Cold War Soviet Spies in the USA in the 1980s - CIA Mole Aldrich Ames

In the 1980s Aldrich Ames, a CIA agent, supplied the Soviets with significant numbers of classified American intelligence files – and it was not until after the Cold War finished that he was caught. But Ames was not influenced by ideology – it was something else. Scott Rose explains this Cold War spy scandal.

You can read past articles in the series about spies who shared American atomic secrets with the Soviet Union (read more here), and the 1950s “Red Scare” (read more here).

Aldrich Ames on the day of his arrest.

During the waning years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union received and paid for intelligence from one of the most notorious traitors in American history. Unlike previous American spies who betrayed their country because of communist ideologies, Aldrich Ames did so for another reason: he needed the money. 

The most ironic component of this case was that Ames was a 25-year veteran of the CIA, working in counterintelligence. His activities led to the executions of several Soviets who were working for the United States, and the resignation of a CIA Director. The effect Aldrich Ames had on the American intelligence community was nothing short of devastating.

The Agent’s Son

Born in Wisconsin in 1941, Aldrich “Rick” Ames was the son of Carleton Ames, a college professor, and Rachel Ames, an English teacher at the local high school. In 1952, Carleton went to work for the CIA, and was stationed in Southeast Asia. At that time, the region was a Cold War hotspot, as the communists had taken power in mainland China and Ho Chi Minh’s communist rebels were fighting the French for control of Vietnam. Not far away, American forces were engaged in the bloody conflict in Korea.

Carleton Ames had brought his wife and children to Asia along with him, but the family would not live abroad for very long. Carleton was an alcoholic, and his performance was negatively affected. The CIA called him back to the United States, and the elder Ames would spend the rest of his career at the Agency headquarters at Langley, Virginia, in the suburbs of Washington.

Aldrich Ames used his father’s connections to land a summer job at the CIA in 1957, and returned the next two summers. He worked as a records analyst, filing documents and performing various office tasks. Ames graduated from high school in 1959, and was accepted to the prestigious University of Chicago. However, he didn’t adjust well to life away from home, and his grades were poor. By the middle of his sophomore year, he was in danger of flunking out of school, so he dropped out and returned to his family. He regained employment at the CIA, working at office duties once again. While working at the Agency, Ames resumed his education, this time at George Washington University. At the age of 26, Ames graduated with a degree in history, and was accepted into the Career Trainee Program at the CIA. He received positive appraisals in the program, and had a blossoming romance with another agent-in-training named Nancy Segebarth. In 1969, Aldrich and Nancy were married, and he received his first assignment, in Turkey. At the age of 28, he was one of the CIA’s youngest agents; in all respects, his future seemed bright.

Assignments Around the World

Once Ames and his new wife settled in Ankara, Nancy resigned from the Agency, as the CIA had a rule that married couples weren’t allowed to work from the same office. Ames was given the task of recruiting agents to spy on the Revolutionary Youth Federation, a Marxist group in Turkey. While he was moderately successful, the CIA rated Ames’ job performance as “satisfactory,” and he was so dismayed by the evaluation that he nearly quit the CIA. After three years in Turkey, Ames was recalled to Washington and assigned to the Soviet-East European division. His new task was to recruit informants among workers at the Soviet embassy.

Ames was not very effective at recruiting Soviet spies in Washington, but was praised by his superiors for his management and planning skills. The CIA was concerned that Ames was drinking excessively, and noted this on his file in the mid-1970s. However, the Agency felt that given the right situation, Ames would flourish. He was sent to New York in 1976 to manage two established Soviet informants, and did the job well. Ames received promotions in rank and pay increases, but at times, he made careless mistakes that could have become disasters. Once he even forgot his briefcase, which was carrying classified documents, while traveling on the New York subway. Instead of firing or demoting him, the CIA merely gave Ames a verbal warning.

He was transferred again in 1981, this time to Mexico City. His wife remained in New York, and Ames had several affairs with women in Mexico. He met a lady named Maria del Rosario Casas Dupuy in 1982. Maria, a Colombian national, worked as an attaché at the Colombian Embassy, and Ames managed to recruit her as a confidential informant for the CIA. Ames was supposed to report any romantic relationships with foreign nationals to his superiors, but declined to do so. His coworkers at the CIA station in Mexico were aware of his relationship with Maria, but did not report it either. In September of 1983, Ames was recalled to Washington once more, and he brought his Colombian lover with him. Unsurprisingly, his wife served him with divorce papers the next month. 

Ames was now back at the Soviet and East European division of the CIA, and at the end of 1983, he finally reported his affair with Maria to his CIA superiors. His divorce was costly, as he was forced to pay off his and Nancy’s debts. In addition, he was required to pay alimony for the next three years. To make matters worse, Maria was from a wealthy Colombian family, and she expected to live in luxury. Ames, nearly bankrupted by his divorce, was feeling the financial heat. 

Seeking out the Soviets

Working in a division that dealt with Soviet counterintelligence, Ames was expected to make contacts at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, just as he did in the 1970s. He knew the names of important officials at the embassy, and decided he would use these contacts to remedy his financial problems. In early 1985, he sold his first trove of information to the Soviet KGB for a price of $50,000. Ames would later state that this information was not of particular importance, but that it established him as a credible source of CIA intelligence. He had entered into an alliance that he could not turn away from; the Soviets expected more information, and Ames wanted more money. In August of 1985, he and Maria were married. Ames’ motivation for betraying the United States began to evolve, from financial need into pure greed.

Over the years, the Soviets often targeted Americans who were in over their heads financially as potential sources of information. However, in the case of Ames, he saw espionage for pay as a way to do more than merely keep his head above water; he started living the good life and became addicted to it. For years, Ames had been wearing suits off the bargain rack; now he was wearing custom tailored suits that were more expensive than the ones worn by the top officials at the CIA. He and his new bride developed expensive tastes, with Ames explaining to his coworkers that this was a result of his wife’s family fortune.

By the latter part of 1985, the CIA knew something was badly wrong. Soviets who were spying for the United States were starting to disappear, and word began to trickle in later that these individuals had been arrested and executed. During 1986, Ames told his Soviet handlers that in light of these CIA losses, he was worried that he might become a suspect. The KGB by this time considered Ames too valuable to lose, and took steps to protect him. A carefully planned campaign of misinformation was carried out by the Soviets, leading the CIA to believe the mole was at the Warrenton Training Center in Virginia. The United States spent a year investigating nearly 100 people at the facility.

Later in 1986, the CIA created a mole-hunt team whose sole purpose was to find the source of the leaks. About the same time, Ames was transferred to Rome, which helped him stay under the radar of suspicion. His drinking increased, and his CIA work in Rome was less than stellar, while he continued to sell information to the Soviets. He was once again recalled to Washington in 1990, being assigned this time to the Counterintelligence Center Analysis Group within the CIA.

The CIA mole-hunt team, around 1990.

To Catch a Mole

The clues finally began to point toward Ames, as the members of the CIA mole-hunt team started to closely examine his finances. He had passed a polygraph test in 1986, which had bought him time. However, by 1990, his lifestyle, when compared to his salary, made no sense. When the CIA team examined this, it found that Ames had bought a $540,000 House in Virginia, as well as a $50,000 Jaguar. The minimum monthly payment on his credit card was more than his salary paid him in a month.

Still, Ames was hard to catch. He passed another polygraph in 1991, while a CIA operator incorrectly reported that the mole was a Russian-born agent who had infiltrated the Agency. However, by 1993, all signs pointed to Ames as the culprit. The FBI bugged Ames’ home and installed a device in his car that was used to track his movements. He was kept under constant surveillance as the case was built against him.

The Soviet Union had fallen in 1991, but Ames had continued to spy for the Russian Federation, the country that had formed out of much of the U.S.S.R. He was scheduled to attend a conference in Moscow in the spring of 1994, and American authorities decided it was time to arrest him, fearing he might defect if allowed to attend. On the morning of February 22, he was arrested in Washington and charged with spying. The same morning, FBI agents came to his home, arresting and charging his wife also.

Aldrich Ames pled guilty and was sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole. His wife had been heard on surveillance tapes discussing Ames’ activities, as he had told her about his role with the Soviets. He had previously told her that he was making large amounts of money on various investments. Maria ended up being sentenced to five years in prison. CIA Director James Woolsey came under heavy fire in the wake of Ames’ capture. Woolsey had only become Director in 1993, but he was criticized for not cleaning house at the Agency after such a fiasco. The CIA as a whole endured heavy criticism for not catching Ames sooner.

The movieAldrich Ames: Traitor Within was made in 1998, and the ABC mini-series The Assets, produced in 2014, was based on Ames. Two members of the CIA mole-hunt team, Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille, wrote a book about the experience.

Aldrich Ames remains in prison at the Federal Detention Center in Terre Haute, Indiana. He pocketed nearly 3 million dollars from the KGB during his years of espionage. While his CIA career was merely mediocre, he was without a doubt one of most valuable Cold War spies for the Soviet Union.

What do you think about Aldrich Ames’ actions?

References

Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefuille, Circle of Treason: A CIA Account of Traitor Aldrich Ames and the Men He Betrayed, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2012

Chester B. Hearn, Spies & Espionage: A Directory,Thunder Bay Press, San Diego, 2006

Slava Katamidze, Loyal Spies & Ruthless Killers: The Secret Services of the USSR, 1917-1991, Barnes & Noble, New York, 2007

Peter Maas, Killer Spy: The Inside Story of the FBI’s Pursuit and Capture of Aldrich Ames, America’s Deadliest Spy, Warner Books, New York, 1995

Tim Weiner, David Johnston, and Neil A. Lewis, Betrayal: The Story of Aldrich Ames, an American Spy, Random House, New York, 1995

Republic of Uzice – The World War II European Territory that Broke Away from the Nazis

The Republic of Uzice was the first free territory in occupied Europe in 1941, and the best proof that the Nazi German Army was not invincible. Existing for only 67 days, this short-lived liberated Yugoslav territory was remembered as a heroic attempt at resistance against a much stronger enemy, even after its fall following a strong German offensive. During the existence of the Republic of Uzice, a factory of weapons and ammunition in the town of Uzice was working full time to produce weapons to fight against the Nazis. In 1941, it was the only factory in occupied Europe where weapons were produced to fight against the Wehrmacht (Nazi forces). Zorica Jovanovic explains.

Slobodan Sekulic, Commander of the Partisan Company, paying homage to the killed soldiers in the town of Uzice, October 2, 1941.

Axis forces occupied Yugoslavia in April 1941. The rebellion against the occupiers, which began in Serbia in the summer of 1941, reached wide proportions. By the end of September 1941, almost all major towns in western Serbia were liberated.

The so-called Republic of Uzice is the name that settled in post-war communist Yugoslavia for the first liberated territory inside war-torn Europe in World War II. This "republic" lived, for one fall, for 67 days, from September 24 to November 29, 1941. It was located in Yugoslavia, in Western Serbia, and was part of the Nazi-run ‘Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia’. The Republic of Uzice didn’t have a permanent border, the borders changed almost daily with every movement of the resistance on one side and the occupier on the other side. In this territory, nearly a million inhabitants lived in an area of approximately 19,000 square kilometers.

