THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
1897-1960
1941-1945
1941
- Communist activist Ho Chi Minh secretly returns to Vietnam after 30 years in exile and organizes a nationalist organization known as the Viet Minh (Vietnam Independence League).
Rise of communism in Indochina
After Japanese troops occupy Vietnam (currently known as Tonkin and Annam to the north and Cochin-China to the south, and all three constantly involved in bloody border disputes) during World War II, the US military intelligence agency Office of Strategic Services (OSS) allies with Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh guerrillas to harass Japanese troops in the jungles and to help rescue downed American pilots. (Vietnam War Timeline, D.J. Herda) - From 1941 until the end of World War II, the Persian Gulf region is occupied by Allied forces to protect the supply and delivery of oil.
Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"
British liason officer T.E. Lawrence writes to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, "The people of England have been led in Iraq ito a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient that the public knows. It is a disgrace to our record, and may soon be inflamed for amy ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster." Churchill responds, after British troops retake the country (see below): "You do not need to bother too much about the long term future in Iraq. Your immediate task is to get a friendly Government set up in Baghdad." (History Lesson: Middle East Timeline, Greg Palast) - May 2: British invades Iraq to restore a pro-UK government.
Middle East unrest
The deposed leader, Rashad Ali, who had been making overtures for support from Adolf Hitler, who plans to use the Palestinians as part of his attempt to control the Middle East for Germany, pleads in vain for German support, and flees the country. (FactMonster, MidEast Web, Greg Palast) - June:
Oppression of Jews
A massacre of Jews in Baghdad is allowed to happen by the British ambassador, who blocks the entrance of the British army into the city until the massacre was over. British forces overwhelm the Iraqi Army in Fallujah, and, after the slaughter of the Baghdad Jews, retake the city. (MidEast Web, Greg Palast) - June 22: German forces attack the Soviet Union in what is called "Operation Barbarossa,"
World War II
breaking the non-aggression pact between the two countries. The German invasion brings the USSR into the war, and is considered Hitler's most costly military blunder. Though early results are good for Germany, including the occupation of the Balkan states and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops, the invasion bogs down, and a combination of the fierce Russian winter and staunch Soviet resistance will prevent the Germans from reaching Moscow by December of 1941. (Wikipedia) - July 19: The first black Americans enter the Army Air Force. (Michael Cooper)
Hitler's "Final Solution"
- Fall: Chancellor Adolf Hitler and SS chief Heinrich Himmler determine the "Final Solution"
Oppression of Jews
to what they perceive as Germany's problem with Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, intellectuals, and political and religious dissidents. Hitler and Himmler decide to systemize the ongoing murders of these so-called undesirable elements in what will become known as the Holocaust. They decide to build a system of centralized concentration camps, where prisoners will be used as slave labor until they can be efficiently executed, usually by use of poison gas. Over 11 million people will be murdered between 1939 and the end of World War II in 1955; six million of them are Jews. (Wikipedia) - September 4: The USS Greer, an American destroyer, is attacked by a German submarine in the Atlantic after joining with a British aircraft to track and depth-charge the U-boat.
World War II
The Greer evades two torpedoes and drops four depth charges of its own near the submarine, making the destroyer the first American ship to attack a German target. President Roosevelt decries the attack on the Greer as "unprovoked" and an "act of piracy" during a "fireside chat" broadcast over the radio, inflaming American opinion against the Germans even more and prompting Roosevelt to give US naval vessels the option of attacking German warships without being fired upon first; this marks the beginning of the Americans' "undeclared war" against the Axis. (The Greer served honorably through the entirety of World War II, mostly performing escort duties.) (DANFS, David Corn) - September 16:
Middle East unrest
Reza Shah Pahlavi is forced to abdicate the throne of Iran in favor of his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, by Britain and France, who fear that he will ally Iran with the Axis, and invade Iran. He will die in exile in South Africa in 1944. (Wikipedia, Sedona) - November 21: Hitler receives the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
World War II
currently fleeing from Soviet and British forces; the Mufti tells Hitler about the Arabs' struggle against Britain and the Palestinian Jews. Hitler is sympathetic but refuses to help the Arabs until after Germany has conquered Russia. The Mufti will spend the rest of the war in Berlin, and after Germany's defeat will flee to Beirut and declare a jihad, or holy war, against the newly formed state of Israel. (Dan Cohn-Sherbok) - November 26: The US issues an ultimatum for Japan to immediately withdraw all of its forces from Indochina.
World War II
The ultimatum is issued in part by pressure from Harry Dexter White, a Treasury Department official who is secretly a Soviet spy; Moscow feared Japan would join with Germany and attack Siberia. Until the ultimatum, Japan had been seeking a peace treaty with the US; after the ultimatum would come the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Pat Buchanan) - November 29: A picture of the USS Arizona appears in the Army-Navy football game program, with a caption stating that "no battleship has ever been sunk by air attack."
US military
Eight days later, 1,117 men died aboard that ship during the Pearl Harbor attack. The picture's display shows the self-satisfied and unreasoning mindset among so many American military experts as to America's invulnerability to attack. The attack drove many American isolationists to the opposite extreme -- since the oceans demonstrably could not protect the US from military attack, then the only way to protect the country was to militarily dominate the world. Their change from one extreme to the other marks the beginning of what is currently known as "neoconservatism."(Derek Leebaert)
Pearl Harbor attack
- December 7: Japanese aircraft bomb Pearl Harbor in Hawaii,
World War II
doing serious damage to the US Pacific Fleet and precipitating the US's official entry into World War II. US forces will fight in both the European and Pacific theaters through August 1945, in the process helping to overthrow the Nazi regime in Germany and the imperialist Hirohito regime of Japan. Some historians believe that Roosevelt has prior knowledge of the attack, and allows it to take place as a way to impel the US's entry into the war; the evidence of this is circumstantial at best. (ZMag, Wikipedia) - December 7: Reporter Edward R. Murrow has dinner with President Roosevelt,
Media cooperation with government
during which time Roosevelt tells Murrow pretty much every detail he knows about the attack, including how many lives were lost, how many planes were destroyed, how many ships were sunk, etc. On his way back to his hotel, Murrow considers filing a report: as Marvin Kalb later writes, "the news, after all, was sensational, vitally important, and he had it from a superb source." Undoubtedly a modern reporter would have run, not walked, to the nearest phone to file the story; Roosevelt was aware of Murrow's profession and may well have intended the information to be made public. But Murrow decides not to publish the information, and wait for official confirmation and press releases. "Better than now?" Kalb asks. "Worse? Certainly different, and, in my judgment, wrong. The news should have been reported." (Marvin Kalb) - December 11: Italy and Germany declare war on the United States.
