CHAPTER I
BRAHMA
If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The theme of "Brahma" is this: Human beings can find fulfillment and contentment only when they realize that they are part of a universal entity. The Hindu god Brahma tells the reader that what appear to be opposites—a warrior and his enemy, remoteness and nearness, shadows and sunlight, and shame and fame—are really the same. Anyone who does not believe this truth lives in error, for all these things are part of the essence of Brahma—the eternal god who is beyond human understanding—and therefore are unified in him and are the same. Even a hymn sung by a Brahmin, a Hindu priest, is part of Brahma's essence. Other Hindu gods—such as Yama, the lord of death; Agni, the god of fire; and Indra, the warrior god and god of rain—long to live in Brahma's essence (line 13), as do the holiest Hindus of the past (line 14). Brahma ends the poem by telling the reader that if he finds his way to Brahma's essence he will have all that he needs for all eternity.
Hinduism is a major world religion that developed in India more than three thousand years ago. It encompasses many beliefs. Generally, however, Hindus believe in a supreme being, the creator Brahma. They also believe in two other major deities that, with Brahma, make up a trinity: Siva (also called Shiva), the god of destruction and restoration, and Vishnu, the preserver. Hindus believe that the Atman (spirit, soul, or eternal part of an individual) survives death and transmigrates to another body (human or animal) unless the individual has achieved a state of moral perfection and enlightenment called moksha. When a person achieves moksha, he becomes worthy of eternal peace in union with Brahman.
"Brahma" is miraculous in its blend of Eastern and Western thought. In the poem, Emerson assumes the role of Brahma, the Hindu God of creation. Emerson is able to use clever, yet complex paradoxical logic in order to present his philosophy in poetic terms. Throughout the poem, Emerson alludes to Hindu mythology.
In the first stanza, Emerson expresses the continuity of life. He says that if a killer thinks he has killed another or if the dead think that they are truly well, they do not fully realize his power; for he, Brahma, can create, destroy and re-create. In the end the "red-slayer", or the Hindu God Krishna, and his victim are merged in the unity of Brahma. When Brahma re-creates or "turns again," it is known commonly as the concept of reincarnation. Thus, the continuity of life is expressed through Brahma's eyes.
The ultimate unity if the universe is expressed through the second stanza. Emerson uses such opposites such as shadow and sunlight, good and evil, in order to prove this philosophical belief. In essence, Emerson states that all opposites are reconciled in the ultimate unity of the universe. This is proven as he states that shadow and sunlight are the same as are shame and fame. Thus, when it comes down to it, the universe is built through harmony and not counteracting forces such as good and evil.
In the last stanza, Emerson calls upon the reader to do something. He states, "Find me (Brahma), and turn thy back on heaven, this is a definite allusion to the statement in the eighteenth chapter in the Bhagavad-Gita which says, "Abandoning all religious duties, seek me as thy refuge. I will deliver thee from all sin." In lines before he makes this request, he states that the sacred seven, the highest priests, and the strong gods, the Hindu gods Indra, Agni, and Yama, pray to him in vain and ask for his asylum. Thus, he is saying that praying to him for material goods will not accomplish anything. Thus, the request that he makes is for the reader to join him in the ultimate unity of the universe, also known as the Hindu philosophy of Mukhti.
In Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem, "Brahma", the overall theme is the divine relationship and continuity of life and the unity of the universe. To begin with, this is explained through the concept of re-incarnation, which is expressed in the first stanza. Second, Emerson clarifies it the second stanza in which he states that the universe lives in harmony ad not opposing forces such as good and evil. Lastly, Emerson calls upon the reader to abandon praying for material thoughts or asking him, Brahma, for asylum as join him in the ultimate unity of the universe. In writing "Brahma," Emerson boldly crosses new bounds by assuming the perspective of a God and by cleverly mixing Eastern and Western thought.
In spite of, because of, all the deficiencies and imperfections of the human mind and knowing how it is subject to various moods, some positive, some negative, you must take a stand that these things do not affect you; these things do not rob you of the greatest ever chance given to the individual to rise up and ascend back into its universal abode of perfection, fearlessness, freedom and absolute completeness.
The scriptures also tell us the type of person we should be. They say that people in the least category have no stuff in them.
Even before launching into an undertaking they begin to think of all the obstacles and conclude that it is too much for them.
People of the middling type undertake a project, but when some obstacles come in the way, they give up.
But people of real stuff, who know that they are made in the image of an omnipotent God, once they have undertaken some venture—even if they are repeatedly assailed by obstacles and adverse circumstances—never turn back.
Thus we must be of the highest
category—the elite—with the right stuff in us.
CHAPTER II
THE US-IRAN ECONOMIC WAR 
Here's a crash course on how to further wreck the global economy, says Pepe Esecobar.
A key amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act signed by United
States President Barack Obama on the last day of 2011 - when no one was paying
attention - imposes sanctions on any countries or companies that buy Iranian
oil and pay for it through Iran's central bank. Starting this summer, anybody
who does it is prevented from doing business with the US.
This amendment - for all practical purposes a declaration of economic war - was
brought by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), on direct
orders of the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi"
Netanyahu.
Torrents of spin have tried to rationalize it as the Obama administration's
plan B as opposed to letting the Israeli dogs of war conduct an unilateral
attack on Iran
over its supposed nuclear weapons program.
Yet the original Israeli strategy was in fact even more hysterical - as in
effectively preventing any country or company from paying for imported Iranian
oil, with the possible exceptions of China
and India.
On top of it, American Israel-firsters were trying to convince anyone this would not
result in relentless oil price hikes.
Once again displaying a matchless capacity to shoot themselves in their
Ferragamo-clad feet, governments in the European Union (EU) are debating
whether or not to buy oil from Iran
anymore. The existential doubt is should we start now or wait for a few months.
Inevitably, like death and taxes, the result has been - what else - oil prices
soaring. Brent crude is now hovering around $114, and the only way is up.
Get me to the crude on time Iran is the
second-largest Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) producer,
exporting up to 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. Around 450,000 of these
barrels go to the European Union - the second-largest market for Iran after China.
The requisite faceless bureaucrat, EU Energy Commissioner Gunther Ottinger, has
been spinning that the EU can count on Saudi
Arabia to make up the shortfall from Iran.
Any self-respecting oil analyst knows Saudi Arabia does not have all the necessary extra spare capacity. Moreover, and crucially, Saudi Arabia needs to make a lot of money out of expensive oil. After all, the counter-revolutionary House of Saud badly needs these funds to bribe its subjects into dismissing any possibility of an indigenous Arab Spring.
Add to it Tehran's threat to block the Strait of Hormuz, thus preventing
one-sixth of the world's oil and 70% of OPEC's exports from reaching the
market; no wonder oil traders are falling over themselves to lock up as much
crude as they can.
Forget about oil at an accessible $50 or even $75 a barrel. The price of oil
may be destined to soon reach $120 a barrel and even $150 a barrel by summer,
just as in crisis-hit 2008. OPEC, by the way, is pumping more oil than at any
time since late 2008.
So what started as an Israeli-concocted roadside improvised explosive device
has now developed into a multiple economic suicide bombing targeting whole
sections of the global economy.
No wonder the chairman of the Iranian parliament's national security and
foreign policy commission, Ala'eddin Broujerdi, has warned that the West may be
committing a "strategic blunder" with these oil sanctions.
Translation: as it goes, the name of the game for 2012 is deep global recession.
Obama rolls the dice. First Washington leaked that sanctions on Iran's central bank were "not
on the table". After all, the Obama administration itself knew this would
translate into an oil price hike and a certified one-way ticket for more global
recession. The Iranian regime, on top of it, would be making more money out if
its oil exports.
Still, the Bibi-AIPAC combo had no trouble forcing the amendment through those
Israel-firster Meccas, the US Senate and Congress - even with US Secretary of
the Treasury Tim Geithner expressly against it.
