Stalin’s plan for the expansion of Communism after the war involved three techniques: the creation of pro-Communist puppet governments in occupied territory, the military conquest of new territory by satellite armies, and the further infiltration of free countries by Soviet espionage and propaganda organizations.
In this chapter we shall try to account for the phenomenal success of these three programs. It should provide the answers to these questions:
• Toward the last part of World War II did Allied leaders begin to suspect a Russian double cross? Why did Harry Hopkins make a special trip to Moscow a few months before he died?
• How did the free world lose 100,000,000 people to the Iron Curtain through Soviet strategy?
• How did the free world lose 450,000,000 more people through the conquest of China? What did the Wedemeyer Report reveal?
• Do you think diplomatic blunders may have encouraged the attack on South Korea? What significance do you attach to Owen Lattimore’s amazing statement in 1949: “The thing to do is let South Korea fall, but not to let it look as if we pushed her”?
• What was the turning point in the Korean war which gave the U.N. forces their first military advantage?
• After the Korean cease-fire in 1953, what did the U.S. Secretary of State say to indicate that the U.S. was abandoning a twenty-year policy of appeasement?
• What was the role of the FBI in the “Battle of the Underground?”
• Why did the U.S. not do more to prevent the loss of French Indo-China?
• In the dispute over Formosa, why did the Red Chinese call the U.S. a paper tiger?
• What did Dimitry Z. Manuilsky say about the strategy of “peaceful coexistence”?
The evidence of Communist subversion and aggression became so apparent toward the close of World War II that even some of those who had staked their professional careers on the friendship of the Soviet leaders began to sense a feeling of alarm. This included Harry Hopkins. Within a month after the death of President Roosevelt, Hopkins became so concerned with developments that he hurriedly made arrangements to see Stalin in person. At the time Hopkins was critically ill, with only a short time to live, but he forced himself to make this final pilgrimage to Moscow to try and salvage some of the remnants from the wreckage of what was to have been a master plan for post-war peace.
When he arrived in Moscow, however, Hopkins was confronted by a blunt and angry Stalin. We are indebted to former Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes, for an account at what happened.{87} Stalin made an amazingly antagonistic verbal assault on the handling of the program Hopkins had sponsored for Russia—the program of Lend-Lease.
The shock of this attack may be better appreciated when it is remembered that Hopkins considered himself to be the best friend the Soviets had in America. He and his associates had just spent billions of dollars and risked an atomic war to try and create a Russo-American partnership for peace. Probably Hopkins would not have been more startled by the treatment he received if Stalin had physically slapped him in the face.
In reply, Hopkins vigorously pointed out “how liberally the United States (through him) had construed the law in sending foodstuffs and other non-military items to their aid.” Stalin admitted all of this but roughly crossed it off by saying the Soviets still could not forgive the United States for terminating Lend-Lease after V-Day in Europe.
At the moment it seemed that nothing would pacify Stalin but a brand new round of wide-open American Lend-Lease generosity; otherwise he apparently could think of no particular reason for even pretending to want the friendship of the United States any longer. He even threatened to boycott the United Nations Conference which was soon to be held in San Francisco.
For reasons which now seem quite incongruous, Hopkins continued to plead with Stalin to stay on the team and reiterated the many concessions which he was sure the Communists could gain by taking part in the United Nations organization. Like a pouting and spunky child, Stalin assumed an air of studied reluctance, but gradually gave in. By agreeing to join the United Nations Conference at San Francisco he wanted Hopkins to know he was doing the United States a tremendous favor.
Finally, Hopkins returned home. By the time of his death in January, 1946, there was already ample evidence that peace-loving nations were in for a violent and stormy era as a result of the strategy of writing in the Soviets as full-fledged partners of the free world.
Obviously, a primary object of World War II was to liberate all of the countries occupied by the Axis powers. Russia was well aware that if she were to expand her influence into these liberated nations—particularly the ones which bordered the USSR—she would have to do it in such a way as to create the illusion that these nations had gone Communistic through their own political self-determination. It became established Soviet policy to take secret but highly active interest in the affairs of these countries—to make them “voluntary” satellites through infiltration and subversion.
In some nations this plan brought immediate results. For example, it made satellites of Yugoslavia and Albania almost overnight because the Communists had captured the leadership of the anti-Nazi, anti-Fascist resistance movements during the war and as soon as these countries were liberated the Communists demanded the right to set up the new governments. Later, Stalin tried to purge Tito’s regime but found it would not purge. Tito temporarily pulled Yugoslavia away from the Russian orbit but remained openly devoted to Marxism in spite of generous U.S. economic aid.
Russia also found a highly favorable condition for her schemes in the Eastern European countries. As a result of the military campaigns carried out by Soviet troops during the final phase of World War II, Red forces occupied all of Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and most of what is now East Germany.
The Soviet strategy for the “peaceful” conquest of these countries prior to withdrawing the Red troops was to encourage the creation of coalition governments including only left-wing parties. This gave the impression that these nations had some semblance of representative government. The next step was to maneuver Communists into all key governmental positions. The third and final step was to force all parties to join in a “monolithic bloc” with the Communist leaders assuming complete dictatorial power.
Through this carefully executed maneuver the complete subjugation of all these countries was completed by 1949. The Communist Iron Curtain came clanking down on all their western borders and the free world found itself completely cut off from any contact with these former allies who represented approximately 100 million people.
At this same time there also came to the free world powers one of the most bitter lessons they had to learn in dealing with World Communism—the loss of China.
After fighting the Japanese militarists for fourteen years, China had approached the end of World War II with high hopes. The war had been fought under a dictatorship led by Chiang Kai-shek but his Nationalist Government had promised to set up a democratic constitution as soon as national unity would permit. As the war ended Chiang Kai-shek ordered the restoration of civil rights and inaugurated freedom of the press.