The united forces of the Partisan (communist) movement and the Chetnik movement (a guerrilla organization that was loyal to the Yugoslav government in refuge) took part in the creation of the free territory in Western Serbia. The newly-appointed German commander in Serbia, Franz Böhme, decided that German soldiers should leave Uzice on September 21. The Germans left the town under the pressure of the uprising, leaving untouched the most important weapons factory in Serbia. The line of Germans was 6 kilometers long and consisted of 1,217 soldiers.

Captured German soldiers in Uzice, 1941.

Organization 

The Republic of Uzice wasn’t a homogeneous territory with one authority and a single armed force. There were two different powers in the Republic of Uzice, one from the Partisan movement and the other from the Chetnik movement. For the time that the Republic existed, there was dual authority, army and command, but the Partisans gave the most significant contribution to the organization of authority and defense, especially due to their military strength (25,000 fighters against several thousand Chetniks). The Partisan center of this free territory was located in Uzice (hence the name Republic of Uzice), and the Chetnik center was in the town of Pozega.[1]

The economy was under war conditions in the town of Uzice. There was a weaver workshop, where the linen, towels and some medical supplies were made. Also, the town had a tailor's workshop for making military clothes, a footwear workshop, a partisan bakery, and a leather workshop. Three small hydroelectric plants were continuously operating on the Djetinje River, and the town and all key facilities were regularly supplied with electricity. There was also a railway that was primarily used for military purposes (soldiers were transported to the front), but also served for civilian needs. Workers made an armored partisan train for safer transport.

In this free territory there were established kitchens for the disabled. The influx of population and the evacuation of the wounded to the towns, led to the organization of free health care in hospitals in free towns. An intense cultural life also developed. In Uzice, the Partisans printed newspapers,which posted news of battles. There was even an arts section within the Partisan Company, which had active drama, art and music sections.

An ammunition factory was set-up after the entry of Partisan forces into the town of Uzice on September 24, 1941. Since frequent German bombings prevented consistent production, the factory was displaced several times in different locations in the town to hide its location. Machines of one part of the ammunition department and tools were placed in underground facilities that were built before the beginning of the war for the needs of the National Bank.

In the Republic of Uzice, partisans produced and fixed weapons and ammunition for the front including:[2]

Rifles: 21,000

Special rifles for the supreme headquarters: 40

Ammunition for rifles: 2.7m

Ammunition for handguns: 90,000

Bulletproof ammunition: 20,000

Grenade guns: 300

Hand grenades: 30,000

Fixed machine guns: About 300

Fixed cannons: 3

Repaired cannon grenades: 5,000

Made landing mines: 2,000

Bottles filled with gasoline: 3,000

The breakdown

Hitler was angry because of the rise of the largest and only free territory in occupied Europe. The command for the suppression of the Republic of Uzice came from the highest point of the Third Reich. On September 16, Hitler gave an order to reclaim the liberated territory. Command was entrusted to General Franz Böhme, the commander of the 18th Army Corps. The attack by the German 342nd Division began on September 28, 1941. Wehrmacht units fought against rebels for one month. Although the Partisans and Chetniks repeatedly negotiated during the autumn, they did not agree firmer co-operation. Conflicts between the groups and the weakening of resistance forces were going hand-in-hand, and the Germans who launched an offensive on November 25, 1941.

The Germans, who were more numerous, technically more equipped, and better military-trained, quickly broke the resistance. The Wehrmacht Army reached the Kadinjača Ridge where a large battle took place between the Germans and the Partisans on November 29. The German forces surrounded the Partisan battalion and all the fighters lost their lives in the battle. After World War II a monument was set up for the fallen soldiers at Kadinjača ridge. Just five days after the start of the final offensive, the German division occupied the center of the Republic of Uzice. The German 342nd Infantry Division agreed a demarcation line with the Italians on December 1, with three hunt groups, and that effectively ended the German offensive. After the offensive, the Germans attacked the Chetnik headquarters in Ravna Gora. About 1,500-2,000 partisans from western Serbia retreated with the Supreme Headquarters, to the south of Serbia.

Aftermath

In post-war communist literature, First Enemy Offensivewas the name for the operations that the Wehrmacht occupying forces led against the rebels in the Republic of Uzice, a name that the older citizens still remember today, while the Germans named this operation - Operation Uzice. In the memory of the Yugoslav people, the Republic of Uzice was remembered and celebrated for its glory.

In Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia, glorious battles of World War II were turned into films, so in 1974,the Uzice Republicfilm was made. However, it was more political than action-based. The film wasn’t about the resistance and heroism – politics was the main theme as it was made to glorify the Partisan movement.[3]

Although this free territory did not last long, there was hope in the minds of the Allies that the struggle against the Axis Powers would be successful. The Soviet Union supported the Partisans, and the United Kingdom supported the Chetnik movement, so their attention was piqued with the uprising and the creation of this large free territory. This event also showed the importance of the Balkans and even influenced the creation of resistance movements in other parts of war-torn Europe.

What do you think about the Republic of Uzice? Let us know below.

[1]Petranović, Branko (1992). Srbija u Drugom svetskom ratu 1939—1945  (http://znaci.net/00001/92.htm)

[2]Uzice'sNational Museum, Partizanska fabrika oružja i municije (http://www.nmuzice.org.rs/index.php/sr/izlozbe/partizanska-fabrika-oruzija)

[3]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067920/ 

Scared America: 1920s America - Nativism and Restrictions on Immigration

In the aftermath of World War One, and many changes in the previous decades, many in 1920s America wanted a return to ‘normalcy’ - and this included a change in immigration policy. Here, Jonathan Hennika (his site here) continues his Scared America series by looking at nativism in the 1920s.

Past articles in the series are on strained 19thcentury politics here, Chinese immigration here, and anti-German propaganda during World War One here.

29th US President Warren G. Harding. Harding signed the 1921 Quote Law that restricted immigration to the US.

As the United States headed towards the holiday season and the new year, another government shutdown loomed. President Donald Trumpinstigatedthe showdown over funding for the Mexico border wall. Congress and the White House entered a tense negotiating stance; on the ground in Mission, Texas another type of battle loomed.

On the outskirts of the town situated close to the border on the Rio Grande River is the National Butterfly Center. Recently Border Agents informed the Executive Director of the Center that wall construction wouldcommence in February 2019. It is unknown how much land the Center will lose, but estimates indicate 70% of the Center’s propertywill be on the other side of the wall. “The center's 100-acre sanctuary… is home to at least 200 species of butterfly, and serves as criticalhabitat for the migration of the threatened Monarch butterfly and endangered species including the ocelot and jaguarundi.” Also, for construction to commence, twenty-eight federal laws governing the land were waived; including the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act.[i]

The Mexico border wall is a cornerstone of the Trump administration. When dealing with border security, the President fixateson the southern border. However, it was using the legal student visa process that enabled the September 11, 2001 terrorists to enter the country and not via the Mexican border. Politicians, usually of the conservative stripe, have been decrying the lax border security conditions on the southern border for decades. Immigration control on the southernborder links back to the nativist movement of the 1920s.

A Return to Normalcy

The European War was over, peacebrokered, and the American people were tired. The decades of the aughts and the teens were exhausted with the rapid change of Progressive reforms and mobilization towards war. In the election of 1920, one man was speaking their language; in a campaign announcement “aide Ed Scobey announced: `One of his slogans is `back to normal’ and another is `America First.’ In connection with the former, I think I can say there is no man better fitted to bring this country backtonormal more efficiently than Warren G. Harding.” [ii]The return to normalcy included a return to the isolationist days of the nation. One of the ways to achieve that goal was a severe limitation of immigrants permitted entry into the United States.  Congress enacted, and Harding signedthe 1921 Quota law. The Quota law mandated the number of immigrants permitted into the United States, limiting it to three percent of each nationality. The percentage derived by the total number of that nation’s immigrant counted in the 1910 census. While structured around the category of “nationality” soon the quotas naturally evolved into ones based on race.  The Johnson-Reed Act amended the Quota Act of 1921becoming the Immigration Act of 1924.[iii]

The 1924 law had two significant changes: the origin point in determining a nationalities population shifted from 1910to the 1890 census, andthe percentage of acceptable immigrants fell from three to two percent.  “The new immigration law differentiated Europeans according to nationality and ranked them in a hierarchy of desirability…. non-European immigrants—among them Japanese, Chinese, Mexicans, and Filipinos—acquired ethnic and racial identities that were the same. The racialization of the…national origins rendered them unalterably foreign and unassimilable to the nation.”[iv]

The 1921 law established the Quota Board whose job it was to determine the definitions governing immigration. Tocalculate quotas, the Board needed to define such terms as “National origin,” “foreign stock,” and “native stock.” Any citizen who traced their lineage to those present in the United States before1790 were native stock. All other were foreign stock. The countryof birth defined national origin. However, there was no American nationality because “inhabitants in [the] continental United States in the 1920s’does not include (1) immigrants from the [Western Hemisphere] or their descendants, (2) aliens ineligible to citizenship or their descendants, (3) the descendants of slave immigrants,or (4) the descendants of the American aborigines.”[v]The American nation, therefore, was made up only of those white European settlers who arrived before1790. 

In addition to setting quotas on immigration,the act also banned outright immigration from the Asian states. Citizens of Japan, China, et al.were considered aliens ineligible for citizenship. Unfortunately, thepolitical reality of the 1920s included a system of mandates and protectorates established after World War One. Great Britain and France were the major colonial powers after the war and governed much of modern-day Africa, the Middle East and parts of Eurasia. Most often, immigrants from those regions were not natural born citizens, but rather, descendants of the governing colonial powers. For instance, there were scant black South African emigresadmitted while white South Africans, with British heritage, entered the United States.  This practiceaided the quotas in decreasing non-white immigration.

The Era of Scientific Racism 

Attitudes towards indigenous and non-white populations made an interesting turn at the end of the 19thcentury.Aboriginesand indigenous peoplewere considered something less than the civilized white Europeans. This belief was so strong that English author and poet Rudyard Kipling penned a poem mocking this belief, entitled The White Man’s Burden. In 1903, G. Stanly Hall, President of Clark University wrote in the Journal of Education: “My plea is that Indians, who are men of the stone age, and other low races should be first of all sympathetically studied as we study children.”[vi]

It was during this period that scientific theory was gaining a widespread societal acceptance. By the 1920s the White Man’s Burden became a defactoscientific theory. “Historical and sociological data [were] used to prove that race lines, racial distinctions, and inequality of the races are essential.”[vii]In drawing up,the quotas the scientific rationalization of racial prejudice casts its influence. Racial mixing resulted in the downfall of ancient civilizations from Rome to Athens was the argument used to justify limitations on the unacceptable nationalities. That same worry dominated a large segment of the American population in the 1920s. It was a period that saw a sharp rise in membership and activities of patriotic clubs, as well as the Ku Klux Klan. These organizations preached a message of fear regarding the unadvanced foreign interloper. The main concern revolved around the theory that the outsider was unable to conform to accepted American societal norms. The fear was the outsider might manipulate the system toachieve equal societal status with the average American. Thus, “the ambitious immigrant, non-Anglo-Saxon, non-Protestant, whose frequent tendency to overachieve led to actions to `keep him in his place.’”[viii]One of those actions was the strict immigration acts of the 1920s.