The amendment passed may not represent the "crippling sanctions"
vociferously demanded by the Israeli government. Tehran will feel the squeeze - but not to an
intolerable level. Yet only those irresponsible people at the US Congress -
despised by the overwhelming majority of Americans, according to any number of
polls - could possibly believe they can take Iran's 2.5 million barrels of oil a
day in exports off the global market with no drastic consequences for the
global economy.
Asia increasingly will need more oil - and will continue to buy oil from Iran.
And oil prices will keep flirting with the stratosphere.
So why did Obama sign it? For the Obama administration, everything now is about
electoral calculus. Those terminal wackos in the Republican presidential circus
- with the honorable exception of Ron Paul - are peddling war on Iran
the moment they're elected, and substantial swathes of the American electorate
are clueless enough to buy it.
No one, though, is doing some basic math to conclude the American and European
economies certainly don't need oil flirting with the $120 level if some minimal
recovery is in the cards.
Show me your balls. Apart from
that self-defeating, terminally in crisis euro/North Atlantic Treaty
Organization bunch, everyone and his neighbor will be bypassing this
Israeli-American declaration of economic war:
- Russia already said it will circumvent it.
- India is already paying for Iranian oil via Halkbank in Turkey.
- Iran is actively negotiating to sell more oil to China. Iran is China's second-largest supplier, only behind Saudi Arabia. China pays in euros, and soon may be paying in yuan. By March they both will have sealed an agreement about new pricing.
-
Venezuela
controls a bi-national bank with Iran
since 2009; that's how Iran
gets paid for business in Latin America.
- Even traditional US
allies want out. Turkey
- which imports around 30% of its oil from Iran.-
Will seek a waiver exempting Turkish oil importer Tupras from US sanctions.
- And South Korea will also seek a waiver, to buy around 200,000 barrels a day - 10% of its oil - from Iran in 2012.
China, India, South Korea,
they all have complex two-way trade ties with Iran (China-Iran trade, for
instance, is $30 billion a year, and growing). None of this will be
extinguished because the Washington/Tel Aviv axis says so. So one should expect
a rash of new private banks set up all across the developing world for the
purpose of buying Iranian oil.
Washington wouldn't have the balls to try to
impose sanctions on Chinese banks because they will be dealing with Iran.
On the other hand, one's got to praise Tehran's
balls. After a relentless campaign of covert assassinations; abductions of
Iranian scientists; cross-border attacks in Sistan-Balochistan province; Israeli
sabotage of its infrastructure, with viruses and otherwise; invasion of
territory via US spy drones; non-stop Israeli and Republican threats of an
imminent "shock and awe"; and the US sale of $60 billion of weapons
to Saudi Arabia, still Tehran won't balk.
Tehran has just tested - successfully - its own
cruise missiles, and in the Strait of Hormuz
of all places. Then when Tehran
reacts to the non-stop Western aggressive barrage, it is blamed with "acts
of provocation".
New York Times editorial board is totally in love with the Pentagon's threats
against Iran,
as well as calling for "maximum economic pressure".
The bottom line is that average Iranians will suffer - as average, crisis-hit,
indebted Europeans will also suffer. The US economy will suffer. And
whenever it feels the West is getting way too hysterical, Tehran will keep reserving the right to send
oil prices skyrocketing.
The regime in Tehran
will keep selling oil, will keep enriching uranium and, most of all, won't
fall. Like a Hellfire missile hitting a Pashtun wedding party, these Western
sanctions will miserably fail. But not without collecting a lot of collateral
damage - in the West itself.
CHAPTER III
THE SCIENCE OF
LIBERATION
To avail full benefit from any branch of knowledge, one has to have the prerequisite qualifications to ensure complete fulfillment in that particular field. This is known in Sanskrit as ‘Adhikara.’ For example, the part of Vedic literature dealing with rituals states that only a person with the following four qualifications is eligible for performing Vedic Karmas (sacrifices etc) and their fruits thereof:
1). He should have the desire to perform the Vedic Karma (in order to obtain the desired fruits).
2). He should be competent to perform the Karma.
3). He should understand the secret behind the Karma.
4). He should not be prohibited by the scriptures against performing that particular Karma.
Going further, the science of ‘Moksha’, or liberation, better known as Vedanta, requires a seeker to be qualified for attaining full benefit from it. Only the one who is qualified for it can attain Moksha. However, only few people are interested in Moksha, because the majority of us live under the illusion that happiness is the result of fulfilling worldly desires, while Moksha is something which has no trace of ‘worldliness’ in it, and this is what frightens us, making us believe that Moksha is not our cup of tea at all.
What is needed for preparing the requisite ground entitling us to the study of Vedanta? Is it necessary to have performed Vedic rituals, or to have made an enquiry into the nature of Dharma? To all these questions Bhagavan Shankaracharya answers an unequivocal ‘No’. However, another set of qualifications is emphasized by him, which is both sufficient and necessary. This is known as the four-fold wealth of Sadhana (spiritual practice). It must be remembered here that acquiring this four fold wealth is extremely difficult because it depends upon the continuity of purifying Karmas performed by the seeker in his past lives. The Bhagavad Gita says: ‘One cannot transcend Karma, without performing Karma’ (3.4).
The Four-Food Spiritual Wealth consists of the following:
1). The ability to discriminate between that which is permanent and that which is impermanent.
2). Non-Attachment to the fruits of actions, in this world and the next.
3). The Six Virtues like control of mind etc.
4). A sustained desire to achieve Moksha.
1). The Ability to Discriminate:
Viveka is the human ability to accept what is conclusively right, rejecting that which is identified as wrong after a proper analysis. What exactly is the nature of the Viveka which is required for pursuing (attaining) Moksha?
Indeed Moksha is a state of permanent, untainted, and unparalleled Happiness. But the happiness derived from this world is not so. It is in fact the exact opposite, being momentary, tainted with many faults, meager and limited. This is obvious because this happiness is dependent on worldly objects which are by nature non-permanent. How can a permanent state of happiness be derived from a non-permanent object? Not only this, we all know that to derive pleasure, there needs to be a contact between the sense organs and the object in question. Therefore, there is an amount of effort required in this engagement which eventually leads to exhaustion and hence the joy gained is not long lasting.
Further, the pleasure does not persist all the time even when such a contact is in place. The pleasure gained from the contact between a sense organ and an object sustains only for a limited period of time. Indeed, desire for an object seems to disappear when it is fulfilled and the fulfillment also disappears before long. Even then, the fulfilled desire does not reappear for a long time. Therefore, the seeker of Moksha comes to the firm conclusion that everything in this world is non-permanent. Keeping this always in mind, the seeker drops the craving for anything which is fleeting. The Vedas state that only Brahman is permanent. One should always remember this. Gradually then there takes place a detachment from the impermanent and attachment towards that which is permanent. This is the discriminative understanding. Such discrimination can never surface in one who is sinful in thought and deed. The Gita says: ‘Only those whose sins have been terminated by virtuous deeds are able to worship and pursue me firmly’ (7.28). This is Krishna’s own voice. Hence it is clear that such a discriminating faculty is found only in those who have obtained the grace of God through virtuous deeds. Therefore, an aspirant should invoke the grace of God through virtuous deeds and through direct contact with saints and sages, Mahatmas who are already blessed with such a grace.
2). Non Attachment to the Fruits of Action:
As Virtue gets more and more rooted, detachment towards momentary pleasures becomes prominent and perpetual. According to the Viveka Chudamani:
The deer meets death through its attachment to sound. The elephant is caught by its desire for touch. The moth meets death due to its fascination for a sight. The fish dies due to its relationship with taste. The black bee meets death due to its fascination for smell. (Verse 78)
A deer can be caught by enticing it with sweet sounds like those of a flute. Upon hearing the flute, the deer stands motionless, entranced; an elephant, during the mating season, is easily lured by the touch of a female elephant; a moth is attracted to the light of a flame not knowing that if it falls into it it will burn; a fisherman baits a hook, and a bee is attracted to the odor of a flower.