The Chinese leaders knew their greatest threat to peace was the small but well-trained army of Chinese Communists in the northwest; nevertheless, they went right ahead with their plans for a constitution which would allow the Communists, full representation but would require them to disband their armed forces. There was confidence that a representative government could be worked out for all parties in China if armed insurrection were eliminated. In fact, Chiang Kai-shek invited the Communist leader, Mao Tse-tung, to come to the capital and see if they could reach a peaceful settlement of their difference.
Mao came. He promised to cooperate in setting up a democracy but Chiang Kai-shek and his aides were not at all impressed with his superficial display of professed sincerity. Chiang later promised his nervous associates that he would never relinquish his dictatorial powers until he was completely satisfied that the government was safely in the hands of a substantial majority of the people—not just some noisy militant minority.
An early blow to China’s hopes for a post-war peace came when it was learned that back in February, 1945, British and American diplomatic leaders at Yalta had agreed to give Russia extensive property rights in Manchuria if the Soviets would join in the war against Japan. Chiang Kai-shek was outraged by this unilateral arrangement (China was never consulted) and he never ceased to blame much of the subsequent disaster on this initial blunder.
The Yalta agreement allowed Russia to come racing into Manchuria (and North Korea) just six days before the Japanese capitulated. After a typically brutal Russian occupation, the Soviet troops fixed the Communist grip on this territory which the Japanese had extensively industrialized and which was one of the richest agricultural regions in all China. In fact, it was Manchuria that the Nationalists were expecting to use as the working base in bolstering China’s battered economy.
However, after taking Manchuria, Stalin suddenly and unexpectedly agreed to withdraw his troops and recognize the Nationalist Government of China as the legal sovereign of that territory providing China would acknowledge Russia’s property rights in Manchuria which Stalin had previously demanded at Yalta. This consisted of half ownership in the Manchurian railroads and the right to lease Port Arthur as a Russian naval base. Under strong pressure from the United States and Great Britain, China signed this agreement with Russia on August 14, 1945.
Almost immediately Chiang Kai-shek knew this was a serious mistake. The treaty was nothing but a Russian tool of strategy which legally codified the mistakes at Yalta. As Chiang Kai-shek had feared, the Russians operated the Manchurian railroads as though they owned them outright. They not only set up a naval base at Port Arthur, but arrogantly refused to allow the Chinese to use their own port of Dairen. Instead of evacuating Manchuria, the Soviets began looting the entire region of all its heavy industry and shipping it to Russia as “war booty.” This represented a stunning blow to China’s future economic recovery.
But even more important than this was the Russians’ strategy of delaying the removal of their troops by various pretexts until the Chinese Communists could come in from the northwest and occupy Manchuria. As the Communists came in, the Russians turned over to them the vast quantities of ammunition and war material which they had seized from the Japanese.
Consequently, when the Nationalists arrived to take over Manchuria, they were outraged to find that the Chinese Communists were already dug in. Immediately civil war loomed up as an inescapable consequence.
All of this was happening right at the time the Nationalists were trying to prepare China for a constitutional form of government. On his own initiative Chiang had set May 5, 1946, as the first meeting of the Chinese National Assembly in which all parties were to take part. But, of course, this entire program to unify and democratize China was seriously jeopardized by the outbreak of war in Manchuria. At this point the U.S. diplomats decided to take a hand.
They had planned the United Nations to preserve world Peace and had insisted from the beginning that the Red leaders were potentially peaceful and had no territorial ambitions. Assuming this to be true they denounced Chiang for resisting the Chinese Reds. They accused him of creating new world tensions. General George C. Marshall was therefore sent over to China to stop the civil war.
General Marshall arrived in January, 1946. What happened after that is a long series of incidents, each one tragically demonstrating the error of trying to incorporate the ideas of world revolutionists within the framework of representative government.
The Communists demanded a coalition government but insisted on keeping their own private army. They wanted a voice in the government of all China, but would not allow the central government to have a voice in the affairs of Communist-occupied areas of China. They agreed to a cease-fire and then launched aggressive attacks as soon as it served their own advantage to do so. They agreed to help set up a State Council representing all parties and then advised at the last moment that they would not participate.
When the date for the first National Assembly was postponed so the Communists could participate, they used it as an excuse to accuse Chiang Kai-shek of setting the new date without proper authorization. After a second postponement, with the Communists still refusing to participate, the National Assembly finally convened on November 15, 1946, and a democratic constitution was approved and adopted on Christmas Day. But the Communists would have no part of it.
Chiang Kai-shek became completely convinced that the Communists would never negotiate a peaceful settlement but were out to win the whole domain of China by military conquest. He also believed the Communists could never represent the interests of China because their policies were created and imposed upon them by Moscow.
Time was to prove this analysis correct, but U.S. diplomatic strategists were the last to be convinced—and then only after the Chinese mainland had been lost. Furthermore, Chiang could not convince the U.S. diplomatic corps that he was justified in striking back when the Communists attacked him. When he tried to regain the territory recently seized by Communists, it was described in Washington as “inexcusable aggression.”
Finally, in the summer of 1946, when the Communists had repeatedly violated the truce agreement, the Nationalists decided to vigorously counterattack and penetrate deep into Manchuria. The diplomats frantically ordered Chiang to stop, but he refused to do so. He said another truce would only allow the Communists time to re-group and come back even more fiercely than before. He also said it was his intention to continue the campaign to forcibly disarm the Communists and restore them to civilian status so that China could get on with her program of constitutional government without fear of constant insurrection.
This line of reasoning did not appeal to the State Department. Three different times Chiang was ordered to issue an unconditional cease-fire. To make it stick a U.S. embargo was finally placed on all aid to China. Only after United States aid abruptly halted did Chiang reluctantly agree to a cease-fire. General Marshall stated: “As Chief of Staff I armed 39 anti-Communist divisions (in China), now with a stroke of the pen I disarm them.”