The Trouble with Mexico

The Mexican-American war ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. As part of the peace, Mexico ceded a broadswathof territory to the United States. The present-day states of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and California all comprise former Mexican territory. The treaty declared that those living in the areasbecame American citizens after one year if they did not announce their intentions to return to Mexico. Unlike the other nations of the world, the treaty governs the naturalization of Mexicans to American citizens.  Hence, Mexico was exempt from the quota system. “While not subject to numerical quotas or restrictions on naturalization, Mexicans were profoundly affected by restrictive measures enacted in the 1920s, among them deportation policy, thecreation of the Border Patrol, and the criminalization of unlawful entry.”[ix]

Embracing the respectability of scientific theory, President Herbert Hoover commissioned a large study conducted by academics and social scientists. The resulting report provides a detailed look at American life in the decade of the 1920s. The report, entitled Recent Social Trends, examined the state of racial and ethnic groups in chapter eleven.  In discussing Mexican migration, the report noted: “that the Mexican element has increased from 3 to 16 percent of all immigration within the past twenty years. Thishas meant an increase from 400,000 in 1910 to nearly a million and a half in 1930 in the number of persons born in Mexico or of Mexican parentage. Of this million and a half,about 65,000 were enumerated in 1930 as "white Mexicans" or those of Spanish descent, while the remaining 1,400,000 were of “Indian and Negro descent.”[x]The report found a variety of pull and push factors for Mexican migration; civil unrest in Mexico and a strong United States economy beforethe Stock Market crash. The impact of the Great Depression decreased the flow of migrants into the United States from Mexico. The American border while porous became tighter in the 1920s; the trickle of emigres permitted in through the quota system virtually stopped as a result of the events of the 1930s. As for the immigrants already present in the United States, the return to normalcy translated into Americanization. Under the pressures of nativism, the narrative of the American melting pot became more one of assimilation. 

What do you think of the article? Let us know below.

[i]CBS News, “Butterfly Sanctuary in Texas Expected to be Plowed Over for Trumps Border Wall,” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/butterfly-sanctuary-in-texas-expected-to-be-plowed-over-for-trumps-border-wall/

[ii]David Pietrusza, 1920: The Year of Six Presidents, (New York: Basic Books, 2007) 314.

[iii]Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The 1920s to the 1990s, (Harper Collins: New York, 1983) 205.

[iv]Mae M. Ngai, “The Architecture of Race in Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924,” The Journal of American History, 86 June 1999, 69-70

[v]Ibid., 72

[vi]G. Stanley Hall, “The White Man’s Burden Versus Indigenous Development of the Lower Races,” The Journal of Education, 58 July 1903, 83.

[vii]W.O. Brown, “Rationalization of Race Prejudice,” International Journal of Ethics, 43 April 1933, 302-3.

[viii]Paul L. Murphy, “Sources and Nature of Intolerance in the 1920s,” The Journal of American History, 51 June 1964, 69.

[ix]Ngai, 71, 88.

[x]T.J. Woofter, Jr., “The Status of Racial and Ethnic Groups,” Recent Social Trends (York, Pa: The Maple Press Company, 1933), 561.

Civilian Deaths in the Falklands War and the Decline of the British Empire

The Falkland Islands are some 300 miles (or about 480 kilometers) off the coast of Argentina and have been a British-owned territory since the nineteenth century; in 1982 Argentina and Britain fought a war over ownership of the islands. Here, Matt Austin considers civilian casualties during the Falklands War in the wider context of the decline of the British Empire.

Argentine prisoners of war during the 1982 Falklands War. Source: Ken Griffiths, available here.

Introduction

Beginning on the second of April and lasting until the fourteenth of June 1982, Britain was engaged in a seventy-two day war to retain one of its few remaining commonwealth territories. Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges refers to the Falklands War as “two bald men fighting over a comb,” a comparison that strongly outlines the sheer needlessness of the conflict in the eyes of many historians and writers.[1]It is therefore possible to suggest that the casualties endured during the Falklands War, an estimated eight hundred and seventy eight in total, with the inclusion of Argentine prisoners of war, numbering over eleven thousand, were themselves needless.[2]Ultimately, the motivations behind the Falklands War and the nature of how it was fought have led it to be considered one of the most unique conflicts in British military history.

The Decline of the British Empire

Following the Second World War, Britain underwent a period of decline. Due to the heavy economic losses endured during the conflict, the nation was unable to effectively fund its Empire and granted independence to a number of its former colonies from the 1940s onwards. The first of the major colonies to gain independence following the Second World War was India. With warring political groups and a lack of ‘safeguards’ for British business and trade interests, UK Prime Minister Clement Attlee decided Britain was to ‘abandon control’ of India in 1947.[3]

This was followed by the loss of numerous territories in the following decades, such as Ghana in 1957, Uganda in 1962, and Kenya in 1963. Consequently, the loss of Southern Rhodesia, or Zimbabwe, as the newly independent state became known, in 1980, was the last of the British territories in Africa. The loss of Southern Rhodesia represented the end of an era for the British Empire, following its inevitable decline in the decades after the Second World War.[4]This left the former international powerhouse of the British Empire with a severely reduced, sparsely scattered group of commonwealth territories, so threatening the nation’s global influence. With the threat of the Empire being completely lost, a concept that had become gradually apparent throughout the past several decades, Britain would therefore rigorously attempt to retain and protect any of its remaining territories against invasion. 

The Falklands War

The origins of the Falklands Warcan be attributed to the militant Argentine government’s decision to invade and occupy the neighboring islands in an attempt to encourage positive public opinion. Despite having a severely weakened economy and dealing with increasing demand for the introduction a democratic voting system, the government, under the control of their military dictator Leopoldo Galtieri, received an outpouring of public support in favor of the invasion of the islands, as Argentine feelings of nationalism surged.[5]This reinforced the decision to defend their newly captured territory against the prospect of a British invasion.

Following news of the Argentine invasion and take over of the Falkland Islands, Britain responded by sending a naval taskforce on April 5, 1982 to defend the islands from the invading forces. Ultimately, the conflict was short lived, as Britain was successful in its attempt to regain the Falkland Islands through the use of more advanced military technology and superior combat training. US president Ronald Reagan was initially skeptical of Britain’s decision to win back the Falklands, suggesting that it was not worth an invasion. However, in an attempt to avoid any political tension between the United States, and the United Kingdom, under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he eventually decided to support the effort, providing Britain with weaponry and munitions, which aided the victory and shortened the conflict.

Military Casualties

The Argentine casualties during the Falklands War numbered up to six hundred and forty nine, around four hundred more than those of the British. The majority of the casualties of the Falklands War occurred during the attacks on naval ships carrying large numbers of troops. The specific case of the British attack on the Argentine ship, the General Belgrano, resulted in almost half of all Argentine casualties, with three hundred and twenty one of the ship’s one thousand one hundred crew being killed.[6]This has since been considered a highly controversial moment of the Falklands War, sparking the debate over a possible war crime, as the Belgrano was attacked thirty six miles away from the British exclusion zone that had been set up around the islands.[7]

Nevertheless, despite a vast majority of the casualties originating from naval attacks, friendly fire was a larger issue for British troops in the Falklands than the majority of its other twentieth century conflicts, relative to the scale and nature of the war. The majority of incidents of British friendly fire occurred at night. The reason for this can be attributed to the result of misinterpretation of the identity of British troops, among the ‘monotonous, featureless terrain’ of the Falkland Islands.[8]Furthermore, it was not simply British troops that fell victim to friendly fire, as the only civilian casualties of the Falklands War are attributed to this.

Civilian Casualties

The decisive British victory, however, was underpinned by the regularly overlooked deaths of three civilians.[9]Whilst civilian casualties are unfortunately rarely unique during wartime, the case of the death of three Falkland Islanders is in itself a rare occurrence, as these deaths were caused by friendly fire. The three civilian deaths of the Falklands War hold great significance, as they demonstrate the contradictory nature and moral considerations that embodied this conflict. As the islands had been under British rule for centuries, those living there were British citizens and being predominantly farmers, had little to no means of preventing the unexpected Argentine invasion. Consequently, there must have been a sense of relief when news that the British would launch an invasion to secure back the islands reached those living there.[10]However, this was not to be the case for three Falkland Islanders living in the capital, Port Stanley, as Susan Whitley, Doreen Bonner, and Mary Goodwin unfortunately lost their lives during the British bombing of the capital.[11]Whilst these deaths are often overlooked in what is a considerably neglected conflict in itself, they have come to somewhat represent British international relations in the latter half of the twentieth century.

What is therefore so intriguing about these deaths are the wider moral implications that surround them. Britain, in an attempt to recapture the islands, supposedly for the safety of the Falklanders and the right to retain their British identity, contributed to the only incidents of civilian casualties of the war. This represents the contradictory nature of this conflict and creates a wider moral question of whether the unrealistic perception of the ‘Empire’ and the lengths that Britain would go to ensure its survival was worth more to the government and foreign policy makers than the people they were trying to protect. 

Conclusion

The Imperial undertones of the Falklands War are highlighted by these deaths; this article therefore concludes by posing the question of British morality and whether this conflict was simply an overreaction to the post war decades characterized by the decline of the once powerful Empire that built up and bubbled over, culminating in one of the most unnecessary, frustrating conflicts in the nation’s history.

What do you think of the author’s arguments? Let us know below.

[1]Miles Kington, “What did you do in the Falklands War, Daddy?” The Independent, October 28, 1998, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/what-did-you-do-in-the-falklands-war-daddy-1181032.html.

[2]“Falkland Islands War. Cost and Consequences,” Britannica, accessed 17/11/2018, https://www.britannica.com/event/Falkland-Islands-War#ref302171.

[3]Nicholas Owen, “The Conservative Party and Indian Independence, 1945-1947,” The Historical Journal 46, no. 2 (June 2003): 404.

[4]Hevina S. Dashwood, “Inequality, Leadership and the Crisis in Zimbabwe,” International Journal57, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 209.

[5]Paola Ehrmantruat, “Aftermath of Violence: Coming to Terms with the Legacy of the Malvinas/Falklands War (1982),” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 15 (2011): 95-96.

[6]“Is Maggie Thatcher a War Criminal?” Belgrano Enquiry, accessed 10/12/2018, http://belgranoinquiry.com/.

[7]“Is Maggie Thatcher a War Criminal?”

[8]Beck, “How Are You Enjoying the Day?”

[9]Lucy Beck, “How Are You Enjoying the Day? Remembering the victims of the Falklands War,” April 2007. http://archive.ppu.org.uk/falklands/falklands3.html.

[10]David Saunders, Hugh Ward, David Marsh and Tony Fletcher, “Government Popularity and the Falklands War: A Reassessment,” British Journal of Political Science 17, no. 3 (July 1987): 281-282.

[11]Beck, “How Are You Enjoying the Day?”

Soviet Spies in 1950s Cold War America: The Strange Story of Rudolf Abel

Following the finding of the spies who shared American atomic secrets with the Soviet Union (read more here), the “Red Scare” was sweeping over 1950s Cold War America. And Cold War espionage was not going away. Here Scott Rose explains how Rudolf Abel’s New York-based Soviet spy ring was discovered in 1957.

A Soviet stamp from 1990 commemorating Rudolf Abel.

