The Longest Retreat in U.S History: The Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River in the Korean War - Part I

The Korean War (1950-53) pitted the capitalist South Korea, backed by the U.S., against communist North Korea. A major offensive by South Korea ultimately led to Communist China becoming involved in the war.

Here, Victor Gamma considers how failures in the U.S. understanding of China’s intentions and over-confidence that China would not intervene led to the U.S. backed forces moving very close to the Chinese border.

You can also read Victor’s article on Henry VIII’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon here.

Fighting with the 2nd Inf. Div. north of the Chongchon River, Sfc. Major Cleveland, weapons squad leader, points out an enemy position to his machine gun crew. November 20,1950.

Seventy years ago, on June 25, 1950 the Cold War turned hot when North Korean forces launched a surprise attack across the 38th Parallel. The communist attempt to violently take-over the entire peninsula was thwarted by the firm U.S. response and General Douglas MacArthur's brilliant counterattack at Inchon that September. Now it was the turn of the U.S.-led UN and South Korean forces to attempt the unification of the Korean Peninsula on their terms. UN forces moved towards the Yalu River and victory seemed within sight. This objective, however, was shattered when massive, skillfully handled attacks by Chinese forces beginning on November 25 caused a disastrous defeat for UN forces, including the longest retreat in U.S. military history. The attacks on what the Chinese called the Western Sector came to be called the battles of the Ch'ongch'on River. These were among the most decisive in the post-World War Two era. How could the world’s premier superpower be taken by surprise? How could the nation with arguably the best intelligence-gathering capacity in the world be completely fooled? The answer is complex. It includes persistent miscalculations from the American military and political leadership, preconceived assumptions regarding communist China, ignorance regarding local conditions and China's interests, the refusal of American officials to deal with the Communist Chinese or to take their government seriously, and the on-going failure to correctly interpret intelligence.

Mistrust and Misunderstanding

Part of the problem can be traced to the atmosphere of heightened tension and suspicion that existed between East and West. This suspicion led to a breakdown in communications and effectively clouded understanding. The West viewed the communist world in a monolithic sense. The bickering between China and the Soviets was unknown to Western decision-makers. The Korean attack was viewed as an attempt by Russia to gain advantage and it was to the Russians the United Nations had to resist. The West's suspicions are understandable; had not Kim Il-Sung been an officer in the Red Army? Hadn't the Soviets accumulated a track record of forcing 'friendly' regimes on every state that came under their dominance? Hadn't the Red Army left behind a hardline communist state devoid of free elections in North Korea? However, documents declassified in 1992 fail to support the contention that Kim Il-Sung was merely a puppet acting under Stalin's orders. In contrast, the post-Cold War research revealed that although Stalin ultimately gave his approval and was willing to aid Kim, he was not the initiator of it. Valentin Pak, Kim's translator who read Stalin's communications to Kim, stated emphatically that Stalin did not encourage an attack on the South.

Dr. Katherine Weathersby examined declassified Soviet documents and affirmed that Stalin thought it unwise to initiate hostilities in Korea. This knowledge was unknown to U.S. policy-makers because American intelligence failed utterly to investigate the nature of the Soviet-Korean relationship. The reasons for Stalin's final go-ahead to Kim are still unclear. Whatever he may have hoped to gain by a communist victory, his contribution to the effort was relatively meager and he did not want to associate himself too closely with it.  U.S. intelligence failed completely to investigate the relationship between the Soviets and Kim. Instead, the Americans went into the conflict viewing Kim as a Soviet proxy. 

At first, China did not appear strongly concerned. The Chinese had several motives for intervening in Korea. First, they were alarmed by the rise of anti-communist sentiment in the West and thought the UN advance toward Manchuria was a military expression of this. North Korea was also deemed vital to the Chinese leadership, which had plans for large-scale industrial growth. Hydroelectric resources in North Korea were deemed essential to these plans.  U.S. officials failed to grasp these local conditions and took little interest in Korea beyond the view of Korea as merely one more piece in the massive chess game against Soviet expansionism. 

                  But rather than conduct talks with the Chinese, the animosity and mistrust that characterized East-West relations not only thoroughly poisoned any attempt at accommodation but effectively disrupted clear interpretations of Chinese or Soviet intentions. Throughout the period before open Chinese intervention (June 25 - November 25, 1950), communication between China and the West was hampered by the fact that there were no formal relations with Communist China. Any knowledge about Chinese intentions had to be gathered from reading the cables of foreign ambassadors stationed in China or by Signal Intelligence (SIGIN). The Armed Forces Security Administration (AFSA) had the responsibility for intelligence gathering. Information collected would then be passed on to the appropriate officials for evaluation. These leaders would then act on the information accordingly. There was sufficient intelligence during the summer and autumn of 1950 to alert Western officials that China had a vital interest in Korea and would back up their interests with force. China had communicated its approval of a pro-Western regime in Korea if it did not involve direct Western intervention and if it occurred at the expense of the Russians. This communication was ignored or misunderstood.  Cable traffic to and from the office of the Indian Ambassador at Beijing, Dr. Kavalm Madhava Panikkar, was being read by the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA). Dr. Panikkar was probably the most well informed diplomat in Beijing and had built good relations with high-ranking Chinese officials. He was thus a quite valuable source of information regarding Chinese diplomacy. In July and August 1950, cables revealed that Panikkar had been informed that China would not intervene in Korea. However, decrypted cables began to reveal a dramatic change following the Inchon landing and the turn of the tide against North Korea. For example, the cables of the Burmese ambassador now revealed that China intended to intervene militarily. A week later, on September 25, Panikkar cabled New Delhi that China would intervene if UN forces crossed the 38th Parallel. This information was transmitted to Washington, where officials dismissed it due to Panikkar's supposed pro-Chinese sympathies. Less than a week later, on October 1, 1950, Mao Tse Tung publicly declared: "The Chinese people will not tolerate foreign aggression and will not stand aside if the imperialists wantonly invade the territory of their neighbor". Mao continued by warning that if non-Korean forces crossed the 38th Parallel, the Chinese "will send troops to aid the People's Republic of Korea." That same day South Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel. Accordingly, on the following day the Chinese Politburo made the decision to intervene in Korea. Mao Tse Tung ordered 260,000 troops to cross into Korea by October 15.

The Die is Cast

On October 2 the Indian ambassador was roused from sleep shortly after midnight and ordered to meet with Chou En-lai, China's premier and foreign minister.  Chou informed the Indian Ambassador of China's intentions regarding Korea, which information was passed to the West on October 3. Additionally, the Dutch charge d' affaires also cabled The Hague quoting Chou en Lai's comments that China would fight if U.S. forces crossed the 38th Parallel. These warnings were dismissed in Washington as a bluff. 

Meanwhile the first U.S. forces crossed the 38th Parallel on October 5 and advanced on Pyongyang.  MacArthur had not been totally incognizant of the possibility of Chinese intervention. In fact, in the days and weeks following Inchon, he repeatedly inquired of his subordinates if any sign of Russians or Chinese had been noted. Since no reports of their presence were forthcoming, he assumed that the Soviets and Chinese had decided to withdraw at America's demonstration of will. The United Nations mandate of June 27 read in part; "furnish such assistance to the Republic of Korea as may be necessary to repel the armed attack and to restore international peace and security in the areas." It was widely held that the only way to accomplish this objective was the complete removal of the Kim regime as a threat to the south by occupying the north and reunifying the entire peninsula. 

Not everyone shared this sanguine hope, however. Several doubts about an advance into the north had been voiced. The Policy Planning Staff in Washington had also expressed grave doubts about the ability to invade the north without provoking a war with China. In addition, a National Security Council 81 report was circulated on September 1 emphasizing the risk involved but also pointed out the unlikeness of Soviet intervention. It recommended that only Republic of Korea (ROK) forces should cross the 38th Parallel. 

MacArthur harbored no such doubts, though, and the advance continued with non-Korean forces in support. On October 15 Chinese General Pen Dehuai received the order from Mao Tse Tung to begin moving his forces across the Yalu River into Korea. That night, the 372 Regiment of the 42nd Army crossed into Korea. Before long, more than 300,000 Chinese troops moved into North Korea, completely undetected by AFSA. However, other warnings did occur. SIGINT observed changes in Soviet, Chinese and North Korean military activity, indicating some kind of major operation was impending. The CIA sent a top secret coded memo (still only partially declassified) to President Truman. The memo stated that intelligence sources indicated that the Chinese would intervene to protect their interests in the Suiho Hydroelectric complex in North Korea. The memo also noted an increase in fighter aircraft in Manchuria. On October 21 AFSA reported from Chinese radio traffic that no less than three Chinese armies had been deployed along the Yalu River and reported heavy troop train movement from Shanghai to Manchuria. All of this information was dismissed because it contradicted the dominant opinions of the U.S. intelligence community. For an example of this view, an article in The Review of the World Situation dated October 18, stated: "Unless the USSR is ready to precipitate global war, or unless for some reason that Peiping does not think that war with the U.S. would result from open intervention in Korea, the odds are that Communist China, like the USSR, will not openly intervene in North Korea."  In Tokyo, Lieutenant Colonel Morton Rubin went over the intelligence indicating Chinese intentions to intervene with General MacArthur and his intelligence chief General Charles Willoughby. Neither MacArthur nor Willoughby was convinced of the reality of the threat. In fact, the UN side also suffered from an atmosphere that discouraged healthy challenges to official decisions. Surrounding MacArthur, especially after Inchon, was an aura of infallibility that effectively wilted any suggestions for greater vigilance against possible Chinese action. In this atmosphere, the disregarding of the Chinese threat became the “party line” and a healthy exchange of views was discouraged.  Matthew Ridgway, who was soon to replace MacArthur, added: "the great fault over there was poor evaluation of the intelligence that was obtained. They knew the facts but they were poorly evaluated. I don't know just why this was. It was probably in good part because of MacArthur's personality. If he did not want to believe something, he wouldn't." 

Now, read part 2 on how the U.S. backed forces moved ever closer to China and the eventual Chinese counter-attack here.

Why do you think many in the U.S. did not think China would join the Korean War? Let us know below.

Sources

Aid, Matthew. The Secret Sentry, the Untold History of the National Security Agency. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009.

Alexander, Bevin R.  Korea: The First War We Lost. New York, NY: Hippocrene Books, 1986.

Bacharach,  Deborah. The Korean War. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1991.

Conway, John Richard. Primary Source Accounts of the Korean War. Berkeley Heights: Enslow Publishers, Inc., 2006.

Fehrenbach, T.R. This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1963.

Halberstam, David. The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War. New York: Hyperion, 2007.

Halberstam, David. The Fifties. New York: Fawcett Books, 1993.

Hammel. Eric Chosin: Heroic Ordeal of the Korean. New York: The Vanguard Press. 2018.

Harry S. Truman, ed. by Laura K. Egendorf. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2002. 

Hastings, Max. The Korean War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.

Hammel, Eric. Chosin: Heroic Ordeal of the Korean. New York: The Vanguard Press,1981.

Kaufman, Burton I. The Korean War: Challenges in Crisis, Credibility and Command. McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1997. 

Litai, John and Xue . Uncertain Partners, (Stanford University Press), 1995.

Paul Lashmar, New Statesman & Society; 2/2/96, Vol.9 Issue 388, p24, 2p, 1bw

Truman, Harry S. Memoirs by Harry S Truman: Year of Decisions. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1955. 

Truman, Margaret, editor. Where the Buck Stops: The Personal and Private writings of Harry S. Truman. New York: Warner Books, 1989.

"Analysis: The Foreign Interventions: Stalin and USSR" www.mtholyoke.edu/~park25h/classweb/worldpolitics/analysisstalin.html‎)

The Amazing Life of American Photographer Margaret Bourke-White

Margaret Bourke-White (1904-71) was a photographer who had a fascinating career. She went to the Soviet Union in 1930, photographed the Great Depression in 1930s America, and took photos in various wars. Parker Beverly explains – and we also include Parker’s documentary on Margaret below.

American Way of Life, a 1937 photo by Margaret Bourke-White

From the battlefields of Italy during World War II to the tranquil home of Mahatma Gandhi throughout the Partition of India, Margaret Bourke-White was there to capture it all. Born in the Bronx, New York in 1904, Bourke-White grew up in a modest household.[1] It was not until her college years that Margaret began exploring the art of photography.[2] A gifted writer, Bourke-White fused the line between visual and written mediums, creating photographs that spoke to viewers' emotions and sensibilities. A serendipitous shoot at Cleveland's Otis Steel factory landed her industrial photograph portfolio on the desk of Henry Luce, the publisher of Time magazine who tasked her with being the first photographer for Fortune magazine.[3]Climbing atop ledges of the Chrysler Building and entering hazardous industrial factories, Bourke-White soon gained a reputation of being a fearless photographer, undaunted by gender or occupational boundaries.  

Her 1931 book Eyes on Russia which documented her travels throughout the nascent industrial Soviet Union through photographs made her the first photographer to capture the country's steadily growing industrialization.[4] In 1937, she along with her then husband, Erskine Caldwell published You Have Seen Their Faces which detailed the plight of poor rural Southerners in the midst of economic hardship.[5] It was this experience with suffering along with a Fortune assignment covering Midwestern droughts[6] that changed Bourke-White's photography from an advertiser's lens to one depicting the human condition. One of her more famous photographs captures the stark difference between commercial and racial realities in the United States with a line of African Americans seeking emergency aid pictured against a billboard depicting a white unaffected family.  

