities established in what had been Yugoslavia were manipulated so that successful attacks by Mihailovic’s group were attributed to Tito’s instead, while the anti-Communist Mihailovic was described as ineffective, corrupt, and an Axis collaborator.  Based upon such Communist lies (emanating from the Britain’s own MI5, even Churchill turned against Mihailovic, cut off his supplies and threw Britain’s support to the Communist Tito.  Consequently, even had the preferred strategy of Ms. West been adopted, had the Western allies invaded the Balkans, they might well have established pro-Communist governments in the Balkans like one led by Tito.  The Balkans might then have gone Communist even without the Soviet Army!

            But what about Western victories in the Balkans?  In Hitler’s Neuropa, Croatia became an independent nation for the first time in the 20^th century.  Would the Croatians not have fought fiercely to defend their new nation?(Recall the ethnic wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s?)  And the Muslims?  (Some of whom joined the Wehrmacht but wearing a fez as part of their uniform.)  Would the Western allies have had a cake walk through the Balkans?  And through Greece?  Ever hear of the nearby Gallipoli?  The raid that failed dismally.  The Balkan-Adrilatic proposal of Ms. West may have left Western forces stalled in mountainous terrain and amid hostile ethnic groups resulting in bloody battles, high casualties, and very slow progress.  The Soviets may have ended up with most of the Balkans anyway.  And by our delaying D-Day, the Soviets may have driven further into Western Europe, seizing Denmark and perhaps even part of France.  And by placing more of Western material into the Balkan assaults, there would have been less for Normandy.  Could the Balkan alternative have rendered D-Day a failure?

            Enough speculation.  Despite my criticism and skepticism of some of West’s theses, I learned much from her book.  In January 2012 Russian leader Vladimir Putin in a public address thanked the Western scientists who provided atomic secrets to the Soviets so that the Communist regime could develop its own nuclear bombs.  Putin emphasized that the Soviets were provided “suitcases” filled with material; “suitcases full” he stressed.

            In West’s book one can ponder if those suitcases were shipped to the USSR from Great Falls, MT.  West discusses the sworn testimony of George Jordan before Congressional hearings in 1949-50 about his experiences shipping Lend Lease plane-loads of material in 1943.  Some were atomic materials, and some black suitcases contained materials with unusual words like uranium.(138-39, etc.)  The American in charge of Lend Lease was Harry Hopkins, whom some deemed so powerful in the FDR Administration, that called him a co-President.

            Ms. West also reveals an incident damning Hopkins on another occasion.  In April 1943  the FBI had bugged the Oakland home of Steve Nelson, a National Committeeman of the Communist Party, USA.  The FBI overheard a representative from the Soviet Embassy give money to Nelson for the purpose of him placing Communist agents “in industries engaged in secret war production…so the information could be obtained for transmittal to the Soviet Union.”(188)  West declares that this is how the Bureau first learned about the Manhattan Project to produce the A-bomb.  Because of this important information, on 7 May 1943 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote a confidential letter to one of our highest government officials, Harry Hopkins, alerting him to the problem of Soviet espionage and its connection to the CPUSA.

            West writes: “Hopkins’ reaction to Hoover’s revelation may be the most damaging…When he read what Hoover told [him] in his confidential letter…Hopkins [would] immediately turn around and tell the Soviet Embassy, where the same ‘diplomat’ was posted, that the FBI was on to them.”(188)  Hopkins, who then lived in the White House and was perhaps FDR’s chief advisor, was warning the Soviets to be careful when planning espionage against the United States.

            A few other examples of Hopkins’ influence are disclosed by West.  In April 1944 a Soviet official, Victor Kravchenko, defected in the US.  The New York Times headlined the story: “Soviet Official Here Resigns; Assails ‘Double-Faced’ Policies.”(110) The point was that while Stalin spoke of democracy, he was practicing tyranny.(128)  Kravchenko was an ‘economic attache’ in the Soviet headquarters of Lend Lease in Washington; he knew a lot.  How could this anti-Soviet expose be contained?  The Soviets requested the return of this ‘deserter’ to the USSR, and continued to press the Administration for his return.  At one point, the FBI warned him that the US State Department might apprehend him to give him to the Soviets.  Hopkins referred to him as a deserter.(132)  Meanwhile, the Soviets had a good idea of what Kravchenko was revealing.  He was talking to the FBI, but the OSS had supplied him with a typist and translator, a woman who was also a secret agent of the KGB.(118, 132)  Though Pres. Roosevelt toyed with the idea of returning Kravchenko, when the Soviets would not guarantee that he would not be shot, then FDR rejected the Soviet request for the man’s return.  On the other hand, at Yalta Roosevelt agreed to the forced return of some 2 million Soviets who had fled, escaped, deserted, (some of whom even joined fascist forces).  If they were not killed immediately, they were undoubtedly shipped to slave labor in the Gulag.

            Eventually Kravchenko would write two books exposing the Soviet tyranny and he would testify before Congress that for the Soviets, the Lend Lease (the agency he defected from) – “the Soviet Purchasing Commission…-was in reality the Soviet Spying Commission, the Soviet Thieving Commission…with its thousand-plus employees under order to filch as many industrial and military secrets as possible for the upcoming struggle between the USSR and the USA.”(114)  The American chief of Lend Lease was Harry Hopkins.  He was arguably the most important figure in the Roosevelt Administration, and yet he invariably sided with the Soviet position.  Gen. George Marshall summed things up, “Hopkins job with the president was to represent Russian interests.  My job was to represent American interests.”(181)  Perhaps Hopkins performed his job too well.  But since when is there a job description in the American bureaucracy, even at the highest level, to represent Russian (or any foreign) interests?

            I cannot here discuss all the many actions of the Roosevelt Administration that seemed to promote the interests of the Soviets above those of the US.  West reviews many of the Soviet agents in the American government.  She is excellent at exposing how the Roosevelt and Truman and Eisenhower Administrations preferred to hide and conceal information about treason from Congress and the public.  She contends Truman was more interested in pressing perjury charges against the anti-communist whistle-blower Whittaker Chambers than purging foreign agents like Alger Hiss from the State Dept.  West, like M. Stanton Evans, concludes that Sen. Joseph McCarthy was a hero; the witch-hunters were right because there were many real witches infesting our government.  West attacks the play by Arthur Miller which in academia summarizes the Left view of McCarthy and the hearings on Communism.(173)  While our military knew of the secret messages transmitted from the Soviet Embassy in Washington to Moscow as early as 1943, these documents were not made public until 1993, and the vast majority are still not decrypted.(74)  She maintains, had they been made public earlier, McCarthy would have been shown right, and most liberals wrong on the issue of subversion.  She denounced the Hollywood Left that still makes films praising the courage of the Hollywood 10, the Communists who were blacklisted in the McCarthy era.  Yet, she quotes one of those ten, Dalton Trumbo, in the Daily Worker praising their efforts of blocking any films critical of Communism.  The CP in Hollywood was blacklisting conservatives before THE blacklist of Communists.(88)  The Hollywood 10 were not defenders of freedom; they were defenders of Stalin.