World War II
The Axis now finds itself fighting against a coalition of the world's largest empire (the British Empire), the world's largest industrial and financial power (the US), and the world's largest nation (the Soviet Union). (Michael Cooper, Wikipedia)
Many US conservatives oppose war, side with Hitler
- After Roosevelt declares war on the Axis,
US corporate ties to European fascists
the US businesses that had previously done tremendous amounts of business with Nazi Germany take advantage of the situation, continuing to prop up their German subsidiaries on the one hand while taking part in the huge American military buildup on the other. During the low point of World War II, after the fall of Paris when many believed a German victory was inevitable, Roosevelt will rally the US business community and recalcitrant Republicans behind a "Government of National Unity." He will name pro-British Republicans Henry Stimson and Frank Knox to head the War and Navy Departments respectively. He also appoints a business-dominated National Defense Advisory Committee to coordinate industrial mobilization. Later he will admit that, largely to appease reluctant pro-GOP business interests, he effectively suspended the New Deal economic policies in favor of policies that would entice reluctant business leaders in joining in the US war effort. - Conservatives in the US and Britain increasingly clamor for some kind of negotiated peace settlement with Hitler. The first major push for peace with Germany ended when the British managed to win the September 1940 "Battle of Britain," staving off Hitler's cross-Channel invasion. However, many American conservatives and business leaders remained uncommitted to the defeat of the Germans even after December 1941, and Roosevelt will try everything he knows to bring them on board. More and more businessmen will be given positions of command in Roosevelt's various boards and agencies. After the war is won in 1945, many of these conservative business leaders will remain in power, and their influence is largely responsible for the Cold War-era domination of what Eisenhower later calls the military-industrial complex. Many conservative businessmen still deplore what they called "Mr. Roosevelt's War," and work to dismantle his New Deal economic agenda.
- In 1942, conservative dissension results in the election of a Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and that body constantly works to thwart or at least lessen Roosevelt's attempts to defeat the Axis. Many military officials, too, privately oppose Roosevelt's conduct of the war. Mostly conservatives with business connections, these officials believe that Germany's victory was inevitable, and will fight Roosevelt's attempts to support Britain against the German war effort. Many privately oppose the US's support of the Soviet Union against Germany, and maintain backchannel connections with Nazi officials throughout the war. In 1942, Allen Dulles, in Switzerland, discusses a proposal that will allow Germany to keep Austria and other acquisitions with SS chief Heinrich Himmler; Dulles proposed that Himmler, with tacit US backing, would replace Hitler as the leader of the Nazi government, and Eastern Europe would become a "cordon sanitaire" against the Communist Soviet Union. Dulles's proposal found no support in the Roosevelt administration. During 1942 the Germans roll to within 300 miles of the Soviet Baku and the Iranian oil fields; Germany's Afrika Corps advances to within 150 miles of Cairo. The Vichy French-supported government in Syria barely loses to British forces in Iran and Iraq, keeping those oil fields under Allied control. The turning points of the war -- the Allied victories at Midway and El Alamein -- did not, at the time, seem so consequential, and did little to staunch conservative American resistance to continuing the war.
- Finally, Roosevelt moves against his opponents in the American business community. His administration seizes the assets of a number of American corporations, including a half-dozen headed by the likes of Prescott Bush, George Walker, and Averill Harriman, that are still doing business with Hitler. Prescott Bush moves to restore his tarnished reputation in February 1942 by chairing the United Service Organization (USO)'s annual fund drive. Unlike the chairman of Standard Oil, William Farish, Bush escapes public prosecution for his corporate ties with Hitler's regime. Roosevelt, desperately in need of the support of the US business community, will only prosecute a few business executives for doing business with the Nazis, and privately works to restore ties between the business community and his administration. He does not want to make enemies of powerful corporate families like the Rockefellers and the duPonts, nor does he want to preside over the public flogging of the executives of companies like General Motors, Ford Motor Company, IBM, and ITT, all of which had extensive ties to Nazi Germany. His decision is made in part under pressure from Stimson, the Republican head of the War Department, who argues that pressing charges against American corporate leaders, particularly oil and manufacturing company executives, will only inhibit a united war effort. Allen Dulles and others in the intelligence community, who have their own deep ties to conservative oil and industrial executives, support Stimson. Roosevelt agrees to back off. Roosevelt well knows that the war effort is fueled by oil, and he doesn't want to jeopardize the Allies' oil supply by jailing the corporate magnates whose companies were supplying that oil.
- Roosevelt's "deal with the devil" places more and more pro-German conservatives in positions of power, particularly Dulles, who goes on to head the CIA, and others. As for the British, although they disdain too much involvement with the pro-German business leaders in the American government, they, too, practice restraint. An example is Prescott Bush, who has close ties to the chief of Britain's Secret Service, Sir Stewart Menzies; Menzies knows that too many British investors in Bush's firm, Brown Brothers Harriman, existed to make an issue of BBH's aid to the Nazis. Many of these American pro-German businessmen and investors will continue to wield tremendous influence in the post-World War II world, and work to reforge ties with postwar Germany, as well as rehabilitate German corporate leaders whose businesses had supported Hitler.