Wars

In 1936, Margaret's career changed focus as she transitioned into her role as a staff photographer for Life Magazine.[7] Well regarded for its photo essays which documented everything from the building of the Fort Peck Dam to a wartime Thanksgiving, Life provided a national platform for Bourke-White's photography. Seeking to relay news from the battlefield to the home front, Life sent Margaret to photograph various scenes from World War II including torpedo attacks, bombing missions, and the liberation of concentration camps.[8] Soon after, she captured the struggles of apartheid in South Africa and lastly, documented the strife of the Korean War.[9]  While in Korea, Bourke-White began noticing symptoms of Parkinson's disease, a condition which she fought for nearly 20 years.[10]

I came across Margaret's fascinating story while researching for the National History Day (NHD) contest in 2017. I was struck by the lack of coverage on her remarkable and pioneering photojournalism career and knew I wanted to tell her story. Interviewing individuals such as Cokie Roberts and Judy Woodruff, I brought her noteworthy narrative to life through a documentary film seen in both the NHD contest and the All-American High School Film Festival. Three years later, I am still inspired by Margaret's overwhelming tenacity.  Today, her photographs still provide relevant discussion of important moments in history while her trailblazing career encourages others to follow their passions.

You can see Parker’s film on Margaret Bourke-White below. Let us know what you think below.

[1] Vicki Goldberg, Margaret Bourke-White:  A Biography (New York City, NY:  HarperCollins, 1986).  

[2]  Ibid.  

[3]  Beverly W. Brannan, “Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971),” Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.  

[4]  Ibid.  

[5]  Jay E. Caldwell, Erskine Caldwell, Margaret Bourke-White, and the Popular Front:  Photojournalism in Russia     (Athens, GA:  University of Georgia Press, 2016).  

[6] Beverly W. Brannan, “Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971),” Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, https://loc.gov/rr/print/coll/womphotoj/bourkewhiteessay.html. 

[7]  Margaret Bourke-White, Portrait of Myself (New York City, New York:  Simon and Schuster, 1963). 

[8]  Ibid.  

[9]  Vicki Goldberg, Margaret Bourke-White:  A Biography (New York City, NY:  HarperCollins, 1986).

[10]  Ibid. 

My documentary for the National History Day Contest (2017-2018) for the theme "Conflict and Compromise in History." 2018 Official Selection for the All Ameri...

Lessons from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic: Part 4 – Conclusions – ’Such a big event, so little public memory’

With the current Covid-19 pandemic causing upheaval the world over, can we look to the past to learn lessons? Here, Mac Guffey continues a series considering lessons from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic, an epidemic that infected around a third of the world’s population and killed some 40 million people (exact estimates vary from 15 million to 50 million or more). He will consider the question: Can something that happened over a hundred years ago in a society so vastly different from today provide any useful guidance regarding the Covid-19 Pandemic?

Here, part 4 in the series considers some personal tales of the Great Flu of 1918 – and reflects on how little that flu is remembered today. After all, if we knew more about it, maybe the 2020 Flu Pandemic would have been less destructive.

If you missed it, the first article in the series considered what happened during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic and the lessons we can draw on the economy (here), part 2 considered the healthcare lessons from the pandemic by contrasting a successful and less successful approach (here), and part 3 looked at the importance of effective leadership (here).

Policemen in Seattle wearing masks made by the Red Cross, during the flu epidemic. December 1918.

My mom, who has long since passed away, was the first person to ever tell me about the “Spanish Flu” as she called it. Her uncle died from it in 1919 – several months after he returned from World War One. She was five at the time.

She had a photograph of him kneeling beside her in his “doughboy” uniform. He was quite a guy, I guess. Served with distinction, survived multiple “over-the-tops”, gas attacks, trench strafings, and came home to die in the third and last wave of the infamous influenza pandemic. 

He was one of the 675,000 American casualties of that virus.

Across America during the fall and winter of 1918-19, many such tragic memories were made. Here are a few from Mike Leavitt’s The Great Pandemic of 1918 State by State. (Leavit, 2006)

In Hartford, Connecticut, Beatrice Springer Wilde, a nurse, recounted the tragic story of four Yale students she treated. They had become ill while traveling and decided to get off the train in Hartford. Their last steps were taken from the train station to the hospital. Within twenty-four hours, all were dead. 

Bill Sardo, a funeral director in Washington, D.C., remembered:

"From the moment I got up in the morning to when I went to bed at night, I felt a constant sense of fear. We wore gauze masks. We were afraid to kiss each other, to eat with each other, to have contact of any kind. We had no family life, no church life, no community life. Fear tore people apart." 

All public gatherings were banned in Seattle, Washington including church services. Many of the local ministers complained until the mayor said publicly, “Religion which won’t keep for two weeks, is not worth having.” 

The town council in Rapid City, South Dakota made spitting on the sidewalks illegal. A local police officer was seen spitting shortly thereafter. He was arrested and fined $6 for committing the offense. No one was exempt.

Augusta, Georgia was the hardest-hit city in the state. The nurses in the local medical facilities were also struck down by the pandemic. As a consequence, nursing students were put in charge of shifts at a local hospital. Schoolteachers were enlisted to act as nurses, cooks and hospital clerks, and an emergency hospital was constructed on a local fairground. In Athens, Georgia, the University of Georgia indefinitely suspended classes.

An Ocala, Florida man named Olson traveled to Jacksonville, Florida for a carpentry job. Jacksonville was inundated with the flu at the time, and despite a citywide quarantine and the use of gauze masks, Olson contracted the flu. Eager to return to his hometown and family, he slipped past the quarantine and caught a train back home, taking the virus with him. Within days of his return, he had infected his family, and his neighborhood.

James Geiger, the U.S. Public Health Service Officer for Arkansas continuously downplayed the influenza threat to the state - even after he caught the flu, and his wife died from it.

Alaska & Authors

The 1918 pandemic also swept through Native American communities in Alaska killing whole villages. One school teacher later reported that, in her area, three villages were wiped out entirely. Others, she said, averaged as many as 85% deaths and probably 25% of those were too sick to get firewood and froze to death before help arrived. When the pandemic passed, because many were so sick that they were unable to fish or hunt and store food for the winter, they died of starvation. Some were forced to eat their sled dogs, and some sled dogs, unfed and hungry, ate the dead and the dying.

This last story from 1918 is about the effect this epidemic had on one of America’s best known authors - Katherine Anne Porter. 

Porter, who would later earn a Pulitzer Prize for her short stories, was one of the thousands who became ill during the epidemic in Denver, Colorado. Porter contracted influenza while working as a journalist for the Rocky Mountain News. She could not be admitted to the hospital at first, because there was no room. Instead, she was threatened with eviction by her landlady and then cared for by an unknown boarder who nursed her until a bed opened at the hospital. Porter was so sick that her newspaper colleagues prepared an obituary, and her father chose a burial plot. That near-death experience changed Porter in a profound way. She said afterward, "It just simply divided my life, cut across it like that. So that everything before that was just getting ready, and after that I was in some strange way altered." Her book, Pale Horse, Pale Rider, is a fictionalized account of her experience in the 1918 pandemic.

Lesson Four: Conclusions – ‘Such a big event, so little public memory’

Will and Ariel Durant, the husband and wife co-authors of that massive eleven-volume study The Story of Civilization, also wrote a thought-provoking short work entitled, The Lessons of History. On page eleven they ask:

As his studies come to a close the historian faces the challenge: Of what use have your studies been?... Have you derived from history any illumination of our present condition, any guidance for our judgments and policies, any guard against the rebuffs of surprise or the vicissitudes of change? (Durant, 1968)

While that quote is certainly apropos for this last article in a series entitled “Lessons from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic”, it’s not for that reason that I selected it. 

It’s for a far more personal reason.

When I grew up and became a historian, that epidemic in 1918-19, despite my personal connection to it, was never a topic in my teaching curriculum.

And it should have been. 

As an educator, I admit now that I was remiss in not teaching about pandemics and our nation’s susceptibility to them. Had I done so, perhaps one of my students (and there were many) would have gone on to do something in that field. Or perhaps, the 2020 Pandemic would have been less traumatic for all of them.

Every experience that we’ve had in 2020 - our delayed response to the threat of a pandemic - our overwhelmed medical personnel and inadequate supplies - the quarantines - the public pushback and even the key community “stakeholders” – was there in 1918. 

But no one paid attention. It’s unfortunate that we never seem to seek (or adequately teach) the lessons that the past provides us - until it’s too late. We are NOW facing the greatest threat to our Democracy and to our existence as a nation that the United States has faced since the Civil War. The lessons from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic would have helped us in so many ways.

During my research for this series, I came across a 2018 comment that someone left at the end of an article on the Philly Voiceblog during the 100th Anniversary of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic – “Such a big event, so little public memory.” (McGovern & Kopp, 2018)

Indeed. How many five-year-olds will lose a favorite uncle this time?

Food for thought.

Why do you think there is so little public knowledge of the 1918 Great Flu Pandemic? Let us know below.

Read more from Mac Guffey in the Amazing Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War Two here.

Works Cited

Durant, W. a. (1968). The Lessons of History. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster.

Leavit, M. (2006, January thru July). The Great Pandemic of 1918: State by State. Retrieved May 3, 2020, from Flu Trackers.com: https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/welcome-to-the-scientific-library/-1918-pandemic-data-stories-history/14750-the-great-pandemic-of-1918-state-by-state

McGovern, B., & Kopp, J. (2018, September 28). "In 1918, Philadelphia was in 'the grippe' of misery and suffering". Retrieved April 10, 2020, from Philly Voice: https://www.phillyvoice.com/1918-philadelphia-was-grippe-misery-and-suffering/

Lessons from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic: Part 3 – Leadership – ‘Vigilance, Predetermined Countermeasures, and Planning’

With the current Covid-19 pandemic causing upheaval the world over, can we look to the past to learn lessons? Here, Mac Guffey continues a series considering lessons from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic, an epidemic that infected around a third of the world’s population and killed some 40 million people (exact estimates vary from 15 million to 50 million or more). He will consider the question: Can something that happened over a hundred years ago in a society so vastly different from today provide any useful guidance regarding the Covid-19 Pandemic?

Here, part 3 in the series considers the importance of effective leadership. Mac looks at how the cities of St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis managed to have lower rates of infection when compared to other comparably sized cities thanks to effective leadership.

If you missed it, the first article in the series considered what happened during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic and the lessons we can draw on the economy (here) and part 2 considered the healthcare lessons from the pandemic by contrasting a successful and less successful approach (here).

A 1918 poster warning about ‘Spanish Flu’ and how it could impact war production for World War I.

The federal government’s role regarding the public health is generally an advisory one. By and large, the real business of public health and safety is basically a local matter. State, county, and city health departments operate under a rag bag of rules and regulations that vary from community to community based on a community’s prior public health experiences. (Garrett L. , 2020)

Because of this, the way the 1918 Influenza Epidemic unfolded across the United States actually provides a tremendous series of independent case studies about what worked and what didn’t work.

The determining factor – community mortality rates.

Thirteen years ago, Anthony Fauci* and David Morens did just that and wrote an article about the 1918 Influenza Pandemic for The Journal of Infectious Diseases. It was subtitled “Insights for the 21st Century”. 

In their article, they made several key points. One - historical evidence about pandemics suggests there are no predictable cycles; therefore, countries need to be prepared for the possibility of a pandemic at all times. Two - if a novel virus as virulent as that of 1918 were to reappear, a substantial number of potential fatalities could be prevented with aggressive public-health and medical interventions. 

But the best antidote, they said, was prevention - through vigilance, predetermined countermeasures, and planning. (Morens & Fauci, 2007)

Morens’s and Fauci’s recommendations were partially based on the similar way several major urban areas truly “met the moment and prevailed” with the lowest mortality outcomes during that exceptionally virulent second wave of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic.

It was all about leadership.

Lesson Three: Leadership – ‘Vigilance, Predetermined Countermeasures, and Planning’

In addition to St. Louis (covered in Parts 1 and 2 of this series and reviewed here for comparison), Milwaukee, and Minneapolis also registered lower mortality rates than most urban areas of a comparable size during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. 

These cities also encountered many of the same problems and challenges during that pandemic that we’ve faced across the nation in 2020 – disruptive citizens, pushback from churches, schools, and businesses, and failures to comply with mask and distancing mandates.

However, the way those city leaders approached these problems and challenges had a major impact on the civilian death rates in their cities.