The United States broke the Soviet atomic spy ring in the early 1950s, after the USSR had already accomplished its goal of acquiring the American information its scientists needed to build an atomic weapon. However, this was not the end of Cold War espionage between the two superpowers; in fact, it was barely the beginning. Both countries used every available method to find out each other’s plans and secrets, and in the process, many participants in this game either died, were sent to prison, or were ruined personally and politically.

When atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried, convicted and executed, they never admitted guilt or gave up any of their contacts. One of their contemporaries in New York was running a Soviet spy ring of his own, which he built for seven years after the Rosenbergs were arrested.

An Espionage Artist

In 1948, an artist and photographer named Emil Goldfus rented a small studio in Brooklyn. While his artistic talents were average at best, Goldfus had a talent for espionage that was anything but average. Mr. Goldfus was actually a Soviet KGB colonel named Rudolf Abel, and he had been one of the Soviet Union’s greatest spies during World War II. Proficient in Russian, English, Polish, German, and Yiddish, Abel was a uniquely versatile spy. He had perfectly impersonated a German military officer and was able to give the Red Army valuable information on German troop movements.

Abel came to New York in 1948, and he quickly built a spy network in America. In addition to his new espionage contacts, he made friends among other artists, who never had any reason to suspect him as being anyone other than who he said he was. Abel would sometimes leave town for weeks at a time, which his friends attributed to his eccentric, bohemian personality. 

By 1954, Abel had built a large spying operation, and his methods of transmitting coded messages included placing microfilm inside of hollowed-out bolts, coins, and pencils. The Soviets decided Abel needed an assistant, to which he objected. Nevertheless, the Soviets sent an agent named Reimo Hayhanen to help Abel in New York. Abel quickly found his assistant to be completely incompetent, but tried his best to make an effective spy out of Hayhanen. A year later the KGB was concerned that Abel was becoming exhausted, and recalled him to the USSR for six months of vacation. When Abel returned to Brooklyn, he found his operation in shambles. Hayhanen had been extremely careless, and had spent much of the network’s finances on alcohol and prostitutes. By 1957, Abel had had enough, and demanded that his assistant be recalled to the Soviet Union. Hayhanen received his recall orders, and panicked, fearing he would be executed upon arriving in Moscow. He made it as far as Paris, where he walked into the American embassy, telling his story and pleading for asylum. At first, the CIA suspected Hayhanen was drunk, and he may very well have been. However, they decided to verify the information he had given them, and realized he was telling the truth.

When Hayhanen didn’t arrive in Moscow, the Soviets knew right away that he had defected. Abel was recalled, but didn’t make it out of the United States. Just before he was scheduled to leave, the FBI arrested him at a hotel in New York. He knew he was caught when an FBI agent addressed him as “Colonel.” Ever the professional, Abel didn’t say a word when he was arrested, simply staring ahead. However, Abel had not disposed of the evidence in his studio before he attempted to leave the United States, a surprising error for a spy as seasoned as Abel. When the studio was raided, the FBI realized it had found a goldmine of information. All sorts of spying and transmission equipment were found in the studio, but most importantly, there were photos of Soviet agents in the USA, along with lists of their names. Within weeks, Abel’s entire network of spies was shut down.

The Client Nobody Wanted to Represent

Abel was charged with espionage, and his next predicament was that there were hardly any defense attorneys in America that wanted to represent him. In the late 1950s, the United States was dealing with the lingering effects of the Rosenberg case as well as the “Red Scare” that had been whipped up by Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had had ruined many careers by accusing people in all parts of American government and culture of having communist leanings. Not many lawyers, especially ones with political ambitions, could afford to be seen defending a KGB colonel in court. Eventually, the US government found an attorney willing to take on the case. James Donovan, who had previously worked for the American OSS (the precursor to the CIA), agreed to represent Abel. This would seem quite ironic, but Donovan actually did everything he could to defend his client.

When the case went to trial, it probably would not have mattered who his lawyer was, as the evidence against Rudolf Abel was massive and undeniable. In essence, Donovan knew Abel was probably going to be convicted. His main objective at this point was to keep Abel from getting the death penalty, as the Rosenbergs had. He succeeded in this; when the court found Abel guilty, his life was spared in favor of a 30-year prison sentence. Donovan was not finished though, appealing the case to the US Supreme Court. He argued that the evidence from the studio, by which Abel was convicted, had been obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court upheld Abel’s conviction, and he was sent to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta to begin his sentence.

While in prison, Abel kept himself busy with intellectual activities, such as painting and playing chess. Some days, he even passed the time by writing out tables of mathematical logarithms. Abel befriended several other convicted spies, including the Rosenbergs’ former accomplice, Morton Sobell. A couple of years after beginning his sentence, events on the other side of the globe would begin to work in Abel’s favor.

The FBI mugshot of Rudolf Abel after his arrest in 1957.

Gary Powers and the U-2 Incident

In 1960, the Soviets claimed to have shot down an American U-2 spy plane that was performing reconnaissance over the USSR. The pilot, Gary Powers, had ejected and survived, but was captured and brought to trial. The trial was designed to be a major propaganda victory, but it turned into an embarrassment for the Soviets. Powers admitted piloting a spy plane, adding that he had been flying reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union for the past four years. He also told the court that his plane was not shot down at all; the U-2 had suffered a flame-out that had forced him to eject.  When the trial ended in August 1960, Powers was sentenced to ten years in a Soviet prison.

James Donovan, who had represented Rudolf Abel at his trial, recognized the opportunity to free both Abel and Powers. He orchestrated a prisoner exchange with the Soviets, who were eager to get Abel back. In February of 1962, Abel was released to the Soviet Union after serving only four years of his sentence. Likewise, Gary Powers was returned to the United States, where after retiring from the Air Force, he became a test pilot, as well as a helicopter traffic reporter for a Los Angeles television station. The prisoner exchange took place on the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin. As part of the swap, an American student named Frederic Pryor was released from the custody of the East Berlin police. In August of 1961, Pryor had been arrested and held by the East Germans, on the false suspicion that he was a spy for the CIA.

The Soviets treated Abel well when he returned, as he had been a valuable Cold War operative before being brought down by a bumbling assistant. He continued working for the KGB, even giving speeches to Soviet schoolchildren about intelligence operations. Just as Morris and Lona Cohen (two of the American atomic spies) were commemorated on Soviet postage stamps, Abel was honored on a stamp in 1990, one year before the fall of the Soviet Union. However, Abel’s luck had run out long before; after a lifetime of chain smoking, he died of lung cancer in 1971.

The story of the prisoner exchange was portrayed in the 2015 film Bridge of Spies.Frederic Pryor, who is still alive, went to see the film and claimed to have enjoyed it, while considering it to be over-dramatized. Pryor told a fellow moviegoer that the film had many inaccuracies, and the other person replied by asking Pryor, “How do you know that?” Pryor answered, “I’m Frederic Pryor.”

What do you think of the article? Let us know below.

REFERENCES

Chester B. Hearn, Spies & Espionage: A Directory, Thunder Bay Press, 2006

James B. Donovan, Strangers On A Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel, Atheneum House, 2015

Ryan Dougherty, “Economist Frederic Pryor Recounts Life as a ‘Spy’”, Swarthmore College News & Events, October 21, 2015

Giles Whittell, Bridge of Spies: A True Story of the Cold War, Broadway Books, 2010

Nurses in World War Two – Prisoner of War Reba Z. Whittle

World War Two nurse Reba Z. Whittle is a unique and all-too often forgotten World War Two nurse. As well as helping many troops with their injuries, she became a Prisoner of War in Germany. Here, Matt Goolsby continues his series on Nurses in War and tells her extraordinary story (following articles on US Civil War nurses Clara Barton (here) and Cornelia Hancock (here), and World War One nurse Julia Catherine Stimson (here)).

American World War Two nurse Reba Z. Whittle. Source: US Air Force, available here.

The World of the 1930s

Leading up to World War II, the world had already seen significant conflict.

World War I or the ‘Great War’ along with the stock market crash of 1929 had plunged the global economy into a ‘Great Depression’. These were nicknamed ‘Great’ events because of their worldwide impacts.

Along with the ‘Great Depression’, China had been deluged by massive flooding and America was suffering from a suffocating drought. China was also becoming a hotspot of war on the Asian continent as the Japanese were expanding their territorial conquests during the Manchurian invasion of 1931.

There was trouble again brewing in Europe with fascism on the rise. Francisco Franco in Spain, Benito Mussolini in Italy, and Adolf Hitler in Germany were all making overtures of war or were prosecuting it in their respective nations.

By this time, air travel had become more commonplace as had automobiles throughout the entire world. The first inter-continental flight had taken place and travel between continents was quicker and easier than ever before.

Telecommunications were now truly trans-continental and many enjoyed radio as well as early television entertainment daily from studios such as NBC, CBS, and the Blue network.

US Army nurses were professionals in their own right by this time and had become essential participants and  dubbed ‘Angels’ by those cared for by them.

Nurses as captives

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, for the first time ever, five Navy Nurses were taken captive by the Japanese on Guam on December 10th, 1941. These five were fortunate as they were repatriated to Mozambique, Portuguese South Africa in August of 1942.

Nurses had been casualties of war since the Spanish-American conflict, but none had ever been taken captive. All told, 68 Army and 16 Navy nurses were taken captive during World War II.

Other Army and Navy nurses taken captive in The Philippines were not as fortunate as those who had been repatriated to Mozambique.

The Japanese began their assault the day after their Pearl Harbor attack and by April of 1942 had captured Bataan, the prelude of the ‘Bataan Death March’.

When Corregidor fell to Japanese forces on May 6th, 1942, 11 Navy and 66 Army nurses had been captured and were later interred that Summer at Santo Tomas Internment Camp which had previously been the University of Santo Tomas.

The nurses who were captured were fortunate that they were transferred to internment on April 8th, 1942, just two days before the infamous Bataan Death March started that had driven American and Filipino prisoners close to seventy miles on foot and was the scene of numerous atrocities.

On a personal note, one of my uncles was taken captive and forced to march to Bataan. He was never the same once liberated, but was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D.C.

The ‘Angels of Bataan’ as they were referred to by the men or the ‘Battling Belles of Bataan’, survived in captivity for three years without losing a single nurse and were liberated by American forces on February 2nd, 1945.

Battle Tested

In the European theater, a brave young woman named Reba Z. Whittle made history that is little known to this day.

Reba Zitella Whittle was born in Rocksprings, Texas on August 19, 1919.  Destined to have a lasting impact, she applied for an appointment as a Reserve Army nurse after graduating from the Medical and Surgical Memorial Hospital School of Nursing in San Antonio, Texas in June 1941.

Having spent a year in college as a Home Economics major at North Texas State College, Reba was better educated and a little older than other applicants of the Army Reserve Nurse Corps.

She was initially denied an appointment as she was 5’7” and only 117 pounds. The requirement was actually seven pounds heavier but was waived due to her educational qualifications. She was advised to diet and rest to increase her weight.

Her initial appointment to the Army Reserves came with orders in June of 1941 that stated: “Assigned to active duty with the Army of the United States for a minimum period of one-year, effective June 17, 1941, and will continue on this status until relieved for the convenience of the Government or otherwise."

