Chapter 9: War
The Nazi occupiers tried to force Norwegian youth to fight its Russian allies during World War II. They would have succeeded were it not that the Americans bad kept their powder dry and threw out the Nazis. Worse, if Hitler had not been defeated by war, he would today have been running the world, based on nuclear power, and deciding where and for what every young man should fight and die. And some of my sincere, though ignorant American friends are appalled that I make my living building torpedoes, keeping America continuously prepared!
I was 44 when World War II started, considered too old to fight. I had to browbeat my way into the armed forces. In time, with British Intelligence and escaped German officers, we made detailed plans for kidnapping Hitler and ending the war early in 1944. The British were delighted. Franklin Roosevelt, at a safer distance from the front, turned us down, “The Germans must be beaten so they know it.” If we, assigned to this mission, who had thus put our lives on the line, may be permitted a word, it is this: There are times when the horrors of war must be accepted to prevent greater horrors. I have met mutilated veterans and shuddered, “There, but for the grace of God, go I,” but even these tell me they would have done it again.
In addition, the nation’s economy ran smoother, the living standard soared and somber warnings that we would be ruined in the future came to naught, for the sacred goal of winning welded us into efficient working units so we put out ample goodies in addition to munitions. We were close together. All talents were sought and used. We did not waste away our lives in Unemployment. While some of us fought on the outside, the nation’s insides were warm, healthy and compassionate.
This reminded us that we had been unable in peace time to grasp the urgent needs that ought to have kept us all as busy as the more obvious need of winning a war.
The smoothly running economy made the war look attractive, to the non-combatants at least, with the consequence that World War II, for example, was prolonged far beyond its useful life. This writer was involved, as a linguist, soldier and adventurer, in the first German approaches to Allied quarters. The war was not old when high-placed Germans offered to help dispose of the Hitler gang and establish a new cooperative German government. There was every reason to believe in their sincerity, as well as their ability to carry out their plans. Never more than forty-four per cent of the German people bad ever voted for Hitler; most years much less. He bad beaten and murdered his way to power in spite of the fifty six per cent or most who opposed him. He never represented the German people.
Among those who favored the plans of the German dissidents were Allan Dulles, at that time only a minor U.S. intelligence operator who could not yet swing the minds of Premiers and Presidents; Trevor Roper, British historian and intelligence operator, and others in the thick of action though thin in power. Platitudes, such as “We must beat the Germans so they know it,” were countered by British General J. F. Fuller, “The fifty-six percent majority of Germans don’t need that lesson. The rest cannot be taught and do not matter.”
Greater names had their way, ignoring General Fuller, and have weighing on their conscience (if such exists after death?), millions of American, British and continental lives, among which the very Germans who could make the post-war years worthy of the sacrifices.
What, in the scheme of things, caused the emergence of a Hitler gang and its wars? A short-circuit in the current that feels and knows that every living being represents the universe. Hitler, near-sighted, fancied his limited person and his friends represented it against others who did not. But how could this unholy mixture of imagination, lies and hypocricies be accepted by such a substantial part of a great people? Because of intolerable pressure brought about by clumsy, inoperable economic sanctions. Once launched, Hitler’s thrusts at first were more successful than even be had expected, for none of his powerful neighbors lifted a hand to defend the victims Atrocious crimes were committed against people and races while the world sat still in the name of PEACE, which from then on became a dirty word and still may be.
One by one, we finally awoke and saw that there was something greater than peace, morally and practically greater and more necessary. That morally and practically greater thing was WAR.
We learned that war itself is neither wrong nor necessarily right. What is wrong is that we start wars too late and carry them on too long.
The Korean war, predictable to the wary, came as an unpleasant surprise to those American leaders who had sent Phillip Jessup, a distinguished John Hopkins scholar, to East Asia, ostensibly on a “fact-finding mission. Equally distinguished foreign service officers had collected facts for centuries in those same areas, so nobody swallowed this version of the mission. I happened to be on a lower level, partly self-inflicted mission in the same area at this same time and the pretensions of Jessup’s mission so galled me that I deposited with a friend in the Embassy of Tokyo, a less than scholarly treatise on the subject of FACTS, postulating that in international relations, particularly, facts are not “found” but made. Dr. Jessup is rumoured to have chuckled over it.
So, we waited for the real purpose of Jessup’s visit to be revealed. It was. In the first spot of his landing, and thereafter in every following place, he said, with variations, that Asia must not expect from the United States a participation or an aid program in any way comparable to our European commitments. This was Dr. Jessup’s mission: Not to find a fact but to produce one. What he produced was the Korean war. This may not have been his explicit purpose, nor the purpose of those who sent him. But our distinguished North Korean, Chinese and Russian counterparts interpreted to the best of their ability these statements, then staged the invasion of South Korea on the apparently well-founded belief that the United States would not interfere.
