Author Archives: jsh54

Taiwan Troubles.

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            Is Zi Jinping a conventional/traditional “Marxist” leader, bent upon using China’s immense power to advance the world revolution?  Or is Zi Jinping a conventional/traditional Chinese emperor, bent upon using China’s immense power to shatter the American-created international system?  Does it matter?  It is an axiom that you plan for the capabilities of other players, not for their intentions. 

            Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has been the most powerful and most influential nation in Asia.  That power and influence has rested on military superiority, economic dynamism, the sheer appeal of America’s values in comparison to those of its rivals, and strategic alliance-building.  Chief among these allies have been Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan. 

            The murkiest of these alliances has been the alliance with Taiwan.  When the Communists won the Chinese Civil War in 1949, many of the defeated Kuomintang (KMT or “Nationalist”) supporters retreated to the island of Taiwan.  Long a Chinese possession, it had been conquered by Japan in one that country’s early forays into imperialism.  Still, at first it seemed that the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) would soon complete the reconquest of territory lost to imperialist during the dark hours of China’s impotence.  After the Korean War began, the United States recognized Taiwan as an independent state.  The KMT created a separate Chinese state, then build a prosperous industrial economy, and eventually moved toward democracy.  In sum, Taiwan is far more of a legitimate state than it was in 1949.  Richard Nixon’s “opening” to China pushed the US-Taiwan relationship into “strategic ambiguity.”  China has always intended to retake Taiwan, just as it intended to retake Hong Kong.  The United States had an interest in Taiwan remaining independent.  The US and China had a big stake in not coming to blows over Taiwan.  So all sides let things sit.  See what shook out. 

            What shook out was Zi Jinping.  China’s “Belt and Road” infrastructure initiative, military build-up, and the forced change in status of Hong Kong illustrate his determination to reshape the Asian order to China’s advantage.  Now alarm bells are ringing over Taiwan.[1] 

            By what means might China seek to establish control over Taiwan?  Would it begin by fomenting some kind of low-intensity conflict?  Would it just cut to the chase by staging an out-right invasion with overwhelming force?  Would the Taiwanese fight?  Do they have the means to mount an effective resistance?  How would the United States respond?  Would it huff and puff, then accept Chinese conquest as happened with Hong Kong?  Would it adapt the same policy as it has done with Ukraine: supplying arms, money, and intelligence while avoiding direct involvement?  Would it decide that Taiwan is the Czechoslovakia “of our time”?[2]  If the United States did fight, what would be the outcome?  Could it win a “conventional” (i.e. non-nuclear) war in the Western Pacific and Far East?  How great is the danger that a conventional war could slide into a nuclear war—of uncertain magnitude? 

            Is there an alternative?  Perhaps, but anything that looks like or amounts to backing down would most likely have a devastating impact on America’s other alliances in Asia.       

[1] See, for example, Elbridge Colby, The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict (2021).  On Colby, see: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elbridge-colby-7484a0168/details/experience/ 

[2] That analogy has gotten us into trouble before.  See: Vietnam. 

My Weekly Reader 6 June 2022.

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            Stories of individual historical events, the more dramatic the better, command the attention of readers.  Yet those striking events always happen in some larger context that includes cause, effect, and related events happening elsewhere.  Stepping back from the individual event to see the context in which it occurred provides greater understanding.[1]  The farther one steps back, the more the dramatic events recede as the larger patterns emerge.  Always there is a trade-off and the question of where to strike the balance. 

            During the Nineteenth Century, the West rapidly industrialized and international trade grew by leaps and bounds.  These advances required an improved system of reliable and fair international payments.  Answering this need, the Gold Standard set an exchange rate against gold for every country’s national currency.  So nations acquiring gold got piled on top of the eternal human quest for “the color.”  Fortunately for the developing world economy, there were major gold strikes in California (1848), Australia (1851), and South Africa (1886) among many other places.[2]  Gold greased the wheels of economic growth, while creating individual fortunes.[3] 

            They also created unanticipated effects.  The lure of gold drew in many immigrants from distant parts.[4]  Westerners were not alone in seeking their fortunes in a new land.  In the mid-Nineteenth Century, a gigantic civil war racked Qing China. The “Taiping Rebellion” spread death, starvation, disease, and poverty throughout the empire.  Hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrated all over the Pacific.[5]  Some went to the United States, some went to Australia, many went to other places.  Later, others would attempt to go to South Africa. 