- Historian Kevin Phillips writes, "Within a few years after the German surrender, prosperity was blurring any embarrassment at Ford or ITT." By 1950, the Defense Department will swallow up the War and Navy Departments, both heavily staffed by American conservatives, many who had never seriously opposed the Nazi war efforts. The CIA will be established in 1946, following a blueprint drawn up by Robert Lovett, Prescott Bush's partner at Brown Brothers Harriman. In 1950, Lovett becomes the Secretary of Defense. Averill Harriman is Truman's national security advisor. Prescott Bush readies a successful campaign for the US senate. Allen Dulles is deputy director of the CIA. His brother John Foster Dulles will be appointed secretary of state, a post held by his grandfather and his uncle, in 1953. These men and others like them take their ties to Nazi business interests with them into the newly forming US national security establishment. (Kevin Phillips)
- The German firm of I.G. Harben,
US corporate ties to European fascists
along with the German subsidiaries of firms like Ford, General Motors, General Electric, ITT, and Standard Oil, contribute to the "Keppler Leadership Circle" that financially supports SS chief Heinrich Himmler and his intelligence chief, Walter Schellengerg. Farben's American-connected chairman, though a Nazi, opposes Germany's declaration of war with the US, and works with Allen Dulles and numerous American conservative businessmen to promote a peace agreement based on Himmler's replacement of Hitler as Germany's head of government. (Kevin Phillips)
Some US corporations previously involved with the Nazis now switch to helping Allied war efforts; numerous investigations into US corporate connections with Nazi Germany launched, but investigations are largely stymied
- A number of investigations are launched into American business involvement with the Nazi regime after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
US corporate ties to European fascists
Secretary of War Henry Stimson, a Skull and Bones member with deep ties to these business interests, will ask President Roosevelt to stop the investigations in March 1942 because, he said, they would interfere with these same companies' efforts to supply American soldiers with necessary materiel. Stimson's efforts will not prevent investigations from continuing under the 1941 Trading with the Enemy Act. Though the investigations result in the seizure of assets owned by Harriman, Walker, and Prescott Bush, the revelations of such American corporate involvement in assisting the Nazis will not stop John Foster Dulles from being appointed to the US Senate in 1949 or becoming Secretary of State in 1953, nor will they stop Averill Harriman from becoming the Democratic governor of New York in 1954, nor Prescott Bush from winning a seat in the US Senate. It is highly likely that US intelligence, largely controlled by Allen Dulles and others with deep business and social ties to the magnates accused of collaboration, will ensure that much of the most damning information about Bush, Walker, Harriman, and others remains classified and out of the public eye. The ties continue into the 21st century, with an amazing number of the descendents of these same business tycoons -- William Farish III, William Draper III, Joseph Verner Reed Jr, and others -- turning up as close personal advisors or high-level appointees in the second Bush administration. (Kevin Phillips)
1942
"[I]n 1942, when I agitated for black rights, I wondered why I was called a Communist. I didn't even like Communists, from those I'd seen. Certainly it didn't take a Communist to feel that justice should be done. Then I made a fascinating discovery: The word 'Communist' was a catchword and had nothing to do with reality, it was used to discredit an opponent without rational dialogue. You could just say, 'He's a damn red,' and win your point." -- John Henry Faulk
- Joseph
Joe McCarthy
McCarthy leaves his position as a judge in Wisconsin and joins the Marines. He breaks his leg during a shipboard party, and later claims it is a war injury. (HUAC Timeline)
Double V Campaign
- The black-owned Pittsburgh Courier newspaper declares the famous "Double V" campaign,
Minority rights
calling for both victories against the Axis and a victory at home for blacks seeking equal representation, especially in the military. The campaign "is no fight merely to wear a uniform," one black editorialist writes. "This is a struggle for status, a struggle to take democracy off a parchment and give it life." (Michael Cooper) - Early 1942: The old 92nd and 93rd Army Infantry Divisions, the only two African-American units in existence during World War I, are reactivated.
World War II
Training begins at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. White officers are always in charge of the various groups, causing resentment among the black enlisted men and giving white officers with racist views the opportunity to abuse and mistreat their charges. Also, enmity between white and black officers is virulent, and sometimes violent. Blacks often do not respect their superior officers, in part because they consider them incompetent. "The majority of the white officers with the Ninety-third were people who could not have made it with any white division of any caliber," says one black soldier. "They might have been all right in the quartermasters, or some laundry units. Instead of being sent to jobs they were fit for, they were sloughed off on the Ninety-third. I understand that what we didn't get of these misfits ended up with the Ninety-second Division." Unfortunately, due to poor training and the inability to transfer incompetent soldiers to different units, the 92nd and 93rd did not always distinguish itself in combat. Both divisions had their moments of glory, though, and other minority soldiers in other units brought great glory upon themselves and their comrades in battle. (Michael Cooper) - February: The small transport ship Struma, carrying 769 Jewish refugees from the Romanian port of Constanza,
World War II
is sunk in the Black Sea after striking a mine. The refugees, desiring entrance into Palestine, had been denied entrance visas by the British Colonial Office when the ship docked in Istanbul. The sinking of the Struma turns many Jews against Britain; Jewish military leader Menachem Begin takes the leadership of the Revisionist Party and attempts to foment a war of liberation against Britain in Palestine, even though thousands of Jews are training as soldiers and commandos with British forces to fight in Iraq, Syria, and North Africa. These soldiers will eventually make up the core of the Israel military in the years to come. (Dan Cohn-Sherbok)
Internment of Japanese-Americans
- February 19: Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066,
Attack on civil liberties
allowing government authorities to round up and incarcerate over 110,000 Japanese-Americans (Nisei) on the basis of their ancestry and place them in hastily built concentration camps. (Some Italian-American and German-American citizens are also incarcerated; similar incarcerations take place in Canada. A number of dissident Americans are also incarcerated.) Considered a major violation of civil liberties, the order is opposed by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, most likely out of spite against Roosevelt than any concern for civil rights. Lieutenant General James DeWitt explains the reasoning behind the detentions, which did not unearth a single person opposed to the American opposition to the Japanese: "A Jap's a Jap," he tells Congress. "I don't want any of them here. They are a dangerous element. ...There is no way to determine their loyalty.... It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still a Japanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty. ...But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map." DeWitt's report cites no evidence whatsoever of crimes planned or committed by Japanese-Americans, but DeWitt twists this lack of evidence into something sinister: "The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken." During the war, an appeal reaches the Supreme Court contesting the government's authority to intern people based on their ancestry; the court sides with the government. Former Supreme Court justice Tom Clark, who represented the government in the relocation, later writes, "The truth is -- as this deplorable experience proves -- that constitutions and laws are not sufficient of themselves.... Despite the unequivocal language of the Constitution of the United States that the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, and despite the Fifth Amendment's command that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, both of these constitutional safeguards were denied by military action under Executive Order 9066...." - In its discussions of the subject, the government has always insisted that the camps be termed "internment camps" or "relocation camps," not "concentration camps," though a 1983 report, "Personal Justice Denied," by the bipartisan, Congressionally appointed Commission on Wartime Internment and Relocation of Civilians indirectly admits that the term is applicable. Many of the camps are little more than tarpaper shacks behind barbed wire; some internees, such as those housed in the camps in Wyoming, are exposed to extreme cold weather, their plight made more difficult by the fact that they were not allowed to take any possessions with them except for "the clothes on their backs," and the fact that they are never issued any cold-weather clothing. (Most victims of internment suffered significant property losses.) At least one camp, Tule Lake in northern California, becomes a full-fledged prison camp housing those that the government believes are intractable Japanese sympathizers. One of the underlying reasons for interning so many Japanese-Americans is to eliminate the "threat" posed to American farmers by their Nisei competitors.