This proved a great boon to the Communists. While the Nationalists were being held down by U.S. diplomatic pressure the Communists re-grouped their forces and prepared for the all-out campaign which later proved fatal to China. It is strange that even after Chiang had surrendered his own best judgment and issued a cease-fire, the U.S. embargo was not lifted. The Nationalist forces sat idly by, consuming many of their supplies which they feared would never be replaced. Later, when the Red tide had begun to roll in on Chiang, Congress did finally force through an “Aid to China” bill, but actual delivery of goods was not processed in time to be of any significant assistance.
From 1947 on, the morale of the Nationalist army disintegrated. It seemed apparent to Chinese military leaders that they were the victims of Communist aggression on the one hand and the victims of a total lack of insight by U.S. and British diplomats on the other.
After Chiang issued his unconditional cease-fire, General Marshall appealed to the Communist leaders to reopen negotiations for settlement. The Communists replied, but talked as though they were victors and made demands which even General Marshall labeled as completely unreasonable. They wanted all the rich areas of Manchuria from which they had just been driven. They wanted the National Assembly dissolved and demanded a predominant place in the proposed coalition government.
It was obvious that any hope of settlement under such circumstances was impossible. General Marshall accepted this as a Communist pronouncement that the Communists were no longer interested in mediation and he therefore ended his mission by having President Truman call him home. He returned to America in January, 1947, and immediately became the new U.S. Secretary of State.
There were many leaders in the United States Government who were completely dissatisfied with the way the Chinese Civil War had been handled. Therefore, in the summer of 1947, General Albert C. Wedemeyer was sent to Asia under Presidential orders to find out what was wrong in China. Upon his return he submitted a report which was extremely critical of the entire formula for peace which had been followed by General Marshall and the diplomatic corps. He indicated that not only had the interests of free China been violated, but the self-interests of the United States and all her Allies had been subordinated to the whims of the Communists. He recommended prompt and voluminous aid to the Nationalist Government and predicted that the situation could still be salvaged if help were provided in time.
Unfortunately, this report fell into the hands of the very people whom General Wedemeyer had criticized. Consequently, it was buried in department files for nearly two years and was not brought to light until long after it was too late to take the action it recommended.
Meanwhile, the forces of collapse were rapidly moving toward their inexorable climax. During 1947 and the early part of 1948 the armies of Chiang Kai-shek held up remarkably well, but toward the latter part of 1948, the lack of supplies and the internal disintegration of the Chinese economy took its toll. The fall of the Nationalist forces was not gradual—it was sudden and complete. Many thousands abandoned their positions and raced southward in disorganized confusion but other thousands threw down their arms and surrendered to Chinese Communists on the spot.
By September, 1949, the Communist leaders were already wildly celebrating their victory as they set up the “People’s Republic of China.” Shortly afterwards Chiang acknowledged he was temporarily beaten and abandoned the mainland of China in order to flee with the straggling remnants of his army to Formosa.
The fall of free China produced a wave of boiling indignation throughout the United States. Both political leaders and lay citizens felt that somehow an old ally had been subverted or betrayed. At the time few Americans were really aware of what was involved in the Chinese debacle, but they knew Chiang Kai-shek and America’s interests had suffered a catastrophic defeat. There was widespread demand for the facts.
The men who had engineered the fatal Chinese policy quickly collaborated on a report designed to justify their handling of America’s interests in the Far East. It was called “United States Relations With China” and was published as a “White Paper” in 1949. To many people the arguments in this paper were highly persuasive, but not to all; in fact, the loss of China brought a startling awakening to some of those who had been with General Marshall and had trusted the Communists almost to the very last.
One of these was America’s ambassador to China during that critical period, Dr. John Leighton Stuart.{88} As a former missionary to China and president of Yenching University; he could not help but evaluate the fall of China as a vast human disaster. He criticized himself for having a part in it and censured his colleagues for trying to cover up their mistakes in the White Paper.
Dr. Stuart frankly declared: “We Americans (who were carrying out the China policy) mainly saw the good things about the Chinese Communists, while not noticing care fully the intolerance, bigotry, deception, disregard for human life, and other evils which seem to be inherent in any totalitarian system. We kept Communist meanings for such adjectives as progressive, democratic, liberal, also bourgeois, reactionary, imperialist, as they intended we should do. We failed to realize fully the achievements to date and the potentialities of Chinese democracy. Therefore, we cannot escape a part of the responsibility of the great catastrophe—not only for China, but also for America and the free world—the loss of the Chinese mainland.”
Concerning the White Paper he said: “I was, in fact, merely one of many persons who were perplexed and filled with apprehension by what they found in this extraordinary book…. It is clear that the purpose was not to produce a ‘historian’s history’ but to select materials which had been used in making the policy in effect at the moment. What had been omitted were materials rejected in the making of policy, materials which had not been relied upon.”
This had been General Wedemeyer’s complaint. The diplomatic strategists were not willing to neither recognize the realities of the situation nor reverse their evaluation of Communist leaders even though the evidence of duplicity was everywhere.
By 1949 there was little excuse for any alert American to further deceived by Communist strategy. Dozens of American-Communist spies had been exposed, the leading American Communists had been arrested by the FBI and convicted of conspiring to overthrow the U.S. Government by violence, Whittaker Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley and a swarm of exCommunist agents had laid bare their souls, the Western Allies had gone through the vicious squeeze play of the Berlin blockade and the United States had spent billions in foreign aid to keep Russia from consuming all of Europe the same way she had taken over China. But in spite of all this, a meeting was sponsored by the State Department in October, 1949, which almost defies explanation.