            All these were White-ruled societies busily resting control of the lands’ resources from indigenous inhabitants.  They both needed cheap labor and despised the Asian immigrants who would provide it.  Appearance, language, religion, and culture all set the two groups apart from one another.  The white working class and middle class took an especially harsh view of the “coolie labor” that they believed undermined their own efforts at self-enrichment.  Anti-Chinese violence followed in many places.  Both seeking to profit from this hatred and to restore order, politicians stepped forward to give voice to the concerns of the working man.  The American “Chinese Exclusion Act” (1882-1943), the South African Asian exclusion policy (1880s-1980s), and the “White Australia” policy (1901-1973) all manifested this fear of Chinese competition. 

            All this happened in the distant past and most vestiges of the age in laws have been removed.  Yet people still fear Asian states when they become economically powerful, as has been the case with Japan in the Seventies[6] and China today.  The competition is seen as “unfair.” 

[1] The first two essays in Gerhard Weinberg, World in the Balance: Behind the Scenes of World War II (1981) provide a clear and concise introduction to the essential strategic problems of the war.  Steven Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century (1958) uses a small event—the Sicilian massacre of occupying French troops—to examine the complex politics of Medieval Europe, the Papacy, and the Byzantine Empire. 

[2] For an extensive list, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_rush 

[3] As Montgomery Burns chortled, “We’ll be rich as Nazis!”

[4] My great-great grandfather had left his family home in Rhode Island for the “West” of the 1830s and 1840s, the Ohio River valley.  When news came of the gold strike at Sutter’s Mill, he hot-footed it to California. 

[5] Mae Ngai, The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics (2021).  Reviewed by Andrew Graybill, WSJ, 12 August 2021. 

[6] Herman Kahn, The Japanese Challenge (1979); Rush Doshi, The Long Game (2021). 

Zion Island 26.

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            Henry Picker, editor, Heydrich’s Table-Talk (1973).  (My translation.) 

            Gruppenfuhrer Klein (extract):  “Well, you know, he wasn’t prone to run on at the mouth.  Not like some people, as I’m sure you know.  Not likely to surround himself with suck-ups either, who would put up with harangues.  Much more terse.  More like those Spartan fellows I’ve read about.  Laconic. 

            Still, sometimes over brandy after dinner he would say things after Lina [Mrs. Heydrich] had taken the ladies away.  Once, I don’t remember the date, he said something like “Perhaps the Fuhrer was wrong.  To let them go, I mean.  They are still very powerful in Britain.  Even more so in America.  No, we have not finished with the struggle.”  Something like that anyway.  Then we rejoined the ladies.  Generally for singing.  He loved music.” 

Biden and China.

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            Sailors were the first Americans to reach the Pacific and the Far East: fur traders in Nootka Sound, tea clippers in China, whalers in the South and Central Pacific, and Commodore Perry’s squadron “opening” Japan to the West.  All this happened while the rest of the country was pre-occupied with other matters: industrialization, immigration, urbanization, civil war, and territorial expansion across the continent.  The two strands came together at the end of the Nineteenth Century.  The Spanish-American War (1898) made the United States a territorial power in the Pacific and Asia (Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines).  American Christian missionaries joined those of Western European nations.  The “China Market” became an even more attractive lure for American industry.  Still, American interests and ideals combined to oppose anyone ripping China to shreds.  Instead, the United States defended the idea of the “Open Door.”  All nations should have an equal right to trade in China, while the Chinese Empire should preserve its territorial integrity. 

Color lithograph by J.S. Pughe – Library of Congress – https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2012647332/ , Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-ppmsca-28534Color lithograph by J.S. Pughe – Library of Congress – https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2012647332/ , Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-ppmsca-28534

            During the Twentieth Century, the central question in the Far Eastern policy of the United States became how to prevent any one power from dominating Asia to the detriment of the United States.   At first, this meant opposing Imperial Japan’s expansionist appetite.  That appetite seemed to grow over time, from the “Fifteen Demands” levied on China during the First World War to the seizure of Manchuria to outright invasion of China to the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” of the Second World War. 