An important fact to remember about this time period in world history is that many people saw the looming threats that were developing and felt a compelling desire to be involved. Their sense of duty to their countries still rings true to this day and is a tribute as well as a lasting legacy to the many who sacrificed so much for our freedom from tyranny. Regardless of the allied power that they represented, they banded together during this worldwide conflict that cost so many lives.

After taking the oath to defend her country, Reba was given the rank of 2ndLieutenant as a Reserve Nurse in the Army Nurse Corps. She was ordered to report to the Albuquerque Air Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico and then assigned to Kirkland Field, New Mexico at Station Hospital and then at Station Hospital, Mather Field, California where she would spend the next 27 months as a general duty war nurse.

Her life would forever change in January of 1943 when she volunteered for the Army Air Forces School of Evacuation. All of the applicants of the school were volunteers as the potential for casualties ran high.

The Army utilized a C-47 cargo transport aircraft that served a dual-purpose. Its first role was to transport soldiers and their cargo to the battle-lines. Once having transported their initial load, the planes would then switch roles to become an evacuation air ambulance for the wounded. Since the planes were not identified as a hospital transport and didn’t have a Geneva Red Cross insignia, the assignment was very risky for the crew.

Lieutenant Whittle started training at the Army Air Forces School of Air Evacuation at Bowman Field, Kentucky on September 23, 1943. Prior to her arrival, the training had expanded from four to six weeks. 

According to the book, The Forgotten POW, the following details were highlighted as part of her training: “The intent of the program was to make the nurse largely self-sufficient on the flight. The nurse was required to use the equipment and medical supplies provided on the plane for treatment to relieve pain, to prevent hemorrhage, to treat shock, to administer oxygen, and in every way to meet any circumstances that might be encountered. In contrast to the hospital ward situation, all of this was to be done in the absence of a physician. Only in rare instances did a flight surgeon accompany a patient on a flight.”

Having completed her training, Lieutenant Whittle was assigned to the 813thMedical Aeronautical Transportation Squadron in Great Britain. The unit was initially stationed in the city of Nottingham, but later it moved to Brighton and then to Grove. During her time there from January through September of 1944, she flew 40 missions, 80 hours of which included combat time with a combined flying time of 500 hours. She quickly became a veteran combat nurse who coincidentally, had read nurse Juanita Redmond’s book titled: “I served on Bataan”, published in 1943. This is where she learned about what had happened to her fellow nurses captured in war.

Little did she know she would be next.

Lone POW

The day of September 27th, 1944 was not a good one for 2ndLieutenant Reba Z. Whittle.

In her diary that she began not long after being captured, she wrote that on Wednesday, September 27th, she left England with the intention of returning and going to London the next day, her day off. 

As it turned out, this was not to be: “Was sleeping quite soundly in the back of our hospital plane until suddenly awakened by terrific sounds of guns and cracklings of the plane as if it had gone into bits. For a few moments I hardly knew what to think. Can assure anyone a more than startled expression and sensation. Suddenly looked at my Surgical Tech opposite me with blood flowing from his left leg. The noise by this time seemed to be much worse. But to see the left engine blazing away - is simply more than I can express - But never thought I would land on the ground in one peace [sic]. My prayers were used and quick.”

After the plane had hit the ground and all but one of the crew had got out, there were more surprises to come: “Immediately we saw soldiers not many yards away. At first we thought they were British soldiers. Second glance we recognized they were German GIs. This feeling is one never dreamed of having. But thought - we've had it chum. The first thought in my mind - my boyfriend and he would be waiting back at my quarters that evening. But how thankful and grateful to be alive.”

War has a tendency to bring out the best and worst in humanity, but the ground soldiers or ‘grunts’ who served in the German Army were surprisingly gentle and concerned: “They took a glance their guns pointing and immediately one took out a bandage and put around my head as it was bleeding. The surprised look on their faces when they saw a woman was amazing. But they bandaged us and away we marched our ship still burning.”

The unfortunate mistake that the navigator made during the crew’s mission was to get off course. Instead of flying to France, the mis-navigation took them to Achen, Germany where they were shot down.

During the crash, Reba sustained a concussion and a severe laceration that were later treated by a German doctor. Her ordeal would continue as the Germans who’d captured them drove them deeper into Germany.

Traveling on weathered roads with injured POWs inside a cold and dirty truck, the German Army would periodically stop at different towns to take meal breaks or to discuss what to do with the prisoners. One such encounter between a German doctor and Lieutenant Whittle is indicative of the difficulties of war: “Next stop was a German hospital where they unloaded the wood. A German officer takes us in. Where more questions asked. And just what I was - a Dr. came in and looked all over and asked me questions of being a nurse. Shook his head saying, ‘Too bad having a woman as you are the first one and no one knows exactly what to do.’"

Her travels would continue throughout the German countryside as she was assigned to hospitals along a circuitous route that the German command determined on a seemingly random basis. As she landed in different locations, her nurse training met with practical experience to help the wounded American and British POWs.

Along the way the astonishment of the wounded that a woman had been captured and how it had been done continued to intrigue those she met.

Free at last

As Reba’s internment continued, her writings demonstrated the perseverance and dedication that nurses in war exhibit and especially the concern they show for those in their care.

At the end of November 1944, Lieutenant Whittle’s writing in her diary suddenly stopped. It’s been surmised since she never wrote a reason why or told her husband, that she was just too busy taking care of preparations for the holiday season. 

Throughout her writings she would express her spontaneous crying when she felt desperate, though she never seemed to waiver in her hope that she would be freed.

Towards the end of her journaling she had learned that the International Red Cross had heard of her plight and was trying to repatriate her through official bureaucratic channels. Undoubtedly, this provided hope where there had been none.

Reba Z. Whittle was finally repatriated on January 25th, 1945, having spent four months as a German prisoner of war. She was the only American female nurse to have been captured in Europe during World War II.

After being freed, Lieutenant Whittle was sent home and was able to spend one night with her fiancé, Lieutenant Colonel Stanley Tobiason, who would later return to duty in England. She also received a telegram from then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt thanking her for her service:

“As your Commander in Chief, I take pride in your past achievements and express the thanks of a grateful Nation for your services in combat and your steadfastness while a prisoner of war. May God grant each of you happiness and an early return to health.”

Not long after coming home, Reba was awarded the Purple Heart for injuries sustained in action and also the Air Medal for serving in unarmed and unarmored aircraft.

A month later, 2ndLieutenant Whittle was promoted to 1stLieutenant. Unable to return to flight duty due to recurring headaches from the injuries she sustained and other maladies, she remained on active duty until August, 1945 when she married Lieutenant Colonel Tobiason at Hamilton Field, California and resigned her commission.

Reba had never been declared a POW officially. She spent the next 10 years petitioning the Department of the Army to get a disability retirement only to be frustrated by bureaucracy. She finally settled for a meager amount in 1955, trying to reapply in 1960.

By that time the case was determined to have been closed. She never did anything further about the medical and psychiatric disorders she’d suffered from being a prisoner of war. However, her legacy has lived on in her two sons, one of them having graduated from the US Naval Academy and becoming a pilot who flew in the Vietnam conflict. 

Reba passed away from cancer in 1981, but her husband again petitioned the Department of the Army. In 1983 Reba was finally officially recognized as a POW of World War II. 

None of us can truly know the struggles and difficulties that a POW must go through, especially when they return. Reba exemplifies the best in humanity and serves as a lasting role model for the Army Nurse Corps. 

She is justified at last.

What do you think of Reba Z. Whittle? Let us know below.

References

Lieutenant Colonel E.V. Frank, AN, “The Forgotten POW: Second Lieutenant Reba Z. Whittle, AN”, US Army War College, February 1990.

“The 1930s”, https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/1930s

“Angels of Bataan”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_of_Bataan

Scared America: The Post World War One Russian Bolshevik Red Scare in the US

In the years immediately after World War One, a Red Scare swept the US. Following the Russian Revolution there were fears that the Bolsheviks would seek to undermine America and democracy, leading to various laws being enacted. Jonathan Hennika (site here) continues his Scared America series below (following articles on strained 19thcentury politics here, Chinese immigration here, and anti-German propaganda during World War One here).

A drawing depicting the Steel Strike of 1919. From New York World, October 11, 1919.

In a Forbes Magazine editorial, political science Professor Donald Brand wrote, “Donald Trump’s nativism is a fundamental corruption of the founding principles of the Republican Party. Nativists champion the purported interests of American citizens over those of immigrants, justifying their hostility to immigrants by the use of derogatory stereotypes: Mexicans are rapists; Muslims are terrorists.” The United States is not the only nation affectedby Nativism. Great Britain faced its nativist fight in the referendum regarding the nation’s involvement in the European Union. “Nativism … is prejudice in favor of natives against strangers, which in present-day terms means a policy that will protect and promote the interests of indigenous or established inhabitants over those of immigrants. This usage has recently found favor among Brexiters anxious to distance themselves from accusations of racism and xenophobia” journalist Ian Jack wrote in The Guardian.[i]

In 2018, voters in both nations facedthe consequences made in 2016. Great Britain struggled with the formalization of an exit from the European Union; theUnited States grappled with a President who calls himself a “nationalist.” In the lead up to the midterm elections,President Trump demonized a caravan of Latin Americans seeking asylum in the United States; proposed ending birthright citizenship; and threatened to shut down the border between the United States and Mexico. President Trump'slast-minute anti-immigrant rhetoric did not yield him noticeable benefit in the mid-terms; his party retaineda precarious hold on the United States Senate and lost the majority in the House of Representatives.  It is possible the American electorate understood the tactic as one of fear; it is possible President Trump pushed the issue toofar and crossed a line. Perhaps President Trump is a man out of time, as he said at a campaign rally in Houston, Texas” "You know, they have a word. It sort ofbecame old-fashioned. It’s called a nationalist," he continued. "And I say, 'Really, we’re not supposed to use that word?' You know what I am? I'm a nationalist. ... Use that word."[ii]

America at a Crossroads 

The United States at the end of World War One was a nation in turmoil. After running on a re-election campaign touting, he kept America out of the European war; Wilson became a War President in April 1917. The President postulated that if Americans went towar “they’ll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.”[iii]American culture changed over-night as war fervor gripped the nation: “Every element of American public opinion was mobilized behind `my country, right or wrong,’ dissent was virtually forbidden, democracy at home was drastically curtailed so that it could be made safe abroad, while impressionable children were `educated’ in Hun atrocities, or their time was employed in liberty loan, Red Cross, war saving stamp or YMCA campaigns.”Soon, this Americanism became codified under the Espionage Act of 1917 and further enforced with the Sedition Act of 1918. Taken together, the Alien-Sedition Act is an early 20thcentury version of the post-September11, 2001,the PatriotAct, in that they curbed criticism of America’s involvement in the First World War. “There was clear implication that people who utilized free speech as a means of gaining improper ends had to be restricted.”[iv]

Once the war ended, those encouragedby the implementation of the Alien-Sedition Act wanted similar peacetime laws. Therefore, a new enemy was required. Political leaders pointed towards the radical revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe and Russia. Their tactic in creating this Red Scareincluded propaganda, which proved politically useful to President Wilson and his public relations man, George Creel. Inciters of the Red Scare painted a picture of Eastern European immigrants as non-conformists and declared they and “their Socialist `cousins’ rejected the premises upon which the American system rested, namely that rights and privileges were open in a free society to anyone who was willing to work up patiently within the system. Or if the individual wereincapable of utilizing this technique, he would eventually be taken care of in a spiritof paternalism by the affluent class, as long as he stood with his hat in his hand and patiently waited.” The fear of the socialist and Bolsheviks was so great that “by 1920 thirty-five states had enacted some form of restrictive, precautionary legislation enabling the rapid crackdown on speech that might by its expression produce unlawful actions geared toward stimulating improper political or economic change.”[v]

These politicians cast themselves as defenders of the United States and all things American. A partial list of these defenders includes Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, former First Army General Leonard Wood, Post Master General Albert Burleson, William J. Flynn, director of the Bureau of Investigation and his head of intelligence, J Edgar Hoover.  Both Palmer and Wood were contenders for the Republican nomination in the 1920 election. Flynn, Hoover, and later Flynn’s successor, William Burns, used the Bolshevik threat to enhance the power and prestige of the Bureau of Investigation, as well as their reputations. 