Each of these creatures gets into a death trap due to attachment to a single sense object. What then can be said about humans who hanker after not one but five sense objects? Without the ability to discriminate between what is permanent and what is transient, believing sensory pleasures to be paramount, man has become a beast.
Compared to these extremely short-lived worldly physical pleasures, the heavens gained by performing sacrifices are indeed lavish and lasting. However, they too are time-bound and hence impermanent. The Gita says:
‘After the Virtue is exhausted they fall again from the heavens into the world of mortals’ (9.21).
Therefore, the seeker of Moksha should not strive for more than what is sufficient to sustain his life. Detachment matures to this state only when one lives with minimum possessions. This is the true meaning of detachment, which is defined as the mental state of giving up everything by one’s own choice.
3). The Six Virtues:
a). Controlling the Mind: To achieve any aim in life, it is very important
to remove the mind from its objects of desire and fix it unmoving on the aim.
This firmness of the mind is Shama.
b). Control of the Senses: Controlling the outer senses is
known as Dama. The seeker of Moksha should, while increasing his sense
perception of God, constantly and forcefully prevent his organs of knowledge
like the eyes and organs of action like speech from indulging in their objects
of desire. This is what constitutes Dama. It is only after Dama is perfected
that Shama can be attained.
c). Satiety in the Enjoyment of Sense-Objects: It is through the sense organs that we enjoy an object. It is by Karma that we are able to acquire the desired sense objects. Therefore, the one who always hankers after sensory enjoyment is constantly involved only in performing actions (Gita 2.70). Contrary to this, the aspirant of Moksha withdraws from Karma and revels in God. This is knows as Uparati. On account of this feeling in his mind, the aspirant of Moksha ultimately becomes an ascetic.
d). Endurance: Man suffers from three types of pains. On account of the body there is the ‘Adhyatmika-tapa’ in the mind. Natural causes like rain, sun etc. cause ‘Adhidaivika-tapa’. Scorpions, tigers etc. are the source of ‘Adhibhautika–tapa’. These all happen according to one’s previous actions. Commonly man tries to escape from them. When he is unable to do so, he begins to hate them. This is but natural. However the aspirant of Moksha does not view them with hatred. He endures them while progressing in the direction of his spiritual practice towards Moksha. This type of endurance is known as Titiksha.
e). Faith: To understand this we need to keep two things in mind. Firstly, the nature of Moksha cannot be inferred using our own minds because it is beyond our mental faculties. Therefore it has to be known through the Vedas only. Secondly, no one, no matter how talented or qualified he or she may be, it is impossible to study the Vedas on one’s own. The Vedas can be understood only with the help of a Guru. Hence, for the seeker of Moksha, there is no way other than the Guru and the Vedas. Keeping this in mind, we should have complete faith in the words of both the Vedas and our Guru. This faith is known as Shraddha. The word itself is made of two components: Shrat mean truth, and Dha, means bearing it. Therefore, the faith necessary for bearing the truth is known as Shraddha. The Gita says: (4.39) - A man of faith can attain knowledge.
f). Proper Concentration: Samadhana means keeping the mind in balanced
concentration . In what? In God and Guru. Generally it is seen that people
behave only in such a manner that vitiates the mind. But contact with God or
the Guru is of the opposite nature. These kinds of contacts divert the mind
from the passions occupying it and the resulting concentration provides him
peace. The equanimity of the mind obtained from fixing it on God and Guru is
known as Samadha
4). An Intense Desire for Salvation Generally human existence is plagued with miseries only. Unable to face them, some unwise people commit suicide. They think that by doing so they will gain eternal freedom from miseries. Nothing could be far from the truth. Their suicide rather than ending their miseries becomes a source of even more grief. This is because our present suffering is a result of our misdeeds either in this birth or the previous ones. Ending our body without first annihilating our sins by undergoing the miseries confronting us, is to act like the prisoner who escapes from prison without first completing his full term. His sentence is increased even more. Thus suicide leads to even more miseries. Hence the fulfillment of human life lies in maintaining faith in Dharma while facing life’s miseries. Keeping this in his mind, the seeker with an intense desire for salvation, realizing that in essence this world is but misery only, transfers his attention from the world to Moksha. Moksha is nothing but complete freedom from all bondages and miseries. This is not like the heavens we gain after death. Nor is it impermanent like Swarga. Moksha is attainable while living itself. It is permanent, and should be obtained by discriminating between the permanent and the transient, detachment, control of the mind etc. and listening to Vedanta from the mouth of an authorized Guru.
Pain are of three degrees – mild, medium and intense, caused by three types of behavior – direct indulgence, provoked and abetted. They are motivated by greed, anger and delusion and they have to be countered and corrected with right knowledge and behavior.
Non violence in word, thought and action causes one to abandon one’s hostile nature.
Self discipline eradicates the impurities of body and mind and kindles the sparks of divinity.
A cleansed body with a purified mind becomes a fit instrument for self awareness.
Contentment brings immeasurable delight.
To practice restrain one of the ways is total surrender of oneself to God – Sage Patanjali
“Your crown has been bought and paid for. All you must do is put it on your head.” – James Baldwin
There is nothing you need that you do not already have. There is nothing you need to know that you do not already know. There is nothing you want that does not already exist. There is nothing that exists that is too good for you. There is nothing anyone has that you cannot have. There is nothing more powerful, more intelligent, more sacred than you. You are the stuff life is made of. You are the essence of life. You have been chosen at this time, in this place to be among the living. You come from a long line of successful living beings. You are one of the King’s kids. Born into the world to inherit the kingdom. You are equipped to handle anything. You live by grace, built by love. You are the cause and the reason of everything you see. You are one with the Source. You are creative. You are alive. What else could possible matter?
The world is seen as it truly is--sacred--when we behold Siva's cosmic dance. Everything in the universe, all that we see, hear and imagine, is movement. Galaxies soar in movement; atoms swirl in movement. All movement is Siva's dance. When we fight this movement and think it should be other than it is, we are reluctantly dancing with Siva. We are stubbornly resisting, holding ourselves apart, and criticizing the natural processes and movements around us. It is by understanding the eternal truths that we bring all areas of our mind into the knowledge of how to accept what is and not wish it to be otherwise. Once this happens, we begin to consciously dance with Siva, to move with the sacred flow that surrounds us, to accept praise and blame, joy and sorrow, prosperity and adversity in equanimity, the fruit of understanding. We are then gracefully, in unrestrained surrender, dancing with Siva. The Vedas state, "The cosmic soul is truly the whole universe, the immortal source of all creation, all action, all meditation. Whoever discovers Him, hidden deep within, cuts through the bonds of ignorance even during his life on earth."
CHAPTER IV
THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY
Daniel Ben-Ami, a financial and economic journalist, wrote on 50th anniversary of John Galbraith’s famous book, The Affluent Society:
It has become so much part of conventional wisdom that affluence is a problem that it is hard to imagine that attitudes were ever different.
The media is full of stories about problems that allegedly owe much to our affluent lifestyles, including environmental degradation, social inequalities and even mental illness. Yet there was once a time when popular prosperity was seen as overwhelmingly positive.
When John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society was first published 50 years ago, it was meant as a polemic against the spirit of the times. Back in 1958, with America in the middle of the boom that followed the Second World War, the orthodox view was that economic growth was good. That was why Galbraith, then an economics professor at Harvard, coined the term ‘conventional wisdom’ to describe the mainstream view that he intended to attack.
CHAPTER V
MUSLIM IDENTITY
Correspondent Anwar Iqbal recounted in Pakistani newspaper Dawn in January 2012:
The disciple of a Sufi master, who spent several years learning Irfan, the knowledge of the Sufis, came back to his master to tell him that he was now a man of knowledge. When he knocked at the door, the master asked, “Who?” “Me,” said the disciple. “Go back. There is no room for two in this house,” said the master.