It was held for the announced purpose of deciding what the “experts” believed should be done in the Far East. The meeting was presided over by Philip Jessup of the State Department, and those in attendance included not only State Department officials, but many select guests who were interested in Asia. Dr. John Leighton Stuart was present and afterwards expressed deep apprehension concerning the slant of the entire discussion. Harold Stassen was also present and later testified that the majority present favored the following policies:
1. European aid should be given priority over Asia.
2. Aid to Asia should not be started until after a “long and careful study.”
3. Russian Communists should be considered “not as aggressive as Hitler” and “not as apt to take direct military action to expand their empire.”
4. Communist China should be recognized by the U.S.
5. Britain and India should be urged to follow suit in recognizing the Chinese Communists.
6. The Chinese Communists should be allowed to take over Formosa.
7. The Communists should be allowed to take over Hong Kong from Britain if the Communists insisted.
8. Nehru should not be given aid because of his “reactionary and arbitrary tendencies.”
9. The Nationalist blockade of China should be broken and economic aid sent to the Communist mainland.
10. No aid should be sent to Chiang or to the anti-Communist guerillas in South China.
Two of the men at the conference who were foremost in promoting these policies were Owen Lattimore and Lawrence Rosinger. Both were eventually identified by Louis Budenz (former editor of the Daily Worker testifying under oath) as members of the Communist Party.{89}
Even if there had been no such identification, the glaring truth which every man at the conference should have known was the fact that this entire list of policies was a car bon copy of the prevailing “party line” coming out of Moscow. For months these very policies had been hammered out in every edition of the Communist press. It was a singular commentary on the judgment and professional discernment of those officials who fell in with these fantastic recommendations—particularly in the light of the provocative and inflammatory policies which Russia was using at that very moment to threaten nations in nearly every region of the free world.
Three months after this conference, the new Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, announced several policies portending the loss of Formosa and the liquidation of the Chinese Nationalists by the Communists. First, he overruled the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (to give strong military aid to Chiang) by announcing on January 12, 1950, that the principles itemized above as point No. 6 and point No. 10 was to be official U.S. policy. He also stated that the U.S. defense perimeter in the Pacific did not include either Formosa or South Korea. He stated that if an attack should occur outside the U.S. defense perimeter “the initial reliance must be on the people attacked to resist it.” Then he suggested that they could appeal to the United Nations.
This was simply a blunt statement that the U.S. diplomats were abandoning Formosa and Korea. This announcement was shocking to many students of the Far East, not only because the policy violated U.S. self-interest, but because it literally invited Communist attack on these free-world allies by giving advance notice that these areas could be invaded without interference from the United States.
It took just six months for the Communists to select and prepare their point of attack. They chose the practically defenseless territory of South Korea as the first theater of war.
It will be recalled that the Yalta agreement allowed Russia to take over North Korea at the same time the Soviets occupied Manchuria. As elsewhere, the Russians did not withdraw their troops until a strong Communist puppet government was firmly entrenched. As for South Korea, U.S. forces occupied the territory up to the 38th parallel.
During 1949 a United Nations mandate required both Russia and the U.S. to withdraw their troops. The Russians left behind them a powerful North Korean Red Army consisting of 187,000 well-trained and well-equipped troops, 173 Russian tanks, quantities of Russian-built artillery and 200 Russian planes. On the other hand, South Korea was a new-born Republic with an army of 96,000 men who were poorly equipped with practically no tanks, anti-tank weapons, heavy artillery or fighter planes. This meant that by the end of 1949 South Korea was even more vulnerable to attack from North Korea than Formosa was from Communist China. And the Washington diplomats had assured both Formosa and Korea that in case of attack they definitely could not expect any military help from the United States. As spokesman for the diplomatic left-wing contingent, Owen Lattimore explained the situation: “The thing to do is let South Korea fall, but not to let it look as if we pushed it.”{90}
In the early dawn of Sunday, June 25, 1950, 8 divisions of the North Korean Red Army spilled across the 38th parallel and plunged southward toward the city of Seoul. Frantic calls went out from President Sigmund Rhee to the Security Council of the United Nations, to President Truman in Washington and to General Douglas MacArthur in Japan. All three responded. The Security Council pronounced North Korea guilty of a breach of the peace and ordered her troops back to the 38th parallel. (If Russia had been represented, she no doubt would have vetoed this action, but the Soviet delegates were boycotting the Security Council because China continued to be represented by the Nationalists rather than by the Chinese Communists.)
General MacArthur responded by flying to Korea and reporting the desperate situation to Washington. President Truman responded by completely reversing the policy of his diplomatic advisers and ordering General MacArthur to pour U.S. ground troops in from Japan to stop the red tide. Thus the war began.
For several weeks the situation looked very black. General MacArthur was made supreme commander of all United Nations forces, but at first these were so limited that the shallow beachhead at Pusan was about all they could hold. Then General MacArthur formulated a desperate plan. It was so difficult and illogical that he felt certain it would come to the Communists as a complete surprise. It did. On September 15, half way up the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. Navy (with two British carriers), the Air Force, Army and Marine Corps combined to launch an ingenious invasion at Inchon—a point where the 29-foot tide made a landing seem fantastic. Split-second timing permitted landings and the next thing the North Koreans knew they were trapped in the jaws of a mighty military pincer movement which cut across their supply lines and then rapidly closed in to wipe out the flower of the whole North Korean Army which, of course, was concentrated in the South. It was a magnificent victory.
MacArthur then turned his armies toward the north. The ROK’s (South Koreans) went up the East Coast while other U.N. troops went up the West Coast. In doing this, General MacArthur was required to act on obscure hints rather than specific directions from Washington and the U.N. For a while it appeared that he might be forbidden to pursue the enemy forces retreating to the North.
By the middle of October the coastal spearheads of the U.N. offensive were nearing the northernmost parts of Korea and the war appeared practically over. There was the immediate prospect of unifying the entire Korean Peninsula and setting up a democratic republic. Then, in November, unexpectedly disaster struck.