St. Louis

As just a quick review, St. Louis was led by a strong-willed and capable health commissioner, Dr. Max C. Starkloff, who had the foresight to actively monitor the news as the influenza contagion spread westward. The city’s medical and political communities were quickly prepared for the inevitability that the epidemic would find its way to St. Louis. His first action was to issue a request through the influential St. Louis Medical Society that physicians voluntarily report to his office any and all cases of influenza they discovered. (St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 1918)

When St. Louis physicians reported their first cases of influenza, he asked the city’s Board of Aldermen to pass an emergency bill declaring influenza a contagious disease. This gave the mayor the legal authority to declare a state of public health emergency. The bill also levied stiff fines for physicians who failed to report any new cases of the disease. (St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 1918)

Starkloff and St. Louis Mayor Henry Kiel then executed an open-minded, flexible approach to quarantining, school closings, and other social distancing measures. They also maintained a unified front despite persistent pushback from various St. Louis constituencies. Because of the quick and sustained action by its leaders, St. Louis experienced one of the lowest excess death rates in the nation. (University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine, 2016)

Milwaukee

Even with two influenza waves between October and December 1918, the magnitude of Milwaukee’s brush with the 1918 Influenza Epidemic was still less severe than other U.S. cities of a comparable size. In the aftermath, Milwaukee Health Commissioner George C. Ruhland believed there were three reasons for the better outcomes. (Milwaukee Health Department, 1918)

The first reason was the readiness of the public to comply with any regulatory measures. For that Ruhland credited the Milwaukee medical community’s plan to engage the public. With the support of the city’s newspaper editors, the group began an immense public education campaign - with printed literature in six languages, including English. They created flyers and speaker’s notes, selected respected physicians and city notables as speakers, and requested the area clergy to discuss the flyers from the pulpit. If citizens, business owners, and city government all understood exactly what they were facing, there might be greater cooperation and acceptance should any draconian measures be necessary to blunt the epidemic. (Milwaukee Sentinel, 1918)

The second reason Ruhland listed was the timing of the closing orders and the generally widespread compliance from Milwaukee’s citizens. What’s interesting is that because of the two waves – October and December - Ruhland’s team actually tried two different approaches to see which one worked better. The October approach involved mandated closings - all places of amusement, churches, public gatherings, and eventually the schools. (Milwaukee Journal, 1918)

However, as the number of new cases in Milwaukee declined, some citizens and business owners believed the influenza threat was almost over. They got together and sent a number of requests to Ruhland to lift the bans on public gatherings. He refused. As more businesses clamored for relief, Ruhland publicly pointed out the consequence of overconfidence in other cities - reopening prematurely resulted in another wave of the infectious disease. (Milwaukee Journal, 1918)

Despite Ruhland’s gradual reopening however, a resurgence of the virus occurred in December 1918.

This time, to avoid outright closures, Ruhland shifted the responsibility to the public. He recommended masks be worn in public, set restrictions to the amount of personal space surrounding people in public - every other row was vacant in theaters and churches, retail customers surrounded themselves with six square feet of vacant space – and then he left it up to the people to govern themselves. The citizens, for the most part, ignored the self-restrictions, and that idea failed. (Milwaukee Journal, 1918)

The conclusion Ruhland came to after these two experiences have important ramifications for the world pandemic today. While closures don’t prevent influenza, they are very necessary in order to flatten or prevent the severe spikes in the number of influenza cases that can occur over a short period of time. It’s the severe spikes, he said, that overwhelm the available hospital facilities, healthcare workers, and medical supplies. Preventing those spikes flattens the mortality curve because those who do fall ill have access to better – not desperate - healthcare. (Milwaukee Wisconsin Department of Health, 1918)

The last factor that helped contribute to the lower mortality rates was the overall cooperation from all the community “leaders” during the epidemic – city government, physicians, hospital administrators, businessmen, the Red Cross and other relief agency leaders. Thanks to that cooperation, all necessary decisions were implemented rapidly and immediately. (Milwaukee Health Department, 1918)

In this city of 450,000 people, more than 30,000 of them came down with the flu during those two waves in 1918. Thanks to leadership vigilance, predetermined countermeasures, and planning, fewer than 500 died.

Minneapolis

“Spanish influenza does not exist in Minneapolis and never has, but it probably will reach here during the fall,” the City of Minneapolis Health Commissioner, Dr. H. M. Guilford, told residents on September 19, 1918. (Minneapolis Morning Tribune, 1918)

Less than a month later, the flu epidemic struck the city. By then, Guilford had a plan ready. The health department ordered all schools, churches, and non-essential businesses closed indefinitely. The measure was unanimously endorsed by the Minneapolis city council. The council also stipulated that the city’s department of health had the full authority to issue any closure orders with or without the consent of Minneapolis’s mayor or the council. (Minneapolis City Council, 1918)

Pushback, however, was almost immediate. 

The Minneapolis Board of Education disagreed with the shut-down order and reopened the schools. The Superintendent of Schools, B. B. Jackson, argued that the leading medical authorities across the nation had determined that epidemic influenza was not a children’s disease. Guilford however, refused to give ground and at his request, the Minneapolis Chief of Police met with the school board and persuaded them to close the schools once again. (Minneapolis Morning Tribune, 1918)

In spite of the school board resistance and a later protest by the owners of amusement businesses, Guilford kept the city closed down until November 15, when the number of new influenza cases reached what he deemed an acceptable level. At that point, schools and businesses were allowed to reopen. (University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine, 2016)

However, in early December, the number of Influenza cases spiked again – this time, it was among the school populations. Guilford reinstituted the school closures until the end of the month, but he added an important caveat: All students would be required to undergo a thorough examination to ensure that he or she was free of any illness before being allowed to return to the classroom. (University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine, 2016)

Strong leadership, sustained adherence to science, and a unified front both politically and medically throughout the 1918 Influenza Epidemic enabled Minneapolis to keep the mortality rate of its citizens lower than most urban centers of a comparable size.

Conclusion

One of the more important “negative” leadership lessons from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic was the ‘too little, too late” actions by many public officials at the national, state, and local levels that exacerbated the spread of that deadly pandemic. (Mihm, 2020)

That was not the case in St. Louis, Milwaukee, or Minneapolis. Doctors Stackworth, Ruhland, and Guilford each showed vigilance by tracking the progression of the epidemic in other cities, in the military camps nearby, and mandating that their local medical communities report every new case of influenza. They all formed teams, set sound policy directions, communicated and educated about them, and implemented effective, predetermined countermeasures.

However, the greatest insight that 1918 epidemic provides for our 21st century health crisis is the determination of those leaders to maintain the aggressive public-health and medical interventions they put in place for the well-being of their citizens in the face of political, economic, and public pushback.

History Is Now

After taking office in 2017, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure, and disbanded the National Security Council’s pandemic team and a State Department program designed to identify outbreaks and other emerging threats around the world. (Garrett L. , 2020)

Then, in late December or early January 2020, Trump and his administration were informed by intelligence officials of a contagion raging in Wuhan, China. The administration, however, publicly treated the epidemic as a minor threat that was under control, at least domestically, and repeatedly assured the public that the risk to Americans was very low. 

By the end of January, there were about 12,000 reported cases in China, and growing rapidly by the day. At this point, the U.S. had a handful of confirmed cases, but there was almost certainly already significant community spread in the Seattle area.

Finally, on January 27, the White House created the Coronavirus Task Force (publicly announced on January 29) and declared a public health emergency on January 31. At that point, the federal government began to put in motion the executive, legal, and regulatory pandemic response procedures already on the books. (Wallach & Myers, 2020)

On March 24, 2020, the U.S. death toll from the Covid-19 Pandemic stood at 705 Americans. (CDC, 2020) That day, President Donald Trump said in his then daily Coronavirus Task Force briefing:

“There is tremendous hope as we look forward and we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Stay focused and stay strong and my administration and myself will deliver for you as we have in the past." (Woodward & Yen, 2020)

Trump’s ‘hope’ versus the ‘vigilance, predetermined countermeasures, and planning’ of Starkloff, Ruhland and Guilford.

As of June 1, 2020, America’s death toll stands at over 106,000 coronavirus-related deaths. (CDC, 2020)

Food for thought.

Now, read part 4 here: Lessons from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic: Part 4 – Conclusions – ’Such a big event, so little public memory’

What lessons do you think we can learn from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic? Let us know below.

References

CDC. (2020, April 30). “Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic – Overview: statistics”. Retrieved May 2, 2020, from Bing.com: https://www.bing.com/search?q=death+toll+coronavirus&form=EDNTHT&mkt=en-us&httpsmsn=1&msnews=1&rec_search=1&plvar=0&refig=60ce389eba704e0788409300929840cb&PC=HCTS&sp=1&ghc=1&qs=EP&pq=death+toll&sk=PRES1&sc=8-10&cvid=60ce389eba704e0788409300929840cb&cc=US&

Garrett, L. (2020, January 31). Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Coronavirus Response. Retrieved April 28, 2020, from FP (Foreign Policy): https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump-united-states-public-health-emergency-response/

Markel H, L. H. (2007). " Nonpharmacuetical interventions implemented by U.S. cities during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic". JAMA, 298:647.

Mihm, S. (2020, March 3). Lessons From the Philadelphia Flu of 1918: Prioritizing politics over public health is a recipe for disaster. Retrieved April 22, 2020, from Bloomberg Opinion: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-03/coronavirus-history-lesson-learning-from-1918-s-flu-epidemic

Milwaukee Health Department. (1918). Bulletin of the Milwaukee Health Department 8, no. 10-11. City of Milwaukee, Health. Milwaukee: np.

Milwaukee Journal. (1918, October 10). "City closed to fight flu,” Milwaukee Journal, 10 Oct. 1918, 1. Milwaukee Journal, p. 1.

Milwaukee Journal. (1918, December 2). "Schools closed to stop flu". Milwaukee Journal, pp. 1, 6.

Milwaukee Journal. (1918, October 26). "Weather Cause of Deaths". Milwaukee Journal, p. 2.

Milwaukee Sentinel. (1918, October 11). "City Starts Big Battle On Influenza". Milwaukee Sentinel, p. 6.

Milwaukee Wisconsin Department of Health. (1918). Forty-second annual report of the Commissioner of Health City of Milwaukee. Milwaukee: np.

Minneapolis City Council. (1918). Proceedings of the City Council of the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota, from January 1, 1918 to January 1, 1919. Minneapolis City Council, Proceedings of the City Council of the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota, (p. 536). Minneapolis.

Minneapolis Morning Tribune. (1918, October 20). "Clash Over School Order Due Monday". Minneapolis Morning Tribune, p. 1.

Minneapolis Morning Tribune. (1918, September 20). “No Spanish Influenza in City, Says Guilford”. Minneapolis Morning Tribune, p. 2.

Morens, D. M., & Fauci, A. S. (2007). The 1918 Influenza Pandemic: Insights for the 21st Century. Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 195, Issue 7,, 1018-1028.

St. Louis Globe-Democrat. (1918, September 20). “Doctors Here Must Report Influenza,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 20 Sept. 1918, 2. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, p. 2.

St. Louis Globe-Democrat. (1918, October 6). “No Quarantine Here against Influenza, Says Dr. Starkloff". St. Louis Globe-Democrat, p. 8.

University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine. (2016, September 19). City Essays. Retrieved April 21, 2020, from American Influenza Epidemic of 1918 - 1919: A Digital Encyclopedia.: http://www.influenzaarchive.org.

Wallach, P. A., & Myers, J. (2020, March 31). “The federal government’s coronavirus response—Public health timeline - part of the Series on Regulatory Process and Perspective”. Retrieved April 4, 2020, from Brookings: https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-federal-governments-corona

Woodward, C., & Yen, H. (2020, March 28). ”Fact check: Donald Trump is a rosy outlier on the science of the virus”. - Saturday, March 28, 2020. Retrieved April 20, 2020, from Associated Press Website: https://apnews.com/

Wright, J. (2020, March 3). Four disastrous mistakes that leaders make during epidemics. Retrieved April 15, 2020, from The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/03/four-disastrous-mistakes-that-leaders-make-during-epidemics/

Lessons from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic: Part 2 – Healthcare – Two cities - Two outcomes - One reason

With the current Covid-19 pandemic causing upheaval the world over, can we look to the past to learn lessons? Here, Mac Guffey continues a series considering lessons from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic, an epidemic that infected around a third of the world’s population and killed some 40 million people (exact estimates vary from 15 million to 50 million or more). He will consider the question: Can something that happened over a hundred years ago in a society so vastly different from today provide any useful guidance regarding the Covid-19 Pandemic?

Here, part 2 in the series considers the medical readiness lessons for today, by contrasting the very different approaches of Philadelphia and St Louis in the 1918 Influenza Epidemic.

If you missed it, the first article in the series considered what happened during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic and the lessons we can draw on the economy: Available here.

With masks over their faces, members of the American Red Cross remove a victim of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic from a house at Etzel and Page Avenues, St. Louis, Missouri. St Louis managed the Epidemic better than many other US cities.

American life in 1918 was busy, demanding, and non-stop. 

A world war was raging in Europe; military camps were springing up all over the country to accommodate the military’s demand for more soldiers. Factories (and even community clubs, organizations, and families) were busy turning out provisions needed by those boys going “over there”.

But the demands of this war also drained the nation’s supply of healthcare workers, medical equipment, and diminished the quality of available civilian medical care everywhere. So when the second wave of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic struck toward the end of September, the civilian hospitals and medical personnel were simply unprepared.

The state health officer for New Jersey announced on September 27th that the influenza “was unusually prevalent” throughout the state. Within the next three days, more than 2,000 new cases were reported. Newark’s medical facilities were so quickly overwhelmed that the city purchased a vacant furniture warehouse to be used as an emergency hospital. (Leavitt, 2006)

Makeshift hospitals like that one were hastily opened in almost every community to deal with the astronomical surge in people seeking medical help, but the virulence of this epidemic simply overwhelmed them all. 