- Austin Anson, managing secretary of the Salinas Vegetable Grower-Shipper Association, told the Saturday Evening Post in 1942: "We're charged with wanting to get rid of the Japs for selfish reasons. We do. It's a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown men.... If all the Japs were removed tomorrow, we'd never miss them in two weeks, because the white farmers can take over and produce everything the Jap grows. And we don't want them back when the war ends, either." In 1988 and then again in 1992, legislation will be passed doling out small financial reparations to the surviving victims and their family members, along with official government apologies. Earl Warren, the former Chief Justice who was California's attorney general at the time and a strong supporter of internment, later writes, "I have since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it, because it was not in keeping with our American concept of freedom and the rights of citizens. Whenever I thought of the innocent little children who were torn from home, school friends and congenial surroundings, I was conscience-stricken." See the section on the internment of Japanese-Americans on the Imperial Presidency page for more information. (Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Lewis Lapham, Peter Irons)
- July 1: Black activist and union president A. Philip Randolph stages a march of 100,000 African-Americans on Washington, DC,
Minority rights
demanding the right to work and to fight for their country. As a result of the march, and a previous meeting between Randolph and Roosevelt, Roosevelt issues an executive order establishing the Fair Employment Practices Commission and outlawing job discrimination against all ethnic groups. Of course, discrimination against blacks and other minorities continues for years, but the FERC gives victims of discrimination a venue to address their grievances and right the wrongs they experience in the workplace. (Michael Cooper) - October: Three of the firms that Prescott Bush Sr. is associated with,
US corporate ties to European fascists
including the Union Banking Corporation of which Bush is a director, and two front organizations owned by UBC, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation, are seized by the US government under the "Trading with the Enemy Act." One of the senior partners in UBC is longtime Hitler supporter Fritz Thyssen. It becomes clear that Prescott Bush is deeply involved in assisting the Nazi regime. Much of the Bush family fortune comes from Prescott Bush's dealings with the Nazis. (George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Bushwatch) - November: A large group of Polish Jews are allowed to emigrate to Palestine,
Oppression of Jews
where they bring news about the Nazi persecution of Jews throughout Europe. By December the Yishuv, the political leadership of the Palestinian Jews, is well aware of the Nazis' stance towards Jews, and stiffens the Palestinian Jews' opposition to the Axis. Although Jewish terrorist groups such as the Irgun continue their attacks against British targets, the Yishuv largely cooperates with the British to curtail Jewish terrorism. (Dan Cohn-Sherbok) - November 4: Germany suffers a massive defeat in North Africa, losing the Second Battle of El Alamein.
World War II
This permanently denies Germany access to the Suez Canal and the Middle Eastern oil fields. The defeat of Field Marshal Rommel's German forces by Allies under the command of Britain's General Bernard Montgomery is considered one of the major turning points in the war. (Wikipedia) - November 17: Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his father-in-law George Herbert Walker,
US corporate ties to European fascists
are seized under the "Trading with the Enemy Act." Bush and Walker are managing directors of the Union Banking Corporation, a corporate ally of Brown Brothers Harriman, the largest private investment bank in the world. Bush and Walker acted as front men for Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen, whose empire was founded on coal and steel, financed the rise of Adolf Hitler. Then as now, cloaking funds destined for subversion of democracies or weapons shipment was a useful tactic. To hide transactions and conceal ownership, Thyssen created a banking network. The first node was established in Berlin, a second in neutral Holland. UBC in New York was the linchpin. Little more than a money-laundering office for Nazi operations in the United States, Bush, Walker and other confederates oversaw almost a dozen separate businesses. Acting with Thyssen's money, they aided the Nazi invasion of Europe by supplying resources for weaponry. - In 1937, Bush set up a deal to help the Luftwaffe obtain tetraethyl lead to boost aircraft performance. Bush shipped tons of strategic resources to the Third Reich as Hitler prepared to invade Poland. Americans first heard about Thyssen's American operations in the New York Herald-Tribune on July 30, 1942, eight months after Pearl Harbor. The headline declared "Hitler's Angel Has $3 Million in U.S. Bank." However, the story did not identify Bush or Harriman as UBC executives. Prescott Bush is charged with "[r]unning Nazi front groups in the United States." The US makes it clear that it is seizing only the Nazi interests, leaving the Nazis' US partners to carry on their business. "These and other actions taken by the U.S. government in wartime were, tragically, too little and too late. ...Bush's family had already played a central role in financing and arming Adolf Hitler for his takeover of Germany; in financing and managing the buildup of Nazi war industries for the conquest of Europe and war against the U.S.A.; and in the development of Nazi genocide theories and racial propaganda.... The [Bush] family fortune was largely a result of the Hitler project. The powerful Anglo-American family associations, which later boosted [George H.W. Bush] into the Central Intelligence Agency and up to the White House, were his father's partners in the Hitler project."
- After the war ended in 1945, investigators learned that Bush had extremely close ties to Thyssen and continued to work as his agent to the end. When hostilities ceased, Bush helped move Thyssen assets to Panama, Argentina and Brazil, all major destinations for the flight of Nazi capital. In 1951, Bush will use $1.5 million in UBC assets to finance his successful US Senate campaign from Connecticut, and launch his son, George H.W. Bush, in the oil business. Other American companies that armed Hitler included General Motors, Standard Oil and Chase Bank. All were quietly sanctioned after Pearl Harbor; then government files were lost or forgotten. For 60 years, the full record of Prescott Bush's complicity in the Nazi war machine will be ignored or denied by participants and the US media. In October 2003, documents will be unearthed in the National Archives that prove the Bush family connections to Nazi Germany from 1926 through 1942, until forcibly terminated by the US government, and until at least 1951 without government knowledge. (George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, New Hampshire Gazette, Fairbanks Alaska Daily Miner, Truthout)
1943
- Iraq
World War II
declares war on the Axis. (FactMonster) - US
Attack on civil liberties
Army troops violently put down protests by black Americans in Detroit, Michigan. (ZMag) - Roosevelt
World War II
allocates Lend-Lease funds to shore up the Persian Gulf, and declares, "I hereby find that the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States." (Kevin Phillips) - Venezuela legislates a vast reform of its national oil policy.
Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"
The new Hydrocarbons Act ties the national income even more closely to oil production than before; while previous oil income was based mostly on concessions and customs, the new law ties oil revenues to taxes based on income from mining. The law establishes that foreign companies such as Shell and Standard Oil cannot make greater profits from oil than they pay to Venezuela. The continually increasing oil income leads to an ever-increasing reliance of the state on this source of income in lieu of individual income taxes. By the 1950's, however, the world oil industry begins to feel the effects of the over-supply of oil, especially following the increased production of oil in the Middle East and the imposition of import quotas in the US; the consequence, a chronically low price of oil and subsequent drops in Venezuelan revenues, leads the world's main oil-producing countries, including Venezuela, to form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Also in 1960, Venezuela creates the Venezuelan Oil Corporation, which later formed the basis for the nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry. (Venezuela Analysis) - February: After months of vicious fighting, Germany loses the Battle of Stalingrad,
World War II
and their forces in the Soviet Union are decimated. Along with the Battle of Britain and the two Battles of El Alamein, this is a major turning point in the European theater of the war. It is around this point that Adolf Hitler's health begins deteriorating, with historians ascribing his illness, variously, to Parkinson's disease, methamphetamine addiction, and/or syphilis. Hitler's military decisions will become increasingly erratic, and German military and political elements begin plotting Hitler's overthrow. (Wikipedia) - July 25: Following a string of defeats for Italy's forces, and the Allied invasion of Sicily,
World War II
King Vittorio Emanuele III strips dictator Benito Mussolini of his power, and has him arrested. Mussolini is replaced by General Pietro Badoglio, who publicly announces Italy's continued alliance with Germany, but privately begins negotiations for a surrender. On September 8, Badoglio will sign an armistice with the Allies. Meanwhile, after being rescued from his imprisonment by German forces, Mussolini sets up a Republican Fascist State in northern Italy; in reality, Mussolini is merely a puppet of German occupying forces. (Wikipedia)
1944
- April 9:
Attack on civil liberties
Vice President Henry Wallace writes a memorable piece for the New York Times entitled "The Danger of Fascism." While Wallace is writing primarily of Nazi fascists, using the aristocratic Prussian junker as his model, he could be writing about any of the breed -- including the ones occupying positions of power in the US government at the beginning of the 21st century. - He writes in part, "A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. The supreme god of a fascist, to which his ends are directed, may be money or power; may be a race or a class; may be a military, clique or an economic group; or may be a culture, religion, or a political party. ...The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power. If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.