The disciple went away to learn more and when he came back, the master asked again: “Who?” “You,” said the disciple. “Yes, get in, now you have knowledge,” said the master.
But can I knock at the door? I am not two. I am many. Like a broken mirror, I reflect a thousand images. One day I looked at the mirror. I saw a thousand faces staring at me. One moment all looked familiar. The next all looked different. It scared me. I threw the mirror away and it broke into dozens of pieces, fragmenting me further in the process.
Where do I begin my search? I look inside and out. See no light.
I seem to be floating around in a mist, a fluffy velvety mist. It softly touches my toes, moving up. Out of the cloud emerges a face. One moment it is my face. The next moment it is someone else’s. I try to touch it, hold it but it melts away. Many faces appear. I feel around, trying to hold them but they slip through my fingers and disappear in the fog which is slowly slithering around my body.
I am tense. I want to scream. I want to hold onto something. But all faces, all images disappear in the haze as I stretch my hands. Shadows dance on the wall. Broad, bold shadows, leaping around in a rhythmic chaos.
They whisper to each other and laugh; a full-throated laughter fills my room. My skin prickles with fear. I try to escape to the comfort of past images.
I seek refuge in narrow, warm streets, away from a cold Washington morning. Familiar smells of closed rooms, sweat and herbs wander in the streets, getting stronger as the heat increases.
I see people pushing, shouting, laughing and jostling. The muezzin calls for the evening prayers. A soothing shadow slips down the minarets. The sun is plucked from the sky.
The night drops from the clouds. But the streets are not deserted. They are now filled with the faithful smell of summer evenings. People still move around, laughing and shouting. I extend my hands. Try to coax them into my existence. But they slip off out of my hands. The mist licks my fingers and the shadows moving on the wall scare me. I reach out but only touch the cold, slithering mist.
The longing never ends. I wander like a lost soul through the images that fill my mind. Sometimes the images look familiar to me. Sometimes they float through my mind like strangers. But as the time passes, these strangers also become a part of me, of my identity. Yet the confusion continues.
Sometimes I see myself in a valley full of both familiar and strange images. I see people, buildings and trees slowly emerging out of the mist. I see cars, buses and trains. An airplane flies over my head.
I see shops and office blocks. I see people working on their computers, lifting telephones, talking to those thousands of miles away in foreign languages.
“Ref. Your E-mail. Is it the same list we approved earlier?” asks an electronic message from New York. The man working on the computer looks at his watch. As expected, the reply came in less than an hour. This is e-business. An hour equals a year.
Although all these seem foreign, they also look familiar. I feel sure of myself moving around in this world of computers. I need them. I am used to them. They form part of my identity.
But then the muezzin calls again. “Allah is great, Allah is great,” he reminds the faithful. The man switches off his computer, turns his face towards Mecca and prays. There seems no conflict between his faith and the technology he is using.
The scene changes again. Now I hear a thousand horsemen, crossing the world’s highest mountains and running into the valley. They come in groups, some small, some large. They keep coming for hundreds of years. Wherever they stop, they build homes and settle down. It sounds familiar. I understand it. I identify with it.
But my search does not end here. Now I hear music and songs. It is a group of girls in white saris with red borders. Wearing fragrant garlands around their necks and arms and colorful bindies on their foreheads, they sing as they move towards the river with their offerings of flowers and fruits. I understand their song. I recognize their music.
Dress. Flowers. Fruits. All seem familiar. After all, we share so much with them. Our social habits, our culture, languages and even physical features are similar. So I see a link.
Their song fades away. Once again I hear horses and battle cries. These are ancient warriors who came with their horses and arrows and conquered the valley. They came and over-powered those who lived here before them. But the valley conquered them too and they never went back. Now they live with us. I speak the words I borrowed from them; I share their customs, their tales and even their prejudices about castes and creed.
But does my journey end here? No, I also have affinities with those who lived here before them. I feel a sense of attachment to the un-ciphered tablets discovered from the ruins of the Indus cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. The statues of the mother goddess fascinate me. The dancing girl of the Indus is no stranger. She lives inside me — frozen in a frame of ecstasy which has been copied by countless generations of dancers ever since.
Many in my country say that this journey of thousands of years ended in 1947 when we assumed a new identity, that of Pakistanis. After that we should shun all other identities. We have been trying to do so for more than 60 years now but it has not worked. I can’t ignore the invisible string that links me to all those who came before me.
Yet there are some who put my new identity in conflict with my old identities. Besides being a Pakistani, I am also a Punjabi, a Sindhi, a Baloch and a Pashtun. And I am also a South Asian.
There are some who don’t feel comfortable living with the past. The controversies they stir also disturb me. It has pitched my faith against my politics, my traditions against my work, my ethnic origin against that of others, and my language against that of my neighbor.
My being a Muslim is not enough. I also have to identify myself with the groups doing politics in the name of Islam. My being a Pakistani is not enough. I must also associate with those who look at any mention of other historical, social or cultural references with suspicion. I also have to subscribe to the narrow ethnic identities of various groups who have their own definitions of nationalism.
A witch-hunt in a Karachi park that led to the sacking of a TV anchor depicts our crisis of identity more aptly than any other incident in the recent past. In a way, it is linked to other events as well — suicide-bombings, attacks on religious minorities and even the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on New York’s twin towers.
All these events have one common thread: they betray a desire for immediate change through violent and subversive means. And this desire is a byproduct of intellectual bankruptcy. An intellectually rich society does not seek quick-fixes. It does not seek to resolve social and cultural issues through violent means. And it knows killing people does not resolve anything.
A de-intellectualized society does not have the depth to hold back, review, analyze and come forth with an intellectual response. Its responses are always violent.
The problem is that the culture that taught patience and tolerance is dead. After 200 years of colonization, Muslim societies have become barren; incapable of providing the intellectual infrastructure that produces tolerance and patience.
The quick-fixers tried to fill the gap with their violent methods. But instead of providing an intellectual base for Muslim societies to deal with today’s issues, they caused more confusion. Their role, already limited by their short-sightedness, is over, although their ability to create more confusion and violence is still there.
Yet, there’s no denying the fact that now we live in the post-Taliban and post-al Qaeda era. The two violent movements and their off-shoots have outlived their utility. Muslims across the world are now searching for new ideologies. The Arab spring is toppling long-established tyrannies. In Pakistan, a free but irresponsible media and judicial activism are redefining the relation between the state and the individual.
Religious extremism associated with groups like the Taliban and al Qaeda had a devastating affect on the Muslim culture, particularly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It undermined the state structure and killed tens of thousands of people. It created a state of permanent insecurity and fear for women and minorities; and provided no alternative social, economic or cultural infrastructure because it never meant to do so.
But what will the post-Taliban era offer us? More radicalization? Democracy and human rights? A mixture of the two? Or more confusion?
It is difficult to give a clear answer to these questions now but one thing is obvious: suicide bombings do not resolve anything. Nor do the floggings we Pakistanis suffered during the Zia era. Radical Islam has created so much fear that Muslims are now afraid of going to mosques for prayers. So what next? Before we try to understand the future, let’s have a look at our immediate past.
In Pakistan, we grew up in a culture which, although heavily influenced by our religious beliefs, retained its secular characteristics. Poetry, music and painting were — and perhaps still are — an integral part of this culture.
For most South Asian Muslims, the most cherished religious memory is that of milad, a practice common in other Muslim cultures as well. But in the Subcontinent a milad is also a colorful cultural event. It includes recitation of poetry and religious songs. The religion that Muslims learn at milad is one of love and tolerance.
It is also at these gatherings that we are introduced to Sufi poetry, which defines all paths as leading to the same destination.
A modern South Asian Muslim is also influenced by the literature written in the later 19th and 20th centuries. The strongest influence is that of Dr. Mohammed Iqbal, who, writing in early 20th century India, had a huge influence on Muslim thoughts in South Asia.