One New Jersey physician recalled the outbreak: “There was no need to make appointments. You walked out of your office in the morning and people grabbed you as you walked down the street. You just kept going from one patient to another until late in the evening.” He treated more than 3,000 patients that month. (Leavitt, 2006)

Finally, in newspapers around the country, messages from desperate city health departments appeared:

. . . The spread of the Spanish Influenza is now a matter for the individual citizen. The city is doing what it can. Now it is up to the public. You can help keep the disease down. IT’S UP TO YOU—TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF  (Johnson City Health Department, 1918)

That 1918 directive – very pertinent in both substance and form as we currently battle our own pandemic of epic proportions – actually represented a capitulation of sorts by America’s city and state governments.

At that point, everyone was on his or her own.

Lesson Two: Healthcare - Two Cities - Two Outcomes – One Reason

The very virulence of the influenza virus that late summer and early fall doomed the unready medical system in this country almost immediately. The United States had 5,323 hospitals with just 612,000 beds available to accommodate a nationwide population of some 92 million people. Within forty-eight to seventy-two hours of almost every local outbreak, all of the hospitals in that area were filled beyond capacity. (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1976)

During the initial outbreak of the Covid-19 Pandemic in spring 2020, the modern healthcare system in the United States came perilously close to the limits that 1918 crossed. How do we handle a second wave that’s as virulent or more so than our first wave?

As history would have it, there actually is an answer to that very question in the 1918 Epidemic. It’s a tale of two cities – Philadelphia and St. Louis.

Philadelphia

For the sake of establishing a timeline by which to compare these two cities, let’s reiterate the facts we discussed in “Lesson One” of this series about Philadelphia’s health director Dr. Wilmer Krusen’s disastrous decisions that led to Philadelphia’s high mortality rate.

Despite evidence to the contrary regarding the virus’ virulence in the various military camps surrounding Philadelphia, Krusen was quoted in a Harrisburg newspaper on September 14th that he didn’t see any danger in the “Spanish Flu”. (Harrisburg Telegraph, 1918)

Three days later on September 17th, the first cases of the flu in the city were reported. Krusen took no quarantine measures or other social precautions, and furthermore, he ignored pleas from the local medical community to cancel the September 28thparade through the city. Over one hundred thousand people witnessed and participated in the parade that day. (Hatchett, Mecher, & Lipsitch, 2007)

Within seventy-two hours, Philadelphia’s hospitals were overrun. As the disease spread, essential services collapsed. Nearly 500 policemen failed to report for duty. Firemen, garbage collectors, and city administrators fell ill. [1] But it wasn’t until October 3rd that the city finally closed schools, banned public gatherings, and took other citywide measures to suppress the epidemic. (Hatchett, Mecher, & Lipsitch, 2007)

Krusen’s fourteen-day delay between the first reported cases in the city and his decision to finally impose a quarantine played a major role in the deaths of well over 12,162 people from influenza and other influenza-related complications between October 1 and November 2, 1918. (Dunnington, 2017)

One of the findings Thomas Garrett noted in his 2008 study of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic was that healthcare actually becomes irrelevant if there are no plans in place to ensure that a pandemic does not incapacitate the healthcare system like it did in 1918. (Garrett, 2008)

St Louis

In St Louis, Dr. Max Starkloff, the St. Louis health commissioner, planned ahead.

Instead of waiting for the virus to start, Starkloff started. 

First, he changed his thinking from IF to WHEN. By September 20th, Starkloff had already published a list of social “Don’ts” regarding behavior that could spread the “epidemic of influenza” that was happening in the east. (Evening Missourian, 1918)

He also alerted the local medical community to be prepared, and with their help set up a network of volunteer nurses to treat residents in their homes when the hospitals ran out of space. Members of the Red Cross Motor Ambulance Corps* were diverted from various camps to help transport civilian patients to the hospital and to deliver broth and food to those influenza patients being treated in their homes. (St Louis Post Dispatch, 2014)

Starkloff was ready.

When the first cases of the influenza epidemic were reported in St. Louis on October 5th, he and his staff moved rapidly. Two days later on October 7th, they closed schools, theaters, playgrounds and other public places. Quickly added to that list were churches and taverns, as well as restricted attendance at funerals. Streetcars were limited to seated passengers only – the usual crowds of standing riders were forbidden. (St Louis Post Dispatch, 2014)

These restrictions were enforced too. Despite significant pushback from local religious leaders and business owners who complained about the “draconian” measures and predicted dire economic consequences because of the closings, Starkloff and Mayor Henry Kiel remained firm. (St Louis Post Dispatch, 2014)

One Reason

What’s so staggering is the contrast in the mortality figures for these two cities. Philadelphia experienced 12,162 (or more) deaths in one month; St. Louis experienced 1,703 deaths over four months – the lowest mortality rate among the nation’s largest cities. (Hatchett, Mecher, & Lipsitch, 2007)

The one and only reason: In St. Louis, an intervention plan was in place and ready to go when the first cases were reported.

History is NOW

In a recent Washington Post interview, a frustrated ER nurse at Sinai Grace Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, Mikaela Sakal, described their struggle against the coronavirus:

Nobody prepared us for this, because this didn’t exist. These aren’t the kinds of scenarios you go over in training. Where do you put 26 critical patients when you only have 12 rooms? How many stretchers fit into a hallway? (Saslow, 2020)

The Covid-19 Pandemic is filled with healthcare anecdotes like this one.

While all kinds of “plans” supposedly have been designed to deal with a pandemic, there were no complete readiness plans that had been designed, practiced, corrected, approved, and waiting to be implemented. Even essential medical stockpiles of such common essentials as facemasks, hazmat suits, ventilators, or the machines to make them were wholly inadequate to handle the demands of this disaster.

And when a pandemic like 1918 DID hit in 2020, what occurred was panicky, uncoordinated, reactionary moves with no contingency plans for implementation problems, the long-term effects of each measure, or the necessary vs. available resources.

“Nothing went by the book,” Ms. Sakal explained angrily, “Every night, we had to come into work and rewrite the rules.” (Saslow, 2020)

When there is no virus vaccine, “readiness” becomes the major factor in the government’s ability to protect its citizens from a pandemic. Faced with spiraling mortality rates across vast populations over a short period of time, a “virus war” requires preparation, the ready availability of healthcare workers, hospital beds, and huge stockpiles of ready medical equipment to meet the massive demand.

More importantly, as the Philadelphia and St. Louis examples demonstrated, a national readiness plan uniting all of these elements is necessary.

Otherwise, healthcare becomes irrelevant, and 675,000 Americans could die.

Food for thought.

Now, read part 3 here: Lessons from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic: Part 3 – Leadership – ‘Vigilance, Predetermined Countermeasures, and Planning’ 

What lessons do you think we can learn from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic? Let us know below.

Lessons from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic: Part 1 – ‘the threat of an outbreak you may not have experienced’

With the current Covid-19 pandemic causing upheaval the world over, can we look to the past to learn lessons? Here, Mac Guffey starts a series considering lessons from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic, an epidemic that infected around a third of the world’s population and killed some 40 million people (exact estimates vary from 15 million to 50 million or more). He will consider the question: Can something that happened over a hundred years ago in a society so vastly different from today provide any useful guidance regarding the Covid-19 Pandemic?

The first article in the series considers what happened during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic and the lessons we can draw on the economy today, namely the current controversy about reopening the economy after only several weeks of quarantine.

US troops with influenza in 1918 at U.S. Army Camp Hospital No. 45, Aix-Les-Bains, France, Influenza Ward No. 1.

On December 1, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln wrote some advice for the nation’s legislators in his Second Annual Message to Congress. 

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. [1]

Embroiled in the chaos of America’s first and only civil war, Lincoln’s advice to Congress to do what today we call “think outside the box” was almost futuristic in its suggested application. But to think outside the box requires one to know what’s already IN the box.

That’s where the world is right NOW in 2020 – trying to think anew and act anew - as the Covid-19 Pandemic upends the entire globe medically, socially, economically, and politically. 

But humanity is desperate. 

We don’t have the lives to waste on actions that merely repeat past failures or the time to ignore proven medical measures to chase quack medical solutions or the economy to endure all these haphazard plans born of desperation or political expediency.

But do we actually have any idea of what has gone before? Do we know what’s been tried and failed or what’s been tried and worked or what was never tried at all during a pandemic of THIS magnitude?

Ironically, we do – the 1918 Influenza Epidemic. 

In 2008, Thomas Garrett, then an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, published a study on “Pandemic Economics: The 1918 Influenza and Its Modern-Day Implications”. The third paragraph of his study contains this common sense recommendation.

Certainly an event that caused 40 million worldwide deaths in a year should be closely examined not only for its historical significance, but also for what we can learn (in the unfortunate chance the world experiences another influenza pandemic). [2] 

But the relevant question is: Can something that happened over a hundred years ago in a society so vastly different from today provide any useful guidance regarding the Covid-19 Pandemic? 

With Garrett’s suggestion as a goal, this article is the first of a four-part series to answer that question. Using the 1918 Influenza Pandemic as our foundational model, this series will examine that event using the three top issues or questions that have emerged during the 2020 crisis. We’ll see how the government and the people in 1918 handled similar challenges, and what, if any, lessons from the past can help us in the present.

Starting with the current controversy about reopening our economy after only several weeks of quarantine, we’ll also take a look at two other 2020 issues: healthcare and government leadership in the 1918 pandemic. 

The final article in this series will present some conclusions from the lessons of 1918 and offer some anecdotes that give voice to those who experienced this same type of crisis more than a hundred years ago. 

If we must think anew and act anew, then we must do so with knowledge – not ignorance.

Lesson One: ‘the threat of an outbreak you may not have experienced’

The United States (and the world), due to social distancing and stay-at-home restrictions during the Covid-19 Pandemic, hasn’t come near the mortality levels of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic. In fact, we’ve even flattened the rate of infection and mortality curves projected by most, if not all, of the statistical models used for the 2020 crisis.

Because of this good news, public health experts, state governors, the Trump administration, business owners, and Americans from all walks of life are now debating the question uppermost in everyone’s mind: How long do the restrictions need to continue before we can reopen the economy?

Despite the statistical success, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the answer to reopening the economy “depends”.

“It is not going to be a light switch. It is going to be depending where you are in the country, the nature of the outbreak you’ve already experienced, and the threat of an outbreak that you may not have experienced.” [3]

Whether Fauci intended it or not, the end of his statement - “and the threat of an outbreak that you may not have experienced” – actually contains a double meaning. For 2020, it means those areas of the country that were spared the Covid-19 virus thus far, which was his point.

But the unusually deadly 1918 epidemic suggests a far darker meaning for us – the possibility of another wave of outbreaks that could be far more murderous than the first. What made the 1918 Influenza Epidemic so unusual - and so devastating for humanity - were those two subsequent waves of infection in the fall of 1918 and the winter of 1919.

The first wave – spring 1918 

The great influenza pandemic first hit Europe, the United States, and Asia, in 1918 and raged across the globe for two years from January 1918 to December 1919. [4] However, early reports of the virus were almost dismissive.

On page one of the February 6, 1918 Malone, New York newspaper were several updates on area residents at home and abroad. One of the updates was about Lieutenant Clarence M. Kilburn, an infantry officer serving with the First Division in France.

Letters received by his wife and mother – the last one dated Jan. 14th - stated that the lieutenant was still in a hospital in France. He had been in the hospital since Thanksgiving, first with an infection of the bowels and then with influenza which followed. [5]

The April 4, 1918 Port Jervis, New York newspaper – The Evening Gazette – had an article on page six about new U.S. recruits training and marching at Camp Dix - the new World War I military training and staging ground built in New Jersey in 1917. Tucked away at the very end of that article was a short blurb about the March health report for Dix, the largest military reservation in the Northeast. 

Camp Dix. . . The March health report was a setback for the high health mark maintained at the camp for six months. Weather of considerable variance in temperature and humidity coming and going suddenly was responsible for the increase in pneumonia cases, according to Lieutenant Colonel G.M. Ekwurzel, division surgeon. The sudden changes in temperature, coupled with a week of consistently damp weather in early March when the sun failed to break through for days, brought on a camp wide attack of influenza. Many of the pneumonia patients were among those first bothered with influenza. [6]

These initial outbreaks had all the signs of a seasonal flu. But there were two important differences; this particular strain was highly contagious and particularly virulent.

Camp Funston, Kansas reported outbreaks of influenza in early March. A military installation of 54,000 troops, Camp Funston reported that within the first two days of the outbreak 522 men reported sick and by the end of the month, 1,100 troops were hospitalized and thirty-eight of them died from pneumonia complications. [7]

The virus continued spreading throughout Europe, but the number of cases from that spring outbreak of influenza in the U.S. dwindled over the summer. But the first wave was actually a warning of things to come. Unfortunately - like 2020 - these early warning signs were minimized, dismissed, or ignored - because things got better.

Or so the world thought.

The second and third waves 

In August 1918, an even more virulent strain of the influenza virus appeared simultaneously in the shipping ports of Brest, France, Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Boston, Massachusetts. Medical historians now believe this strain was caused by a mutation of the initial virus.