Then the United States shifted to opposing Communist expansionism in Asia.  At the time, many disasters befell American military policy: the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, fighting to a draw in Korea, being defeated in Vietnam.  Over time, however, a different strand of American policy succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its exponents.  The U.S. supported societies engaged in rapid economic development.  As time passed, and in uneven measure, they became democracies.  Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines have become important American partners in the Far East.  Mot striking of all, since the Nixon Administration’s “opening” to the Peoples Republic of China, Beijing has profited enormously from the American-led system. 

More recently, that system has appeared to be in decay.  First, a series of poor presidents with deficient understanding of foreign affairs left the American system badly led for almost thirty years.[1]  Second, the 9/11 attacks required a devastating response against Islamist terrorism, but the decisions to extend that riposte into a long-run nation-building operation in Afghanistan and a disastrous invasion of Iraq soaked up American blood, treasure, and attention.  Third, the United States has been undermined by prolonged economic and social crises that defy easy solution.[2]  The current evening news broadcasts showing the United States Air Force flying advanced weapons to Ukraine and flying foreign baby formula to the United States nicely captures some of our issues.[3]  In any event, it isn’t difficult to understand why American leadership has come under challenge from Russia and China first and foremost, but also by lesser countries which once consulted Washington.[4] 

The Biden administration has now announced steps to reform the post-war American international system to better address the challenge from China.[5]  Declaring that the 2020s will be a “decisive decade,” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced that the United States will work hard to rebuild economic and diplomatic bonds with long-time allies.  The proposed revival falls short on some details and will take time to implement.  Moreover, it is beyond Blinken’s authority to offer a plan for addressing the underlying problems of America.  Nevertheless, partly from preference for the American system and partly from fear of China, there seems to be a deep well of support in the Indo-Pacific region for an American return. 

[1] Bill Clinton (1992-2000), George W. Bush (2000-2008), Barack Obama (2008-2016), and Donald Trump (2016-2020).  Three normal children and one feral child. 

[2] This subject could fill and book and has.  Many, actually.  For social issues, see: https://bookriot.com/100-must-read-books-understanding-u-s-social-policy/  It is perhaps telling about the nature of the crises that it is much easier to find a long list of books on contemporary social problems than it is to find a similar list about American economic problems.  In other words, Americans are better informed about their social problems (almost always to be solved by throwing money at them) than they are about their economic problems (which is where the money will come from). 

[3] Or perhaps I just sent too much time watching the recent George Carlin documentary. 

[4] Notably Israel and Saudi Arabia, but now the Solomon Islands as well. 

[5] Walter Russell Mead, “Blinken’s Indo-Pacific Blueprint,” WSJ, 31 May 2022. 

Zion Island 25.

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John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, Massachusetts. 

Papers of John F. Kennedy.  Pre-Presidential Files.  House of Representatives Files. 

Series 01.1. Boston Office General Correspondence, 1947-1952.  Box 0002.  Folder: “Cape Cod: South Wellfleet: Extension of Gunnery Area.”  [NB: Evidently misfiled.] 

Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

J. Edgar Hoover, “Personal Files.” 

October 3, 1951. 

Dear Roy,

            I had a marvelous time!  Where do you find them? 

            Talked it over with Bobby.  He’s very enthusiastic.  Trying to get rid of the perverts matches well with the anti-Commie thing that you and the Senator have been working.  I’ve got my own list already, starting with Offie[1] and that snotty writer who’s tangled up—somehow—in the whole Bouvier-Auchincloss mess.[2] 

            Just between you and me, I get the feeling that the Birdman[3] feels the same way about this.  I’ll probably get a lot of backing on this from Hoover as well.  He’s ferocious on the subject.  I tried calling him today, but Gandy[4] said he was out of the office. 

Also, it gives me something distinct of my own to run on.  I won’t be just feeding off the Senator’s work.  Which reminds me.  Have you read Agar’s new book The Price of Union?[5]  Wonderful!  It set me to thinking about those brave men who have defied their party and the whole political system to follow their conscience.  Maybe I’ll write something on that theme.  If I do, count on the Senator being included. 