From across the northern Korean boundary of the Yalu River came the first flood tide of what turned out to be a Chinese Communist army of one million men. As these troops came pouring into North Korea, the U.N. forces found themselves smothered by a great wave of fanatical, screaming, and suicidal humanity. MacArthur radioed to Washington: “We face an entirely new war!”
The U.N. lines were cut to ribbons as their wall of defense was pushed back below the 38th parallel. General MacArthur could scarcely believe that the Chinese Communists would dare to risk the massive retaliation of the United States atomic bombing Air Force by this inexcusable assault on U.N. forces. However, what he did not know, but soon discovered, was the appalling fact that the Chinese had already been assured by their intelligence agents that the diplomats in Washington, London and New York were not going to allow MacArthur to retaliate with the U.S. Air Force. MacArthur was going to be restricted to “limited” warfare.
It was in this hour that General MacArthur found that pro-Communist forces in the U.N. and left-wing sympathizers in the State Department were swamping the policies of the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and those who had charge of the Korean War. He found that vast supplies which he badly needed were being diverted to Europe in accordance with point No. 1 of the State Department Conference. He was specifically restricted from following Chinese jets to their bases or bombing the Manchurian Railroad which was dumping mountains of supplies on the north banks of the Yalu River. He was forbidden to bomb the Yalu bridge over which troops and supplies were funneled, and his own supplies and replacements were cut back to the point where a counter-offensive became strategically difficult, if not impossible. The final blow came when the diplomats flatly turned down Chiang Kai-shek’s enthusiastic offer to send thousands of trained Nationalist troops from Formosa to fight in Korea.
Over a period of four months General MacArthur watched the slaughter resulting from these stalemate policies. Finally, he could contain himself no longer. He violated a presidential gag order dated December 6, 1950, and answered a written inquiry from Congressman Joseph W. Martin concerning the inexplicable reverses which U.N. forces were suffering in Korea. The General’s letter giving recommendations for the winning of the war was read in Congress April 5, 1951, and five days later, President Truman ordered MacArthur summarily withdrawn from all commands.
General MacArthur was relieved by General Matthew B. Ridgeway and he returned to the United States completely perplexed by the sudden termination of his military career. It was not until he landed in San Francisco and met the first wave of shouting, cheering, admiring fellow citizens that he realized that the sickness in the American body politic was not in all its members but only in one corner of its head.
It will be recalled that two more years of military stagnation followed the recall of General MacArthur. Subsequently, hearings before Congressional committees permitted General Mark Clark, General George E. Stratemeyer, General James A. Van Fleet, Admiral Charles Joy and others to explain what happened to their commands in Korea. Each one verified the fact that the military was never permitted to fight a winning war. The diplomats had imposed upon them a theory called “Communist Containment,” which in actual operation resulted in the containment of the U.N. fighting forces instead of the Communists. It soon became apparent that the Korean War had been run by the same team and according to the same policies as those which resulted in the fall of China.
It was also to be revealed at a later date that not only had the machinations of confused diplomats contributed to the semi-defeat in Korea but that fulltime under-cover agents of Soviet Russia had often stood at the elbows of officials in London, Washington and at the U.N. in New York to argue the Moscow line. Among the high-level spies for Russia during this critical period were two top British diplomats, Donald MacLean and Guy Burgess. MacLean was head of the American desk in Britain’s diplomatic headquarters at London; Burgess was the second secretary of the British Embassy in Washington. Both fled behind the Iron Curtain when they were about to be arrested by British Intelligence.
By the time President Eisenhower took office in January, 1953, there was a general feeling of gloom and despair concerning Korea. The people desperately desired to somehow stop the bloodshed. The hopes for peace were suddenly accelerated by a news flash of March 5 which swept round the world. Joseph Stalin was dead!
The next day a new government took over in Russia and the leader turned out to be Stalin’s former secretary and the keeper of the secret Communist files—Georgi Malenkov. He had seized power by joining forces with Lavrenti P. Beria, head of the secret police who had an army of agents and troops numbering two million. Beria also had charge of the forced labor camps and supervised the atomic energy plants.
However, when Malenkov and Beria took over as heirs of Stalin they immediately found themselves confronted by an explosive economic crisis. Pressure was building up inside Russia (and her satellites) just as it did in 1922 and again in 1932. Malenkov therefore offered respite to his people: “Let us now lay heavy industry aside for awhile. The people cannot eat heavy industry…. We should care for the needs of our people.” This was the beginning of a radical new policy for the USSR. At home the slogan was “More Food”; abroad Malenkov’s slogan was a campaign for “Peaceful Coexistence” with all the democracies.
It was just twenty-three days after Stalin died that the Communist Chinese acted on their new signals and opened negotiations with the U.N. commanders for an armistice. This finally led to the signing of a truce on July 27, 1953. It became effective twelve days later.
Thus ended the Korean War. It had cost the United States 20 billion dollars and more than 135,000 casualties. It had cost South Korea 1 million dead; another million maimed and wounded 9 million left homeless and saddled South Korea with 4 million refugees from North Korea.
The people of the United States came out of the Korean War sadder and wiser than when they went in. Authorities have stated that two things happened in the Korean War which may yet brand it as the greatest blunder the Communist strategists ever made. First, it awakened the United States to the necessity of vigorously rearming and staying armed so long as the Communist threat exists. Second, it demonstrated to the people of the United States the inherent weaknesses of the United Nations. As Senator Robert A. Taft summed it up: “The United Nations serves a very useful purpose as a town meeting of the world… but it is an impossible weapon against forcible aggression.”
Back in 1950 when the U.N. called upon all its members to furnish the means to resist the Communists, only 16 countries responded with the highly essential ingredient of armed troops. Altogether, these 16 nations furnished an army of 35,000 fighting men. Little South Korea maintained a fighting force of 400,000 men while the United States made up the difference by furnishing a force of 350,000. More than one million American GI’s had to be rotated through Korea to maintain the U.S. quota of military strength. In the mind of the average American the U.N. had therefore ceased to represent “collective security.”