Ms. West generally avoids most political campaign history, but she does mention that Republican Gov. John Bricker, running mate of Thomas Dewey in 1944, did raise the issue of Communist influence in the Roosevelt White House.  Bricker accused White House staffer Lauglin Currie of being a radical if not a Communist.(169-72)  But West concedes that in 1944 most voters did not want to change horses mid-stream in a major war, and Democrat Roosevelt won his 4^th term.  But the Communist issue had been raised long before.  Before the 1936 election, the Hearst national chain of newspapers printed this short poem; “The Red New Deal with a Soviet seal/ Endorsed by a Moscow hand/ The strange result of an alien cult/ in a liberty-loving land.”  Despite the anti-FDR theme of that widely circulated poem, Roosevelt was re-elected in 1936 carrying 46 of 48 states and garnering about 60% of the popular vote.  Americans that year were more interested in jobs and welfare than talk about isms.  Of course, by printing such a poem and Republican columnists, Hearst became a target.  In 1941 Hollywood would get its revenge.  In that year the unauthorized bio-pic of William Randolph Hearst, “Citizen Kane,” burst onto the silver screen.  The Hearst newspaper and radio chain was the Fox News of its day, and highly critical of FDR.  So Hollywood did not portray Hearst as it did the god-like Roosevelt in films.  Instead, the media magnate moves from a man of social conscience to a power mad, greedy, unstable tyrant.  Well, he was against Roosevelt!  West notes the Stalinist legacy lingered in Hollywood even in 1999 when Elia Kazan, the creator of “Streetcar Named Desire,” “On the Waterfront,” and other magnificent films, was given a lifetime award from the Academy Awards.  He had to enter from a side door to avoid the protestors, and when presented, many celebrities in the audience turned their backs on him.  Kazan named the Communists, the Stalinists at mid-century.  And for that he was vilified even at the century’s end!

            Though her style is rambling, roving, and often non-linear (translate: disorganized), there are gems to be found in Diana West’s book.  Unfortunately, the book should not be the place to introduce comparisons between Communist and Islamic infiltrations in the US Government, or American appeasement of both threats.

            West complains that among leading academic historians, FDR is invariably listed among America’s best Presidents.  And certainly, on one level, the American people concur; Franklin Roosevelt is the only President elected to a 3^rd term, and then to a 4^th.  FDR was first elected during the depth of the Great Depression, led the nation out of it through his New Deal, then piloted the ship of state through the perilous storms brewing in Europe and Asia.  He outmaneuvered the very popular (probably vast majority at times) isolationists, reassuring the nation “again and again and again” as he did in his October 1940 speech (just before the election) that “their boys would not be sent to any foreign wars.”  However, when France fell to the German blitzkrieg in spring 1940, FDR violated traditional notions of neutrality, revised the American Neutrality Law, provided supplies to Britain in return for bases in the Western Hemisphere, occupied French islands off Canada, and Greenland, and later Iceland (Danish colonies).  Roosevelt had American ships shadow German u-boats and then radio their positions to British destroyers.  American ships were even escorting convoys to Britain.  It was an undeclared naval war 1940-41 between the US and Germany.  All in the name of peace; these were acts of war.  America was no longer really neutral, but the arsenal of democracy.  Meanwhile we were skirting closer to full-scale war.

            This is not the place to debate whether Roosevelt knew when and where the Japs were preparing to attack in December 1941, or even the role of Communists agents in causing the final rupture between the US and Japan.  The point here, with Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt succeeded in uniting the American nation and getting us into war.  Hitler helped a few days later by declaring war on the US (though we had engaged him in near-war for a year).  Following Pearl, the isolationists shut up; America First shut its doors, and Americans rallied round the flag.

            And here is the point misunderstood by many: to the liberals, so what if Roosevelt lied to the American people (of as Hillary Clinton told Congress about Benghazi, “What difference does it make?)?  We needed to get into the war against Germany, and we got it.  The majority of Americans were still probably isolationists into late 1941, and Col. Lindbergh and the America First had a mass following.

And there was very good reason for American isolationism.  Most Americans knew by the 1920s and 30s how the Eastern Establishment had lied to us to get us into WWI.  The propaganda stories demonizing the Germans as savage Huns, the Kaiser as a monster, cartoons of German soldiers bayoneting nuns and babies, and the whole Versailles lie that Germany was solely responsible for WWI.

            Naturally, many Americans were skeptical when the same anti-German propaganda was repeated in the late 1930s and early 40s.  When Germany attacked Poland in Sept. 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany.  But when the USSR attacked Poland from the other side 2 weeks later, still in Sept. 1939, Britain and France did nothing.  And the Soviets would occupy a larger slice of Poland than the Germans.  When Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and attacked the USSR in summer 1941, many Americans agreed with Democratic Missouri Senator Harry Truman who thought it would be good if both dictators fought it out and destroyed each other.  On the other hand, Roosevelt, pushing Lend Lease for the UK, had the wording of the legislation altered so it could also aid the USSR.  Roosevelt made Hopkins the chief of the Lend Lease program, and his notion, undoubtedly received from FDR, was to give top priority in supplies, munitions, etc., to the Soviets, above those of Britain, above those even for American troops engaged in fighting with the enemy.

            In the end, this is why the academedia complex still loves FDR.  He lied.  He defeated the wishes of the American people.  He got us into war.  He helped save the Soviets so it did not crumble under the Nazi onslaught.  Hopkins and his Lend Lease sent to Russia tons of butter (even when rationed here), Dodge trucks, tanks, planes, whatever, to the Soviets.  And the Soviets would fight with their blood and thereby save the lives of millions of Americans who would come on later in the war and save Western Europe.

            Their liberal view of history can be presented another way – what if the American people had defeated Roosevelt?  What if a Lindbergh had become President?  How would America have survived in a world with Asia under the Japanese Empire, Europe dominated by Hitler, and Eurasia under Stalin?  And if Hitler and Stalin warred against each other, the victor would control a massive super continent, eventually immeasurably stronger.  Could the American republic survive in such a world?  And if we had to fight, could we win then?  It might be too late.  So the liberals are delighted that FDR lied to the American people, manipulated them, and defeated their isolationist heroes.  The liberal Establishment’s hostility to populism did not begin in 2008 with Obama publicly sneering at those who cling to guns and religion.  Nor did it begin in 1940 with Roosevelt’s campaign for a 3^rd term.  But the elite disdain for the populist solutions was certainly reinforced by FDR’s decisions from above.  And even now liberal historians are reluctant to question his pro-Stalinist policies and Communist appeasement.

            Diana West is naïve to write that the Big Lie began in 1933 when the US first recognized the USSR.  Big lies are a part of all governments.  True, the scale of spying by the Soviets on Americans, the financial support given to the CPUSA, this was unique and beyond what one might expect from friendly countries.  And the penetration grew in the 1930s and expanded greatly during WWII – so much so that West refers to ours as an “occupied government.”  The consequences of this occupation resulted in Soviet overt occupation of Eastern Europe, and Communist dictatorships established in North Korea and China.  She notes that the charters of all the major international institutions created at the end of WWII were composed by individuals who were clearly Soviet agents or who may have been such.  Yet, in this paper I have responded that some of the decisions made by FDR and his appointees were rational choices (unconditional surrender, invasion of northern France, etc.) even if the Communists were also promoting the same policies.  If a Communist (or a Nazi) says 1 + 1 = 2, that is not a ground for us to say it is 3.  Even if there had not been a single Communist or a single Soviet agent in the Roosevelt Administration, there were reasonable grounds for the policies of unconditional surrender and the invasion of northern France.  Yes, and even a good reason to supply the Soviets with material so they could continue to fight against the Germans in WWII.  Of course, I see NO reason for supplying the Soviets with suitcases of Atomic secrets!  No reason for the betrayal of Mihailovic in Yugoslavia.  No reason for the betrayal of Chiang, the Poles, etc.  There was no good reason at the end of WWII to return all of those who had escaped the tyranny of Stalin to the Soviet dictatorship.  And there was no good reason – other than appeasement of Stalin – to forget about up to 20,000 American POWs, “liberated” by the Soviets and never returned to the West.  These policies do reflect Communist influence in the American government.  These decisions indicate that some in the American government were more interested in promoting Stalin’s way over the American way.