Best regards, Jack.

[1] Carmel Offie (b. 1909): Department of State, 1931-1948; Central Intelligence Agency, 1948-1950. 

[2] Possibly Gore Vidal (b. 1925). 

[3] Reference unclear. 

[4] Helen Gandy (b. 1897), F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover’s personal secretary. 

[5] Herbert Agar, The Price of Freedom: The Influence of the American Temper on the Course of History (1950). 

Guns Again and Alas.

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            “Troubled people” abound in any advanced society.  The vast majority do not engage in mass-killings.  So far, we have not found a way to predict which “troubled people” will turn into mass murderers.  Therefore, while more spending on mental health issues would be welcome, it isn’t a serious solution to the problem at this time.  What would be “common sense” solutions in the here and now?  “Sick of Massacres?  Get Rid of the Guns” wrote the New York Times columnist Gail Collins on 18 May 2022.  Same thing goes for the vastly more numerous “ordinary’ gun homicides and suicides. 

The United (for the moment) Kingdom suffered mass shootings in 1987 and 1996.  After the first, it banned assault-style rifles; after the second it banned most hand-guns.  The firearm ownership rate has fallen to 5/100 people and the gun homicide rate is at 0.7/million people.  Australia suffered a series of mass-shootings which culminated in a particularly bad one in 1996.  The country imposed a mandatory gun buy-back, then melted down about a million weapons.  The gun buy-back was not universal: it required the surrender of semi-automatic rifles and certain kinds of shotguns.  This reduced the stock of weapons in private hands by 20-30 percent.  Those policies have been followed by a near-absence of mass-shootings.  Canada had long required the licensing and registration of hand-guns.  After a mass killing in 1989, these procedures were extended to rifles and shotguns.  The same thing happened in Norway. 

American gun control advocates emphasize that in the wake of mass murders, people willingly surrendered or agreed to do without firearms.  They seem to count upon the intense emotional revulsion that follows these crimes.  Make no mistake: these countries have engaged in a large-scale disarmament of the population.  That is what it takes to drive down both gun homicide rates and mass killings.  American gun-rights advocates understand this, even if gun-control advocates will not come right out and say so.  For example, a recent “Interpreter” article in the New York Times described the mass weapons bans as merely “tighten[ing] gun control laws.”[1]  Is it possible that gun-owners believe that a) gun control advocates are liars and that b) accepting any controls on guns will just lead to a near-complete ban on all guns? 

The Canadian restrictions on rifles and shot-guns only came into effect six years after the mass killing and were repealed in 2012.  Norwegian restrictions on semi-automatic rifles came into effect seven years after the mass killing.  Australian gun-ownership rates and gun-related homicides have all begun to rebound (at least for the moment) in spite of the restrictions.  There have been two terrible mass killings in Britain since the restrictions. 

One common feature of the gun restrictions in the wake of mass shootings is that they were pushed by conservative governments.  Legal gun-owners in America seem to be one-party voters in the same way as Blacks are one party-voters.  Already, a large majority of Americans favor restrictions on access to guns.  One of these days, the political balance is going to tip.  When that happens, the nightmares of legal gun owners are going to come true.  If the Republican Party could fashion a package of “common sense” reforms to gun ownership, they might be able to bargain.  Let the ATF off the leash to cut access to firearms by those who do most of the “ordinary” killing (and dying), and raise the legal age for gun-ownership.  

[1] Max Fisher, “After Mass Shootings, Other Countries Acted To Change Direction,” NYT, 26 May 2022. 

Quake.