For the next three months – September through November – the virus killed millions worldwide. An estimated 195,000 Americans died in October alone. [8]

The last - but no less deadly - wave started in Australia in January of 1919. This one, however, spread more slowly because World War I was over, but it, too, eventually reached the U.S. in December.

After three waves of this pandemic, an estimated thirty-three percent of the world’s population was infected and the worldwide death toll stood at over 45 million people - 675,000 of whom were Americans. [8]

Contributing factors to the high mortality rate

What made the 1918 Influenza Epidemic so devastating for humanity - were those two subsequent waves of infection in the fall of 1918 and the winter of 1919. 

Why were they so deadly?

While there are a host of biological reasons for the virulence of the virus, war and human decisions also played key roles in exacerbating the spread.

Like all wars in America’s history to 1918, disease killed more soldiers than battles. Recruits in all those wars came from every part of the nation, and they were crowded together in training camps, winter camps, and on ships. They brought with them their own local viruses and immunities, as well as their susceptibilities to other local viruses to which they’d never been exposed. 

But this war was the first truly WORLD war – one that involved soldiers from every continent on the globe. This international mingling increased every soldier’s exposure to a host of local viruses from other soldiers to which they had no immunities. Combine these human petri dishes with crowded training camps and trench living conditions, and it’s a recipe for a medical pandemic. This exposure is similar to that found on public transportation, cruise ships, and during air travel in 2020.

As these soldiers in 1918 went abroad, came home, or went on liberty, they infected civilian populations with similar results.

Many cities and states tried to enforce some degree of social distancing restrictions in 1918 by passing regulations regarding public gatherings and travel in attempts to stay the epidemic. In many places theaters, dance halls, churches and other public gathering places were shut down – some for over a year. One U.S. town even outlawed shaking hands! [9]

Quarantines, however, were few and those that existed were enforced with little success. Some communities were so desperate to isolate themselves that they put armed guards at the town limits to turn back any travelers who might bring an infection. But on the whole, the efforts were unsuccessful. [9]

One historian, Dr. James Harris, who studies both infectious diseases and World War I, came to this conclusion: The reluctance of public health officials to impose quarantines during the first two waves was partly to blame for the high mortality rate.

“Little was done those first two thirds of the pandemic. There was the wartime context, pushback to social distancing, people moving around the globe on a massive scale.” [7]

The failure of public health officials to do what they knew was in the public good because of sensitivity to political or public opinion further endangered the lives of the very people they were hired or elected to protect. 

Philadelphia, in 1918, provides a graphic example. 

By mid-September 1918, the virus was running rampant throughout the various military installations, training camps and staging areas in and around Philadelphia. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Philadelphia’s director of public health, reassured the public. The September 14th edition of the Harrisburg Telegraph reported on page six that “Dr. Wilmer Krusen, Philadelphia health director, does not see any danger in the Spanish influenza at present.”  [10]

Then came the Fourth Liberty Loan Parade.

Scheduled for September 28, the parade and a subsequent concert were organized to promote the sale of “Liberty Bonds” – a way to get the public to buy war bonds to help the government finance the war.

However, as the date approached, the medical community of Philadelphia pleaded with Dr. Krusen to cancel the parade and concert. According to Sam Dunnington’s 2017 post on the blog site: HiddenCity: Exploring Philadelphia's urban landscape:

Dr. Wilmer Krusen found himself under pressure from the city’s medical establishment to cancel the event. Krusen was Philadelphia’s director of Public Health and Charities. Several doctors had called on him earlier that month to quarantine 300 sailors that had recently arrived at Philadelphia’s Navy Yard. The servicemen had come from Massachusetts, where a virulent outbreak of influenza had already caused the Army to cancel a draft call. Krusen refused to quarantine the men. As concerns about influenza grew, the medical community encouraged the cancellation of the Liberty Loan parade in the interest of avoiding crowds and ideal transmission conditions. [11]

Again, Krusen refused. On September 28, over a hundred thousand citizens and soldiers watched or took part in the parade and concert.

Within seventy-two hours, Philadelphia’s hospitals were overrun with influenza cases. Between October 1 and November 2, the city registered 12,162 deaths from influenza - a number that does not include those that died from underlying conditions while fighting the virus. [11]

Dunnington concludes:

Krusen could have lessened the death toll by mandating a quarantine or canceling the parade, but he operated in an environment that made such decisions almost unthinkable. . . With Krusen, Philadelphians experienced the pandemic under a public health official that could not act in their best interests without risking becoming an enemy of the federal government. [11]

History NOW

The controversy about our current pandemic now raging across the United States is whether the social distancing and stay-at-home restrictions need to continue since the rate of infection seems to be tapering off.

Gerard Tellis, Neely Chair of American Enterprise, director of the Institute for Outlier Research in Business (iORB) and his research partner Ashish Sood of UC Riverside, along with Nitish Sood, a cellular and molecular biology student at Augusta University, have released a paper that parses the possibilities.

"The U.S. faces a unique challenge. All states have still not ordered lockdowns. So states that have and contain the disease may suffer contagion and relapse from those that don't or were late to do so. A uniform federal policy seems imperative." [12]

Our experiences during the 1918 Influenza Epidemic indicate that underestimating the first wave of an outbreak and continuing to yield to public and political pushback against quarantines and social distancing may lead to much higher mortality rates. 

As Fauci said, it’s “the threat of an outbreak that you may not have experienced” that should guide our decision-making - not politics or boredom.

Food for thought.

Now, read part 2 here: Lessons from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic: Part 2 – Healthcare – Two cities - Two outcomes - One reason

What lessons do you think we can learn from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic? Let us know below.

References

[1] Roy P. Basler, et al. eds. (1953). The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln – Volume 5. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, p 538.

[2] Garrett , Thomas A. (2008). “Pandemic Economics: The 1918 Influenza and Its Modern-Day Implications”. Federal Reserve Bank Of St. Louis Review - March/April 2008. p.76. 

[3] Sonmez, Felicia, Taylor Telford, Elise Viebeck. “Public health experts urge caution about push to reopen the economy”. The Washington Post – April 13, 2020, First edition.

[4] Rosenwald, Michael S. “History’s deadliest pandemics, from ancient Rome to modern America”. Washington Post – April 7, 2020, First edition.

[5] The Malone Farmer. (Malone NY), February 06, 1918. p.1. Lt. Kilburn recovered, survived the war, and returned home to Malone. He was elected to Congress in 1940 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Wallace E. Pierce (R-NY). Kilburn served in Congress from February 1940 until January 1965.

[6] “Four-Week Recruits at Rifle Practice: Next Seven Days for 7,000 Soldiers Will Be One of Busiest and Most Interesting”. The Evening Gazette, (Port Jervis, NY) April 4, 1918. p. 6.

[7] Roos, Dave. “Why the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Was So Deadly”. History Stories - March 3, 2020; Updated March 30, 2020. HISTORY. Archived April 2, 2020 from https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence

[8] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “1918 Pandemic Influenza Historic Timeline”.  CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Archived April 4, 2020 from https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/pandemic-timeline-1918.htm

[9] “1918 Flu (Spanish flu epidemic)” About Avian Bird Flu - The Avian Bird Flu Survival Guide - May 21, 2008. Archived April 4, 2020 from http://www.avian-bird-flu.info/spanishfluepidemic1918.html

[10] “Well Known People”, Harrisburg Telegraph. (Harrisburg, Pa.) September 14, 1918. p.6.

[11] Dunnington, Sam. “A History Of Leadership During Philadelphia’s Epidemics”. HiddenCity: Exploring Philadelphia's urban landscape – July 21, 2017.

[12] Tellis, Gerald, et.al. “How long will the COVID-19 quarantine last? Business research provides insight”. Medical Xpress, April 8, 2020. Archived April 18, 2020 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-covid-quarantine-business-insight.html

Reflections on the Vietnam War: George S. Patton and the Reasons for the Vietnam War

George S. Patton, son of legendary World War II general of the same name, served three times in the Vietnam War. In this major piece, Robert McBroom considers Patton’s thoughts on the Vietnam War, including the reasons for the conflict and how to fight the Viet Cong. To produce the article, Robert has worked closely with the Patton homestead archive in Hamilton, Massachusetts and met and interviewed George Patton’s wife Joanie Holbrook Patton.

George S. Patton in 1977.

“The war in Vietnam was unwinnable lost before the French expeditionary force fired its first shot, before the south fielded its first soldier in the national Army of Vietnam, before the first U.S. advisor set foot in country.  An idea independence and unity would triumph over bullets. “[1] Colonel William C. Haponski, who served with Major General George S. Patton would go on to explain what he believes is the result of the conflict in Vietnam.  When the White House got involved in Vietnam, they had zero control during the conflict and had no real foundation of why our boys were fighting in a foreign land.  George would later reflect on Vietnam by saying, “There was an absence almost total of a national strategy.”[2]  Despite victories on the battlefield, the conflict in Vietnam had no end goal.  The Vietnam conflict has had many different perspectives and historians for years have tried to develop an understanding for all.  Historian Mark Philip Bradley would explain the Vietnam conflict as “there were many Vietnam wars, among them an anti-colonial war with France, a cold war turned hot with the United States, a civil war between North and South Vietnam and among southern Vietnamese, and a revolutionary war of ideas over the vision that should guide Vietnamese society into the post-colonial future.”[3]  The Vietnamese people had been fighting a war of independence since the very start of their existence and have used guerrilla warfare to their success against colonial powers.  The separation of North and South Vietnam started with French missionaries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and would rule Vietnam.  While the French would rule the South, China and other communists’ countries supported the revolutionary groups in the North, thus the separation was created at the 17th parallel which was a boundary created by the military in 1954.  All of this would make the conflict in Vietnam like nothing this country had seen before, historian Christian G Appy would say that “there has never been a war quite so frustrating as Vietnam.”[4]  However, Congress had not technically declared a war since 1942.  His frustration is one that is felt by historians of Vietnam.  Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr. who was a graduate and an illustrious man of the Army War College, while also being a veteran of Korea and Vietnam would go on to explain to Nguyen Don Tu that, “you know you never beat us on the battlefield.”[5] While his counterpart of the North Vietnamese Army, Colonel Nguyen Don Tu would say “That may be so, but it’s also irrelevant.”[6]  Creating this frustrating for all who were a part of Vietnam and the scholars who study the conflict.  This paper will examine his experience as a United States advisor in Vietnam, which would end up being his first of three tours involving the conflict.  Lieutenant Colonel George S. Patton would reflect on the Viet Cong and their guerilla warfare, and how the United States could find a weakness but also what made the North Vietnam Army so strong along with their leaders and their philosophy in his Army War college thesis.

Major General, George S. Patton IV, was the son of old blood and guts, Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. who was a veteran of both World Wars, would go on to explain what he believes is a cause of the conflict in Vietnam and the history of the area is a direct result of the French rule over time in the region and a lack of leadership from America political leaders.  The Major General was born December 24th, 1923 and would later drop the IV legally in 1947 after his father’s passing.  George would explain to historian Bill McCloud that, “Lyndon Johnson failed to mobilize either the armed forces or the people at home.”[7]  In any time period of war and or conflict, the President of the time must mobilize both the efforts at home, as well as being clear cut orders for the military, which Lyndon Johnson failed miserably at doing so.

After his graduation at West Point a man is famously known for saying “You’ll never be the man your father was but congratulations.”[8]  Never less Patton would become a veteran of two significant military conflicts during the second half of the century, the conflict in Korea and the conflict in Vietnam.  Historian Lewis Sorley would discuss an incident with General Abrams and Patton to show how understanding a person and soldier George was.  “When he arrived Patton could see he was in a foul mood…When he neared it, he asks Patton, you got any whiskey?  Paton said he did and got Abrams a scotch and soda.”[9]  George knew not to antagonize General Abrams; he was simply there to listen and support his fellow soldier who had just returned from the combat zone.  James Dozier, a friend of George's who served with him in the 11th Armored Cavalry regiment known as the Blackhorse regiment would later reflect on Patton’s career by saying, “he just had an instinct for doing the right thing at the right time in combat and many American soldiers are alive today because George Patton was their boss.”[10]  George had the instinct that many military leaders of his time did not have and many veterans of the conflict are thankful for George for being their boss.   

Vietnam became a large cemetery because of their history of conflict with outsiders was the reason for that.  The only way the American political leaders and some military leaders could see success was by body count of the enemy.  “To obtain the attrition rate, enemy bodies had to be counted.”[11]  Chief intelligence William Westmoreland stated.  The Vietnamese wanted nothing more than their culture and lifestyle, but with the strong outside forces controlling the Vietnamese people, Major General George S. Patton would describe it as an open door for communism.  “These powerful forces set up the stage for the entry of communist ideology.”[12]  A long history of injustice for the people of Vietnam was the issue at hand while George would go on to say that “Most humble were confronted by Frenchman holding exact the same or lower jobs but being paid two or three times more.  Thus, the French janitor at Hanoi received a base pay that was slightly higher than that of a Vietnamese professor with a PHD from Paris.”[13]  This George believes is one of many reasons for a communist ideology to spread in a place like Vietnam and also a cause for a revolution for the Vietnamese people, the disbalanced democracy that favors a person’s background and not the education of an individual who went to school in a western country.  “The French concept of divide and rule which kept the five colonial dependencies politically separated, were contributory to today’s dilemma.”[14]  Having the separation between North and South Vietnam all these years, George believes is also a direct cause of the conflict America had become a part of.  Vietnam was unlike anything his father had faced before along with military personnel of his time. “In Vietnam there were no lines, Patton pointed out.  “It was more a war of the people.  And we did not understand that war nor did we have a clear-cut national strategic objective.  It was not clearly defined by the leadership of this country.”[15]  Our military members during the time did not have a understand why we were their just like the American people watching in their living rooms. 