It was difficult to forget that while Americans and South Koreans were taking the brunt of the war, Russia and Britain had both violated the U.N. embargo by shipping strategic materials to Red China. On the floor of the U.N., Andrei Vishinsky had thrown down the Russian challenge: “The Soviet Union has never concealed the fact that it sold and continues to sell armaments to its ally, China!”
The end of the Korean War marked the end of an era. During the summer of 1953 the United States served notice on Britain and France that if the Communists broke the cease-fire agreement in Korea we would immediately launch a major war against China. Both Britain and France agreed to support this stand. Many did not realize it at the time, but by this action the United States was passing the death sentence a twenty-year-old policy of Communist appeasement.
No one could have welcomed the end of appeasement with greater relief than John Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI and the number-one law enforcement personality in the United States. Since 1919 he had struggled to illuminate the minds of government leaders as well as the public generally concerning the conspiratorial nature of Communism. As an assistant to the Attorney General in 1919 he had prepared one of the first legal briefs reflecting the subversive aspects of the worldwide Communist movement.
During the twenty years of appeasement, when many Americans had been lulled into a sense of security by the “sweet talk of Communist United Front propaganda,” John Edgar Hoover had struck out with two-listed blows at the Red menace which was gnawing at the vitals of American life:
“The American Communist… must be placed in the same category as the Ku Klux Klan, the now defunct German-American Bund, and other totalitarian groups…. As common criminals seek the cover of darkness, Communists, behind the protection of false fronts, carry on their sinister and vicious program, intent on swindling and robbing Americans of their heritage of freedom.”
John Edgar Hoover was a great disappointment to the Communists. In most countries the Red leaders had been able to completely discredit the agencies handling the police powers of government by blasting them with charges of corruption and violation of civil liberties. However, the Director of the FBI had spent his adult lifetime building the FBI so that the public would know that any such charges would be false and fraudulent.
Over the years the public had learned that FBI agents spent as much time checking out innocent suspects as they spent in ferreting out the guilty. In fact, by careful investigation and humane treatment of the guilty, the FBI had secured confessions in 85 percent of its cases.{91}
Therefore, the Communists were deeply disappointed with the results of their campaign to portray the FBI as an American Gestapo. The Communists leaders were further embittered by the knowledge that the FBI had trained its personnel to be just what governmental officers in a free nation should be—alert, intelligent, scientific and hard working. And what particularly frightened the Reds was the quiet methodical way in which Bureau agents went after subversives—all of which foreshadowed a day of reckoning for Communist strategists.
It came July 20, 1948, when all the top leaders the Communist Party of America were indicted. The “Big Eleven” who stood trial were all convicted. Six of their attorneys were also fined or imprisoned for contemptuous conduct during the trial. Four of the eleven Communists jumped their $20,000 bail bond and the FBI had to launch an international investigation to have them returned.
Shortly afterwards the Government became convinced that Soviet espionage agents had been stealing atomic information and the FBI was given jurisdiction. Within weeks the FBI had gristed through tons of records, interviewed hundreds of “restricted” employees at various atomic energy plants and emerged from the slow elimination process to point the finger of justice at a physicist, Klaus Fuchs, who had spent considerable time at Los Alamos. However, at that moment the German-born, naturalized Britisher was the dignified director of England’s atomic energy establishment at Harwell.
Acting on the FBI tip that Klaus Fuchs was the principal suspect in the subversion of the free world’s monopoly of the atomic bomb, British Intelligence went to work. Within one month they saw some evidence that the FBI might be right. After another month they had no doubt about it. On February 3, 1949, the British announced that Fuchs had been arrested and had made a full confession.
Fuch’s confession sent the FBI on another hunt. Fuchs said he gave packets of information dealing with the atomic bomb to a person known to him only as “Raymond.” This person had to be identified and located since he was apparently the courier who delivered the bomb secrets to the Soviet Consulate in New York. Although the FBI had nothing to start with but a physical description, a phony name and the possibility that the courier might be a chemist, agents finally came the right man. It was Harry Gold.
Harry Gold confessed and this enabled the FBI to finally unravel the answer to a question which had puzzled the whole nation: “How did the Russians get hold of information on the ingenious trigger mechanism of the atomic bomb which should have taken the Russians many years to discover?” Harry Gold said they stole it. The FBI once more took up the trail and this time it led to the doorstep of two U.S. citizens, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
The investigation revealed that Julius Rosenberg had pressured his young brother-in-law, David Greenglass, to turn over to Harry Gold and himself all the basic information about the trigger device without which the bomb could not be exploded, David Greenglass worked at the atomic energy laboratory at Los Alamos and had a rather intimate knowledge of the construction of the bomb and the lens apparatus by which it was detonated. Greenglass was finally induced to draw up sketches of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and to provide detailed drawings of the detonator lens. The Rosenbergs then channeled this information into the regular Russian espionage apparatus.
As soon as the Communist scientists received this data they quickly closed the gap in the atomic race and exploded a Russian bomb. It will be recalled that this came as a great shock to the startled West. The Red leaders capitalized on this temporary advantage by rattling their atomic sabers and telling the Communist leaders in China and North Korea to start casting about for some early military conquest. Eagerly they went to work preparing for the Korean War. In fact, by the time Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been convicted and were ready for sentence the United States was in the midst of the Korean conflict. Thousands of American lives were being sacrificed to hold back the tide of desolation which the Rosenbergs had helped to turn loose.
Judge Irving Robert Kaufman looked down at this man and woman and said:
“Plain, deliberate contemplated murder is dwarfed in magnitude by comparison with the crime you have committed…. I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb, years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason. Indeed, by your betrayal you undoubtedly have altered the course of history….