My own appearance in Japan at Christmas 1949 was not solely to take part in General MacArthur’s perennial New Year Party at the Imperial Hotel, although this was worth the trip all by itself for you were permitted and even urged to hug and kiss the entire complement of American womanhood in the area from age eighty down to sixteen, at midnight sharp, and the Geishas to boot. In addition, I had been commissioned by a friend to retrieve about a hundred thousand dollars worth of gold dust deposited by a fugitive from the Bolsheviks near Blagovaschensk on the river Amur. My friend had also involved U.S. intelligence. This project held no treasure hunt charm for me; for if I survived at all there would be nothing left for me after the Russians had taken their share and my friend what he considered his. But it was as good an excuse as any for going in and seeing what the Russkies were up to . . . a fact -finding mission after all?
How far up the MacArthur hierarchy my plan was supported I do not know, but with the ranks it was a shoe – in. All information that could be obtained was badly needed. But the local representative of the State Department said no, and so probably saved my life, though was it worth saving?
So the Korean war came along without my assistance. It took thousands of American and Korean lives to prove that America, as a whole, did not share the sentiments of those appointed officials who sent Dr. Jessup on his fact-producing mission. The United States, a giant rider straddling Furope and Asia, can never ignore the plight of either.
My Tokyo friends told me that while I could not enter the Soviet Union from Japan, there was no objection to my entering from any other point. So, I had the most cordial encounter with Ivanshenko in Hong Kong, officially Russian Trade Commissioner, actually one of the eminences behind the vast and secret Russian gold. lie told me a hundred thousand dollars worth was like a grain of sand compared to Russia’s actual. holdings. But this grain of sand, I countered, might nevertheless become of some interest to certain Russians and Americans? Seeing Ivanshenko’s cold stare. I quickly emptied my glass of vodka and sank deeply into the armchair trying to become invisible.
I made a daring thrust as far as Chungking, China’s ancient capital, where I happened to see Chiang Kai-Shek, long since rumored to be in Taiwan, standing very erect in a luxurious overcoat, backslapping and well-wishing his associates, then emplaning for Taiwan; an insouciant, unworried target for ‘red snipers. Whatever his politics, the old man displayed regal courage.
Further penetration became impossible. Reluctantly I had to backtrack, using the last exiting missionary plane, the St. Paul, outrageously overloaded, a pile of furniture and trunks in the middle of the floor upon which the children played mountaineers, yelling their WHOOPEES while the missionaries prayed earnestly that the plane would lift, which it did, obligingly, knocking two telephone poles in the noble effort.
The Korean war brought us in close touch with long-term torture as a government policy. A village chief not yet proven, merely being suspected of being anti-red friend-of-yanks would be strung up and slowly torture through weeks. His dead body would continue to hang there until the stink would duly have impressed upon all what happens if you don’t play ball. Many of our boys seeing this, fought more fiercely, hoping to produce a impression of their own. But some worried whether this zeal might be exposed to the same kind of torture, which might eat away their enthusiasm. There was another creeping fear: That our troops might become brutalized infected with this same disregard for fellow-humans. This, in addition to strategic and tactical reasons, was why all our military men became convinced we must never again become involved in a land war in Asia. General Ridgeway, who knew the ins and outs of the Korean war was a major spokesman for this view, along with Genera Gavin. If the so-called “military mind” could have prevailed, we might not have been in Vietnam at all, eve though visible and invisible pressure from less knowledgeable Presidents and their entourages caused many officers to condone our land war in Vietnam.
The “military mind” syndrome was indulged in even by such an intellect as Jawaharlal Nehru. He used the expression when we talked about President Eisenhower. Later, when he had seen and talked to him, be admitted he had been mistaken. “I have never met a man more genuinely concerned with peace.” A military man, with experience in his ghoulish line, knows the horrors of war and that all means must be employed to avoid it.
As for myself, hailing from Norway, which has not been attacked since the Atlantic Pact was signed because, I believe, the U.S. dropped hints it would go to war if Norway was invaded — I wondered if the Korean war would have happened at all if the U.S. instead of shouting that Asia would have to take care of itself, had said, as in the case of Norway, that an attack would be squarely met.
In Asia, in addition, there is China. What do we know of China? More than any one else in the Western World. Apart from all our immigrants from China and citizens of Chinese descent, the U.S. has more people who know and understand China than any other nation. Through such people, the Mainland Chinese government has made probings through the years. Forced by an irate section of the citizenry, our government has remained aloof and non-committal until now, finally, there has been a coming-together.
The priceless benefit of the Vietnam war has been the revelation it provided of our volatile emotions and stunted thought patterns, upon which might possibly follow a sobering process. Here an oversized half of the nation pompously proclaimed that all we did was thoughtlessly intrude into a domestic quarrel at a fabulous price in lives and billions. The undersized rest of us thought we had honestly tried to save a striving democracy from cruel and reactionary red bullies.