- "...They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead. American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the KKK type of demagoguery. ...Fascism is a worldwide disease. Its greatest threat to the United States will come after the war, either via Latin America or within the United States itself. ...The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism. ...They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection." (New Deal Network)
D-Day
- June 6: D-Day: British and American forces, augmented by Canadian, Australian, French, and other troops,
World War II
launch a huge naval and ground offensive on the shores of occupied France, an assault termed "Operation Overlord" and known by war historians as the Battle of Normandy. The losses suffered by the Allied forces are initially horrendous, with the German fortifications inflicting terrible damage on the troops landing on the various beaches. General Dwight Eisenhower and General Bernard Montgomery are the supreme commanders of the amphibious assault. A disinformation campaign persuades the German high command that the assault will take place at Calais, and forces critical to the German defense are committed to Calais, unable to help fend off the Allied assault. (Had these and other military deceptions not worked, and had the advice of Field Marshal Rommel to move armored divisions to the Normandy coastline been adopted, the outcome of the assault could have been vastly different.) The successful assault opened up a second, Western front in the war, and will lead to the "pincer" assault on Germany itself, with British, American, and allied forces sweeping in from the west, and Soviet forces from the east. The assault also helps curb Soviet domination of Northern and Western Europe after the war. (Wikipedia, Wikipedia)
An American military cemetery in Normandy.
- July: British economist John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White, the Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and a secret Soviet agent,
US economic policies
create a new economic policy for the United States that will affect the world's economic and foreign policies well into the new millennium. Keynes, author of The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, is the most renowned economist of his time; his theories heavily influenced Roosevelt's New Deal economic policies of the 1930s. White is a Soviet spy working through his handler Whittaker Chambers; his influence led to the November 1941 ultimatum by the US ordering Japan out of Indochina that precipitated Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. (White is also the secret author of the Morgenthau Plan that called for the destruction of German factories and farmlands; the plan was secretly adopted by Roosevelt and Churchill at the 1944 Quebec Conference, but hastily repudiated when it became public.) White is also a key player in the decision to hold up a $500 million loan to aid the Chinese Nationalists after World War II, a decision that would play a strong part in the defeat of the Nationalists and the rise of Maoist Communism in China. - Keynes and White, staying at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, pound out a plan to limit America's postwar economic influence by the creation of a global central bank that would, if Keynes has his way, print the world's money and control the supply of international credit. White modifies the plan to make the US dollar the "coin of the realm in global commerce," fixing the value of the dollar at $35 per ounce of gold; other nations would fix their currencies to the dollar at fixed rates of exchange "like spokes to the hub of a wheel." To monitor the system and bail out countries that could not compete, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to be created. Although much of Keynes' and White's plan is not implemented, the IMF is indeed created, and White is named by Truman to be the IMF's first executive director. A sister institution, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, is created to provide loans to war-ravaged European countries; the IBRD is later renamed the World Bank. The creation of the IMF and the World Bank thus makes the US economy the linchpin of redevelopment strategies throughout Europe; it is through these institutions that Germany, Japan, and other countries are able to rebuild their economies, largely at American expense, and obtain vast holdings in American manufacturing and distribution concerns. (Pat Buchanan, Derek Leebaert)
- July 20:
World War II
Hitler narrowly escapes an assassination attempt by members of the German military. (Wikipedia) - July 26:
Iranian monarchy
Iran's Reza Shah Pahlevi dies in exile in South Africa. (Friesian, Wikipedia) - September 2:
George H.W. Bush
Navy pilot George H.W. Bush's TBM Avenger is shot down by a Japanese fighter near the Borin Islands in the South Pacific. He parachutes to safety and is rescued by a submarine, the USS Finback. For bravery in continuing his bombing run in the face of enemy fire, he is awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. (Submarine Veterans) - November: A physically ailing but mentally vibrant Roosevelt runs for an unprecedented fourth term as president.