“What I am about to say is not easy for me. I have deliberated for hours, days and nights…. I have searched the records—I have searched my conscience—to find some reason for mercy—for it is only human to be merciful and it is natural to try and spare lives. I am convinced, however, that I would violate the solemn and sacred trust that the people of this land have placed in my hands were I to show leniency to the defendants Rosenberg. It is not in my power, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, to forgive you. Only the Lord can find mercy for what you have done… you are hereby sentenced to the punishment of death.”
David Greenglass was sentenced to fifteen years.
It was a tragic chapter in American history, but it verified Mr. Hoover’s original assertion that the Red leaders “carry on their sinister and vicious program, intent on swindling and robbing Americans of their heritage of freedom.”
But John Edgar Hoover knew that the communist revolutionists would never try to strike their final, deadly blow at the United States as long as they were losing the battle of the underground. He also felt that carefully selected and carefully trained young Americans could match stratagems with the Red leaders and win. The history of the FBI during Mr. Hoover’s remarkable administration gives ample justification for his feelings of enthusiasm and complete confidence in the ultimate victory of America’s underground soldiers of freedom.
By 1953 the Kremlin was not only suffering embarrassment abroad but a wide crack in the Iron Curtain revealed that the Communist empire was in desperate straits at home. The myth of Communist strength and unity was uncovered. East Germany riots broke out as the people faced tanks with bricks and bare hands. To make matters worse, insubordinate Russian officers and soldiers had to be executed for refusing to fire into the German crowds. A rash of uprisings also broke out in Czechoslovakia and threatened to break out in Poland, Bulgaria and the Ukraine.
Economists discovered from admissions of Malenkov in his speeches and official releases that Russians were working 38 hours a week for food that took only 26 hours to earn in 1928. Furthermore, Russia—with a substantial increase in population—was producing less food under State Socialism than she had produced under the NEP in 1928. The riots in the satellite countries were the result of the realization that Russia would probably never fulfill her propaganda promise to furnish them food, clothing and machinery. On the contrary, the bankrupt USSR had been feeding like a great parasite on the satellite countries.
In contrast to the Iron Curtain countries the Western European nations were enjoying the greatest period of prosperity in forty years. The American people had donated 50 billion dollars to the post-war recovery of these countries and they were rapidly reaching the point where they could begin to stand alone. There was a healthy resurgence faith in free enterprise capitalism as the United States reached the zenith of its prosperity and demonstrated its capacity to not only produce more wealth than any other nation but to distribute it more equitably among its people.
A leading Socialist in Britain, Professor W. Arthur Lewis, openly acknowledged that Socialism had been a great disappointment in England: “What has been done… is to transfer property not to the workers but to the Government. Workers continue to be employees, subject to all the frustrations working under orders in large undertakings…. Those who expected nationalization to raise wages have… been disappointed…. It does not solve the problem of labor relations; it reduces private wealth… it raises unsolved problems of control; and it raises the issue of how much power we want our Government to have.”{92}
After the Korean Armistice the Chinese Communists did not allow Russia’s domestic problems to dull their appetite for further aggression. They marched off to complete the Red conquest of Indo-China. Originally the war in Indo-China had been an attempt by the native population to free itself from French colonialism. However, Red infiltration by Communist Chinese had finally changed the conflict from a war for freedom to a war between France and the Chinese Reds. The compromising influence of the French Communist Party (the largest single party in France) made the fatal outcome of the war dependent only on the passing of time. Defeat to the French came on July 21, 1954. At Geneva the Red Chinese jubilantly agreed to stop fighting in exchange for 12,000,000 people and 61,000 square miles of Indo-China.
Mao Tse-tung was now intoxicated with double success. Even Russia felt it necessary to make concessions to Mao and his Chinese Communists in order to insure their continued loyalty to the Communist Motherland. In October, 1954, Russian officials trekked to Peiping and flattered Mao with the following promises:
1. To evacuate Port Arthur which Russia was authorized to lease at Yalta.
2. To sell to China (on easy terms) the railroads and other industries which Russia had been operating since the war as a “Partner.”
3. To loan China 130,000,000 dollars.
4. To help build two railroads across China.
5. To help China build 15 new heavy industrial projects.
6. To campaign for the seizure of Formosa.
7. To campaign for the inclusion of Japan in the Communist orbit.
It was apparent that even though Russia was talking “peaceful coexistence” the free world would have little relief from the war-making plans of Red China.
From the point of view of the United States, the Indo-China fiasco was a dismal political tragedy. The 100 Communists in the French Parliament (who even refused to stand in tribute to the French war dead) engineered the collapse of the seven-year war. As the U.S. Secretary of State addressed the armistice meeting at Geneva he lashed out at the cowardice and subversion which had sacrificed 12,000,000 more human beings to Red aggression: “Peace,” he said, “is always easy to achieve—by surrender. Unity is also easy to achieve—by surrender. The hard task, the task that confronts us, is to combine peace and unity with Freedom!”
Secretary Dulles left Geneva to carry out a feverish, round-the-world campaign to get all free nations to make an “agonizing reappraisal” of the ridiculous concessions which were being made to Communist imperialism. In 20 months he covered over 152,000 miles and when he was through the United States had become a party to (or strengthened its position in) a chain of regional compacts specifically designed to reinforce Communist containment. To the dismay of the Soviet strategists, Article 52 of the U.N. Charter contained a loophole which permitted this procedure. Therefore, the United States openly began to use NATO, SEATO and similar regional organizations as collective agencies for mutual security. To a large extent this nullified the paralyzing choke-hold which the Soviets had previously held on the West through its abusive use of the veto power in the U.N. Security Council.
The United States also announced that she did not intend to sit back and watch Russia construct its armada of long-range bombers which Communist press releases described as capable of dropping H-bombs on American cities. The U.S. answer to this was the rapid construction of a ring of U.S. defense bases on the fringe of the Iron Curtain. Immediately the roar of an injured bear came thundering out of Russia: “We are being threatened with annihilation!”