The former say: Who could connect the term “bully” with good old Ho Chi Minh’s saintly face with the long, silky beard? My French friends told me he sold his own commie friends (those he didn’t like) to the French secret police and their torture chambers. Senior Congress Person Frances Bolton asked me in the sixties what to do about requests for vast increases in our troops to Vietnam. I said I would love to have helped my South Vietnamese friends — possibly by some intelligence action or naval operations; but more land forces in Vietnam would not help, would destroy more than we could build. I have compassion for my countrymen who had to make those fateful decisions, though I wonder why they did not listen to senior Generals Ridgeway and Gavin, the misunderstood and abused “military minds”.
We might have “won” in Vietnam, by conducting the war on military principles rather than as a parlor game, but what would be the sense of destroying a country and its future livability just because a cruel band had ruled and mistreated its citizens and threatened others? No secure haven would have been created, just wastelands, more hate and additional blood baths.
All this we learned in or from Vietnam, though at a price. Some of us, who found the facts too hard to face, took refuge in drugs. This was also correctly foreseen by our so unappreciated “military minds” who are now busy controlling and reversing this trend, incidentally just a fraction of the nation’s alcohol problem.
While hardly a word has been heard in this country about Ho Chi Minh, this former CIA hireling, and what he has cost our country in lives and billions, former President Thieu of South Vietnam who headed a government of our own creation, has been continuously misrepresented and mistreated by “important”, ignorant and infantile writers. May we learn from this?
War is destruction, though occasionally it fosters greatness. Muclus Scaevola, a Roman patriot, volunteered to kill Lars Porsena who was besieging Rome, just like modern CIA agents today volunteer to risk death and torture to protect us. Mucius was caught and sentenced to be burned alive. Smilingly, he placed his right hand into a coal fire until it was burned to a crisp. This is why he was later called Scaevola, the lefthanded one. Lars was so impressed, he freed Mucius and gave up the siege.
In Norway, during the Nazi occupation, I met men who had been repeatedly tortured, in a way few ever survived, to make them reveal names of the underground. They were treated to boiling enemas that seemed to burn out their insides.
“How can you stand it?”
“There comes a time when you don’t care any longer what happens to you. You know only one thing: You are not going to give.”
“What about the pain?”
“The pain I first felt was half fear, fear of death. I don’t fear death any more, so I feel only half the pain. It is bearable.”
Such sentiment may not make sense to one who is thrown into a war he does not understand or can’t believe in. But a volunteer who knows he defends his country, his ideal, sees such moments as pinnacles of achievement. They are. To him, war lifts him above his human limitations to touch his Creator.
The many more, whom war does not lift, to whom war is unacceptable cruelty, what hope can they be given? No promise of eternal peace, only the prospect that through diligent study of man in all parts of the world, we may reach an insight that will permit us to diminish causes of major wars and eventually substitute police functions.
First of all, our present volatile “deterrent” system can be changed. One contemplated alternative was presented in Foreign Affairs, January 1973, by Fred Charles Ikle, former professor of political science at MIT and recently closely connected with weapons systems and strategy.
Dr. Ikle hopes to eliminate the vulnerability of our strategic arms to surprise attack and thus break the vicious circles: That they must be ready for prompt launching because they are vulnerable, and they are vulnerable because they must be ready. Weapons incapable of quick launching are less suitable for surprise; and against truly invulnerable nuclear armaments, surprise would have lost its purpose. For example, he proposes, arms hidden deeply underground, which could be launched only through weeks or months, would permit second thoughts, change of mind when warranted, over-riding panic decisions or correcting faulty messages. This, he admits, seems like a small step, but may be a beginning that might well save this globe from destruction.
Careful techno-socio-psychologic studies must precede such a step. Is it not possible, for example, that an enemy knowing it would take weeks or months before retaliation could strike -would go ahead with his attack, believing he could counter the counter attack by some means when given that much time? And might he not be right? An adventurous or even erratic bossman might well gamble. But the idea is worth serious consideration.
Now the sixty-nine billion dollar question: What causes wars? As for World War II, the answer was easy: Hitler. But why did such a character gain power in Germany? What level of despair caused a great people to listen to his ravings?
The German economy was out-of-kilter. Germans starved. The payments imposed on Germany after World War I were to be made, not in German goods exported to the Allies – the only way in which any nation can pay. No, the payments were to be made in dollars and other non-German currency. How could Germany obtain dollars? Only by selling German goods in the States. But we refused to let them do that. We were afraid this would increase our own unemployment. We tried, like other Western nations, to maintain what we called a “favorable” trade balance, meaning to sell for more than we bought. The only way any one can maintain such a “favorable” balance is for others to have an unfavorable one. On this self-destructing principle has the world economy operated — or misoperated, and still does.
For many years now thoughtful people have shown us how continuous full employment could be achieved, with the greatest benefit to our national economy, to our freedoms, and to our trade balance. That’s what this book is all about, particularly our concluding chapter. So, if not directly, then indirectly one major cause of World War II was the chaotic national economics. In other words: That full employment as national policies had not been established.
Today we have nuclear arms. A war will be more deadly. We have a choice between full employment or destruction.