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            Future historians may one day write about the “Trump Revolution” in foreign policy.  President Trump broke with cajoling and complaining to China about its predatory economic policies.  He chose tariffs, the harassment of major Chinese corporations, and a diplomatic warm-up with Taiwan.  The Biden administration has, so far, stuck with those policies or even extended them.  President Trump broke with just trying to coerce North Korea through decades of ineffective economic sanctions.  He chose to talk to the North Korean dictator after North Korea demonstrated that it had acquired both inter-continental ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons in spite of those sanctions.  He did this in spite of much expert opinion that the barbarian Kim should not have been allowed an audience with the emperor without having made some kind of offer of tribute.  Now, President Biden has expressed a willingness to meet with Kim.  President Trump openly disparaged the value of NATO (as opposed to Britain) and behaved rudely when Angela Merkel came to call.  President Biden leads a revived NATO not because Vladimir Putin launched a war of aggression in Ukraine, but because the Ukrainian people chose to fight and have a leader of commanding moral authority. 

            The Biden administration and those that come after it [1]will have to deal with the Trump legacy, but also with current and future problems.[2]  Covid, the troubles of global supply-chains, pressures to shift off Russian energy exports, and now Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian food exports look to have unpredictable long-term consequences as well as harsh short-term ones. 

            One lesson for all concerned might be that advanced countries that depend upon imported  energy sources (oil, natural gas) give hostages to fortune.  At the moment, that energy comes from Russia (in the case of Central and Western Europe) and the Persian Gulf (in the case of China).  That dependence opens energy-importers to pressure from the exporters.  Over the long-run, European countries that substitute American energy sources for Russian ones merely make those countries vulnerable to American pressure.  While the Messiah tarries on “green” energy, it is possible that nuclear power will become the energy source of choice for those desiring national or regional independence.  Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island offer alarming examples of what can go wrong, but that doesn’t mean that people will not find solutions.[3]

            American politics seems to have been tilting toward protectionism since the Trump administration.[4]  Yet protectionism clashes with the American-sponsored international economic system created since the Second World War.  Individuals in many foreign countries are powerfully attracted by American democracy and economic opportunity.  Hence the tide of immigration that is one force troubling American policy.  That isn’t the same as many foreign countries being attracted by those things.  This matters because a dynamic American economy that is open to foreign goods plays a vital role in holding other countries to American leadership.  Most of America’s current economic troubles—chiefly inflation—will pass in a few years.  Will the United States still be a pro-free trade nation afterward? 

            “Hope for the best, plan for the worst.” 

[1] Please God, not Kamala Harris. 

[2] Walter Russell Mead, “Managing a World Order in Crisis,” WSJ, 24 May 2022. 

[3] For example, figure out everything that the Soviets did, then don’t do any of those things. 

[4] Please God, not “the first Trump administration.” 

Zion Island 24.

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SECRET/URGENT. 

TO: Admiral John A. Waters, Jr., Director of Security, Atomic Energy Commission. 

FROM: Joseph McCarthy, Security Supervisor, Hanford Works, Hanford, Washington. 

DATE: 26 December 1952. 

RE: Possible loss of plutonium from Hanford Works. 

  1. On the afternoon of 24 December 1952, three sealed freight cars belonging to the A.E.C. were added to a Union Pacific freight train bound from Portland, Oregon, to Salt Lake City, Utah, at Benton Port, Washington. 
  2. From Salt Lake City, the sealed cars—two decoys and real cargo car—were bound for Sandia Laboratory, Albuquerque, New Mexico.  They bore standard Union Pacific Railroad markings and were indistinguishable from the other cars. 
  3. On the night of 24-25 December 1952, the freight train derailed near Nampa, Idaho.  Several freight cars caught fire. 
  4. The Security Office at Hanford did not receive report of this incident until just before noon on Christmas Day.  Investigators were immediately dispatched. 
  5. The preliminary telephone report from the investigators make several alarming points. 
  6. The train appears to have derailed because the spikes securing the rails on two successive 39-foot sections had been removed before the train arrived. 
  7. The freight cars caught fire because of arson. 
  8. Small explosive charges were used to destroy the seals and locks on the A.E.C. real cargo car, but not on the two decoys. 
  9. A small, but as yet undetermined part of the cargo destined for Sandia was removed. 
  10. Investigation continues.  Request permission to contact the F.B.I. offices in Salt Lake City and Seattle. 

SECRET/URGENT. 

Out in the Cold 2.