            Author West quotes various sources along the way who argued that the US should have bargained more with the Soviets, that we could have gotten a much better deal, especially when Stalin was hard-pressed.  But FDR did not seem interested in that for he believed he could handle Stalin.  And some in his Administration pushed for the best deal for the Soviets.  This important aspect of FDRs Presidency is what the liberal historians seek to ignore and suppress.

FDR's ADVISORS & STALIN's AGENTS

STALIN’S SECRET AGENTS: THE SUBVERSION OF

ROOSEVELT’S GOVERNMENT (New York, etc.: Threshold Editions, 2014)

By M. STANTON EVANS AND HERBERT ROMERSTEIN

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            The book is readable and provocative.  When considering the results of WWII, the authors found the real victor among the Allies was not the US, Britain, France, or China, but the Soviet Union.  And the reason for this Communist victory was not merely their performance in battle on the ground, but the influence of their secret agents in Western governments promoting the interests of the Soviets, especially during war-time summits at Quebec, Teheran, and Yalta.  Moreover, Communist infiltration of the British spy organization and the US Office of Strategic Services (predecessor to the CIA) resulted in the betrayal of anti-Nazi (but non- and anti-Communist) leaders in Poland and Yugoslavia.

            The authors note that during the war the pro-Communists demanded that US and Britain open a 2^nd front in Europe to relieve some of the burden faced by Stalin in the war against the Axis.  However, until 1945 the Left never urged a 2^nd front against Japan from Soviet Siberia (not until war’s near end).  Indeed, the authors maintain that some of the American Lend Lease material sent by the US to the Soviets was traded during the war to Japan, America’s lethal foe in the Pacific.(59-60)  The authors explore how some policies, pressed by the Left, like the demand for unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, may have made the Germans fight more determinedly rather than surrender to the Western allies after their landings at Normandy.  By intensifying the fighting in Western Europe, the Soviets could then conquer more in Eastern Europe.  And when unconditional surrender was asked of Japan, again these terms played into Stalin’s hands.  Stalin knew the Japanese wanted to surrender because in summer 1945 they asked for his help in negotiating terms with the US.  Despite the view of various American military leaders that the US could defeat the Japanese without Soviet help, a deal was made at Yalta, so that if Stalin would  enter the Pacific war withinin 3 months after the conclusion of the war in Europe, 8 May 1945, then he would be rewarded with prizes of victory.  To encourage Stalin, massive material was sent to him so he could mount a major offensive against Nippon.  Many Americans assumed that invasion of the Japanese home islands would be extremely costly in the lives of both natives and Americans.  The American A-bomb had not yet been fully tested.  So there were reasonable arguments to promise Stalin something if he would enter the war against Japan.  In August 1945 the American bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviets entered the war against Japan.  Japan quickly surrendered.

            As a consequence of entering the war against Japan for a total of 5 days, the Soviets received south Sakhalin and the Kurile island chain.  They were also allowed to occupy the northern half of the Korean peninsula, occupy rail and other facilities in Manchukuo, and confiscate Japanese weapons and industries in those areas.  Evans and Romerstein write: “It was an amazing coup that put not only China but other nations of Asia at risk of Communist domination – among the most stunning diplomatic triumphs ever recorded by one major power against another.”(201)  Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin made the decision at Yalta.  The leader of the Chinese government, Chiang Kai-shek was not even present as the other powers moved Manchukuo from the Japanese to the Soviet sphere.  Worse, a conservative American intelligence agent who opposed Soviet intervention, Col. Ivan Yeeaton, had predicted what might happen if the Soviets entered the Pacific War.  His report warned that giving so much to the Soviets in Asia would make Chiang Kai-shek’s position so vulnerable that China might become the Poland of Asia to be overrun by Communists.(205)  The Yeaton Report, if read, had no effect on American policy.  Indeed, American OSS operatives attempted to assassinate Chiang Kai-shek to make way for the “democratic,” peasant leader Mao Tse Tung.(152-54)

            Evans and Romerstein (hearafter, E & R) show how the pro-Soviet crowd in the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations went along with lies propounded by the Communists: 1) that the thousands of Polish officers and intellectuals murdered at Katyn Forest had been slain by the Nazis (although many familiar with the massacre knew that it had been executed by the Soviets); 2) in forcing all  Soviets who had fled Stalin’s rule back to the USSR, the US pretended this was no violation of human rights; and 3) in requiring use of forced German labor as reparations to the USSR, the US again pretended such slave labor was no violation of human rights.  (Unmentioned in this book but related is the failure to get back American POWs captured by the Axis and then “liberated” by the Soviets. Diana West makes the point that the US did not push for return of such Americans from the Soviet sphere.)  Bottom line – E and R have made a powerful case for the extensive Communist penetration of the US Administration of Franklin Roosevelt – a penetration that not merely fed secret documents to Stalin’s regime, but equally if not more important, by diverting American policy from action to promote American interests into those which would instead aid and expand world-wide Communism.

            Pres. Harry Truman famously had in his office a desk plaque inscribed, “The buck stops here.”  There seems an ambivalence by E & R as to where the buck stopped under Roosevelt.  For example, before the all important Yalta Conference of 1945, Pres. Roosevelt asked specifically that one of the attendees be Alger Hiss.  At Yalta, when Averill Harriman objected to some protocols written by the Soviets which declared that “Moscow’s claims ‘shall unquestionably be fulfilled’”, Roosevelt dismissed Harriman’s concern for we should not “haggle over words.”(208)  When earlier Secretary of War Henry Stimson complained to Roosevelt about his approval of the harsh Morgenthau Plan for post-war Germany agreed to at the conference in Quebec, Stimson found “the President ‘was frankly staggered by this and said he had no idea how he could have initialed this.’”(183)  And there are other examples where after Yalta Sec. of State Stettinius reported, “FDR was definite that we didn’t want to approve German labor for reparations.”(191)  But, it was in the Yalta agreement.  There are several possibilities: 1) Roosevelt was very ill and allowed Communist agents to make the decisions and was unaware of what they were doing in his name; or 2) Roosevelt knew well what he was doing and chose his advisors because they would do his bidding.  Furthermore, FDR was a politician – the only one elected by the American people 4 times to the Presidency.

            Look at this from the other side for a moment.  In his 3 volume history of the 1948 Progressive Party, C. D. MacDougall necessarily spent some pages on earlier campaigns.  MacDougall was an activist for the Wallace Progressive Party, and his bias is clear in his work. (Gideon’s Army, 1965, New York)  Henry Wallace had been a mid-western Republican but was made Sec. of Agriculture in Roosevelt’s Cabinet in 1933.  Roosevelt had been elected with John N. Garner of Texas, a conservative Texan, as his vice president.  In 1937 Garner openly broke with FDR when the Texan opposed FDR’s proposal to “pack” the US Supreme Court by appointing additional members.  Garner had little influence on the Administration and gave a job description of his post that the vice presidency was not worth a bucket of piss.  In 1940, when Roosevelt decided to run for an unprecedented 3^rd term as President, Garner ran against him for the nomination but lost badly.  Roosevelt replaced Garner on the ticket with Henry Wallace of Iowa.  Though some party regulars were unhappy with Wallace on the ticket, Roosevelt asserted he would not run without him.  The Democrats easily defeated the GOP ticket of Wilkie and McNary.  Even in 1940 Wallace was deemed too far left by many traditional Democrats, but their suspicions of him increased once he held higher office.  “Vice President Henry Wallace [became] arguably the most prominent pro-Soviet political figure of the time,.”(113) even visiting a Soviet gulag camp during the war and praising it as a reeducation center.