Secular poets and writers like Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Saadat Hassan Manto, who top the list of popular South Asian intellectuals of the mid 20th century, introduced Marxist and liberal Western thoughts to their readers. Even Faiz’s marxism was of a South Asian nature — mild and romantic.
The popular Islamic culture of South Asia also owes much to poets like Amir Khusro and Ghalib and Muslim masters of the Indian classical music. But they cannot match the influence that Sufi poets like Bulleh Shah, Shah Latif and Rahman Baba continue to enjoy, even now.
It is a culture that allows people like Ghalib to “seek an idol in Kaaba (Mecca)” and encourages Khusro to declare, “It is the man who is the center of his prayers rather than the holy mosque in Mecca.” Even in modern times South Asian Muslim writers have raised probing questions about the very basis of Islamic faith without causing a violent popular reaction.
This popular culture has had little difficulty coexisting with other South Asian religions and has attracted many followers from other faiths who visit the shrines of Muslim saints in both India and Pakistan. It has encouraged people like Prem Chand, Krishan Chandar and Firaque Gorakhpuri, all Hindus, and Rajinder Singh Bedi, a Sikh, to write literature in Urdu, basically a language of the South Asian Muslims, using Muslim symbols and metaphors.
Such blending of cultural and religious traditions and the coexistence of Islamic values with local traditions and Western influence is not confined to South Asia. Most Muslim nations continue to experience such mingling traditions.
However, confusion and contradictions emerge in the realm of politics, particularly the politics practiced by groups identified as militant Muslims. So far political Islam has failed to attract strong popular support but its influence is increasing. This is because of a general disenchantment with the current political system and the ruling elite.
The Arab spring showed that most Muslims strongly dislike the political set up that they live in. Before this brave uprising shook the Middle East, people showed their dismay by staying away from fake elections held by their governments, allowing the rulers always to proclaim a sweeping victory for themselves.
Widespread corruption and the failure of a political system that does not address social and economic weaknesses of the society is the apparent cause of this disillusion. In Pakistan, people don’t trust the English speaking ruling elite. There is a general perception that they may be good at making money but they have no desire or training to do anything for others. Gone are the days when people looked up to the Western educated elite and believed that with their knowledge and expertise they could help change the society.
Disillusion with the Westernized elite turns into a dislike for the West when they see Western governments supporting corrupt and morally bankrupt rulers in the Muslim world. The West is seen as a bully bent upon maintaining its hegemony over the Arab and Muslim worlds with the help of the corrupt Muslim elite.
But despite this there is still a widespread respect for Western education and technology which many believe could help them jump several steps up on the development ladder. So people want Western education but not Western culture. However, this attitude is full of contradictions. Everybody speaks against the Western culture but people still watch Western movies and listen to songs.
Until recently this was confined to the upper and middle classes but now even the lower middle class is developing a taste for American films and music. As soon as they get money, people send their children to English medium schools.
Thus the West is revered, even if grudgingly, for its prosperity and scientific achievements. But the possibility of benefiting from the West or Westernized education is still only available to less than 20 per cent of the population, most people don’t benefit from it. They continue to live in abject poverty. In fact, no changes have had any impact on their lives.
Ask any man, or woman, in the street about how democracy was different from a military rule or monarchy, he/she would see no difference. “We struggle for bread, clothes, democracy or no democracy,” would be the standard answer.
In Pakistan, the slogan for roti, kapra aur makan (food, clothes and shelter) was made popular by the late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 1970s. Similar promises were made by other left-leaning leaders in the Arab world as well. But they did little to make them available to those who need them most. Nothing seems to work in the Islamic world, capitalism or socialism.
Political ideas and economic theories — Islamic, socialist and dictatorial — of all ilk and brand have been tried here. All failed. No country suffered under this ideological conflict more than Afghanistan.
The cold war brought the Russians who brought superpower-rivalry to this unfortunate country. Both the Russians and the Americans — and their allies — created dozens of armed groups who are still fighting each other. Hundreds of thousands died during the Soviet occupation, 1979-1989. But what followed the Russian withdrawal was even worse.
More than 50,000 were killed in Kabul alone during the first Mujahideen government which ruled the country from 1993-96. They paved the way for the Taliban takeover in 1996. The Taliban brought even more suffering and turned Afghanistan into an international pariah by sheltering terrorists like Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.
They were pushed out of power by the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in America. It brought a US-supervised democracy, which is as corrupt and inefficient as were the Taliban, Mujahideen or communist rulers of the recent past. Why? Is it because the Western concept of a nation state does not fit well in Muslim countries?
Here is Daniel Pipes writing about Muslims, telling Westerners: Get Tougher on Islamists:
Muslim-majority countries may be the main source of terrorism, but the leaders of these states generally take a harder line against their Islamists in opposition than do their Western counterparts.
This makes sense, for (1) all this is quite new to Westerners but not to Muslims and (2) terrorism out of the West now threatens Muslim-majority states.
(Case in point: British-based terrorists have carried out operations in at least 13 foreign countries: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, France, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Pakistan, Tanzania, United States, Yemen.)
Here are some examples of Muslim leaders giving their Western counterparts a piece of their minds on the need to be tougher of Islamism in general and terrorism in particular:
Palestinian Authority: Yasir Arafat was quoted expressing "surprise and anger" at reports that high-level Hamas figures met with senior U.S. officials in April 1995 (Davar, April 24 , 1995).
Egypt: Husni Mubarak expressed dismay in 1995 that the U.S. government: "Your government is in contact with these terrorists from the Muslim Brotherhood." He complained that "this has all been done very secretly, without our knowledge at first" (The New Yorker, January 30, 1995). When Mubarak went further and accused the U.S. government of supporting terrorism, the Islamist intellectual 'Adil Husayn called this charge "ridiculous" and defended the United States (Ash-Sha'b, February 3, 1995).
Tunisia: Zine El Abidine Ben Ali deplored the attitude of the U.S. government with regard to "the enemies of freedom" who have found refuge in the West. He calls fundamentalism "a totalitarian approach which excludes all virtues." He added: "Fundamentalism is your problem now: I mean it is the problem of Paris, London, and Washington. France, Great Britain, and the United States serve as the rearguard headquarters for fundamentalist terrorists" (Le Figaro, August 2, 1994).
Pakistan: President Pervez Musharraf castigated the British authorities for putting free speech ahead of counterterrorism. "They should have been doing what they have been demanding of us to do — to ban extremist groups like they asked us to do here in Pakistan and which I have done." Specifically, Al-Muhajiroun and Hizb ut-Tahrir, two groups he accuses of calling for his own assassination, should have been prohibited. "They could have banned these two groups. Good action is when you foresee the future and pre-empt and act beforehand, instead of reacting as in the case of Britain — which waited for the damage to be done and is now reacting to it." Musharraf noted that he had taken counterterrorism measures that the UK has yet to implement. As a result, it has become Islamist Central: "Many people around the world find it convenient to leave their countries and go to Britain, which they regard as a safe haven as it wants to project itself as a champion of human rights. But now they [the British] have to reconsider and take action against these groups." (July 31, 2005)
Saudi Arabia: Prince Turki, the outgoing Saudi Ambassador to London, castigated Tony Blair for having "repeatedly failed to tackle radical Muslims in his backyard." He said he went "around in circles" during his 2½-year posting, unable to make the British understand the dangers posed by Saudis linked to al-Qaeda and living in London. Turki expressed frustration at being shunted around Whitehall by departments unwilling to take responsibility. "When you call somebody he says it is the other guy. If you talk to the security people, they say it is the politicians' fault. If you talk to the politicians they say it is the Crown Prosecution Service. If you call the Crown Prosecution Service, they say, no, it is MI5. So we have been in this runaround for the last two and a half years." (August 10, 2005)
Dawn correspondent, Murtaza Razvi writes: Wasn’t it the founder of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, who whilst on a visit to Karachi in the 1970s was asked how his country could help Pakistan become an economic power, and he had remarked with words to the effect, that how can you even begin to think helping a people who believe that real life starts after death?