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and the Red Scare of 1919

The end of the war, which had been an economic boon for the United States, brought with it a depression due in part to the cancellationof no longer needed war orders. As the economy slumped, retail prices climbed more than doubling by 1920, the worse increases occurring in the spring and summer of 1919. The workers who had prospered during the boom years of the warnow complained about low wages. Over 4,000,000 workers participated in 3,600 strikes in 1919. Veterans, returning to civilian life, resulted in high unemployment. Speaking at a public event, Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson indicated that two significantstrikes in Seattle and Butte, Montana were “instituted by the Bolsheviks…for the sole purpose of bringing about a nationwide revolution in the United States.”[vi]

Americansoldiers arereturning to civilian life, having performed their patriotic duty, found their jobs had been taken over by African-Americans and others who had not served in the war. There was a sharp rise in unemployment which increased nativist sentiment. Soldiers returned to a country where Socialists and other radicals were striking and threatening violence against the government and the democracytheyhad defended in the trench warfare of France. The threats of violence became real in April and June 1919. Bombing campaigns targeted various cities and public officials. Speaking of the June 1919 bombings, William Flynn, Director of the Bureau of Investigation, declared that the “bombers were connected with Russian Bolshevism aided by Hun money,” placing the enemy directly at the feet of the old enemy, Germany, and the new enemy, Russia.[vii]

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer was one of the public officials targeted by the April bombings. Palmer began a swift retaliation campaign between 1919 and 1920. Palmer’s Justice Department rounded up and deported over six thousand aliens and arrested thousands more upon suspicion of belonging to subversive or radical groups. At this time President Wilson had taken ill (having suffered a stroke), Palmer went unchecked. Of the thousands arrested, most were taken within a warrant and detained for inexcusably long sentences. Thosearrested were later released.[viii]In a precursorof what was to come in the 1950s, Attorney General Palmer presented a report to Congress in November 1919. In his report, Palmer stated that “the Department of Justice discovered upwards of 60,000 of these organized agitators of the Trotsky doctrine in the US… confidential information upon which the government is now sweeping the nation clean of such alien filth…. The sharp tongues of the Revolution’s head were licking the altars of the churches, leaping into the belfry of the school bell, crawling into the sacred corners of American homes and seeking to replace marriage with libertine laws.”[ix]

As a result of the Red Scare of 1919-1920, New York State disbarred five Assemblymenas socialist.  Being the nation’s top-crusader against the Red menace, Palmer was unable to turn his campaign of fear and red-baiting into higher political office. Unlike President Trump in 2016, Palmer lost his party’s bid for the nomination. However, as an intended consequence of the Red Scare, in 1921 Congress enacted the Quota law. This was the first of many billspassedduring the Roaring Twenties to sharply curtail an influx of immigration to a country founded by immigrants. These immigration and Naturalization Laws increased the United States’ move towards a return to pre-war isolation and harbored disastrous consequences as the fascists began to seize power in the 1920sand 1930s Europe.

What do you think of the post World War One red Scare in the US? Let us know below.

[i]Donald Brand, “How Donald Trump’s Nativism Ruined the GOP,” Forbes, June 26, 2016. http://fortune.com/2016/06/21/donald-trump-nativism-gop/; Ian Jack, “We Called it Racism, Now it’s Nativism,” The Guardian, November 12, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/12/nativism-racism-anti-migrant-sentiment

[ii]Brett Samuels, “Trump: `You Know What I Am? I’m a Nationalist,” The Hill, October 28, 2018.

[iii]Ray Stannard Baer, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters(New York: Scribners and Son, 1927), 506-07.

[iv]Paul L Murphy, “Sources and Nature of Intolerance in the 1920s,” The Journal of American History, 51 (June, 1964), 63.

[v]Ibid,62,  65

[vi]Stanley Coben, “A Study in Nativism: The American Red Scare of 1919-20,” Political Science Quarterly, 79 (March, 1964,)66-8.

[vii]Ibid, 60.

[viii]Ibid, 72-3.

[ix]Paul Johnson, Modern Times: From the Twenties to the Nineties(New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 205.

The Last Tsar – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia: Protect us Lord, for We Reign Too Young

Tsar Nicholas II was the last Tsar of Russia. He ruled from 1894 until his abdication in 1917 – and with his abdication came the end of a line of rulers of Russia, the Romanovs, that went back more than three centuries. Here, Matthew Hazelwood considers Nicholas II and why his reign failed, so leading to the downfall of the Romanov Dynasty.

A 1915 painting of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia by Boris Kustodiev.

Socialism with a Bloody Face 

On the night of the 16th-17th of July 1918 in Yekaterinburg [1], Russia, Nicholas II and Alexandra, the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, were executed, along with their five children, the head Footman, the head cook, the head physician, and the Czarina’s lady-in-waiting. [2]A week later, Leon Trotsky wrote in his diary:

My next visit to Moscow took place after the fall of Yekaterinburg. Talking to Sverdlov I asked in passing, "Oh yes and where is the Tsar?" "It's all over," he answered. "He has been shot." "And where is his family?" "And the family with him." "All of them?" I asked, apparently with a touch of surprise. "All of them," replied Yakov Sverdlov. "What about it?" He was waiting to see my reaction. I made no reply. "And who made the decision?" I asked. "We decided it here. Ilyich [Lenin] believed that we shouldn't leave the Whites a live banner to rally around, especially under the present difficult circumstances."[3]

The Chief Executioner, Yakov Yurovsky, had no such pause. “I shot Nicholas on the spot.” He said, “The Empress barely had time to cross herself before she was shot. She died instantly. Elsewhere in the room there was bloody carnage as the guards lost control and shot wildly. The bullets ricocheted from the walls to the floor and around the rooms like Hailstones.” This carelessness left six of the eleven victims wounded but alive.  “Alexis {the Tsar’s only son} fell off the chair, shot in the leg, still alive. Kharitonov {the head cook} sat down and died.” “When one of the girls was stabbed, the bayonet would not go through the corset.” The ordeal lasted over twenty minutes. [4]

The true reason for the execution, though, was the Czar himself. Everyone else was an incidental party guilty only by association. Who, then, was this man whose blood ushered in the symbolic end of Czarism and the victory of Bolshevism? Was His Imperial Majesty an innocent victim killed in the name of communism, or a bumbling, reactionary tyrant who got what was coming, or both?

A Philistine Sophisticate 

Nicholas II was first and foremost a loving man. He wrote letters addressing his wife as “my own beloved” and “my dear wifey”. [5]She in turn called him “Sunshine” and “My very own treasure”.[6]He spoke Russian, German, French, and English, and once told his son’s tutor that as a young man, “{my} favorite subject was history”. [7]Their relationship was, by all accounts, successful, even if Alexandra’s English reserve and stoic pride caused her to be hated by the populous and snubbed by Russian aristocrats.[8]As an adult, he became a passionate amateur photographer; but despite these virtues, he was the wrong man to head the Russian Empire. [9]

And his faults leap to the scholar’s eye. “He was handsome and blue-eyed” wrote Simon Sebag Montefiore, “but diminutive and hardly majestic, and his looks and his immaculate manners concealed an astonishing arrogance, contempt for the educated political classes, vicious anti-Semitism, and an unshakable belief in his right to rule as a sacred autocrat. He was jealous of his ministers, and he possessed the unfortunate ability to make himself utterly distrusted by his own government.”[10]

But even he had modest moments. When his father, Tsar Alexander, unexpectedly died at the age of forty-nine, Nicholas, then a youth of twenty-six years, became Tsar. The world as he knew it had come to an end. Nicholas was reported to have said to his brother-in-law, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, “Sandro {the Grand Duke’s nickname}, what am I going to do? What is going to happen to me, to you, to Alex, to mother, to Russia? I am not ready to be Tsar. I never wanted to become one.” Nicholas’ younger sister, Grand Duchess Olga, agreed while absolving her brother of any blame: “Nicky was in despair. He kept saying that he did not know what would become of us all. That he was wholly unfit to reign. And yet, Nicky’s unfitness was by no means his fault. He should have been taught statesmanship, and he was not.” [11]

But the universe had other plans. Nicholas was the rightful heir to the throne, and nothing could change that.  His wife even gave him the marching orders: “Be more autocratic than Peter the Great and sterner than Ivan the Terrible.”[12]No matter how hard Nicholas tried, he could never quite learn the decisiveness of Peter nor the cruelty of Ivan.  It was a mistake from which he and his loved ones could never recover from.

Nicholas as leader 

His first massive blunder was when he chose to wage war against Japan. Nicholas II wanted control of the South China Sea and to increase his country’s global power. He didn’t expect the conflict to last long, since the Japanese were “yellow men, not entirely civilized”. What he didn’t realize was Japan had possession of an impressive military, and they roundly defeated Russia’s pacific fleet. Russia was forced to sue for peace. 

The loyalty of the people was lost after Sunday, January 9, 1905, otherwise known as Bloody Sunday. A group of peaceful demonstrators marched through St. Petersburg, in the hope of appealing to the Czar himself. Nicholas, however, wasn’t made for diplomacy. He left the city, ordering the military to disband the crowd should they come close to the Winter Palace. The ensuing massacre left an estimated 800 dead.[13]To the Tsar’s credit, though, he wrote in his diary “A distressing day. The troops have been forced to fire in several parts of the city, and there are many killed and wounded. Lord, how powerful and sad this is.”[14]But this was little consolation. 

Then 1914 came along, and Nicholas decided, against the wishes of many a Minister, that Russia would fight against the Triple Alliance in the First World War. Count Sergei Witte advised against war “because the army is the mainstay of the regime and may well be needed to preserve order at home.” Pyotr Durnovo, no friend of the Revolution, predicted that war would cause “Russia {to be} flung into hopeless anarchy; the issue of which cannot be foreseen.” Even the notorious Rasputin, a favorite of the Queen, said that “{war} will be the end of all of you”. 