I. Leaders of the Vietnam Conflict

Patton would write several versions of his Army War College thesis on the Viet Cong forces and how they endured their history, and how he viewed success in Vietnam along with his beliefs on the Vietnamese people.  Unlike Westmoreland, George did not believe that a body count of the enemy was the simple solution with the conflict in Vietnam. Patton would state that “This early failure to establish a viable political base which would include these important ethnic minorities was to prove costly.”[16]  The idea of counting the enemy in body bags, was a cover up for American political problems with not creating a political base for the South Vietnam People.  Thus, Communism which was an easy quick government to set up, seeps through and into the Vietnamese lives. 

After his first tour in Vietnam, George S. Patton would examine his enemy, the Viet Cong and how Vietnam has been shaped over time and in history.  “The very existence of Vietnam as a separate country and the survival of the Vietnamese as a distinct people must be regarded as a miracle for which scores of historians have satisfactory solution.”[17]  Vietnam had been under colonial rule since the French got there in 1887 and continued to be under rule for much of their history, yet the people of Vietnam were never going to give up.  “Vietnam has everything that others want both geographical and historical should have made the absorption of Vietnam by the Chinese empire and inescapable fate.”[18]  The Vietnamese people had no problem with outsiders coming to their homeland, they just did not want to be controlled.  George would go on to explain that “They did not mind the French so very much.  They just didn't like always being occupied and working for the French.”[19]  If the Vietnamese people and the French could have lived together with equal opportunity, they’d be no conflict.  Let the Vietnamese have their culture and ways of life, that had been taking away from them for so many years.  This unbalance democracy allows for Communists countries to intervene on Western beliefs in Vietnam both North and parts of the South.   

II George’s view on the Conflict

When the French backed away and the United States would now take over with the help of the Democratic party of South Vietnam, that had now been established.  It was still not going to kill the Viet Cong heart and soul, that their leader Ho Chi Minh and others have put forth to them with Propaganda and radio broadcasts over the years to get the outsiders out, a tactic known as psychological warfare.  Revolution had been a part of Vietnam’s history since the people could remember and the Viet Cong used that to their advantage.  Their country had been under foreign rule whether it was the Chinese empire, or the French or America acting for western democracy ideology.  ”From the perspective of the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese, it was a war to end foreign domination and reunite the two Vietnams.”[20] The people in North Vietnam were under a nationalistic uprising, while the people of the south was in conflict within the Saigon government.  Both the North and the South had major issues within their own governments.  The United States military was simply trying to make life better and help get the Chinese out of Vietnam, as they were supporting the North Vietnam army.  “You fools Don’t you realize what it means if the Chinese stay? Don’t you remember your history?  The last time the Chinese came, they stayed for one thousand years![21]  Ho Chi Minh would explain to his pro Chinese counter part of the North Vietnam Government.  “As for me I prefer to smell French shit for five years, rather than Chinese shit for the rest of my life.” This confusion within the government led the Vietnamese people to a conflicting point of view on both sides of the government in both North and South Vietnam.  Some of the Vietnamese people saw American’s as the enemy because of the psychological pressure put on the people by propaganda, put forth by the communist party in North Vietnam.  Patton would discuss a situation about his men helping a local village.  “Our generosity was often overlooked, “says Patton. 

“One time, in a village called Bing Co, elements of the 919-engineer company, which was organic to Blackhorse, were laying foundation for a new school and playground.  As a vehicle carrying water and food for the army troops approached, it hit a mine buried in the road, wounding two soldiers and destroying the vehicle.  The mine location must have been well known to some of the villagers. Yet, within thirty minutes of the incident other dedicated engineers were back outside to finish the playground job even without orders.”[22]

Despite the political views on either side, the military had developed a reason to be there in Vietnam, and that was helping the people.  Try to fix the constant destruction upon it because of the country’s history.  Helping the South Vietnamese people was not put forth by the United States government, but rather acts of kindness by Veterans.  “Few American’s arrived in Vietnam with a deep-seated commitment to help the people of South Vietnam, but most were convinced that helping the South Vietnamese was a central purpose to their mission.”[23]  The simple act of helping them build schools and Patton would go on to say that any operations that was happening in Vietnam, was a chance within itself.  “These were very delicate operations and any time one realized that the chances of success were perhaps 50 percent or less.”[24]  The Military members never asked questions, and always did what they were told and no matter how difficult the operation sounded, they did it with no questions asked.  Marine Lance Corporal Steven Shircliff who was a member of the Third Reconnaissance Battalion, would reflect on a call to battle his platoon got to return to the battlefield where they’d just fought, by saying “I can still remember those insane words to return.  Not only I, but everyone else who was left were in tears, shock, and disbelief.  It was unbelievable that we were being ordered back into the same hell we had just managed to survive.  But we followed orders.”[25]  Whether the political leaders of the time, kept sending our military service members back into the Jungle, or the massive media hit the service members got by having the war televised in America’s living room.  They could not see what Patton and many other veterans of Vietnam, saw before the conflict ended, including the North Vietnam leaders, one being Bao Dai who said “I saw Ho Chi Minh suffer.  He was fighting a battle within himself.  Ho had his own struggle.  He realized communism was not best for his country, but it was too late.  Ultimately, he could not overcome his allegiance to communism.”[26]  Communism was the best fit for the Vietnamese people to come together as one people and for the nationalistic side of individual’s became the forefront of their lives.  The North Vietnamese Army was not going to give up anytime soon and nothing was going to beat the belief in independence, even if communism was not the right answer, it was a solid starting point for the hope of combining to create one Vietnam.

 III. Fighting the Viet Cong

In George’s writings about the conflict, did he ever reflect on how the United States could be successful in Vietnam against the Viet Cong forces?  Fighting the North Vietnamese Army was an issue that was very complex.  George would explain in his thesis that the “the main force Viet Cong may be of either sex, in our out of uniform and of any age.  He may or may not be a communist party member.”[27]  The Vietnamese had been in this conflict for a very long time and it became a war of not only communist members, but the people of Vietnam.  Viet Cong forces, Patton wrote, were commanded by those before who have survived a western influence over the years and those leaders have used propaganda to gain the trust of mostly peasants.  “Communist ideology was not a significant motivating factor other than being the force that developed the propaganda that emerged as the primary weapon of this conflict.”[28]  The leaders of North Vietnam over the years, developed a strong hatred, grievances and a sense of adventure for their people to join against the westerns and their beliefs.  Although communism would not be good for the people in the long run, to reunite the two Vietnam’s it was the best fit.  They did not care if they were poor or rich, they just wanted to live in peace in their corner of the world.  

The Major General would go on to explain that the leaders of the Viet Cong, were a heroic figure for the people of Vietnam because they were “effective, dedicated, experienced and product of the law of survival.”[29]  Thus they have stood the tests of time and are true Vietnamese patriots.  The General would discuss the strong influence of self-criticism for a Vit Cong solider in Mai Xuan Phong’s diary states that “In my heart, I keep loyal to the party and people.  I am proud and happy.  For two days we have been short of food and had only glutinous rice.  The sun is burning hot.  Not enough drinking water.  But our patriotism and our determination to liberate will help us overcome all.”[30]  The General would go on to explain that “these extracts and reports merely demonstrate that complaint continues as a handmaiden of soldiering, and cannot be discounted as an influencing factor”[31]  George would explain that when things for the United States did not look good in Vietnam, examine the enemy and find what is not working for them as well for what is working for them.  “In the words of our greatest ally, “when things look bad and one’s own difficulties appear great, the best tonic is to consider those of the enemy.”[32]  When your plans are not going as the way you wanted them too, George believes that taking a deeper look at the enemy situation and status is a good way to figure out how to overcome one’s own difficulties in warfare.

The North Vietnamese Army never stopped training, no matter if that meant military or political training their minds.  “Main force military training consists of forty-five days with five days extra for cadres.  Fifteen days are for general military items and ten days are for tactics.  There is a separate training schedule for politics, this is about 20 days.”[33]  George would explain that in one of Ho Chi Min writings, unknowingly would write what he believes was a “western shortcoming in training for guerrilla war.”[34] In that the North Vietnamese knowingly knew what and how westerns trained for battle.  “To Train everybody for guerrilla warfare.  But in many localities time is devoted only to training or parade.  This is like practicing music for putting out a fire.”[35]  However, George believes that is was a political tactic for Ho Chi Minh and for his spread of communist propaganda as the main objective to reach the people and gain their support, since this was a major factor for the Viet Cong forces.  “Always returning to the importance of effective propaganda…but encourages go to the people to give them explanations.”[36]  He was a man of the people, much like most of the North Vietnam military leaders.  Patton also believes that there was nothing new and nothing about the Viet Cong military training that would make them super revolutionary.  “There is nothing starkly revolutionary about the Viet Cong military training.  On the other hand, it is training for revolutionaries, realistic and simple, reflecting the simple character of the trainee.”  That the main Viet Cong forces had not done anything new or different when it came to those before him.  The Vietnamese people were fighting for independence and would not stop because the North Vietnam government had made a “big promise”[37] to the people.  Another strong belief for the Viet Cong forces Patton believes is that to keep secrets and never reveal information.  “The Viet Cong are fairly good at security operations in general, and yet there are the diaries heretofore cited.”[38]  The Diaries of fallen Viet Cong forces would be a helpful tip inside of what they were thinking, planning and even sometimes their next moves Patton believes.

The Viet Cong soldier had the idea drilled into them, that to bear torture if captured.  Since the North Vietnam army refrains from believing in torture and to not torture others as well, Patton would explain that “Although it is certain that both sides have indulged in some cruelty, especially after sharp engagements, constant RVN efforts have achieved some improvement.”  Thus, torture and integrations are a part of warfare, so it some way or from it will make its way onto the battlefield.  After intense fighting and both sides are still filled with hate, anger and all kinds of emotions.  

When it came to supplies and weaponry, The Viet Cong forces did not have much.  George believes that “The Viet Cong are a have not force.  Therefore, what they do have they will secure and maintain, paying special attention to ordnance material, critical foodstuffs, and medical supplies.”[39]  As the conflict continues, they would try to capture the weapons and supplies they need and had been successful doing so.  The Vietnamese people had been in a conflict with each other and had been under a foreign rule for so long, that the need for supplies was always a need as the North Vietnam army would have to rely on civilian population and help.  George would explain that for the Viet Cong to have success in the future, they would have “to respect and help the civilian population.”  However, this was not always true because the survival of the Viet Cong was so important, George would explain that “The insurgent enemy is a combination of many things.  He is known to be a mixer of terror with days of help, murder with general education and falsity with kindness.  He is a pillager and a thief, yet sometimes a philanthropist.”[40]  The Viet Cong had to be all of this George believes, because they had to hide the political side of their mission, while being for the people like Ho Chi Minh and other Viet Cong leaders.  

While reflecting on her husbands’ military career, along with his War College Thesis Joanne Holbrook Patton would say that “My husband was always aware that there could have been other things done.  If we had gone further as a government to get to know Ho Chi Minh, might have been possible something better could have happened, wouldn’t have said he was all communist because first he was all Nationalist.”[41]  The United States propaganda put forth by the political leaders and their scare of the spread of communism, along with the media had turned Ho Chi Minh into a full blown Communist when in reality, he was all nationalist and wanted to unify the two Vietnam’s anyway he could, as this was the main objective for him.  

IV George’s view on Viet Cong philosophy

Patton would describe the Viet Cong philosophy for government as something to be conflicting within its own ideology.  That the United States could use the North Vietnam propaganda and beliefs as counter propaganda if it was placed in the hands of an expert.  “It’s is Questionable as to whether the reputation of either Ho or his government is indeed founded on fact.”[42]  Ho Chi Minh and his government relied on their Propaganda to gain a foundation for nationalism and a movement towards unity, as this was their main objective and hid communism from the people.   

Vietnam was being influenced by foreign countries in both the North and the South, while the United States was in the South, the North was facing two different enemies, the Chinese and the Soviet Union, George believes that a weakness could be found if the United States exploits those two countries.  “The Chinese intervention problem and this nation’s basic ideological disagreements with the Soviet Union might, if properly pressed and exploited by the free world, enfeeble the insurgency.”[43]  The Soviet Union and China had now placed the small nation of North Vietnam and their government into a dilemma, due to the Sino-Soviet split, Patton believes that it will “Force the small nation to cast her lot with one side or the other or follow an independent course which may be economically undesirable.”[44]  Doing this will open a weakness within the North Vietnam Government and allow the South and the United States to try to bring North Vietnam to the discussion table which is the only way George believes will be the only way North Vietnam can come out of the conflict with some form of victory.  That if the conflict was to continue.  The United States military, with the help of South Vietnam would over run the Viet Cong Military force.  George would write about how the Viet Cong “Must bring us to the conference table to win because a military victory is completely beyond their power”[45]  When it comes to military strategy, George would explain that we must fight the Viet Cong with their own tactics, Beat them at their own game and that the only way for this conflict to end was to meet at the table.  The time for that meeting, was never to happen as American political leaders pulled troops out of Vietnam in March 1973.