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            The Great Depression (1929—various dates depending on where you were in the world) dealt a heavy blow to capitalist democracy.  In many minds, it discredited what had been on the surface a thriving engine of prosperity and liberty.  The worst that its critics could muster was accusations that it was tacky and often unjust to those on the margins.  Now it seemed to offer only the freedom to starve.  In many places, rickety new democracies collapsed.  Elsewhere they seemed paralyzed by internal disputes that might well end in democratic collapse.  In the United States, voters eventually turned to the feverish experimentalism of the New Deal. 

            Under these circumstances, Communism and the Soviet Union offered an appealing alternative loyalty—to the extent that people could ignore the reality for the ideal.[1]  Both Communism and the Soviet Union had a particular attraction for educated people who felt themselves estranged from the American society of the day.  Eventually, the Second World War put the United States and the Soviet Union on the same side in an alliance of convenience.  For people already inclined to distrust the American government, keeping information secret from America’s Soviet “ally” amounted to weakening the war effort.  Thus, among the sort of people who ended up in government civilian bureaucracies and universities, there were many people willing to help out the Soviet Union with more than $10 in the donation bucket at a rally. 

            Mildred Fish (1902-1941) grew up poor in the Middle West, but managed to get a BA and then an MA in English literature.[2]  She met and married Arvid Harnack when the German economist was visiting America.  In 1929, they returned to Berlin.  Already people with progressive opinions, they were radicalized by the Depression and, in particular, by the Nazi seizure of power.  Red, white, and black swastika banner billowing everywhere, torch light parades, book burnings, and mass arrests repelled them deeply.  As the Second World War began, the Harnacks came into contact with members of the much larger and multi-national Soviet intelligence operation called “the Red Orchestra.”[3]  In 1940, they became small cogs in that machine.  Arvid Harnack obtained a position in the Ministry of Economics, while Mildred worked their wide range of friends.  They fell when the ferocious German hunt for the larger “Red Orchestra” began to succeed in Summer 1942.  German counter-intelligence in Belgium tracked a Soviet radio operator, captured him, and then read an accumulation of coded radio messages.  Several of these led the police to the Harnacks.  Both were brutally tortured, then executed.[4]  They were two among many who paid with their lives for their political and moral commitments. 

            Among Mildred Harnack’s pre-war acquaintances was Martha Dodd (1908-1990), the daughter of the American ambassador to Germany William E. Dodd.[5]  Ambassador Dodd tended to distrust the regular State Department officers, so he let Martha help him with his work.  This opened a gap in embassy security.  The flighty Martha had a series of foreign lovers.  First, they were Nazis, then later anti-Nazis.  In March 1934, one of the latter, a Soviet intelligence officer, received orders to recruit her as a spy.  She fell for it, especially after the “Night of the Long Knives” (Hitler’s June 1934 purge of his enemies) opened her eyes to the reality of the Nazi regime.  She provided what information that came her way to her Soviet contacts until her father ended his tenure as ambassador in December 1937.  At the same time, she socialized with Mildred Harnack without being drawn into her work. 

Martha Dodd stayed in contact with Soviet agents after she returned to the United States, but had little to tell of value.  She encouraged the recruitment of her husband, Alfred Stern (but he didn’t know anything either) and had some contact with other low-value Soviet Agents.[6]  Without any valuable sources from 1937 on and without any real contact after the Second World War, her contacts with Soviet agents ended in 1949.  However, the “Red Hunt” in the United States gathered steam just as Martha Dodd wanted to put her past behind her.  Too late: the FBI already had her under surveillance.  Martha Dodd and Alfred Stern were small-potatoes in the eyes of the FBI, so they weren’t subpoenaed to testify until 1956.  They bolted to Prague.    

None of these agents was particularly important or valuable to the Soviet Union.  Is there anything to be learned from their cases?  There are several lessons.  First, the Soviet Union could call upon intelligent people motivated by a strong ideological commitment.  Unlike German espionage in the United States, they didn’t have to rely upon coercing unstable renegades. 