As the bodies piled up, the soldiers’ morale was soon depleted beyond repair. This above anything else is what ruined him. It became clear to everyone from the most illiterate peasant to the richest aristocrat that changes had to be made. But Nicholas remained resistant to change. A violent revolution in February 1917 made the decision for him. He signed the throne away to his brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, but Michael refused. Some wanted Nicholas’ son to become Tsar, but Alexis was a hemophiliac, and Nicholas declared that “I can’t bear to be parted from him.”[15]

The Duma, or Parliament, first created a Worker’s Council, which pledged its support if Marxist policies were enacted, and a temporary Provisional Government was created which would guide Russia through the war abroad, and away from chaos at home. One important change was the repealing of former laws against speech and assembly. But despite becoming the “freest country in the world”, workers called for far more changes. They wanted to control the factories and have eight-hour days. Strikes were rampant. 

Around June 1917, the Provisional Government initiated a few offensives against Germany, but the Russians were forced to retreat after two days of advancing. The First Machine Gun Regiment was called for back-up, but most of these soldiers were Pro-Bolshevik, and threatened to take over the government. A month later, workers joined the soldiers and sailors for an armed uprising. But the Bolshevik leaders were not ready to make a move, and the government quickly cracked down. Many were arrested. 

Around this time, the former minister of Justice Aleksandr Kerensky, a self-proclaimed socialist, became prime minister. Though the only socialist in power, he had the death penalty restored, and the restrictions on public gatherings increased. But instability continued as Kerensky pushed policies advocated for by the head of the army, General Kornilov, which amounted to martial law, but then Kerensky turned against Kornilov, and advocated that the Soviets fight against Kornilov’s army. Instead the Soviet convinced Kornilov’s soldiers to put down their weapons. 

This hurt Kerensky’s reputation infinitely, and his countrymen became more radicalized, to the point where more and more Bolsheviks were elected to the Soviets. Hearing of the planned insurrection, the meeting of the Soviet Congress was rescheduled from October 20thto the 25th. As for Kerensky, his last and final mistake was to try to move most of the Petrograd Garrison to the northern front. The Bolsheviks formed the Military Revolutionary Committee to prevent this. And at last, on October 25th, 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power, and by then the fate of the Czar was sealed.[16]

Final Thoughts 

We have seen Nicholas the man, and Nicholas the leader. Where does that leave us? What judgements, if any, do we make? When it comes to human affairs, the historian must remember that there are no easy answers. A certain level of skepticism is necessary, because history is inevitably political, and politics is often far from objective. A Hitler warrants universal condemnation, but most people aren’t Hitler. 

As mentioned above, Nicholas had positive qualities. A better question, perhaps, is what could have been done differently? Should he have listened to X or should he have done Y? We can’t rule that out, but this fails to give us a larger perspective. The real battle the last Tsar was fighting wasn’t with the liberals or the Bolsheviks; it was against a much stronger, much scarier enemy, and that enemy was modernity. 

To yield to modernity meant to negate certain values that had been propagated for centuries. A society where most people were lowly laborers, educated aristocrats quietly laughed at the foibles of the world, theologians studied intensely, and the monarch’s word was law. The world is as it is because God willed it so. To a mere peasant, the world may seem unfair, but that’s because he doesn’t have God’s knowledge. The Universe is necessarily as it is. No changes are permitted to be made unless we want to be cast in eternal hell-fire. Nicholas was trying his hardest to keep his world from collapsing on top of him.  

Nevertheless, it was a war he was destined to lose. An extraordinary amount of energy was going to be let loose one way or the other, as in Britain in 1688, North America in 1775, and France in 1789 respectively. What was necessary was the creation of a freer, more just, and more technologically advanced society in Russia. And though one could argue that Russia is still behind other Western countries in areas such as freedom of speech, press, and assembly, Russia is much better off than it was a century ago. 

If Nicholas had been forward-thinking, in a word, wiser, it’s likely that Russia’s transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy would’ve been much smoother, and the excesses of Marxism-Leninism wouldn’t have been realized. His regressive outlook and uncertain jesters, unfortunately, did nothing more than exacerbate the situation. He had several chances to make changes for the better, and he did not take them. In fact, he consistently made the wrong decision until, ultimately, his options ran out and the Bolsheviks got to him. 

The story of civilization, though, is not a morality play. There are no good guys or bad guys. It’s a tale more profound and dramatic than anything Shakespeare ever wrote. This article can only give you a snapshot into Russia’s unique place in that great whole which nobody can completely understand.  If we cannot love the long-dead emperor of Russia, we can at least recognize the Romanov’s execution as one of the darker moments of the twentieth century. 

What do you think of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia? Let us know below.

[1] Massie, Robert K. (2012). The Romanovs: The Final Chapter. Random House.pp. 3–24

[2] William H. Honan (12 August 1992), A Playwright Applies His Craft To Czar Nicholas II’s Last Days, New York Times, Retrieved 26thNovember 2018 

[3]King, G. (1999). The Last Empress, Replica Books, p. 358. 

[4]Sebestyen, Victor. (2017) Lenin. London: Penguin Random House LLC. 401-410

[5]Letters from Tsar Nicholas to Tsaritsa Alexander-January 1916. Retrieved from www.alexanderpalace.org

[6](2018, April 26). ‘Cover you with kisses, my Angel’: #Romanovs100 Intimate love letters. Retrieved from https://www.rt.com

[7](2006, May 17). Tsar Nicholas and his Family. Retrieved from www.pravmir.com

[8]Anderson, M. (director). (1996).  Last of the Czars. {motion picture}. USA: Discovery Channel.

[9]Anderson, M. (director). (1996).  Last of the Czars. {motion picture}. USA: Discovery Channel.

[10]Montefiore, Simon Sebag. (2018, Oct.12). The Devastating True Story of the Romanov Family’s Execution. Retrieved from https://www.townandcountrymag.com

[11]Anderson, M. (director). (1996).  Last of the Czars. {motion picture}. USA: Discovery Channel

[12](2015, May 21). Quotes on Nicholas II Romanov. Wordpress.com. Retrieved from https://alldocumentsherekanan.wordpress.com/2015/05/21/quotes-on-nicholas-ii-romanov/

[13]Sebestyen, Victor. (2017) Lenin. London: Penguin Random House LLC. Pg. 159-170 & 234-239

[14]Anderson, M. (director). (1996).  Last of the Czars. {motion picture}. USA: Discovery Channel.

[15]Sebestyen, Victor. (2017) Lenin. London: Penguin Random House LLC.Pg. 159-170 & 234-239

[16]Figes, Orlando. (2017, October 25th). From Czar to U.S.S.R.: Russia’s Chaotic Year of Revolution. Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.com

Scared America: Anti-German Propaganda During World War One

Immigration has been a regular theme to date during US President Donald Trump’s administration, but it has played a role throughout American history. Here, we follow on from past articles (on strained 19thcentury politics here and Chinese immigration here) and look at the use of anti-German propaganda in America during World War One.  Jonathan Hennika explains (his site here).

A US Army anti-German propaganda poster during World War One.

For political observers, the use of the migrant caravan working its way north to the United States border by President Trump and his supporters as a mid-term election scare tactic came as nosurprise. “Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.” Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump said in an interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa on March 31, 2016, at the Old Post Office Pavilion, Trump International Hotel, Washington, D.C.[i] Such words were never spoken by the Chief Executive of the United Statesbeforethe era of President Trump. While addressing the delegates of the United Nationsin September 2018, President Trump proudly declared: “America is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism. Around the world, responsible nations must defend against threats to sovereignty not just from global governance, but also from other, new forms of coercion and domination.”[ii]

President Trump had been laying the groundwork for his imagined bogeyman for some time.  Reporting on a pre-election speech given by the President, The New York Times concluded, “President Trump’s closing argument is now clear: Build tent cities for migrants. End birthright citizenship. Fear the caravan. Send active-duty troops to the border. Refuse asylum. Immigration has been the animating issue of the Trump Presidency, and now…the president has fully embraced a dark, anti-immigrant message in the hope that stoking fear will motivate voters to reject Democrats.”[iii]

A tactic used in any campaign of fear of the foreigner is the labeling of the other as a threat to the American public or national security. Characterizing the caravan, the President declared at a White House Press conference, that it was made up of “a lot of young men…and a lot of men we maybe don’t want in our country…they have injured; they have killed.”[iv]While this type of scare tactic has been used before in American politics, nonehadachieved the level of an unassuming newspapermanfrom Colorado in 1916.

George Creel and the Committee on Public Information

On the eve of America’s entry into World War One, President Woodrow Wilson wrote, “It is not an army that we must shape and train for war. It is a nation… The whole nation must be a team.” Tounite the nation into the team needed to fight Nationalism and militarism that was at the heart of the First World War, President Wilson leaned heavily on the former muckraking journalist George Creel. Creel, an ardent supporter of Woodrow Wilson in the election of 1916, wrote a brief that came to the attention of the scholarly Wilson. The author/historian Jon Dos Pasos wrote the Creel brief, “summed up the arguments for and against official wartime censorship and suggested that what was needed was not suppression, but expression; in other words, a publicity campaign to sell the war to the nation.”[v]Early in the creation, Creeland the Committee for Public Information (CPI) decided the United States was fighting to save democracy for the world. If the United States was the hero, a villain was needed. After the sinking of the cruise ship Lusitania, the Kaiser and unrestricted submarine warfare made it easy for Germany to play theroleof the villain. 

By 1910 the Library of Congress estimated the German-bornpopulation in America to be 2.3 million.[vi]As with all ethnic groups that came to America, the German community was close-knit, often reading newspapers or attending church services that were primarily in German. At the onset of the United States entry into the war in 1917, Americanization came to German sounding street or city names by renaming them in honor of the General in charge of the American Expeditionary Force, John J. Pershing or honoringthe innocent victim of German militarism, neutral Belgium.

As Creel and his propagandists poured out an anti-German message soon there appearedsubtle changes in the German influence on the melting pot of American culture.  The German staple sauerkraut was called Liberty Cabbage. The banning of Germanlanguage instruction in public schools and colleges was commonplace. The ban was the central point of discussion in the 1919 case before the Supreme Court Meyer v Nebraska. 

Esteemed German composers and conductors confronted the face of the fear campaign. KarlMuck, the conductor of the Boston SymphonyOrchestra,faced ostracization as a result of anti-German sentiment. After receiving a request by political clubs and civic organizations,out of Providence, Rhode Island Muckwas instructed by the founder and manager of the BSO to not open the October 30, 1916 performance with the star-spangled banner. Later performances had to be canceleddue to the anti-German backlash. Even the music of Wagner did not escape criticism, “the Wagner cult in music has naturally spread, together with the Kaiser cult in politics.”[vii]

Let the Images Speak for Themselves

Some of the most chilling anti-German themes came from the propaganda posters. In images that served as inspiration for the anti-Japanese campaign of World War Two, the German, or Hun, was portrayed as a hulking beast, raping and pillaging across Europe (see the above/below images).

The world recently celebrated the centennial of the Armistice.  Shortly after the war ended, America turned inward, shunning it’s new found place on the world stage. The world was changing; the Bolsheviks had taken power in Russia; Germany fellinto a gripping economic depression as a result of the cost of the peace; and the militarism the world had fought against would see a resurgence in Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Tojo’s Japan. While the world changed, the United States imposed even harsher immigration controls in the 1920s. The use of fear of the other, so easily demonstrated by George Creel, had a lasting impact and informedUnited States immigration policy into the 21stcentury, as evidencedby President Trump'srhetoric.