Roosevelt administration
This time he chooses Missouri senator Harry Truman as his running mate, abandoning his former Vice President, Henry Wallace, who is seen by some Democrats as too agrarian and perhaps even Communist in his sympathies. Roosevelt handily defeats Republican Thomas Dewey, who will run against Truman in 1948. Roosevelt's four terms leads to a Constitutional provision limiting presidents to two terms in office. (Wikipedia) - December 16: The Germans launch their "Ardennes Offensive" on the German/Belgian border,
World War II
an offensive known to the Allies as the "Battle of the Bulge." On December 26, as the Allies tried to win back the sixty-five miles of territory taken from them by the Germans, Eisenhower puts out a call for all service battalions asking African-American soldiers to volunteer for battle in the Ardennes. Eisenhower's intent was to have black and white soldiers fighting together "without regard to color or race," "shoulder to shoulder to bring about victory." Unfortunately, complaints from white generals led Eisenhower to specify that the black soldiers will serve in all-black platoons under white officers. Over 45,000 black soldiers, most from transportation or engineering units, volunteer for duty. Nearly half are turned down because they could not be trained fast enough to make use of them at the front. Unlike some earlier experiences with all-black units, these soldiers, because of receiving the same training and respect as white soldiers, will distinguish themselves in combat. Sergeant Edward Carter, an infantryman riding atop an American tank entering an occupied German town, wins the Distinguished Service Cross and later the Medal of Honor for extraordinary bravery; thousands more black soldiers distinguish themselves in battle. "There has never appeared the slightest sign of race prejudice in this organization," recalls one white officer. "White men and black men are welded together with a deep friendship and respect born of combat and matured by a realization that such an association is not the impossibility that many of us have been led to believe. Segregation has never been attempted in this unit and is, in my mind, the deciding factor as to the success or failure of the experiment.... My men eat, play, work, and sleep as a company of men, with no regard to color." After heavy losses on both sides, the Allies eventually beat back the German onslaught. (John P. Kline, Michael Cooper)
1945
- Early 1945: Even before the collapse of the Nazi war machine and the surrender of Germany,
Cold War
Army officials decide that the best way to energize its own missile development program is to bring aboard Nazi rocket scientists. Project Overcast and Project Paperclip bring dozens of German scientists to America to continue their work on rockets for the Americans; the Soviets make their own efforts to secure Nazi scientists for their own research projects. Wehrner von Braun, the technical director of the Nazi ballistic missile program, is the highest-profile scientist brought to America by the projects. By October, von Braun is ensconsced at Fort Bliss, Texas, and others are at White Sands, New Mexico, turning out new versions of the V-2 missiles that had terrorized London. Philip Taubman writes, "The cold-blooded decision to make use of the Nazi rocket engineers was a fitting model for the kind of cold war calculations that often put Washington in league with foreign tyrants and brutal security forces. Unlike many of those cases, the use of the Germans ultimately enhanced American security." (Philip Taubman) - February 11: The Yalta conference between Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt,
United Nations
and Josef Stalin lays the groundwork for an international body committed to fostering international peace, later to be known as the United Nations (Churchill chooses the name "United Nations" from a poem by Lord Byron). During the conference, Stalin smilingly calls the head of his secret police, Lavrenti Beria, "our Himmler." Beria will oversee the murder of millions of Soviet citizens in a mass genocidal slaughter that outstrips Hitler's "Final Solution." (NATO and UN History, Derek Leebaert) - February 13-15: Allied bombers firebomb the medieval city of Dresden,
World War II
an undefended German city known as "the Florence of the Elbe," for three days, virtually destroying the once-beautiful city and killing anywhere between 35,000 and 250,000. The city's population is swollen by thousands of refugees fleeing from the advancing Soviet armies. The bombing is part of a deliberate terror campaign designed by, among others, Winston Churchill and Air Marshal Arthur Harris, to destroy the morale of the German armies and populace; incendiary bombs filled with napalm, magnesium, and other combustibles create a firestorm that devastates the city. Another part of the reason for the horrendous firebombing of Dresden, according to an internal RAF memo, is to demonstrate to the advancing Russians just what havoc the US and Royal Air Forces can wreak. Stories from the relatively few survivors of the firebombing are, predictably, horrific in the extreme. Writer Kurt Vonnegut, then a POW who was part of the cleanup force, writes his novel Slaughterhouse-Five as a reflection on the devastation. Churchill says before the bombing, "It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed." (Spartacus, Pat Buchanan) - March 9:
World War II
Amid rumors of a possible American invasion, Japanese oust the French colonial government which had been operating independently and seize control of Vietnam, installing Bao Dai as their puppet ruler. (Vietnam War Timeline) - March 9:
World War II
179 Air Force B-29s under the command of General Curtis LeMay drop incendiary bombs on Tokyo, a city largely made up of paper-and-wood buildings. The city is virtually consumed in the ensuing firestorm. American estimates of 87,000 dead are ludicrously small. Future Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who works with LeMay on the bombing plans, later says that LeMay concluded "If we lost, we'd be prosecuted as war criminals, and I think he was right. LeMay, and I, were acting like war criminals." (Pat Buchanan) - March 22:
Arab League
The Arab League is formed; Iraq is a charter member along with Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. 21 countries currently belong to the organization. (Wikipedia, FactMonster) - April: Soviet forces close in on Berlin.
World War II
Adolf Hitler is advised by his closest aides to flee to Bavaria or Austria to make a last stand in the mountains, but he insists on remaining in Germany's capital city. SS commander Heinrich Himmler makes private overtures to the Allies concerning Germany's eventual surrender. (Wikipedia)
Roosevelt dies; Truman becomes president
- April 12:
Truman administration
Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in office of a massive cerebral hemorrhage, elevating Vice President Harry Truman to the presidency. Truman, a loyal New Dealer, is best known for his relentless campaigning in the Senate against fraud and mismanagement of tax monies by the US military. (Wikipedia) - April 27:
World War II
While trying to escape northern Italy for refuge in Switzerland, former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini is captured, along with his mistress and a number of Mussolini loyalists, by Italian partisans. The next day he and his entourage are executed, and their bodies are hung upside down in a public square in Milan where they are mauled by angry mobs. (One investigation says that Mussolini is actually killed by British secret agents who are trying to secure an exchange of letters between Mussolini and Churchill, who were secretly negotiating an anti-Soviet separate peace.) (Wikipedia)
Hitler commits suicide
- April 30: With Russian forces closing in, German chancellor Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his bunker in Berlin.
World War II
His wife Eva Braun commits suicide with him. Russian intelligence agents secure the body and, in order to prevent it being used in any sort of memorial, secretly bury Hitler's remains at their headquarters in Magdeburg. In April 1970, when the building is about to be turned over to East Germany, the remains are exhumed, burned, and disposed of in the Elbe River. A skull and mandible fragment survive in Moscow. It is later revealed that Churchill wanted Hitler and other top Nazi officials to be captured alive and executed "like common outlaws" without even a trial, which he believed would be a farce. (USAF Museum, Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Reuters/MSNBC) - May 1: Hitler's will names Admiral Karl Doenitz as President of Germany and Josef Goebbels as Chancellor;
World War II
instead, Goebbels and his wife commit suicide. Doenitz will assume leadership of the German government just long enough to oversee the surrender. (Wikipedia)
Germany surrenders
- May 8:
World War II
After Allied forces overrun Germany from the west and Russian forces from the west during April, on May 7, Hitler's successor Admiral Karl Doenitz sends General Alfred Jodl to formally deliver a notice of surrender to US forces in Rheims. The surrender goes into effect on May 8, and Germany's part in World War II comes to an end. (USAF Museum) - Summer:
Rise of communism in Indochina
Peasants revolt in Vietnam, triggered by severe famines. The Viet Minh's influence spreads. (Vietnam War Timeline)
Potsdam Conference divides Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia among the Allies
- July: After the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan,
Cold War
the US, Great Britain, the USSR, and their allies meet to restructure Europe and the Middle East at the Potsdam Conference in Germany. Among many changes to the world map, Vietnam is divided into two countries along the 16th parallel. Chinese Nationalists disarm the remaining Japanese forces in the north; the British disarm the Japanese in the south. France is granted hegemony over its prewar colonies in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. (Vietnam War Timeline) - July 26: The British electorate ousts the Conservative Party under war leader Winston Churchill, overwhelmingly preferring the forward-looking Clement Attlee and his Labour Party. (BBC)
- August: Truman sends reports of the conditions of Jewish concentration camp prisoners to newly elected British PM Clement Attlee,
Oppression of Jews
who says that the Jews have little more to complain about than any other people, and for Jews not to expect "favorable treatment." Attlee's government resists allowing large numbers of Jews to emigrate to Palestine; on October 1, David Ben-Gurion tells the Jewish Haganah to begin armed uprisings against British occupation forces in Palestine. The Haganah reverses its previous opposition to Jewish terrorist groups such as the Irgun, and terror attacks against British targets are supported by the Jewish leadership. (Dan Cohn-Sherbok)
Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Japan surrenders
- August 6 - 9: The US bombs the Japanese city of Hiroshima with the first military deployment of a nuclear weapon.