Second, espionage is a lot easier in peacetime than in wartime.[7]  The “Red Orchestra” fell because it had to rely upon insecure and discoverable radios to handle communications.  In peacetime, information collected and orders could pass back and forth through secure diplomatic communications.  In peacetime Germany and in the United States before and after Pearl Harbor, the Soviet Union had embassies that could serve as secure bases for its intelligence officers.  Those officers could recruit, evaluate, direct, support, and discipline their agents.  Those agents, of very variable quality and temperament, could be built into powerful networks.

A third lesson might be that the Soviet intelligence agencies possessed some very able case officers.  Ishkak Akhmerov (1901-1976) ran NKVD agents in the United States from 1935 to 1945, then went home without having been discovered.  Vasily Zarubin (1894-1972) and his wife Elizabeth Zubilin (1900-1987) ran a network in the United States from 1941 to 1944, only being recalled because of a false report from a disgruntled subordinate.  Arthur Adams (1885-1969) gained the first valuable intelligence on the Manhattan Project, although he was discovered by Army Intelligence.  He still managed to escape to the Soviet Union in 1946. 

            In short, the Soviets succeeded much better than did the Nazis against the same target. 

[1] Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, 1928-1978 (1981) is highly entertaining.  On the other hand, the Communist Party of the United States of America paid for the legal defense and publicized the case of the “Scottsboro Boys.”  Most everyone else just stood around with their hands in their pockets. 

[2] This was back when state universities intentionally offered a low-cost, high-quality education because it was an investment in the common good. 

[3] Understandably, there has been much interest in the “Red Orchestra.”  For an introduction, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Orchestra_(espionage)#CITEREFScheel1985 

[4] Rebecca Donner, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler (2021).  The story has been told before by Shareen Blair Brysack, Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra (2000). 

[5] A lot of her activity is covered in Eric Larson, In the Garden of the Beasts: Love, Terror, and An American Family in Hitler’s Berlin (2011). 

[6] On Boris Morros, see Jonathan Gill, Hollywood Double Agent (2020); on Jane Foster Zlatovski, see her memoir, Jane Foster, An Un-American Lady (1980). 

[7] This, in turn, suggests that a prissy refusal on moral grounds to offer “diplomatic recognition” to a hostile regime just blinds one when it is most necessary to have information. 

Out in the Cold 1.

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            Fictional spies make for good stories.  Real spies are tougher to write about.  For one thing, the documentary sources are mostly secret for a long time.  Writers have to conjecture some parts of the story.  For another thing, they are human, rather than super-human.  Real spies act for a range of motives and with a range of skillfulness.  Still, the inherent interest to readers of the “secret world” of spies maintains an audience for real spy stories. 

            The Second World War offers rich ground.  A great struggle between Good and Evil overlapped with other ideological struggles between Capitalism and Communism, and Nationalism and Internationalism.  They took root during a great economic crisis that caused many people to doubt the viability of democracy while imagining authoritarianism to be the “wave of the future.”   It was a “total war” in which armed forces were joined by industry, technology, science, propaganda, and espionage as important weapons of war.  Finally, the war set the United States solidly on the path away from isolationism and toward its troubled role as “the greatest power on Earth.” 

            In the late Thirties, all countries recognized the potential power of the United States.  Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union targeted the United States for espionage.  Germany efforts misfired badly.  German military intelligence, the Abwehr, began reasonably enough.  They reached beyond the usual military attaches to build an infrastructure among the crews of the merchant and passenger ships that regularly called at American ports.  They targeted German-Americans by appealing to racial solidarity and nationalism.  They sought people with direct access to technical information.  The “trade craft”[1] of the agents turned out to be a weak spot.  One German-American agent tried to obtain 35 blank passports by pretending to be the Secretary of State.  Arrested in February 1938, he soon told what he knew.  This led the Federal Bureau of Investigation, newly tasked with domestic counter-espionage, to jury-rig an investigation.  Leon Turrou soon identified 18 suspected German agents.  Used to chasing bank robbers rather than foreign spies, let most of them slip between the FBI’s fingers.  The rest were convicted in an October 1938 trial.  The bad publicity from the case made J. Edgar Hoover determined that things would go better next time.[2] 

            It did.  In early 1940 the FBI turned a very reluctant German agent, William Sebold.[3]  He put them on the trail of a large German network headed by Fritz Duquesne.[4]  After carefully building cases, the FBI arrested 33 people at the end of June 1941.  All were swiftly convicted.  Again, the newspapers splashed the news around, but this time it pleased Hoover. 