Ours is also a country where young adults in a Pak-Afghan border area barely know the name of the country they live in; many do not know the name of the President or the Prime Minister, as a televised interview by journalist Saleem Safi revealed the other day. But surely, if asked, the same bunch would have denounced America as a reincarnation of Satan in our times and hailed Bin Laden as their lost Messiah. And they would certainly also tell you what constitutes blasphemy, and why women should be locked up.
The knowledge being disseminated from the pulpit (including TV televangelist shows) and the textbooks is simply frightening. It is frightening in the literal sense of the word, because it is aimed at instilling the fear of God in your hearts and minds via the most ferocious of interpretations of the religious dogma. This leaves one incapable of thinking for oneself.
Who needs arithmetic, reading or writing stories in a worldly language, God forbid, when we have our own unique, divine mechanisms, and Arabic, to guide us through this transitory life on Earth?
In another article Murtaza Razvi writes:
We want our madressahs and hijabs and missionaries preaching in the UK, which readily obliges because it respects your right to practise your faith (France and even Turkey will not allow half as much freedom to their Muslim populations), but here in Pakistan we won’t have the Ahmadis call themselves Muslim even though they recite the same kalema and pray the same prayer; we won’t allow Christian missionaries either.
According to a thin but a loud minority in Pakistan, anyone who does not believe in the Taliban or the Saudi-like reading of Islam is a heretic, who must be converted or ‘banished to hell’, as the expression in Urdu goes. Farhat Hashmis of the world also go around preaching that even greeting a non-Muslim is akin to heresy.
The Gulf is another story altogether. Most our of brotherly oil-rich people — read very honourable men, for women hardly count — have their rules of engagement listed according to your nationalities, rather the race. A white man from the US, say a doctor, draws a much higher salary than his plebian Bangladeshi counterpart even if both are graduates of the same American medical school! But neither can go to church in the holy kingdom, for no such place exists there.
A friend narrates that whilst he was in Riyadha, a Hindu chap was picked by the religious police along with him because they were found loitering in the marketplace while a muezzin had already called the faithful to the prayer. The Muslim friend says that he went down on his knees and begged forgiveness for his felony from the officer who hit him on the head and let him go with a warning that next time Allah will not forgive him, while the Hindu fellow found himself in a bigger mess. When he, too, was tauntingly asked if he was Muslim, he replied in the negative and prompt came the next question in all its fury: ‘Why are you not Muslim?’ To which the poor chap had no answer. He too was eventually let go with a long and hard kick in the back, but with the warning that next time if he dared say he was a non-Muslim, he’d have to face a bit more than the wrath of Allah. This, my friend says, is not Islam but is definitely quite the Muslim conduct, for which many will, perhaps very wrongly, cite the backing of their religion.
Double standards abound. In the UAE Muslims can drink alcohol in a bar, but taking liquor is a punishable offence for them; in Qatar, it is your nationality, and not your faith, that decides whether you can legally consume alcohol: a Muslim from UAE, Turkey, Indonesia or India can, but a Muslim from Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia or Iran cannot.
Yes, Islam emphasizes on equality in social justice, as was enshrined in the de facto constitution which the Prophet of Islam hammered out in consultation with all concerned, and which became the basis of running the first Islamic state at Medina. He declared the neighbouring Jews and Christian tribes with whom he entered into a truce as part of the Ummah, in which each individual was bound by the same set of rules, obligations and privileges regardless of his/her faith. This was a true pluralistic aspect of Islam which its Prophet implemented and enforced by consensus in his own lifetime in the 7th century CE.
Today the word Ummah has been robbed of its original meaning and popularly connotes Muslims only. Muslims who feel free to discriminate against non-Muslims in Muslim-majority countries, whilst demanding and enjoying equal rights in Muslim-minority countries. Thus, the modern pluralistic, secular state is more Islamic in its social justice regime than the few Islamic republics which have their minorities on tenterhooks.
CHAPTER VI
THE CHANCE FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
As the U.S. administration grapples with grave financial and international crises, it may seem counterintuitive to argue that the very unsettled nature of the international system generates a unique opportunity for creative diplomacy.
That opportunity involves a seeming contradiction. On one level, the financial collapse represents a major blow to the standing of the United States. While American political judgments have often proved controversial, the American prescription for a world financial order has generally been unchallenged. Now disillusionment with the United States' management of it is widespread.
At the same time, the magnitude of the debacle makes it impossible for the rest of the world to shelter any longer behind American predominance or American failings.
Every country will have to reassess its own contribution to the prevailing crisis. Each will seek to make itself independent, to the greatest possible degree, of the conditions that produced the collapse; at the same time, each will be obliged to face the reality that its dilemmas can be mastered only by common action.
Even the most affluent countries will confront shrinking resources. Each will have to redefine its national priorities. An international order will emerge if a system of compatible priorities comes into being. It will fragment disastrously if the various priorities cannot be reconciled.
The nadir of the existing international financial system coincides with simultaneous political crises around the globe. Never have so many transformations occurred at the same time in so many different parts of the world and been made globally accessible via instantaneous communication. The alternative to a new international order is chaos.
The financial and political crises are, in fact, closely related partly because, during the period of economic exuberance, a gap had opened up between the economic and the political organization of the world.
The economic world has been globalized. Its institutions have a global reach and have operated by maxims that assumed a self-regulating global market.
The financial collapse exposed the mirage. It made evident the absence of global institutions to cushion the shock and to reverse the trend. Inevitably, when the affected publics turned to their national political institutions, these were driven principally by domestic politics, not considerations of world order.
Every major country has attempted to solve its immediate problems essentially on its own and to defer common action to a later, less crisis-driven point. So-called rescue packages have emerged on a piecemeal national basis, generally by substituting seemingly unlimited governmental credit for the domestic credit that produced the debacle in the first place - so far without more than stemming incipient panic.
International order will not come about either in the political or economic field until there emerge general rules toward which countries can orient themselves.
In the end, the political and economic systems can be harmonized in only one of two ways: by creating an international political regulatory system with the same reach as that of the economic world; or by shrinking the economic units to a size manageable by existing political structures, which is likely to lead to a new mercantilism, perhaps of regional units.
A new Bretton Woods-kind of global agreement is by far the preferable outcome. America's role in this enterprise will be decisive. Paradoxically, American influence will be great in proportion to the modesty in our conduct; we need to modify the righteousness that has characterized too many American attitudes, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
That seminal event and the subsequent period of nearly uninterrupted global growth induced too many to equate world order with the acceptance of American designs, including our domestic preferences.
The result was a certain inherent unilateralism - the standard complaint of European critics - or else an insistent kind of consultation by which nations were invited to prove their fitness to enter the international system by conforming to American prescriptions.
Not since the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy half a century ago had a new administration come into office with such a reservoir of expectations as had of President Obama. It is unprecedented that all the principal actors on the world stage avowed their desire to undertake the transformations imposed on them by the world crisis in collaboration with the United States.
The extraordinary impact of the president on the imagination of humanity was an important element in shaping a new world order. But it defined an opportunity, not a policy.
The ultimate challenge was to shape the common concern of most countries and all major ones regarding the economic crisis, together with a common fear of jihadist terrorism, into a common strategy reinforced by the realization that the new issues like proliferation, energy and climate change permit no national or regional solution.
The charge of American unilateralism has some basis in fact; it also has become an alibi for a key European difference with America: that the United States still conducts itself as a national state capable of asking its people for sacrifices for the sake of the future, while Europe, suspended between abandoning its national framework and a yet-to-be-reached political substitute, finds it much harder to defer present benefits.
Hence its concentration on soft power. Most Atlantic controversies have been substantive and only marginally procedural; there would have been conflict no matter how intense the consultation. The Atlantic partnership will depend much more on common policies than agreed procedures.