World War II
The devastion is unprecedented. Three days later, Nagasaki is bombed by a larger and more powerful atomic bomb. Japan surrenders within hours of the second bombing. Nearly 300,000 Japanese die, either in the bombings themselves or from radiation poisoning in the months and years thereafter. The effects of radiation on the environment and the populace are felt for generations. Tremendous controversy surrounds the bombings, with some saying that the US went too far with the use of the bombs and others saying that the bombings prevented the necessity for a traditional ground invasion of Japan, with its own forecast of appalling casualties both military and civilian. (A-Bomb WWW Museum) - In the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Japan, General Douglas MacArthur bars all press access to southern Japan,
World War II
restricting all reporting from that area to come through military officials. Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett determines to penetrate MacArthur's restrictions and travels incognito to the devastated environs of Hiroshima itself. He is one of the first to witness the horror of extreme radiation sickness, and the first Westerner to see the devastation wrought on the city and its denizens. He types out a report that is all the more horrific for its detachment and eye for objective detail, saying towards the end of his article, "I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world." His article, titled "The Atomic Plague," is published on September 5 in London's Daily Express. Burchett's searing reporting proves to be a public relations fiasco to MacArthur and the US military, which up until now has succeeded in controlling the reporting on the nuclear holocaust inflicted on Japan. Official reports, sanitized for public consumption, downplay the devastation on human lives and property, and dismiss all stories of radiation sickness (Burchett's "atomic plague") as fantasy. US journalist George Weller tries to follow in Burchett's footsteps by slipping into Nagasaki and writing his own report; US military censors kill the story in its entirety. MacArthur orders Burchett expelled from Japan, Burchett's camera with irreplaceable shots of Hiroshima's devastation is stolen while he is in the hospital, and US military officials accuse Burchett of being suborned by Japanese propaganda. - To counter the effects of Burchett's reporting, Major General Leslie Groves, director of the atomic bomb project, summons a group of 30 reporters to New Mexico. Foremost among these journalists is Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter William Laurence, who writes for the New York Times. Groves fills Laurence and the other journalists with information equally composed of truth, half-truths, and outright fictions, and sends them off to write stories lauding the project. Laurence in particular comes through in stellar fashion. His story gives credence to Army claims that radiation sickness is a myth, and blames the Japanese themselves for concocting horror stories about the suffering caused by the atomic bombings. What is unforgivable about Laurence's reporting is that he knows better. He himself has observed bomb tests, he had even accompanied the bomb crew on the second bombing run over Nagasaki, and knows about radioactive fallout and the subsequent effect upon living tissue exposed to such fallout. He deliberately withholds his knowledge and writes what Groves and the US military wants him to write. Laurence will go on to write 10 articles for the Times that describes the nuclear program, and the US military, in glowing terms. His reporting, a farrago of lies and misinformation, wins him a second Pulitzer Prize.
- It is later revealed that Laurence is not just a reporter, but an employee of the US War Department. He was employed in March 1945 by Groves himself to write press releases for the Manhatten Project, the US program to develop an atomic bomb. Laurence also helped write statements for release by President Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Laurence obviously let his patriotism and eagerness to cooperate with the government blind him to his duty as an impartial, knowledgeable journalist, according to war historian Harold Evans. Evans notes that many of the most effective, and bombastic, press releases from the War Department concerning the aftermath of the Japan bombings were written by Laurence, and were often printed almost verbatim by compliant US media outlets. Laurence, later nicknamed "Atomic Bill," reveled in his role as "Minister of Disinformation" for the US government. Authors Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell write in their authorative treatise Hiroshima in America: "Here was the nation's leading science reporter, severely compromised, not only unable but disinclined to reveal all he knew about the potential hazards of the most important scientific discovery of his time." (It is worth noting that another journalist with a similar name, W.H. Lawrence, wrote largely accurate and informative reports about the Hiroshima bombings; the two journalists are often confused with one another in historical examinations of the media's response to the events of the time.) (Amy Goodman and David Goodman)
- August 9: President Truman tells the world,
World War II
"The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians." Truman is being less than truthful; Hiroshima is a city, not a military base, and its population includes over 350,000 civilians. (David Corn) - Late August: Japan had threatened the puppet government of Bao Dai into declaring its independence from France and its intention to join Japan's "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."
Rise of communism in Indochina
(The Japanese had a Vietnamese pretender, Prince Cuong De, waiting to take power in case Bao's elimination was required.) Instead, after Japan's surrender, the Soviet-trained Ho Chi Minh and a force of Indochinese revolutionaries overthrow Annam's Bao Dai, occupy Hanoi, and claim rulership over all three countries (later known as North and South Vietnam) in a provisional government. (Ironically, Ho Chi Minh's life had been saved earlier in the year by an OSS team who parachuted into Vietnam and treated Ho for a variety of debilitating illnesses, including malaria.) British forces in Cochin-China drive Viet Minh forces from the south; France claims Cochin-China as part of its republic and once again places the compliant Bao Dai as the head of the new government. The Bao Dai puppet government enjoys the support of the US and Great Britain, among others. (Wikipedia, Chronology of US-Vietnam Relations, Vietnam War Timeline, D.J. Herda) - September 2:
World War II
The Japanese sign the surrender agreement in Tokyo Bay formally ending World War II in the Pacific. (Vietnam War Timeline) - Between the end of World War II and 1955,
Cold War
more than 700 Nazi scientists will be smuggled into the US. In addition to providing the government with valuable science, "Operation Paperclip" eventually spawns more notorious programs like Operation Artichoke (extreme interrogation and torture) and MK-ULTRA (mind control). (Maureen Farrell)
Ho Chi Minh forms new Vietnamese government
- September 2: Ho Chi Minh proclaims the independence of Vietnam
Rise of communism in Indochina
by quoting from the text of the American Declaration of Independence which had been supplied to him by the OSS: "We hold the truth that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This immortal statement is extracted from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. These are undeniable truths." Ho declares himself president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and pursues American recognition but is repeatedly ignored by Truman. (Vietnam War Timeline) - September 13: British occupation forces enter Saigon, South Vietnam.