            The Duquesne case wrecked Abwehr operations in the United States.  Still, pressed hard by American entry into the war in December 1941, the Abwehr sent off eight saboteurs by submarine.  They landed on the American coast in June 1942.  Almost immediately, two of them defected and betrayed the others to the FBI.  All were arrested, tried by a special military tribunal, and sentenced to death.  The two defectors were granted clemency: 30 years in prison for one and life for the other.  FBI Director Hoover suppressed all mention of the defectors in explaining the case to the public. 

            Finally, in late November 1944, two more German agents landed from a submarine off the coast of Maine.[5]  The two were mismatched: an experienced German agent and an unstable American renegade.  The renegade didn’t stick with spying for Germany any longer than he had with anything else. He soon bolted with much of the cash, burned through a lot of it on wine, women, and song, and then turned himself in.  The German soon fell into the hands of the FBI.  Both were sentenced to death, but the sentences were commuted to prison terms.  That ended German efforts to spy on the United States. 

            The Abwehr had a good sense of what information it wanted and what targets it wanted to sabotage.  It just lacked the human means to achieve these ends.  The quality of people available to the Abwehr plagued their operations.  Spying required both commitment to the cause and the time needed to work into a useful position.  The first operation foundered on the stupidity of an agent; the rest suffered defections before they had scarcely begun.  Apparently, in New Deal America, neither National Socialism nor German ancestry provided much motivation to run great risks.  Few of the German agents had any natural talent: they weren’t habitually circumspect, or suspicious, or stolid, or even careful.[6]  Often they became spies because the Germans first twisted their arms, then sent them abroad with no way of keeping an eye on their recruits.[7]  The failures of the weak links then brought disaster for the handful of able German agents.[8] 

            The wartime cases did much to unjustifiably burnish the reputation of the Counter-Intelligence Division of the FBI.  The role of the defections in catching the spies got erased in the press coverage.  Instead, the FBI celebrated the determined gum-shoe work of its agents. 

Moreover, several of the cases led to movies that distorted the realities.  “Confessions of a Nazi Spy” (dir. Anatole Litvak, 1939) purported to tell the story of Leon Turrou’s 1938 investigation.  Warner Brothers made it as a wake-up call to Americans about the Nazi danger, but it failed at the box office.[9]  “They Came to Blow Up America (dir. Edward Ludwig, 1943) tells a thoroughly fanciful story of the eight saboteurs of 1942.  Again, the FBI is all over the plot foem the beginning.  “The House on 92nd Street” (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1945) retold the story of the Duquesne spy rung—with the full support of the FBI.  Finally, the story of the final two saboteurs appeared—again much refashioned—in the West German film “Spy for Germany” (dir. Werner Klingler, 1956).  Understandably, this one did not glorify the FBI. 

The lesson here might be that a foreign enemy wishing to spy in the United States would require better quality human assets and professional case-officers on the ground. 

[1] OK, I read John Le Carre novels.  What about it? 

[2] Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The Nazi Spy Ring in America: Hitler’s Agents, the FBI, and the Case that Stirred a Nation (2020). 

[3] See: Peter Duffy, Double Agent: The First Hero of World War II and How the FBI Outwitted and Destroyed a Nazi Spy Ring (2014). 

[4] On Duquesne, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Joubert_Duquesne#Second_World_War_%E2%80%93_Duquesne_Spy_Ring  I’m not sure that I actually believe his story. 

[5] At a point way up in the Gulf of Maine.  The nearest town had a population of only 750 people.  The two men from “Away” were soon noticed. 

[6] In this, if not in motivation, they resemble most members of European Resistance movements. 

[7] In contrast, German counter-intelligence operations in the occupied countries worked to devastating effect.  In large part, this is because they were in a position to keep a close watch on the agents they recruited from among the conquered peoples. 

[8] Several members of the Duquesne network had obtained valuable intelligence on American air power. 

[9] On the other hand, it appears in a brief scene in “Operation Mincemeat” (dir. John Madden, 2021).