Secretary Dulles soberly reaffirmed a truth which he was well aware the Communists already knew—namely, that no nation need fear these bases except an aggressor. Then he expounded in clear-cut, hard-hitting terminology the new doctrine of “massive retaliation” which he warned would be triggered instantly in case the Soviet Empire dared fulfill its oft repeated threat of a surprise attack on the free world.
For awhile there was an ominous silence in Moscow.
Toward the latter part of 1954 it became apparent that serious political adjustments were going on inside Russia. A bellicose, bullet-headed personality named Nikita S. Khrushchev and a punctilious party politician named Nikolai Bulganin began to appear more frequently in the news. An ex-Soviet official (Nikolai E. Khokhlov) declared this to be a bad sign. He described Khrushchev and Bulganin as promoters of world Communism, in contrast to Malenkov and Beria who wanted first to improve living conditions for Russians.
In the fall of 1954, Khrushchev and Bulganin led a delegation to Peiping. There the Chinese were given instructions to prepare for an assault on Formosa. From this, it became apparent that completely new lines of power had been drawn in Russia. Eventually it came out that Malenkov had deserted his partner, Beria, and joined forces with the new Khrushchev-Bulganin forces. In the latter part of December, Beria and three of his aides were shot. Malenkov was summarily demoted but he had switched sides in time to save his life. Bulganin took his place and Khrushchev hovered in the background setting policy and announcing the new slogans, “return to heavy industry—armaments” and “the growing of food by decree.”
Meanwhile the Chinese Communists had also caught the spirit of the new leadership and began fronting for Moscow by tantalizing the democracies with the shocking announcement that they had deliberately held back U.S. officers and men in violation of the prisoner-exchange agreement at the close of the Korean War.
The armistice agreement at Panmunjom had specifically provided that all U.N. prisoners who desired repatriation would be returned even though some of them might be charged with some crime. Now, however, the Chinese Communists were defiantly announcing that they had secretly held back a number of American prisoners because they were charged with espionage or some other type of crime. U.S. indignation reached a white heat as many Americans began to realize for the first time how completely impossible it is to depend on a Communist pledge.
In spite of public indignation, however, American feelings were somewhat compromised at this particular moment by a rapidly growing desire on the part of many citizens to forget the whole foreign “mess” and get on with home-front developments which promised to provide an all-time record of American free enterprise prosperity.
Mao Tse-tung accurately diagnosed this national feeling as an anti-war sentiment, and he therefore accelerated his campaign of propaganda throughout Asia by representing the United States as a “paper tiger.” He taunted the United States with additional disclosures of illegally-held American prisoners of war and by open implication boastfully defied the United States Government to try and do something about it.
He became so enthusiastic in his campaign that he finally decided to prove the impotency of American influence to the entire world by acting on Khrushchev’s fighting orders and strike at Formosa. In a matter of weeks the offshore islands in the hands of the Nationalists began to be bombed from the Chinese mainland. It was the preliminary phase of an all-out attack on Chiang Kai-shek’s last outpost.
This was a highly critical hour for the United States since she had committed herself to defend Formosa. If she wavered, the light of freedom could very easily go out in Southeast Asia. One-half billion “neutral” Asians also watched keenly as U.S. leaders measured the risk and fathomed the depths of their own moral convictions.
Early in February, 1955, the Chinese Reds and the other World Communists got their answer. It was a U.S. Congressional resolution supported by both parties which confirmed the authority of the President of the United States to throw the Seventh Fleet into the Formosa Straits and give orders to wage an all-out war if attacked. This would obviously include the use of nuclear weapons.
The “little nations” of South East Asia stood up and cheered. It was apparent that the U.S. not only had the will to talk “massive retaliation” but the will to wage it. At the Afro-Asian conference at Bandung several of the little nations boldly showed their colors. They badgered the Chinese Communist delegates with cries of “Communist colonialism” and “Communist aggression.” It was a severe blow to the prestige and propaganda of Mao Tse-tung and his Communist backers in Moscow.
Within a matter of weeks the “stand firm” policy of the U.S. and her Pacific Allies began bearing miraculous fruit. Orders went out from Moscow that coexistence was once more the sweet theme of the hour. The Chinese began releasing U.S. prisoners they had held illegally. The issue of Formosa was allowed to slip quietly into the background. Khrushchev extended an invitation to the United States to exchange visitors—editors, congressmen, farmers—he even said he might come himself sometime. All over the world the hard-knuckled tension of the ten post-war years began to subside. There seemed to be general satisfaction with the new and unexpected turn of events throughout the world and the democracies settled back once more to the pursuit of their own normal domestic affairs.
But in the midst of it all came a sinister warning from military intelligence. Reports indicated that while the emphasis of “soft” policies toward the democracies was being promoted abroad a tough, imperialistic policy was being fed to the troops at home. Soviet troops were being taught that the “importance of the surprise factor in contemporary war has increased enormously,” and “the Communist Party demands that the whole personnel of our Army and Navy should be imbued with the spirit of maximum vigilance and constant and high military preparedness, so as to be able to wrest the initiative from the hands of the enemy, and, having delivered smashing blows against him, finally defeat him completely.”{93}
All this had a familiar spirit. It reminded alert Americans of a significant statement made by Dimitry Z. Manuilsky who represented the USSR in presiding over the Security Council of the United Nations in 1949. At the Lenin School of Political Warfare in Moscow he had taught:
“War to the hilt between communism and capitalism is inevitable. Today, of course, we are not strong enough to attack…. To win we shall need the element of surprise. The bourgeoisie will have to be put to sleep. So we shall begin by launching the most spectacular peace movements on record. There will be electrifying overtures and unheard of concessions. The capitalist countries, stupid and decadent, will rejoice to cooperate in their own destruction. They will leap at another chance to be friends. As soon as their guard is down, we shall smash them with our clenched fist!”{94}