V. Conclusion 

“Find the Bastard and Pile on!”  was the standing order that George S. Patton gave his men who were a part of the 11thArmored Cavalry regiment.  George was hopefully that this conflict could be turned around with the right leaders in charge.  Joanne Holbrook Patton would go on to say “George was hopefully his favorite general Abrams, when appointed to take the place of Westmoreland, he would be able to turn things around.  But he hardly got started when everything was shut off.”[46]  When General Abrams finally got the command to lead, it was too late.  As troops returned home to an unpleasant welcome by American citizens.  “George was frustrated by the press showing that the Tet offensive was such a success for the North…not the whole story.”[47]  Success in Vietnam is very complex and frustrating, general Abrams finally got his chance to lead, but the effort in Vietnam had to come to an end, because of the pressure from the people at home and media not showing the whole conflict is something that George would take with him for the rest of his life.  George was a beloved soldier by so many and a fantastic father.  “He was a tolerant father, one time or another one of our children did something that was not what he wanted them to do but never deserted them.”[48]  Even after the conflict in Vietnam was over, the veterans who returned home took most of the blame for it because of the media and press of Vietnam.  He never let his feelings toward the conflict and political leaders get in the way of what meant more to him in life.  His duty to serve his country, and his duty to be the best father and husband he possibly could be.  True American hero.   

What do you think of George S. Patton and the Vietnam War? Let us know below.

[1] Autopsy of an unwinnable war Vietnam colonel Ret William C. Haponski with colonel Ret Jerry J. Burcham foreword by lieutenant General Ret Dave R. Palmer pg.241

[2] Bill McCloud, What Should We Tell Our Children? Norman: (The University of Oklahoma Press) 1989. Pg.98.

[3] Mark Bradley, (Vietnam at war New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) pg.8

[4] Christian G Appy. Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam. Pg.237

[5] Ibid pg.236

[6] Ibid

[7] Ibid

[8] Brain Sobel, George Smith Patton, and Joanne Holbrook Patton. The Fighting Patton’s. Bloomington: (Indiana University Press, 2013) pg.7  

[9] Lewis. Sorley Thunderbolt: General Creighton Abrams and the Army of His Times. Bloomington, IN: (Indiana University Press, 2008) Pg.300

[10] Ibid pg.120

[11] Gregory A. Daddis No Sure Victory Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War. New York: (Oxford University Press)2011

[12] (George S. Patton Thesis US Army War college April 1965) portrait of an insurgent: a study of the main force Vietnamese communist force 02.1591 pg.4

[13] Ibid pg.14

[14] Ibid pg.15

[15] The Fighting Patton’s pg.xv 

[16] (Thesis US Army War college April 1965) portrait of an insurgent: a study of the main force Vietnamese communist force 02.1591 pg.10

 [17] Briefing on my AWC thesis (the VC) 19 September 1964 1st version Patton family homestead archive file 02.289.02 

[18] Ibid 

[19] Ibid  

[20]James Stuart, and Randy Roberts. Where the Domino Fell: America and Vietnam, 1945-2010. Malden (Mass.): Wiley Blackwell, 2014. Pg113

[21] William Appleman. America in Vietnam: a Documentary History. W.W. Norton, 1985. Pg.94

[22] The Fighting Patton’s by Brain M. sobel pg.146

[23] Working Class War by Christian Appy pg.212

[24] The Fighting Patton’s. Pg.104

[25] Lawrence C. Vetter JR Never without Heroes Marine Third Reconnaissance Battalion in Vietnam. pg250

[26]Williams, William Appleman. America in Vietnam: A Documentary History. W.W. Norton, 1985. Pg.94

[27] (Thesis US Army War college April 1965) portrait of an insurgent: a study of the main force Vietnamese communist force 02.1591 pg.4

[28]Ibid pg87

[29] (Thesis US Army War college April 1965) portrait of an insurgent: a study of the main force Vietnamese communist force 02.1591 pg.84

[30] Ibid pg.67

[31] Ibid pg.68

[32] Ibid 

[33] (Thesis US Army War college April 1965) portrait of an insurgent: a study of the main force Vietnamese communist force 02.1591 pg.69

[34] Ibid pg.28

[35] Ibid

[36] Ibid 

[37] Ibid pg.94

[38] Ibid pg.71

[39] (Thesis US Army War college April 1965) portrait of an insurgent: a study of the main force Vietnamese communist force 02.1591 pg.73

[40] Ibid  

[41] Joanne Patton reflects on her husband’s war college thesis and his service.  In person with author February 28th, 2020, Interviewer Robert L McBroom Jr. interviewee Joanne Patton at 4:40

[42] (Thesis US Army War college April 1965) portrait of an insurgent: a study of the main force Vietnamese communist force 02.1591 pg.94

[43] Ibid pg.92

[44] Ibid pg.92

[45] Ibid pg.97 

[46] Personal interview Joanne Patton reflects on her husband’s war college thesis and his service. 28th February 2020, Interviewer Robert L McBroom Jr. interviewee Joanne Patton 8:09

[47]Ibid 8:36

[48] Ibid 12:02

Bibliography

Patton Family Homestead, Wenham Museum, Hamilton, Ma

Patton Family Archive collection  

Sobel, Brian, George Smith Patton, and Joanne Holbrook Patton. The Fighting Patton’s. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.

Personal interview Joanne Patton reflects on her husband’s war college thesis and his service. 28th February 2020, Interviewer Robert L McBroom Jr. interviewee Joanne Patton

Published Secondary Sources:

Appy, Christian G. Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam. United States: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Bradley, Mark, and Marilyn Blatt. Young. Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars: Local, National, and Transnational Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Bradley Mark Vietnam at war New York: Oxford University Press, 2009

Conley, Michael Charles. The Communist Insurgent Infrastructure in South Vietnam: A Study of Organization and Strategy. Washington: Center for Research in Social Systems, American University, 1967.

Daddis, Gregory A. No Sure Victory Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Duiker, William John. Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam. Boston: McGraw Hill, The Pennsylvania State University press, 1995.

Herring, George C. Americas Longest War: The United States and Vietnam. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.

Lawrence, Mark Atwood. The Vietnam War: An International History in Documents. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

McCloud, Bill. What Should We Tell Our Children? Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.

McKenna, Thomas P. Kontum: The Battle to Save South Vietnam. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015.

Palmer, Bruce. The 25 Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam. Lexington University Press Of Kentucky, 2002.

Summers, Harry G. On Strategy: the Vietnam War in Context. Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 1981.

Morningstar, James Kelly. Patton's Way: a Radical Theory of War. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2017

Olson, James Stuart, and Randy Roberts. Where the Domino Fell: America and Vietnam, 1945-2010. Malden (Mass.): Wiley Blackwell, 2014.

Sorley, Lewis. Vietnam Chronicles: The Abrams Tapes, 1968-1972 (Modern Southeast Asia Series). Lubbock TX: Texas Tech University Press, 2004.

Sorley, Lewis. The Vietnam War: An Assessment by South Vietnams Generals. Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 2010.

Sorley, Lewis. Thunderbolt: General Creighton Abrams and the Army of His Times. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008.

The Pioneering Soviet Espionage Device that was Active in the US Embassy in the USSR for Seven Years

‘The Thing’ is surely one of the most remarkable espionage devices in all history. Given to the Americans as World War II was closing, it managed to escape American notice for 7 years – despite being in the US Embassy in the USSA. And it took a lot longer for the West to uncover its secrets. But what was ‘The Thing’? And what did it do? Pitamber Kaushik explains.

The seal opened exposing the Soviet bugging device, ‘The Thing’, on display at the National Cryptologic Museum in Maryland, USA. Source: Austin Mills, available here.

Automated Doors, Manufacturing line tracking, Supermarket Product Tags, Credit Cards, and Passports are common places where you might encounter the humble RFID tag - a radio frequency identification tag whose information can be “read” using radio waves, a form of shortwave electromagnetic radiation. RFID tags are a crucial component of modern-day automation and information tracking, and were the very definition of “Smart” before the advent of the modern smartphone, and were in fact, a contender technology for realizing the ‘Internet of Things’. These nifty, effortless labels became commercially popular only in the last couple decades of the 20th century and hence it might come as a bit of a surprise to know that they essentially operate on World-War II technology. Its bulky forerunners were Radio Frequency Identification kits that were used in World War 2 fighter aircraft to prevent friendly fire. One aircraft’s radar would “illuminate” the other’s kit which would automatically communicate a signal indicating that it was on their side. This response needed no power source on the part of the latter - it drew its energy from the incident radiation.

As a token of appreciation, amity, and solidarity for their alliance in the Second World War, and a promise of maintaining them in its wake, the Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union, an organization of boys, presented a hand-carved two-foot wooden plaque of the Great Seal of the United States to the American ambassador to the Soviet Union W.A. Harriman, a month before the conclusion of the war. It was a natural procedure for the embassy office to meticulously scrutinize any inbound item but this souvenir without a trace of wiring or batteries seemed totally innocuous and did not appropriate a thorough dissection and consequent desecration. It was, after all, a harmless gift from enthusiastic children, and was thus gladly and dearly hung on the wall of Harriman’s study. Harriman gave it a privileged place in his private chambers since it was a welcome gesture from the Soviets. Or was it? The Americans had slightly underestimated Soviet engineering. They had fallen for the Trojan horse, admitting it into their most intimate quarters.

Leon Theremin, the inventor of the eponymous no-contact electronic musical instrument, was compelled to work in the Soviet Experimental Design Bureau, a specialized espionage department. It was here that he had designed the Buran eavesdropping system, a sophisticated device that cast infrared rays on windowpanes from a distance, in order to “listen to” conversations inside the room via the vibrations induced by them on the glass - a technology that Lavrentiy Beria, the Head of the Soviet Secret Police would use to eavesdrop on the British, French, and American embassies, as well as allegedly, on Stalin himself. It was also Theremin who had designed the minimalistic bug that was concealed in the plaque. It was a passive device, meaning it needed no attached power source. When the Soviets irradiated it with radio waves, it responded to them, at other times remaining inanimate, making it very difficult to detect. It derived its operational impetus from the inbound “interrogating” signal and “answered” to it utilizing the signal’s own energy.

The device being inconspicuous in size and structure and spontaneously operational (staying dead-silent when not being tapped into), it didn’t catch the notice of anyone at the office for a long time. It remained dead until it was activated by the right frequency Soviet interrogation waves, upon which it reacted to the sounds around it (sounds varied its ‘capacitance’, encoding their waveforms into its outbound signal) and relayed them to the Soviets in its retransmitted signal. The Soviets sent out a characteristic signal which would be regenerated by the device, now enclosed in the envelope of the signal of the sound in the room. The audio transmission from the room would be superposed over (act as a container for) the communicating signal. The Soviets would disentangle their own rebounded communication wave from the characteristic frequency from the encoded signal in a process called demodulation, extracting the audio from the room. Put simply, whenever the Soviets cast the appropriate signal upon it, the device conveyed the sounds of the room encoded in the same signal back to them.

Its simplistic design and passive nature gave it a veritably unlimited operational life. It would be seven years before the device would be discovered, during the tenure of George Keenan, owing to an accidental reception by an operator at the British Embassy when the Soviets were illuminating the device. In the meantime, it would have relayed much of the vital contents of Harriman’s private conversations. Upon its discovery, two State Department Employees were dispatched to the USSR in order to conduct a “sweep” of American, British, and Canadian embassy buildings to check for other bugs. Its discovery sparked a frenzy of emulation, improvisation, and progressive development of radio signal-based eavesdropping devices on the Western side. Such was the precisely frugal ingenuity of the device that even upon discovery and procurement, it befuddled American scientists, working on comprehending and possibly emulating it, for quite some time. It appeared to have several resonant frequencies, relied on both Amplitude Modulation and Frequency Modulation, and its membrane was so sensitive that it was damaged during the American probe of the device and had to be replaced. It would be years before the British and the Americans would develop a reliable, pulsed cavity resonator of their own. The Western vexation at the elusively designed device is palpable in the name it was given – ‘The Thing’.

What do you think of ‘The Thing’? Let us know below.

Bernard Freyberg: The New Zealand World War I Hero who Failed to Defend Crete in 1941

For the Greek public, the 1941 Battle of Crete is known for the wrong decisions made by the British commanders, so leading to an Axis victory. The tactical mistakes of the British were critical in allowing the occupation of the island by the Nazis and were caused by the decisions of high-ranking officers like General Bernard Freyberg. But who was this General? And why is he a hero in his native New Zealand? Here, Manolis Peponas looks at the life of Bernard Freyberg.