            By 1944 some believed Roosevelt’s health was in decline, and Democratic Party leaders were determined to dump Wallace from the ticket and replace him with a more reliable, regular politician.  But much depended on Roosevelt, who would be running for a 4^th term.  I do not recall the details, but it was clear that while the President was reassuring Wallace of his support, Roosevelt was also encouraging the opponents of Wallace to get in the race.  Roosevelt lied.  He was duplicitous.  He did not demand the convention renominate Wallace (or others he urged to run).  Simply put, Roosevelt was a politician, telling different people different things.  Wallace was dumped and replace by Missouri Senator Harry Truman.

            Reading this volume, I find a tendency to excuse Roosevelt for much of what was done at Quebec, Teheran, and Yalta in explaining the expansion of the Soviet sphere throughout the world.  Some imply FDR was too sick, and their proof includes some jokes.  When Stalin proposed killing 50,000 Germans, Churchill objected, but FDR urged compromise, shooting only 49,500.  FDR also suggested giving the king of Saudi Arabia all of America’s Jews (aware of the Saudi’s attitudes toward them).  Clearly, such comments do not reveal sickness, but a sense of humor prevalent before the puritan era of political correctness, when people were allowed to laugh at a much wider range of humor.  Similarly, the authors write that when conservatives objected to major leftwing policies, like the US acceptance of the Morgenthau Plan – Roosevelt tells Stimson he does not see how he could have initialed it for approval.(183)  But he did, and according to the authors, though there was verbal backtracking by the Administration, in reality the Morgenthau was the basis for American post-war policy in Germany into 1947.(147)  When pressed, Roosevelt, without haggling over words, was continually endorsing pro-Soviet policies, nor did he require Soviet agents to conclude his pro-Soviet deals.

            There is little doubt that E & R prove again that there was large-scale Soviet penetration of the US Government under Roosevelt.  But was FDR a conservative surrounded by traitors who distorted his instructions for the benefit of Stalin?  Or might these policies have been implemented EVEN IF there was not a single Soviet agent in the US Government?  Were these not Roosevelt’s policies?

            How could the US cede so much to the Soviets?  “The most obvious and most powerful influence of this [pro-Soviet] nature was the President himself,”(112) write E & R.  They add that Mrs. Roosevelt was a progressive involved in left-wing cases.(112)  Moreover, beginning in the late 1930s, in the State Dept. those who were known as anti-Soviet began to lose influence, sometimes demoted, sometimes exiled to posts in South America or other distant, and less important assignments.  Some blamed these purges on Mrs. Roosevelt and Presidential advisor Harry Hopkins.  Just before Yalta when Roosevelt asked specifically for Alger Hiss to attend the important conference, rather than his more experienced but conservative superior at State, this request may not indicate “conspiracy,” but simply Roosevelt selecting people who agree with him to go with him – though in this case Hiss happened to be a Soviet agent.  But if Hiss had not been available, perhaps another, non-agent, would have been drafted by the President to devise the same pro-Soviet policies.  I agree with E & R that Soviet penetration of the US Govt. was probably much greater then already revealed.  The authors note that only 3,000 Venona decrypts have been decoded out of hundreds of thousands, so the possibility of their having been many more Soviet spies and agents then we know is most likely.(252-53)

            Although the authors devoted little space to the Communist Party, USA, it is worth considering their opinion.  “As the record clearly shows, communists and fellow travelers on official rosters in case after case were agents of the Soviet Union,…striving to promote the casue of dictator Stalin.  This is of course contrary to the notion that American Reds were simply idealistic do-gooders, perhaps a bit misguided but devoted to peace and social justice, and thus shouldn’t have been ousted from government jobs because of their opinions.”(4)  The authors summarize their view: “The CPs more important Cold War role [was] as 5^th columnist agent of a hostile foreign power.”(89)  In their assessment, the CPUSA created various front groups to reach a larger section of Americans.  With those front organizations a conveyer belt was established so that from the fronts, some will join the CP, and from the CP, some (if not all) will pledge primary allegiance to the working class leadership emanating from Moscow, and some of these will become spies or 5^th column agents of influence.  Admittedly, from Moscow’s perspective, this may have been the primary function of the front groups and of the CPUSA itself.  And Moscow subsidized the American party for decades, as we now know.  The USSR created and financed the CPUSA and some of its front groups for the good of the USSR.

            But does the child always serve the interest of the parent?  In 1931 several young Blacks were accused of raping 2 white women aboard a freight train in Alabama.  They were quickly found guilty, and 8 of the 9 sentenced to death.  Enter the International Labor Defense, a Communist front.  Using a combination of hiring top-notch attorneys for inside the court, plus mass agitation outside the courtroom, the ILD made the Scottsboro case into the most famous rape case of the 20^th century.  ILD attorneys appealed the case to the US Supreme Court twice, and won significant rulings concerning the right to adequate defense lawyers and exposing the exclusion of Blacks from jury rolls.  A CP-front group changed American Constitutional history in the 1930s.  And for the better!

            Decades later, the FBI was taping the phone calls of a man deemed a secret member of the CP and a major financial officer of that organization.  Listening in, the FBI overheard Stanley Levison talking with and advising a Black minister in the South regarding civil rights tactics.  And so the FBI wanted to also have a tap on the phone of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., which Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy then approved.  The point is that King was receiving some advice from Levison and other Communists, and it is probable that some of King’s writings were ghosted by Levison.  Once again, one may argue that the American CP had influence on the larger American society, and for the better.

            In 1948 Henry Wallace ran for President on the Progressive Party ticket, against Democrat Truman, Republican Dewey, and States’ Rights (Dixiecrat) Thurmond.  Truman and many others accused the PP of being dominated by the CP, and Lillian Hellman in one of her memoirs recalls being asked by investigators if she was or had ever been a member of the CP or the PP.  The Progressive Party was considered by many to be a CP front group.  Yet, the Henry Wallace, PP campaign tour of the South in 1948, with the support of the National Negro Congress, the Civil Rights Congress, the Southern Conference on Human Welfare and the Southern Negro Youth Congress WAS the civil rights movement of that era.  Not only did Wallace refuse to speak to segregated audiences, but he roused enthusiasm for integration.  He also roused the hatred of the segregationists and had dozens of rotten tomatoes and eggs hurled at him.  His VP candidate, Sen. Glen Taylor of Idaho, was arrested in Birmingham for entering the Negro entrance of a building for a rally of the SNYC, which was pronounced snick.  The arresting officer in charge was Bull Connor.  If you look at the PP campaign in the South of 1948, you will suddenly be aware that many of the names will resurface with the later civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.  Rosa Parks attended radical Highlander Folk School in Tennessee for training in how to oppose segregation before she was arrested on the bus in Montgomery.  Highlander sometimes had Communists participants, and one sat beside Rev. King when he attended.  Bottom line, the Communists and Progressives were some of the most dedicated to civil rights in the South.  They get no credit for it, because when the movement reawoke, it was judged necessary to hide the connections between the old left and the new.  But sometimes, one could note the connection.  The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee that was so involved in the Southern sit-ins of the early was also known as “snick,” the same as the front-group, the Southern Negro Youth Congress.  In promoting civil rights, once again I would contend the CP and its fronts helped America. 