The role of China in a new world order is equally crucial. A relationship that started on both sides as essentially a strategic design to constrain a common adversary has evolved over the decades into a pillar of the international system.
China made possible the American consumption splurge by buying American debt; America helped the modernization and reform of the Chinese economy by opening its markets to Chinese goods.
Both sides overestimated the durability of this arrangement. But while it lasted, it sustained unprecedented global growth. It mitigated as well the concerns over China's role once China emerged in full force as a fellow superpower. A consensus had developed according to which adversarial relations between these pillars of the international system would destroy much that had been achieved and benefit no one. That conviction needs to be preserved and reinforced.
Each side of the Pacific needs the cooperation of the other in addressing the consequences of the financial crisis. Now that the global financial collapse has devastated Chinese export markets, China is emphasizing infrastructure development and domestic consumption.
It will not be easy to shift gears rapidly, and the Chinese growth rate may fall temporarily below the 7.5 percent that Chinese experts have always defined as the line that challenges political stability. America needs Chinese cooperation to address its current account imbalance and to prevent its exploding deficits from sparking a devastating inflation.
What kind of global economic order arises will depend importantly on how China and America deal with each other over the next few years. A frustrated China may take another look at an exclusive regional Asian structure, for which the nucleus already exists in the Asean-plus-three concept.
At the same time, if protectionism grows in America or if China comes to be seen as a long-term adversary, a self-fulfilling prophecy may blight the prospects of global order.
Such a return to mercantilism and 19th-century diplomacy would divide the world into competing regional units with dangerous long-term consequences.
The Sino-American relationship needs to be taken to a new level. The current crisis can be overcome only by developing a sense of common purpose. Such issues as proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, energy and the environment demand strengthened political ties between China and the United States.
This generation of leaders has the opportunity to shape trans-Pacific relations into a design for a common destiny, much as was done with trans-Atlantic relations in the immediate postwar period - except that the challenges now are more political and economic than military.
Such a vision must embrace as well such countries as Japan, Korea, India, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, whether as part of trans-Pacific structures or, in regional arrangements, dealing with special subjects as energy, proliferation and the environment.
The complexity of the emerging world requires from America a more historical approach than the insistence that every problem has a final solution expressible in programs with specific time limits not infrequently geared to our political process.
We must learn to operate within the attainable and be prepared to pursue ultimate ends by the accumulation of nuance.
An international order can be permanent only if its participants have a share not only in building but also in securing it. In this manner, America and its potential partners have a unique opportunity to transform a moment of crisis into a vision of hope.
A.G. Noorani, a Mumbai based lawyer and writer has this to say about Negotiation US style:
Like individuals, nations have a style, an attitude and an outlook. They are reflected most strikingly in the style of their diplomacy. Our region is at a crossroads today. Afghanistan holds the key to regional peace; so does Iran. The United States` diplomacy on both will make the big difference between peace and protracted conflict.
On Jan 24, 2012, Yale University Press published a book with stunning revelations, based on official records and briefings. In May 2010, Turkey and Brazil had successfully negotiated with Iran an accord on the nuclear question, the Tehran Declaration. It was in conformity with a letter to the mediators by President Barack Obama.
Iran would have parted with 1,200kg of low-enriched uranium, about a half of its stockpile as a prelude to a wider accord. The US scuttled it and instead drummed up support in the UN Security Council for sanctions against Iran. The book`s title is A Single Roll of the Dice and its author is a highly respected scholar Trita Parsi who is frequently consulted by western and Asian governments.
In an earlier book Treacherous Alliance he had exposed how the US rebuffed Iran`s overture for peace in May 2003, made through Swiss ambassador Tim Guldimann.
It is a certain mindset which inspires such behaviour. It was explained by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “It’s only after we pass sanctions in the Security Council that Iran will negotiate in good faith.” Since Iran had already demonstrated its good faith, by accepting the declaration, a fact the mediators accepted, she implied clearly that the US would force Iran to yield further under duress.
As an American official told Trita Parsi, the impression was created that “we could not take yes for an answer”. Prof Nicholas Burns noted last week that “we have not had a serious and sustained negotiation with the Iranian government in more than 30 years”.
This policy has a long pedigree. On Feb 8, 1950 Secretary of State Dean Acheson said that the United States` policy was, indeed, to bring about understandings, but “by creating situations so strong that they can be recognized and out of them can grow agreement”. On Feb 16, he spoke of the need “to create situations of strength”. Thus was born the doctrine of `negotiation from strength`. After the collapse of the USSR the doctrine acquired menacing nuances. They would doom the US parleys with the Taliban to failure.
The omens are not propitious. On Jan 3, both the White House and the State Department welcomed the Taliban’s decision to open a political office in Qatar to provide an address for talks. There is, however, a long road to travel before negotiations can begin in earnest.
For, the White House Press Secretary Jay Carney’s remarks suggest that the US believes that the Taliban are a spent force and are suing for peace in sack cloth and ashes. The conditions he stipulated reveal the mindset of old. “…Standards for reconciliation have not changed — the conditions, rather, those insurgents who are willing to lay down their arms and reconcile, must meet in order to be accepted by the Afghan government and by us.”
He amplified: “And we’ve always said that Taliban reconciliation would only come on the condition of breaking from Al Qaeda, abandoning violence and abiding by the Afghan constitution, and that remains the case.”
As Britain`s former ambassador to Afghanistan Sherard Cowper-Coles mentions in his book Cables from Kabul , the constitution was “drafted by a Frenchman and imposed by an American that was out of sync with Afghan political realities. A constitution which imposes something like 14 separate national elections in 20 years is not really sustainable, politically or economically”. It could “last only as long as the West was prepared to stay in Afghanistan to prop up the present disposition”. To the Taliban this is a non-negotiable demand. It wants all the foreign troops to leave.
The basic assumptions underlying the US `conditions` are all wrong. The Taliban had never been defeated in 2001-02 and is not negotiating now from a position of weakness. Quite the contrary. More to the point, it was a wholly unnecessary war for the US to launch — 9/11 was a horrendous act of terrorism; but it was not an act of aggression by the state of Afghanistan. It is as absurd to declare `war on terror` as it is to declare war on evil.
After 9/11 the tide was turning against Osama bin Laden and ways were being debated in Kandahar on his expulsion without loss of face. Time was needed, which “western governments thirsting for violent revenge were not prepared to give”. Two Asian and Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, were wantonly devastated and laid to waste by the US and its allies with grave consequences for the peace of the region; especially the immediate neighbours including Pakistan and Iran. That was aggression.
In both cases, negotiations provided an option; in both it was spurned and continues still to be spurned. The Qatar parleys do not inspire much confidence. This is not a bilateral matter between the US and the Taliban — a quest for a face-saver by the US to cover its ignominious retreat after the failure of a venture of criminal folly. This is a matter which concerns the countries whose peace and stability that venture undermined with grave consequences to their well-being.
With Sherard Cowper-Coles one cannot help asking “whether Obama’s America is up for the challenge of driving such a process forward with all the political and diplomatic resources such a strategy would require”. Does it have the vision to take that path of peace and the stamina to stay the course?
Philanthropy no solution to poverty, says Robert Newman:
It is strange that at the World Economic Forum the designated voice of the world’s poor has been Bill Gates, who has pledged £478m to the Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, telling Davos that the world economic crisis was no excuse for cutting aid.
It reminds me of that dark hour when Al Gore, despite being a shareholder in Occidental Petroleum, was the voice of climate change action – because Gates does not speak with the voice of the world’s poor, of course, but with the voice of its rich. It’s a loud voice, but the model of development it proclaims is the wrong one because philanthropy is the enemy of justice.
Am I saying that philanthropy has never done good? No, it has achieved many wonderful things. When people didn’t have polio vaccines would I rather get them from a plutocrat? No, give them the vaccines. But beware the havoc that power without oversight and democratic control can wreak.
The biotech agriculture that Lord Sainsbury was unable to push through democratically he can now implement unilaterally, through his Gatsby Foundation. We are told that Gatsby’s biotech project aims to provide food security for the global south.