Bernard Freyberg (right) during the Battle of Crete in May 1941

Bernard Freyberg was born in London in 1889 but moved to New Zealand with his parents in 1891. When he was a young man, he became famous as a swimmer. In March 1914 he moved to the USA and, after that, to Mexico where he participated in the Mexican Revolution. In the summer of 1914, he was informed about the beginning of World War I and decided to enlist in the British Army. That was the starting point of a successful military career.[i]

Freyberg fought on the Western Front and in the Gallipoli Campaign. He was wounded nine times and became one of the most decorated young officers in his homeland. For example, he won a Distinguished Service Order (DSO) because he swam ashore in the Gulf of Saros and diverted Turkish attention from the main landing, at Bulair in Gallipoli in April 1915. In 1916, he won the Victoria Cross for his heroic acts at the Battle of the Somme. During the interwar period he worked mainly in staff positions, and in 1937, he was obliged to retire because of a heart problem.[ii]

World War II

Following the outbreak of World War II, Freyberg again offered his services to the New Zealand government. Immediately, he was appointed as the commander of the 2nd New Zealand Division which took part in battles in Greece, North Africa, and Italy.[iii]

Winston Churchill said about Freyberg:

“I had suggested to the C.I.G.S.[iv] that General Freyberg should be placed in command of Crete, and he proposed this to Wavell, who had immediately agreed. Bernard Freyberg and I had been friends for many years. The Victoria Cross and the D.S.O. with two bars marked his unsurpassed service, and like his only equal, Carton de Wiart, he deserved the title of ‘Salamander’. Both thrived in fire, and were literally shot to pieces without being affected physically or in spirit. At the outset of the war no man was more fitted to command the New Zealand Division, for which he was eagerly chosen.”[v]

In Crete in May 1941, the New Zealand major general believed that he was to face an invasion from the sea, so he created a plan that was wrong from the start – the German invasion was in fact mainly airborne. Also, he did not give the right orders for the support of the Commonwealth’s troops who defended the Maleme airfield. However, Freyberg was not the only one responsible for the fall of Crete; he had to command a varied and badly equipped army, without the RAF’s support or the necessary artillery battalions.[vi] This meant that despite the Allied loss in the Battle of Crete, as recognition of his service, he added a third bar to his DSO and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general.

After the Allied victory in the war, the retired high-ranking officer was appointed Governor-General of New Zealand, a position he served from 1946 to 1952. After that, he returned to Britain where he acted as Deputy Constable and Lieutenant Governor in charge of Windsor Castle. He died in Windsor on July 4, 1963 following the rupture of one of his many wounds. Today, he is a national hero for the people of New Zealand.[vii]

What do you think of Bernard Freyberg? Let us know below.

[i]         Ewer, Peter (2010). Forgotten Anzacs: The Campaign in Greece, 1941. Scribe Publications. p. 30.

[ii]        ‘Bernard Freyberg', URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/people/bernard-freyberg, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 8-Nov-2017. Retrieved 5-5-2020.

[iii]               'Freyberg given command of 2NZEF', URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/bernard-freyberg-assumes-command-of-the-nz-expeditionary-force, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 17-Nov-2016. Retrieved 5-5-2020.

[iv]               C.I.G.S.: Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

[v]       Churchill, Sir Winston (1959). Memoirs of the Second World War. Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 441.

[vi]      Barber, Laurie. “Freyberg and Crete: the Australasian Perspective”, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, Vol. 72, No. 292 (Winter 1994), pp. 247-254.

[vii]     ‘Bernard Freyberg', URL: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/people/bernard-freyberg, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 8-Nov-2017. Retrieved 5-5-2020.

How did Nazi Germany Treat Mixed Race People?

The German Nazi Party is responsible for some of the greatest atrocities in all history, notably the Holocaust in which around 6 million Jews were killed. But in Nazi Germany what happened to mixed race, or ‘Mischlinge’ people - that is people who were partly Jewish and partly not Jewish by descent? Seth Eislund explores this question by looking at the work of three historians.

Erhard Milch, who was in charge of Nazi Germany’s aircraft production in World War II. His father was Jewish and his mother was not Jewish.

From its inception in 1920, the German Nazi Party saw the Jews as an “anti-race” that threatened to destroy the purity of German blood. Following Adolf Hitler’s assumption of power in 1933, the Nazi government legalized its racist anti-Semitism with the 1935 Nuremberg Laws. In addition to discriminating against Jews, these laws created a racial category called “Mischling,”[1] or “mixed-race,” for Germans of partial Jewish descent. There were different classifications of Mischling depending on how much “Jewish blood” a person possessed. A “full Jew” had three or more Jewish grandparents, a “Mischling First Degree” (a “half-Jew”) had two Jewish grandparents, and a “Mischling Second Degree” (a “quarter-Jew”) had one Jewish grandparent.[2] While Nazi legislation defined who a Mischling was, what was the regime’s policy towards Mischlinge, and how was this policy enforced? Historians Peter Monteath, Bryan Mark Rigg, and Thomas Pegelow provide compelling answers to this question. While the three scholars use different methodologies to examine Nazi policy towards Mischlinge, they agree that such policy was inconsistent and vacillated between persecution, semi-toleration, and racial reclassification.

Monteath’s Approach: A Social Analysis

Drawing on extensive oral history research, Peter Monteath argues that Nazi legislation towards Mischlinge displayed a clear disconnect between ideology and practice, and that Mischlinge consequently lived anxious and tumultuous lives. Monteath observes that there were two main schools of thought regarding Nazi Mischling policy. The first school tended towards a pragmatic integration of Mischlinge into German society. This form of thinking led to the opening of the draft to Mischlinge in 1935, and the declaration of “mixed marriages” as privileged and protected against anti-Semitic persecution in 1938.[3] The second school of thought, however, was more radical. Its adherents saw Mischlinge as equivalent to Jews, and therefore they needed to be removed from Germany. These party radicals pushed for violent measures against Jews, such as pogroms like Kristallnacht.[4] These integrationist and radical schools of thought manifested themselves in local Nazi policy. For instance, certain German cities, like Dortmund and Hamburg, gave illegitimate half-Jewish children a “German upbringing,” while Königsberg saw such children as thoroughly “semitised” in blood and mentality.[5] Furthermore, at the infamous Wannsee Conference of 1942, its attendees agreed on conflicting resolutions to “the Mischling Question.” It was agreed that half-Jews should be treated as “full Jews,” while Mischlinge married to Germans with Aryan blood should be exempted from being treated as Jews.[6] Similar to the Nazi government’s inconsistent policy towards them, Mischlinge lived uncertain and anxious lives. They existed in a grey area between the racial categories of “Jewish” and “Aryan,” and faced persecution ranging from daily slights to the deportation and mass murder of relatives and friends.[7] Thus, Monteath convincingly argues that Nazi Mischling policy and the lives of Mischlinge were incoherent and chaotic.

Rigg’s Approach: Mischlinge in the Military

While Monteath does an excellent job of describing the specificities and constant uncertainty of Mischling life and policy in Nazi Germany, his analysis overlooks a key aspect of the Nazi regime: the military. However, Bryan Mark Rigg provides a thorough examination of Nazi policy towards Mischling soldiers in the Third Reich, which he calls “a maze of confusion and contradictions.”[8] According to Rigg, the Nazis either persecuted or tolerated Mischling soldiers based on their perceived loyalty and importance to the regime, which varied widely on an individual basis. Rigg states that despite their Jewish ancestry, half-Jews and quarter-Jews were legally allowed to serve in the German military until 1940.[9] However, they were forbidden from becoming non-commissioned officers or officers without the personal approval of Adolf Hitler. Hence, due to their Jewish blood, Mischling soldiers were not allowed to advance in rank. Their Aryan commanders, who were their superiors in rank and blood, were destined to command them. Thus, the Nazis saw Mischlinge as useful to their military goals but refused to treat them as equal to Aryan soldiers due to their Jewish ancestry. However, Mischling soldiers were treated far better than their Jewish parents, who lost their jobs and civil liberties due to Nazi legislation.[10] This demonstrates a disconnect between the Nazi treatment of “full Jews” and Mischlinge. While a “full Jew’s” blood was completely tainted, a Mischling possessed some Aryan blood and could therefore serve the Third Reich. While Hitler eventually decided to expel all half-Jews from the German military in 1940, he made several exceptions. Hitler personally signed thousands of special permission forms that “allowed [half-Jews] who had proven themselves in battle…  to [remain] with their units.”[11] This demonstrates that Hitler approved of veteran half-Jewish soldiers more than he did ordinary half-Jewish soldiers, as their extensive service demonstrated their loyalty and utility to the regime. Thus, Rigg makes the potent observation that, in military terms, Nazi policy towards Mischlinge was influenced by an individual soldier’s perceived devotion and significance to the regime based on their decoration and experience in combat.

Pegelow’s Approach: The Language of Nazi Racial Categories

Although he reaches similar conclusions to Monteath and Rigg, Thomas Pegelow’s analysis differs from theirs. Instead of examining the social or military aspects of Nazi policy towards Mischlinge, he examines the language behind Nazi racial categories, arguing that “Racial discourses were not static, but were constantly remade.”[12] Pegelow focuses on the Reich Kinship Office (RSA), which was created in 1933 with the mission of “determining people’s ‘racial descent’ in cases of doubt.”[13] The RSA’s decisions about a person’s racial descent had severe consequences: being designated as “Aryan” resulted in one’s safety while being designated as “Jewish” resulted in one’s death in a concentration camp. Mischlinge knew this, and many tried to avoid persecution by publicly disputing their Jewish ancestry with the RSA.[14] Pegelow’s portrayal of Mischlinge corroborates Monteath’s argument that Mischlinge lived frantic lives due to their ambiguous status in Nazi policy. Consequently, Pegelow argues that the RSA committed “linguistic violence” against Mischlinge. This was because the RSA constructed racial categories through language, such as the German Volk and the Jewish race, and it used language to determine who was a member of each group.[15] The RSA excluded some Mischlinge from the Volk, thereby condemning them to persecution and death. However, they also declared 4,100 Mischlinge, or 7.9% of all Mischlinge who petitioned for racial evaluations, to be legally Aryan.[16] Thus, the RSA’s classification of over 4,000 Mischlinge as Aryan demonstrates that Nazi policy towards Mischlinge was inconsistent. The category of “Mischling” was fluid and ambiguous, and it’s meaning changed depending on the individual Nazi official who interpreted it. Some Nazis associated Mischlinge with the Aryan side of the racial spectrum, while others saw Mischlinge and Jews as identical.

Conclusion

Peter Monteath, Bryan Mark Rigg, and Thomas Pegelow’s research demonstrates that Nazi policy was inconsistent towards Mischlinge, as it shifted between persecution, quasi-toleration, and conflicting racial definitions. According to Monteath, Nazi officials contested the status of Mischlinge: some party members advocated for the integration of Mischlinge into German life, while others saw them as “full Jews” and pushed for their removal from Germany. Mischlinge lived similarly incongruous and anxious lives: they suffered varying degrees of persecution and constantly worried that they would face imprisonment and death. Similarly, Rigg observes that even Hitler’s policy towards Mischlinge serving in the German military was contradictory. While Hitler discriminated against Mischling soldiers by preventing them from serving as NCOs or officers, he signed thousands of forms that allowed battle-hardened Mischlinge to continue fighting during the Second World War. Lastly, Pegelow argues that Nazi racial categories, such as “German” and “Jewish,” were linguistically constructed and therefore subject to constant change. Nazi functionaries defined Mischlinge, who occupied an uncertain place within the Nazi racial hierarchy, as either Aryan or Jewish based solely on their individual assumptions. Thus, the inconsistency of Nazi policy towards Mischlinge reflected the latter’s ambiguous status in the Third Reich. For the Nazis, Mischlinge were members of a contradictory and perplexing racial category, a bizarre mix of the most superior race and the most inferior race, and Nazi policy towards them was equally paradoxical.

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

[1] In German, “Mischling” is singular and “Mischlinge” is plural.

[2] Peter Monteath, “The ‘Mischling’ Experience in Oral History,” The Oral History Review 35, no. 2 (2008): 142, www.jstor.org/stable/20628029.

[3] Monteath, 142-143.

[4] Monteath, 143.

[5] Monteath, 144.

[6] Monteath, 144-145.

[7] Monteath, 154.

[8] Bryan Mark Rigg, “Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers,” in Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, ed. Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012), 123.

[9] Rigg, 119-121.

[10] Rigg, 119-120.

[11] Rigg, 121.

[12] Thomas Pegelow, “Determining ‘People of German Blood’, ‘Jews’ and ‘Mischlinge’: The Reich Kinship Office and the Competing Discourses and Powers of Nazism, 1941-1943,” Contemporary European History 15, no. 1 (2006): 43, www.jstor.org/stable/20081294.

[13] Pegelow, 44.

[14] Pegelow, 45.

[15] Pegelow, 46.

[16] Pegelow, 64.

Bibliography

Monteath, Peter. “The ‘Mischling’ Experience in Oral History.” The Oral History Review 35, no. 2 (2008): 139-58. Accessed April 23, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/20628029.

Pegelow, Thomas. “Determining ‘People of German Blood’, ‘Jews’ and ‘Mischlinge’: The Reich 

Kinship Office and the Competing Discourses and Powers of Nazism, 1941-1943.” Contemporary European History 15, no. 1 (2006): 43-65. Accessed April 23, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/20081294.

Rigg, Bryan Mark. “Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers.” In Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, edited by Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth, 118-126. New York: Berghahn Books, 2012.