            I do not contend that all the tactics of the CPUSA and its front groups and its attempts to penetrate various organizations were always successful, or that they were always good for those groups or America.  Indeed, years ago wrote an article critical of the CP tactics in the American Irish movement.  Communists provided crucial organizers in organizing the Congress of Industrial Organizations (the CIO once had millions of members), struggled for equal rights for various ethnic groups, and probably changed America more than mose of us know or would like to admit.

            What the Communists brought to a movement was knowledge of how to organize.  They had members trained in how to write and set up a movement flyer or newspaper, and they had contacts with the wider media.  They knew how to run meetings, etc.  And most importantly, many of them were brave.  Some of the bravest people I have known have been Communists.  But bravery and experience was subsidized by and entangle with and ultimately subordinate to the demands of a foreign government.  I certainly am not saying that every member of a front group was a Stalinist agent.  I am not saying that about every member of the CP.  But I recall the memoir of North Carolina CP leader Junius Scales, who acknowledged that he had never been asked to spy by the party, but he was unsure how he would have answered if asked.(See my review of Cause at Heart, in Labor History, Winter 1989).

            So to the E & R linear formula: from front group into the CP and into an agent, I respond that it was more complex; moreover, some of the accomplishments of the fronts and even of the CP were good for America overall.  Of course, in the end there are virtues beyond bravery and knowing how to organize.  Communist parties world-wide were responsible for the deaths of about 100 million, and even in the US, according to E & R, one comrade lost influence when he failed to kill Elizabeth Bentley, who would go on to expose many of the agents discussed in this book.  When handsome actor Ronald Reagan came in conflict with the Communists in his union, one threatened to ruin his career by tossing acid on his face.  And Whittaker Chambers decided to expose Communist agents in part because he believed the Party responsible for murdering an American comrade during the Soviet purges of the 1930s.

            Finally, a most important point re history – what is kept in government files?  E & R observe how in the early stages some reports are classified top secret, and thus unavailable to the public (and often to Congress as well).  Over time, some elements are then redacted.  Then, the report may disappear altogether.  Sometimes, files were ordered to be destroyed, as in WWII when the Roosevelt Administration defied the laws excluding Communists from government positions.  Communists were hired, sometimes when other agencies were absorbed into larger ones, as when the OSS was merged with the State Dept. and no security checks were made.  Thus, members of the OSS, heavily penetrated by Communists, were suddenly working for the American State Dept.  The Roosevelt Administration also ordered the destruction of security files on Communists and alleged spies – so many security files which would show the depth of Communist infiltration disappeared on government orders.  The justification, the aims of the US and the Communists were identical in the midst of WWII.  In a previous work Evans notes how occasionally those suspected of treason were allowed into classified areas, and they apparently removed damaging material from their own files.  Also, in Evans’, Blacklisted by History (New York, 2007), he demonstrates that Presidents Truman and Eisenhower used the notion of Executive Privilege to block Congressional investigators from acquiring files which might prove their cases against alleged Soviet agents.  (Evans also contrasted the media reaction which praised Ike for protecting the power of the Executive (thereby shielding accused foreign agents), with how the media denounced Nixon for invoking Executive Privilege to cover the crimes of Watergate.

            In this book, E & R show that the Truman Justice Dept engaged in a “fix” in the Grand Jury that resulted in John S. Service walking away free despite stealing State Dept. papers.  Service had also used his position in China to boost the “democratic” Mao insurgents against the “corrupt” forces of Chiang Kai-shek.  In the end, American aid to Chiang was curtailed.  The Truman Justice Dept. also sabotaged another Grand Jury case involving the accusations of a spy network by Elizabeth Bentley.  Worse, Truman’s Justice Dept. preferred to ignore Soviet agent Alger Hiss, while attempting to indict his accuser, the whistleblower Whittaker Chambers, for perjury.  And the authors give an example of what can happen to files that the Soviets found offensive.  An American POW was in Poland when the Germans discovered the Katyn grave site, in which thousands of Polish officers had been killed by the Soviets.  “…on his return to the US [he] filed a report to this effect with his superiors in the Army.  This report…would be concealed from view, labeled ‘top secret,’ then disappear entirely.”(172)

            Disappearing files and files that may still be classified so neither public nor Congress may examine them – interesting.  Earlier this year WGN Chicago/America televised a series, “Manhattan,” about the project to build the Atomic bomb in the American Southwest.  One of the heroes of the series is J. Robert Oppenheimer.  His wife was a member of the CP.  So was his brother.  Now we know he himself was a secret member of the CP.  Might this membership have urged him to share secrets with our Soviet ally?(253-54)  Is there more on Oppenheimer in secret files?  Remember, in 2012 Russian leader Putin praised all the Western atomic scientists who shared their secrets with the Soviets.  He bragged that they had received suitcases full of atomic secrets.  Were Fuchs and Hall and the Rosenbergs the only culprits?

            Back to secret files that are closed and may eventually disappear.  I have mentioned the contact of Martin Luther King with various American Communists, some of whom advised him.  Why are 900 pages of FBI files on King closed until 2027?  Is it merely because of his sexual escapades?  Or because of his relations with Communists?  When the files are finally opened, will they be empty?  Or watered down?

            Missing from the files?  What about the brain of Pres. John Kennedy?  Those who support the official version that Oswald did it alone, assert that Atty. Gen Robert Kennedy wanted the brain buried with his brother’s body.  Perhaps.  Or, the brain may have provided evidence that contradicted the official theory of the Warren Commission.  One researcher for a later Congressional probe of the assassination alleged that he had seen a film showing a training camp north of New Orleans in summer 1963.  The men were anti-Castro militants preparing for a renewed military assault on Cuba.  Among these anti-Castroites was Lee Oswald.  Then, Congress shook up the leadership of the investigating committee followed by firings of some investigators.  Before he quit, he noted that that film had disappeared from the files.

            And under Pres. Obama, the “most transparent Administration in American history,” we are not allowed to inspect the grades or read the papers he wrote for classes at the universities he attended.  Governments cover up, especially when they fear releasing the information will harm them.

            What E & R ferret out is that Communist penetration of the Roosevelt Administration was extensive.  Though spying was part of it, perhaps more important was the advice by government officials that somehow always coincided with the Soviet line; and to the benefit of the Soviets and not necessarily to the benefit of the US or it other allies.  To make my point:

            1)  From the American policy view, by 1941 there may well have been a good argument that Japan was totally imperialistic – Korea, Manchukuo, much of coastal China, and then Vietnam.  That it was finally time to take a stand, to cut off oil, and prepare for war (Roosevelt was already engaged in acts of war against Germany in the Atlantic, but it was undeclared).

            2)  There were sound arguments for Lend Lease priorities to the Soviet Union, which was then baring the brunt of the Axis invasion.

            3)  Our demand for an unconditional surrender by the Axis powers demonstrated to our Soviet ally that we would not make a separate deal that might mean peace in the West, but continued war against Stalin.

            4)  Based on intelligence (from secret Communist agents), Gen. Mihailovich in Yugoslavia and later Chiang Kai-shek in China were condemned as collaborators with the Axis enemies.  This misinformation urged Western countries to support Tito in Yugoslavia and Mao in China instead.