Rise of communism in Indochina
Nine days later, 1400 French soldiers released from Japanese POW camps go on a rampage, killing Viet Minh troops and innocent civilians. Around 20,000 French civilians live in Saigon; a number of them join the slaughter. Two days later, 150 French civilians are killed in a massacre at the hands of a Vietnamese criminal organization; Saigon is closed by a general strike. In the North, 15,000 Chinese Nationalist troops, mostly poor peasants, arrive in Hanoi after looting their way through the northern region from China. They proceed to loot Hanoi. (Vietnam War Timeline) - September 26: The first American death in Vietnam occurs during the unrest in Saigon,
Rise of communism in Indochina
as OSS officer Lieutenant Colonel Peter Dewey is killed, either by Viet Minh guerrillas who mistake him for a French officer or by French soldiers. Before his death, Dewey had filed a report on the deepening crisis in Vietnam, stating his opinion that the US "ought to clear out of Southeast Asia." (Vietnam War Timeline, Chronology of US-Vietnam Relations)
France occupies South Vietnam
- October: 35,000 French soldiers arrive in South Vietnam to restore French rule.
Vietnam War
The Viet Minh immediately begin a guerrilla campaign to harass them. The French then succeed in expelling the Viet Minh from Saigon. The Viet Minh attack the French in the North. (Vietnam War Timeline) - October: RAND is created as an Army Air Force research and development shop in Santa Monica, California,
Military-industrial complex
part of a liason between the US military and the Douglas Aircraft Company. (RAND stands for Research ANd Development.) RAND is created to promote unorthodox thinking on long-term issues of reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, and military technology, free from the usual constraints of the Pentagon bureaucracy. (Philip Taubman)
United Nations formed
- October 24: The United Nations Charter is signed in San Francisco.
United Nations
The UN will be headquartered in New York City, and have major offices in Geneva, Switzerland and Vienna, Austria. The UN supersedes the old League of Nations, established in 1919 to help end World War I. The International Court of Justice, established in 1899, comes under the purview of the UN. The five victors of World War II, the US, Great Britain, France, Russia, and China (originally the Nationalists of Chiang Kai-Shek, but later the government of Communist China) become the five permanent members of the UN's Security Council, each with absolute veto power over any proposals or resolutions presented to that body. President Harry Truman tells the US delegates, "You have won a victory against war itself." For more about the formation and structure of the UN, see the following section of my page on the imperial presidency. (NATO and UN History, Peter Singer) - October 24: George Orwell publishes Animal Farm,
Cold War
a thily veiled allegory of revolution betrayed that attacks the hypocrisy of the democratic Left just as much as the totalitarian Right. Orwell's self-described "fairy tale" is, in historian Derek Leebaert's words, "intended to show how the most exalted ideals are degraded by despotic power." It is Orwell who coins the phrase "Cold War." (BBC, Derek Leebaert) - Late 1945: While many American generals remain optimistic about Russia's intentions,
Cold War
Stalin works overtime to expand the newly formed Soviet Union's control into Eastern Europe. The agreed-upon division of Europe dave the USSR 100 million subjects to add to the 200 million already under Stalin's rule; Stalin will unleash a ruthless campaign to drag any so-called "displaced persons" back to the USSR. Key members of liberal non-Communist political organizations will be forcibly "disappeared," along with over 1 million German POWs captured by Russian forces during the war. (Derek Leebaert) - Late 1945: The US becomes inextricably involved in shoring up Great Britain's foundering economy.
US foreign policy
Britain is now the world's largest debtor nation, and the US pumps up Britain's economy because it is seen as the easiest way to maintain democracies in Europe and other areas of the former Empire. In 1946, the US grudgingly loans Britain nearly $4 billion, the first distinctly postwar commitment of American economic and political power. Many Americans are outraged by the loan, fearing "the spectacle of a wily sponging Socialist Britain attempting to outwit the open-hearted, open-pursed Americans and steal their legitimate markets by indefensible trading practices," as it is sardonically put by an English observer. They fear, not without reason, that much of American foreign aid is being wasted -- and, based on subsequent events, their fear is based in reality, so much so that many US foreign aid programs will come to be dubbed "Operation Rathole." On the other side, the argument of national security against the nebulous threat of "world Communism" is one that sways some Congressional hearts and minds into approving the loan. Another argument centers around the British expertise in intrigue and influence in foreign lands -- they are, the argument goes, professionals at the "Great Game," whereas the Americans are merely newcomers. The British can assist the Americans in becoming world players. - But although a belligerent Churchill insists that America be part of a postwar military buildup designed to defend "free countries" from Communist invasions, Americans are leery of committing major resources even to achieve that goal. American envoys are shaken by the words of Churchill's son Randolph, who warns his colleagues, "You don't understand the British Empire. Just let me tell you this. We dragged you into two wars and we'll drag you into a third." But commitment is not what the Americans want, not after fighting a costly and lengthy war in faraway places. Instead it tries for peace settlements and compromises, snapping at the British, fruitlessly conferring with the Soviets, and even trying to arrange a settlement in China between Mao Zedong's Communists and Chiang kai-Shek's Nationalists.
- Once the war is officially over, American military readiness sags dramatically. By summer 1946 not a single Army or Air Force unit could be rated as combat-ready. Over 9 million of the 12 million in military service had been dismissed; Congress envisioned a standing army of less than 700,000. "The people demobilized themselves," recalls then-secretary of state George Marshall, who describes the overwhelming homecoming as a "rout" and terming the military left standing as a "hollow shell." Standing in ever-more certain opposition is Stalin, the Soviet iron man, with an army of nearly 3 million and little worries about the few partially assembled nuclear weapons the US has remaining. Soviet spies, some working through the by-now-thoroughly penetrated American Communist Party, others working independently, are much more successful in gathering information about the US military than US intelligence is in finding out information about Soviet military might. But both sides are working hard to find out everything they could about the other: scores of Soviet spies leave the US with their bags and diplomatic pouches stuffed with classified documents, much of it from Los Alamos; on the other hand, Soviet citizens made their way by the scores to American shores, where many of them shared what they knew with the Americans. (Ironically, the Soviet leadership knows more about the US atomic program than the program's Congressional overseers, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, many of whose members specifically asked that they not be told details about "the bomb.") (Derek Leebaert)
1945 - on
- The efforts to colonize and subdue the Kikuyu population in and around Kenya escalate after the end of the war.
British colonization of Kenya
The postwar economic crisis in Britain after the war moves the Churchill government to press the Kenyan colonies to produce more and more foodstuffs for Britain, which in turn prompts British colonial officers to enforce vast and unpopular changes in the way the Kikuyu traditionally farm their land. An agricultural crisis brought on by overfarming threatens starvation for hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu, and results in too many Kikuyu being forced to live on, and live off of, too little land. Kikuyu soldiers who had fought in British regiments during the war are now returning home, and show little interest in placidly submitting to draconian British rule, leading to the infancy of what is now called the "Mau Mau Rebellion." (Caroline Elkins)