What do you think of the use of anti-German propaganda during World War One? Let us know below.

[i]Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), Kindle Edition.

[ii]UPI, Full text: President Donald Trump's Speech to United Nations, September 25, 2018. https://www.upi.com/Top_News/Voices/2018/09/25/Full-text-President-Donald-Trumps-speech-to-United-Nations/1511537892605/

[iii]Michel D. Shear and Julie Hirschefiled Davis, “As Midterm Vote Nears, Trump Reprises a Favorite Message: Fear Immigrants,” New York Times, November 1, 2018.

[iv]Ibid

[v]John Dos Pasos, Mr. Wilson’s War(New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1962), 300.

[vi]The Germans in America, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/rr/european/imde/germchro.html

[vii]J.E. Vacha, “When Wagner was Verboten: The Campaign against German Music in World War I,” New York History64 (1983): 173-4.

Further American anti-German Propaganda from World War One

A US Navy recruitment poster, showing a bloody German moving through dead bodies.

A newspaper image of “The Rape of Belgium”, related to the German invasion of Belgium in 1914.

Another reference to Belgium to encourage people to buy war bonds.

How Cold War era Soviet Spies Shared American Secrets and Helped the USSR Obtain Nuclear Weapons

In the early days of the Cold War, during the years after World War II, spies became a key weapon for the USSR and USA. But perhaps the most important spies were those American-born Soviet spies who provided secrets about America’s nuclear weapons program, the Manhattan Project, to the Soviet Union. Scott Rose tells us about Cold War nuclear weapons spying in the USA.

Lona Cohen, an American-born Soviet spy on a Russian postage stamp.

Morris Cohen, an American-born Soviet spy on a Russian postage stamp.

In summer this year, an alleged Russian spy named Maria Butina was arrested in Washington, DC, where she currently awaits trial, charged with conspiring to act as an agent for a foreign government. However, Russian espionage in the United States is not a new phenomenon, actually beginning in earnest during the Soviet era, particularly during World War Two. During the war and the years immediately afterward, Russian spies in the U.S. gained unprecedented access to the American atomic research community.

Soviet spying took on all sorts of forms through the years, from homegrown Russian agents who took on American appearances to American citizens who betrayed their country and stole highly sensitive information, including the data needed to build the Soviet Union’s first atomic weapon.

The Race to Build the Bomb

The United States knew that Nazi Germany was actively trying to develop atomic power during World War Two. In 1942, the U.S., along with Great Britain and Canada, began what was called the Manhattan Project, with the purpose of building atomic weapons before the Germans could develop their own. The Soviets also started an atomic development program, though much smaller than the American project. The Soviet research team consisted of about 550 people; whereas the Manhattan Project at its peak employed over 130,000. With so much more money and manpower at work, the Americans were seemingly light years ahead of Soviet atomic research.

The Germans surrendered in April of 1945 without succeeding in building atomic weapons, and in July, the Manhattan Project tested its first atomic device at Los Alamos, New Mexico. On August 6th, the Japanese city of Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb. Three days later, the second bomb destroyed Nagasaki, and the Japanese surrendered six days later.  

The Soviets realized that the United States had become the world’s first superpower with its development of the atomic bomb. They also knew it would take many years to catch up with American atomic abilities, unless they gained access to the Manhattan Project’s research. Even before the war ended, the Soviets used espionage for the purpose of acquiring America’s atomic secrets.

The scientists that worked on the Manhattan Project included some of the top researchers and mathematicians from America, Britain, and Canada. The Soviets aimed to glean information from scientists with leftist leanings, and in time these efforts bore fruit. In the 1940s, a young American from Philadelphia named Harry Gold began working for the Soviet Union. His orders were to make contact with a Manhattan Project scientist named Klaus Fuchs, and to move atomic information from Fuchs to the Soviets. Born in Germany, Fuchs had emigrated to Britain, becoming a citizen there. By the time he reached his early 30s, Fuchs was respected as a brilliant physicist, and his work would contribute greatly to the American development of the atomic bomb. Fuchs gave critical information on the Manhattan Project’s research to Gold during the war, unbeknownst to the Americans. In 1946, he returned to Britain to work for the new British atomic program, and he continued to pass information to Soviet agents in Britain.

Another of Gold’s sources was David Greenglass, a U.S. Army machinist from New York who had worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. Greenglass had been recruited into espionage by his sister and brother-in-law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs were committed Communist Party members, and some of the information Greenglass collected was passed to them. They in turn passed the same information along to their Soviet handlers.

The Soviets had taken several German atomic scientists back to the U.S.S.R. after the war, and although the Germans had failed to produce an atomic bomb, these scientists were a huge boost to the Soviet atomic program. With the accelerated pace of Soviet research, and stolen atomic secrets from America, the Soviets were able to make up ground quickly. Still, America was shocked when the Soviets tested their first atomic device in August of 1949. Now the world had two superpowers instead of one.

The American military distrusted the Soviets, even during the war, when the two countries were allies, and the U.S. suspected the Soviets were in the business of using Americans to gather intelligence. In 1943, the Army launched the Venona Project, a program using complex mathematics to decode secret messages from the Soviets to their operatives in other nations. Venona was so secret that President Franklin Roosevelt didn’t even know about the program when it commenced.

The Dominos Fall

One month after the Soviet atomic test, Venona hit a home run when it identified Klaus Fuchs as a Soviet spy. This information was passed along to British intelligence, and Fuchs was questioned about his activities. Fuchs denied having ever been a spy, and was not held in custody. However, in January of 1950, Fuchs contacted the British authorities and confessed to having passed atomic information to the Soviets through Harry Gold. Immediately arrested and put on trial for espionage, Fuchs was convicted, sentenced to 14 years in prison, and stripped of his British citizenship. He served just over nine years before being released early for “good behavior.” Upon release, Fuchs left Britain for East Germany, where he got married and went to work for that country’s nuclear research program, before passing away in 1988 at the age of 76.

When Fuchs was arrested in 1950, his confession led to the arrest of Harry Gold in the United States. Gold was interrogated, and confessed to having been a Soviet spy since 1934; he admitted to passing Fuchs’ atomic information to the Soviet General Consul. During Gold’s confession, he spilled the beans about his other espionage contacts, David Greenglass and the Rosenbergs. At the beginning of the year when Fuchs was arrested, Julius Rosenberg had given Greenglass $5,000 in order for Greenglass to escape to Mexico with his wife and children. Instead, the Greenglasses had stayed put and used the money to hire a lawyer. In June of 1950, the FBI arrested David Greenglass, charging him with espionage. 

Not long after Greenglass was arrested, he gave up his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg, and at first, Greenglass denied his sister Ethel’s involvement in the spy ring. A couple of months later, Greenglass changed his story and implicated his sister as well, claiming Ethel had typed the notes he had passed from the Manhattan Project. Greenglass stated that Ethel had originally recruited him to become a spy, after being persuaded by her husband Julius. One of the Rosenbergs’ assistants, Morton Sobell, was arrested while on the run in Mexico City, and he was extradited to stand trial along with the Rosenbergs.

The trial began in early March and lasted 3 weeks. Greenglass testified that he had given Julius Rosenberg illustrations of atomic bomb research, and Harry Gold testified that he had worked as a courier for the Rosenbergs, who never admitted their guilt. The couple and Sobell were convicted; while Sobell got a 30 year sentence and was sent to Alcatraz, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. Judge Irving Kaufman, during sentencing, claimed the Rosenbergs crime was “worse than murder”. He blamed the Rosenbergs for giving the Soviet Union access to atomic weapons, which he argued had led to the communist aggression in Korea that cost thousands of American lives.

Many people around the world felt the sentence was overly harsh. There was a worldwide campaign for clemency, and many leading artists, writers, and scientists of the day joined the movement. Even Pope Pius XII asked President Eisenhower to reduce the Rosenbergs’ sentence, but the president refused. After two years of appealing their sentence, the Rosenbergs were executed on July 19th, 1953, meeting their fate via the electric chair at New York’s Sing Sing prison. 

The other members of the spy ring were much luckier than the Rosenbergs. Sobell was released from prison in 1969 and wrote a book, spoke on the lecture circuit, and maintained his innocence for many years before finally admitting his guilt in 2008, claiming that by aiding the Soviets, he had simply “bet on the wrong horse.” Sobell is still alive and residing in New York at the age of 101. Harry Gold was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but didn’t serve even half of his sentence before being paroled. He died in 1972 and was buried in his hometown of Philadelphia. David Greenglass only served nine years in prison before returning to New York and changing his name. He gave an interview to the New York Timesin 1996, claiming he had exaggerated his sister Ethel’s involvement in the spy ring in order to protect his own wife from prosecution. During the rambling interview, Greenglass declared “My wife is more important to me than my sister. Or my mother or my father. OK?”

To Russia with Love 

The Rosenbergs were not the only American couple to help the Soviets attain atomic secrets. Another New York couple, Morris and Lona Cohen, were united by their Marxist ideologies, and proved to be valuable agents for the U.S.S.R. Morris had served in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, and he was recruited into Soviet intelligence at that time. Lona was an eager partner in her husband’s espionage activities, and the couple established contact with several Manhattan Project scientists. When Klaus Fuchs was arrested in Britain, the Cohens didn’t wait for the trail to lead back to New York, leaving immediately for the Soviet Union. In 1954, the childless Cohens re-emerged in London as “Peter and Helen Kroger”, operating a small antique book shop. They were also operating a new espionage network for the Soviets. Seven years after their arrival in England, the Cohens were caught with a houseful of spying equipment and arrested. Put on trial and convicted, luck would intervene for the “Krogers” in 1969, when they were traded to the Soviet Union for British prisoner Gerald Brooke. Many Britons criticized the exchange, claiming the Soviet Union should have been forced to pay a higher price for the Cohens, as by this time it was known that they were two of the most dangerous spies on the planet. They would live out the remainder of their lives in Russia, where they died in the early 1990s.

When the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, old Soviet espionage files were opened that detailed the contributions made by spies to the Soviet atomic program. These files showed that while the Rosenbergs gave valuable information to the Soviets, the secrets gathered by the Cohens were most vital to Soviet development of the atomic bomb. Seemingly confirming the Cohens’ importance was the fact that during the last years of the Soviet Union’s existence, commemorative Soviet stamps were printed honoring both Morris and Lona Cohen. The honors bestowed on the couple in Russia seem an ironic twist, given the fact that these Americans did so much, in the name of idealism, to hurt their own country.

What do you think about Soviet spies in the USA during the Cold War? Let us know below.

References

Chester B. Hearn, Spies & Espionage: A Directory, Thunder Bay Press, 2006

Slava Katamidze, Loyal Comrades, Ruthless Killers: The Secret Services of the USSR 1917-1991, Barnes & Noble, 2003

Robert McFadden, “David Greenglass, the Brother who Doomed Ethel Rosenberg, Dies at 92”, The New York Times, October 14, 2014

Sam Roberts, “For First Time, Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits Spying for Soviets”, The New York Times, September 12, 2008

Allen Hornblum, The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man who Gave the Soviets the Atom Bomb, Yale University Press, 2010

Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1995

Robert Chadwell Williams, Klaus Fuchs: Atom Spy, Harvard University Press, 1987