            5)  Germany was responsible for the war and therefore its industrial might must be destroyed after war’s end.

            6)  Germany was responsible for the war and therefore its young men may be drafted to serve in other nations (chiefly the USSR) as a form of reparations.  (in effect, this would be slave labor.)

            7)  Those who fled the USSR must be returned, no matter their personal wishes.  They chose to live in fascist countries, abandoning the wonders of the Soviet homeland.

            There were reasonable arguments for all these pro-Soviet policies.  However, when the US Govt. adopted the pro-Soviet line on all of these issues, and many more, one must ask, what was going on?

            The contention of E & R that the Communists, with their great influence, used it to turn American policy into pro-Soviet agreements.

            FDR was not a Communist.  Had he been one, he would have stood by Henry Wallace and demanded that Wallace remain on the Democratic ticket as VP at the 1944 party convention as he had done in 1940.  But FDR did not make such a demand in 1944.  Had he done so, in all likelihood, Wallace would then have won the nomination (he almost won it anyway), and become President Wallace in April 1945 upon the death of FDR.

            Roosevelt may not have been a Communist, but clearly HE supported the Soviet foreign policy positions in case after case.  One can blame Harry Hopkins, Alger Hiss, John Sergeant, and the numerous Soviet agents and Communist sympathizers in government.  One can even blame Mrs. Roosevelt for purging and exiling conservative voices in the State Dept.  But in the end, the buck stopped at the desk of FDR.  He appointed the leaders of his Administration.  He is responsible for agreements at Quebec, Tehran, and Yalta.  He is (with Stalin and others) responsible for Communist rule in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Albania, Yugoslavia, and East Germany.  And though the question was asked later, “Who lost China?” it seems Roosevelt’s policies explain much of the change in Asia after WWII.  In 1950 Republicans asked the question, “Who lost China?”  In 2020 will Republicans be asking, “Who lost America?”

HOW TO END IMMIGRATION CRISIS

Hugh Murray 8 hours ago 0 12 

The more the borders are open, the more immigrants will come. If Europe wants to stop the invasion, it should sink the boats so they never reach European shores. Word would quickly get out - Europe is for the Europeans. Let the Muslim "refugees" go to nearby Muslim nations instead. But the "refugees" do not want that, they want the welfare riches of socialist Europe. AND the nearby Muslim nations do not want the Muslim refugees, out of fear of terrorists among them (so Europe can get the terrorists, too). To save Europe, to stop the invasion, Europeans must defy the hate-Europe crowd which includes the UN, EU bureaucrats, and the Papacy.

America faces a similar fate. The Pope, a Catholic, urges the US, a traditional Protestant secular nation, to accept millions of Catholic invaders. They come here not to assimilate to American values, but demand we learn Spanish, etc. The question is why do these millions of Catholic invaders leave their Catholic homelands? Why are the Catholic homelands so poor by comparison to the US? So crime ridden? So corrupt? Why did Catholic societies fail to produce the riches found in the more Protestant lands?

Ignore the Pope when he comes preaching pro-invasion sermons to the US. Ask why Catholic nations have so failed to produce wealth? If Catholic nations could do that, then they need not invade North America.

Earlier today I had posted this comment on one of the stories about the immigration crisis.  My solution sounds cruel, but it will save lives.  Once people learn they cannot take the boats across the Med. Sea to Northern European welfare, they will either stay home, or move to nations closer to their own, both geographically and culturally.  And under the present system, Europe is importing a sharia future, with forthcoming terrorism.

EMMETT TILL's LEGACY - MODEL FOR DISASTER

John Nolte on Breitbart.com wrote an article: “60 YEARS: EMMETT TILL’S MEMORY DESCERATED BY TRAYVON MARTIN/FERGUSON RACE HOAXERS.”(28 August 2015)  My comments and a reply follow.  HUGH MURRAY

·          

·         umura • 9 hours ago

Till was in the store to humiliate the young, married, white woman. He wanted to impress his Southern, and to him, backward, relatives. Till was the son of a man executed for rape during WWII in Europe. When the young Till was in the grocery, he was wearing the ring of his rapist father. Till was showing his Southern friends how they could go after white women. He was a bully, asking for trouble. The husband and friends of the insulted wife reacted to stop such aggression before it spread. They over reacted. On the other hand, the number of today's Black on white rapes is overwhelming.  (A day later this post was deleted from Breitbart - HM)

o    •

foobar  humura • an hour ago

And here John Nolte says that the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Mike brown have as much to do with Emmett Till as a ham sandwich.

Mr Nolte conveniently forgot to mention: white supremacists have a rich and proud tradition of defaming their victims, after their deaths, to seemingly justify their heinous acts. We're fortunate that readers such as humura are here to remind us of this shameful history.

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humura  foobar • a minute ago

Till was in the grocery to insult, show disrespect to a young married woman, and by implication, show how good he was and encourage his friends to follow his path of violating the rules of civilization in the future. And many have followed his path. This is why many urban schools are entered through metal detectors. Why test scores are abysmal. Why teachers are taunted and insulted (just like the Mississippi grocery clerk). This is why so often failure is the present and future for many young Black men.
Those who followed Till are evident - the druggie crook unarmed but dangerous Mike Brown in Ferguson, the aggressive suspended schooler (and possible thief) Trayvon Martin, Gray in Baltimore, et al. So long as Till is held up as a role model, Blacks will destroy civilized values.
And this is why the Black on white rape rate compared to the white on Black rate is perhaps 5,000 to 1.

TRIGGERING PEARL HARBOR - H. D. WHITE, or the WHITE HOUSE?

OPERATION SNOE: HOW A SOVIET MOLE IN FDR’S

WHITE HOUSE TRIGGERED PEARL HARBOR (Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2012)

BY JOHN KOSTER

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            Koster has written an enjoyable, readable book.  His thesis is that a secret Soviet agent in the Roosevelt Administration “triggered” the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, getting the US into war and eliminating the Japanese option of striking north against the USSR.  Since the Japanese were thus occupied elsewhere, Stalin could safely move men and material from Asia to be sent to aid in the war against Hitler.  Presumably, without Harry Dexter White, America might not have entered WWII.

            The book is a good read, and Koster includes a chapter “cast of characters,” identifying many of those to be discussed in the volume.  Unfortunately, he does not include a chronology, which would have been most helpful to the reader.

            Using both recently released information from an NKVD operative and older sources, such as sworn testimony before the House un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Koster concludes there is no doubt that White was a Soviet agent.  And the logic of his book is also simple - Soviet agent Vitalii Pavlov in March 1941 urges White to foment war between Japan and the US.  According to Koster, the NKVD had its “own foreign policy,” and it believed that Hitler’s Germany would soon turn against its Soviet ally and there would be war between the two dictatorships.  Stalin did not accept this view.(pp. 1, 22, 108-09)  But on behalf of the NKVD, Pavlov sought to engulf Japan in a war with the US so it would not have the strength to also strike its northern neighbor.

            White agreed with Pavlov’s analysis, and though White was merely an Undersecretary of the US Treasury Department; Director of the Division of Monetary Research, “Behind the scenes, White was the brains behind Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (Treasury Secretary), who in turn tried to be the brains behind Franklin D. Roosevelt.”(9)  In Koster’s view, Morgenthau was simply White’s “puppet.”(122)

            Koster writes fascinating history, some deemed too far afield to be discussed in most works.  In Japan, there were those who urged a strike north, against the Soviets, and others who thought it better to attack south.  Even before Pavlov had given instructions to White in spring 1941, Japan had already engaged in a strike north.  Disputed border areas between Manchukuo (ally of Japan) and the People’s Republic of Mongolia (a Soviet ally) resulted in an undeclared war between the Soviets and Japanese.  In May 1939 incursions escalated.  While at first the Japanese did quite well, Soviet Gen. Zhukov counter attacked with “the BT tank, the greatest in the world at that time,..designed in the United States by J. Walter Christie,…”(33)  This Nomonhan Incident was not an official war, but the Soviets lost 8,000 men and the Japanese some 9,000.  On 15 September 1939 both sides signed a cease fire, but both recognized that war in that quarter would be costly for both sides.  (In 2011 the South Koreans released one of their most expensive films, “My Way,” in which fighting around Nomonhan is a major feature of the movie.)  Only after the cease-fire with Japan was signed on 15 September did Stalin then join in the spoils of Poland.  The Germans had begun their blitzkrieg against Poland earlier in September, and Stalin waited till he was sure of peace in the east before he joined in the dismemberment of Poland on 17 September.(34)

            Koster records some of the political violence in depression Japan.  He almost justifies the hostility toward bankers and politicians, and even against the Emperor, by “young officers” who thought themselves the heirs of the samurai and defenders of the poor.  These officers attacked, assassinated, and attempted coups.  (Of course, FDR was nearly assassinated a month prior to his inauguration as President, 15 February 1933.)

            Koster’s description of the incident by the Marco Polo Bridge just outside Beijing is amusing.  Never the less, it led to the 2^nd Sino-Japanese War.  Koster also discounts what he believes are vastly inflated figures for the horrors of the “Rape of Nanking” – he thinks the most likely death count is 42,000.(29)  Even more heretical, he suggests Nanking may have been better off under the Japanese occupation than under the corrupt Nationalist government.

            In his discussion of the American Communist Party, Koster alludes to 2 incidents involving possible murders.  He states that Communist Joseph Katz lost favor when he refused to kill another American Communist, Elizabeth Bentley, because she had become an anti-Communist.  And one reason Whittaker Chambers defected from the Communist movement was when long-time American Communist Juliet Poyntz “disappeared” during party purges.  Were people killed in the US for splitting with the Communist movement?(7-8, 20)

            There is an interesting note on whistle-blowers under FDR.  A Korean who was involved in an anti-Japanese, pro-Korean underground alerted the US of a forthcoming attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor.  He even provided the exact date of the attack.  His warning was ignored.  Ignored until AFTER the attack.  “That afternoon, Kilsoo Haan,…,received a telephone call from Maxwell Hamilton (US State Dept., Far Eastern Affairs).  If his (Haan’s) December 5 warning of an attack on Pearl Harbor were released to the press, Hamilton warned Haan, he would be ‘put away for the duration.’”(151)

            Koster includes the pressures to round up Japanese and Americans of Japanese origin and place them in concentration camps.  Liberal Pres. Roosevelt signed the order.  Both the CP, USA, and the ACLU supported this assault on civil liberties.  Republican conservative Sen. Robert Taft and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover opposed the round up.(160)  Strangely, Koster does not mention another strong proponent of the round up, then California Atty. Gen. Earl Warren, who is best known as a liberal Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court.

            Clearly, I enjoyed much of the book.  Why do I demur?  “On Dec. 11, 1941, four days after Pearl Harbor, Hitler spontaneously declared war on the United States.  With the Wehrmacht at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad, Russian morale was crumbling…Then hundreds of thousands of reinforcement and more than a thousand tanks arrived from Siberia and Mongolia, freed by the Japanese war with the United States.”(163)  The Germans had to retreat.  Pavlov’s order to Harry Dexter White, culminated with White’s memorandum that became the ultimatum causing Tokyo to decide on war and attack Pearl Harbor, thus saving Stalin and the Soviet Union.  But Stalin’s counter offensive began 5 December 1941, before the Japanese attacked Pearl.  Stalin had already shifted men and material from Asia to the European front.  German Communist Richard Sorge’s spying in Japan may have provided information of the planned attack on Pearl so Stalin believed he could win the gamble of shifting troops.  Still, Koster’s writing is deceptive on this issue, implying the shift occurred after Pearl.

            More troublesome is the utter absence from this volume of any mention of Robert Stinnett and his DAY OF DECEIT: THE TRUTH ABOUT FDR AND PEARL HARBOR, published in 2001 by Free Press, and made into a program shown on the History Channel.  Stinnett’s hypothesis was that FDR had decided on war with Japan and provoked it.  Because of advances in American code-breaking, Stinnett contended that FDR knew of the attack coming, and did nothing to stop it (indeed, Gen. Marshall is included among the do-nothings as I recall).

            Review some of Koster’s points.  The Hull Note of 26 Nov. 1941, based upon the memorandum of NKVD agent Harry D. White, was an ultimatum to Japan that it could not accept.  Japan’s late offer of peace, including withdrawing from most of China, were rejected by Sec. of State Hull and State Dept. expert on China, Stanley Hornbeck, neither of whom were sympathetic to communism.(125)  FDR was already risking war with Japan when in April 1941 he authorized American pilots who could fly for Chiang’s air force.(38)  Koster adds, “While Roosevelt himself had probably not actively conspired to provoke the Japanese, the Hull note had made war all but inevitable, and he had done little to interfere.”(153)  Even Koster concedes that code breakers and other warnings, like that from Kilsoo Haan, were ignored.  No one informed Admiral Kimmel or Gen. Short in Pearl Harbor of the approaching danger.  Koster writes: “Washington sat on the information – apparently because they wanted some sort of war but did not expect anything like what they got.(154)  FDR read a decoded message from the Japanese and stated, “This means war.”  Even Koster adds, “…why didn’t the White House or the War Department telephone Hawaii when the President decoded the message…”?(159)

            In some of his rhetoric, Koster seems to blame all the deaths at Pearl Harbor, and perhaps in WWII on Harry Dexter White.  White was a spy and a man of influence seeking to push America to advance the cause of Communism.  But Roosevelt was engaged in many war-like actions against Germany in 1940 and 41.  He was risking war with Japan too.  If Stinnett’s thesis is correct, FDR did not require Harry White to trigger Pearl Harbor.  It is sad that Koster decided not to consider the Stinnett view in this book.  While Koster presents a thesis that it was all the fault of Harry White, even his own quotations force one to question the actions of Roosevelt in the lead up to war with Japan in December 1941.     

DESTROY THE 1% ! ---- REALLY?

LEGAL AND ACADEMIC EQUALITY NONSENSE

The left's fruitless obsession with eliminating "racial disparities."

August 4, 2015

Walter Williams

A particular act or policy might not have a discriminatory intent, but that doesn't let you off the hook. If it has a disproportionately negative impact on so-called protected classes, it is said to have a disparate impact and risks being prohibited by law. The uninformed assumption made by judges, lawyers and academics is that but for the fact of racial and sex discrimination, we all would be distributed across occupations, educational backgrounds and other socio-economic characteristics according to our percentages in the population. Such a vision is absolute nonsense. There is no evidence, anywhere, at any time, that but for the fact of discrimination, there would be proportional representation among various socio-economic characteristics. Let's look at some disproportionalities, with an eye toward discovering the causes and then deciding what to do about them.

If one were to list the world's top 30 violinists of the 20th century, at least 25 of them would be of Jewish ancestry. Another disparity is that despite the fact that Jews are less than 3 percent of the U.S. population and a mere 0.2 percent of the world's population, during the 20th century, Jews were 35 percent of American and 22 percent of the world's Nobel Prize winners. Are Jews taking violin excellence and Nobel Prizes that belong to other ethnicities? If America's diversity worshippers see underrepresentation as probative of racial discrimination, what do they propose be done about overrepresentation?

Overrepresentation may be seen as denial of opportunity. For example, blacks are 13 percent of our population but about 80 percent of professional basketball players and 65 percent of professional football players and among the highest-paid players in both sports. By stark contrast, blacks are only 2 percent of the NHL's professional ice hockey players. Basketball, football and ice hockey represent gross racial disparities and as such come nowhere close to "looking like America." Do these statistics mean that the owners of multibillion-dollar basketball and football operations are nice guys and ice hockey owners are racists? By the way, just because blacks are 65 percent of professional football players, let's not lull ourselves into complacency.

When's the last time you saw a black NFL kicker or punter?

There are even geographical disparities. Not a single player in the NHL's history can boast of having been born and raised in Hawaii, Louisiana or Mississippi. Geographical disparities are not only limited to ice hockey. The population statistics for North and South Dakota, Iowa, Maine, Montana and Vermont show that not even 1 percent of their population is black. In states such as Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, blacks are overrepresented. When such racial disparities were found in schooling, the remedy was busing. I'll tell you one thing; I'm not moving to Montana. It's too cold.

Geographical disparities don't only apply to the U.S. Historically, none of the world's greatest seamen has been born and raised in a Himalayan nation, such as Nepal and Bhutan, or a sub-Saharan nation of Africa. They mostly have been from Scandinavia, other parts of Europe, East Asia or the South Pacific.

Being a man, I find another disproportionality particularly disturbing. According to a recent study conducted by Bond University in Australia, sharks are nine times likelier to attack and kill men than they are women. Such a disproportionality leads to only one conclusion: Sharks are sexist. Another disturbing sex disparity is that despite the fact that men are 50 percent of the population and so are women, men are struck by lightning six times as often as women. Of those killed by lightning, 82 percent are men. I wonder what whoever is in charge of lightning has against men.

Differences are seen by many as signs of inequality. Nobel laureate Milton Friedman put it best: "A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both." Equality in conjunction with the general rules of law is the only kind of equality conducive to liberty that can be secured without destroying liberty.  (End of article)

(I took this fine article by Walter Williams from frontpage.com.  For a long time now I have thought that one of the major issues of the 20^th century was that of overrepresentation, and, unfortunately, it appears to be a major issue of the 20^th.  Read the first part of this article again, and imagine that you are a German in the 1920s.  How can Jews be so prominent among the violinists?  It must be because the judges are Jewish.  Or are paid by Jews.  How else explain the overrepresentation if all people are equal.  If all are equal, then Jews, less than 1% of the population of Germany in 1930, must be manipulating the system somehow, through corruption, some way.  National Socialism was the attempt to restore equality for the 99%.  The Occupy-Wall-Street crowd with their attacks on the 1% were all too similar to the Nazi approach.  If you like the Williams article, I urge you to read my article, on this blog, as to why liberals cannot understand the holocaust.  See “What Caused the Holocaust?”  In 1930s Europe, the targets of the quest against the oppressive overrepresented, the 1%, the targets were the Jews, and they became the victims of the spirit of equality.  In multicultural America, the new targets are white men.---Hugh Murray)

Decline of D. West - Her latest book

THE REBUTTAL: DEFENDING ‘AMERICAN BETRAYAL’

FROM THE BOOK-BURNERS (Washington, DC: Bravura Books, 2013)

By DIANA WEST

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            A book should stand on its own merits, and by this criterion, Ms. West’s REBUTTAL fails. The book’s organization is chaotic; consequently, there is much repetition.  But the repetition does not necessarily lead to better understanding – just a retold version of events again and again, which by book’s end leaves the reader more confused.  West includes no index, so one cannot easily recheck to note slight variations in the retelling.  Worse, over 60% if the book is taken from the blogosphere, but in the book’s visual presentation of this net scape, it is often difficult to distinguish who is writing from whom they are quoting, for a blogger may include several paragraphs by another author.  These are serious drawbacks to any book.

            The reason for West’s REBUTTAL is to defend her previous book. AMERICAN BETRAYAL, from a series of scathing reviews beginning with that of historian Ronald Radosh on the FrontPage website of David Horowitz.  Horowitz actually pulled a favorable review of her book by Mark Tapson and replaced it with the lengthy attack by Radosh.  In her REBUTTAL, West notes some of the nasty, unacademic words that Radosh and other neo-conservatives used to denigrate her, such as “unhinged,” and “loon.,”  In the title of his review, Radosh indicates he is not a far-right conservative, “McCarthy on Steroids,” linking West to the Wisconsin Republican Senator.  Horowitz summarized his view of West’s AMERICAN BETRAYAL in one sentence, “This book should not have been written.”  Others smashed her book in reviews while admitting that they had not bothered to read it.  In short, the fault line seems to be, the more one adores Franklin Roosevelt, the less one thinks of Diana West’s work.  Her research led her to conclude that FDR’s Administration contained so many Soviet agents, Communists, and fellow travelers, that Washington was an “occupied” government.  Some of the disputes between her and her critics hinged on words like “occupied,” and “agent,” or whether Roosevelt’s close advisor Harry Hopkins was or was not Agent 19.  In this work West defends her critical view of the FDR leadership and Hopkins in particular.  She recounts an episode in which FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote Hopkins about FBI information that a Soviet embassy agent conferred with leaders of the Communist Party, USA.  Hopkins then warned the Soviet Embassy that the FBI was listening to some of its agents.  Agent 19 or not, Hopkins was revealing highly classified information to the Soviets and to the detriment of the US Government.

            West includes many tantalizing tidbits strung throughout her REBUTTAL, but they fail to generate a full argument.  Here are some:  US aided in Operation Keelhaul, returning escapees from Stalin’s workers’ paradise, forcing their return to the USSR to gulag and/or death (p. 40, 151); Soviet refusal to return to the US American POW’s captured by the Axis and then “liberated” by the Soviet’s advancing armies (44); Pres. Harry Truman’s promotion of Soviet agent Harry Dexter White at the same time his Dept. of Justice was considering charging anti-Communist whistle-blower Whittaker Chambers with perjury (59); The CPUSA paid for many of the expenses of participants in the 1968 Days of Rage at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 (101); Gen. Sikorski, leader of the anti-Communist government of Poland may have been murdered by Soviet agents in Gibraltar in July 1943 - not a victim of a mere airplane malfunction (155-59); J. Robert Oppenheim may have been a secret member of the Communist Party (171).  These are all tasty crumbs, but where is the cake?  Unfortunately, not in this book.

            The saddest item in this work concerns the firing of a blogger who wrote approvingly of West’s AMERICAN BETRAYAL.  Clare Lopez was fired from her post at the Gatestone Institute’s website, allegedly for recommending West’s earlier book.  The new CEO of Gatestone at the time was former UN Ambassador John Bolton(135-38).  Too bad that conservatives cannot be more open-minded.

            Does West make her case in THE REBUTTAL?  Because of the acrimony, she probably could not reprint Radosh’s 10-page hostile review in full.  So the reader is left with only one side of the argument.  It is a rebuttal, but one should read the other side before coming to a judgment.
(I hope to have a review of her book AMERICAN BETRAYAL later this year.  Hugh Murray)