But if you listen to southern groups such as the Karnataka State Farmers of India, food security is precisely the reason they campaign against GM, because biotech crops are monocrops which are more vulnerable to disease and so need lashings of petrochemical pesticides, insecticides and fungicides – none of them cheap – and whose ruinous costs will rise with the price of oil, bankrupting small family farms first.
Crop diseases mutate, meanwhile, and all the chemical inputs in the world can’t stop disease wiping out whole harvests of genetically engineered single strands.
Both the Gatsby and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundations are keen to get deeper into agriculture, especially in Africa. But top-down nostrums for the rural poor don’t end well. The list of autocratic hubris in pseudo-scientific farming is long and spectacularly calamitous. It runs from Tsar Alexander I’s model village colonies in 1820s Novgorod to 1920s Hollywood film producer Hickman Price, who, as Simon Schama brilliantly describes in The American Future , “bought 54 square miles of land to show the little people how it was really done, [and] used 25 combines all painted glittery silver”.
His fleet of tractors was kept working day and night, and the upshot of such sod-busting was the great plains dustbowl. But there’s no stopping a plutocratic philanthropist in a hurry.
And then there is the vexed question of whether these billions are really the billionaires’ to give away in the first place. When Microsoft was on its board, the American Electronics Association, the AeA, challenged European Union proposals for a ban on toxic components and for the use of a minimum five per cent recycled plastic in the manufacture of electronic goods.
AeA took the EU to the World Trade Organization
on a charge of erecting artificial trade barriers. (And according to the
American NGO Public Citizen, “made the astounding claim that there is no
evidence that heavy metals, like lead, pose a threat to human health or the
environment”.)
CHAPTER VII
HUMAN STORY
ALANNA MITCHELL writes a human story:
The tip of a girl’s 40,000-year-old pinky finger found in a cold Siberian cave, paired with faster and cheaper genetic sequencing technology, is helping scientists draw a surprisingly complex new picture of human origins.
Humans as Hybrids
The new view is fast supplanting the traditional idea that modern humans triumphantly marched out of Africa about 50,000 years ago, replacing all other types that had gone before.
Instead, the genetic analysis shows, modern humans encountered and bred with at least two groups of ancient humans in relatively recent times: the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia, dying out roughly 30,000 years ago, and a mysterious group known as the Denisovans, who lived in Asia and most likely vanished around the same time.
Their DNA lives on in us even though they are extinct. “In a sense, we are a hybrid species,” Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist who is the research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, said in an interview.
The Denisovans (pronounced dun-EE-suh-vinz) were first described a year ago in a groundbreaking paper in the journal Nature made possible by genetic sequencing of the girl’s pinky bone and of an oddly shaped molar from a young adult.
Those findings have unleashed a spate of new analyses.
Scientists are trying to envision the ancient couplings and their consequences: when and where they took place, how they happened, how many produced offspring and what effect the archaic genes have on humans today.
Other scientists are trying to learn more about the Denisovans: who they were, where they lived and how they became extinct.
A revolutionary increase in the speed and a decline in the cost of gene-sequencing technology have enabled scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, to map the genomes of both the Neanderthals and the Denisovans.
Comparing genomes, scientists concluded that today’s humans outside Africa carry an average of 2.5 percent Neanderthal DNA, and that people from parts of Oceania also carry about 5 percent Denisovan DNA. A study published in November found that Southeast Asians carry about 1 percent Denisovan DNA in addition to their Neanderthal genes. It is unclear whether Denisovans and Neanderthals also interbred.
A third group of extinct humans, Homo floresiensis, nicknamed “the hobbits” because they were so small, also walked the earth until about 17,000 years ago. It is not known whether modern humans bred with them because the hot, humid climate of the Indonesian island of Flores, where their remains were found, impairs the preservation of DNA.
This means that our modern era, since H. floresiensis died out, is the only time in the four-million-year human history that just one type of human has been alive, said David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School who was the lead author of the Nature paper on the Denisovans.
For many scientists, the epicenter of the emerging story on human origins is the Denisova cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, where the girl’s finger bone was discovered. It is the only known place on the planet where three types of humans — Denisovan, Neanderthal and modern — lived, probably not all at once.
John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose lab is examining the archaic genomes, visited the cave in July. It has a high arched roof like a Gothic cathedral and a chimney to the sky, he said, adding that being there was like walking in the footsteps of our ancestors.
The cave has been open to the elements for a quarter of a million years and is rich with layers of sediments that may contain other surprises. Some of its chambers are unexplored, and excavators are still finding human remains that are not yet identified. The average temperature for a year, 32 degrees Fahrenheit, bodes well for the preservation of archaic DNA.
Could this cave have been one of the spots where the ancient mating took place? Dr. Hawks said it was possible.
But Dr. Reich and his team have determined through the patterns of archaic DNA replications that a small number of half-Neanderthal, half-modern human hybrids walked the earth between 46,000 and 67,000 years ago, he said in an interview. The half-Denisovan, half-modern humans that contributed to our DNA were more recent.
And Peter Parham, an immunologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, has used an analysis of modern and ancient immune-system genetic components — alleles — to figure out that one of the Denisovan-modern couplings most likely took place in what is now southeastern China. He has also found some evidence that a Neanderthal-modern pair mated in west Asia.
He stressed, however, that his study was just the first step in trying to reconstruct where the mating took place.
Dr. Parham’s analysis, which shows that some archaic immune alleles are widespread among modern humans, concludes that as few as six couplings all those tens of thousands of years ago might have led to the current level of ancient immune alleles.
Another paper, by Mathias Currat and Laurent Excoffier, two Swiss geneticists, suggests that breeding between Neanderthals and modern humans was rare. Otherwise, they say, modern humans would have far more Neanderthal DNA.
Were they romantic couplings? More likely they were aggressive acts between competing human groups, Dr. Stringer said. For a model, he pointed to modern hunter-gatherer groups that display aggressive behavior among tribes.
The value of the interbreeding shows up in the immune system, Dr. Parham’s analysis suggests. The Neanderthals and Denisovans had lived in Europe and Asia for many thousands of years before modern humans showed up and had developed ways to fight the diseases there, he said in an interview.
When modern humans mated with them, they got an injection of helpful genetic immune material, so useful that it remains in the genome today. This suggests that modern humans needed the archaic DNA to survive.
The downside of archaic immune material is that it may be responsible for autoimmune diseases like diabetes, arthritis and multiple sclerosis, Dr. Parham said, stressing that these are preliminary results.
Although little is known about the Denisovans — the only remains so far are the pinky bone and the tooth, and there are no artifacts like tools. Dr. Reich and others suggest that they were once scattered widely across Asia, from the cold northern cave to the tropical south. The evidence is that modern populations in Oceania, including aboriginal Australians, carry Denisovan genes.
Dr. Reich and others suggest that the interbreeding that led to this phenomenon probably occurred in the south, rather than in Siberia. If so, the Denisovans were more widely dispersed than Neanderthals, and possibly more successful.
But the questions of how many Denisovans there
were and how they became extinct have yet to be answered. Right now, as Dr.
Reich put it, they are “a genome in search of an archaeology.”
CHAPTER VIII
HENRY KISSINGER’S DIPLOMACY
Henry Alfred Kissinger (born 1923) was secretary of state during the second Nixon administration and the Ford administration, chief of the National Security Council (1969-1973), professor at Harvard University (1952-1969), and co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (with Le Duc Tho) in 1973.
Henry Kissinger was the chief foreign policy adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford between 1969 and 1974, a tumultuous period for the United States in its dealings in Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. The use of secret negotiations (based in large part on a fundamental distrust of bureaucracies - most notably that of the State Department) led to agreements on arms limitations (SALT I), the reopening of relations with the People's Republic of China after more than 20 years of non-recognition following the assumption of power by the Communists in 1949, and "shuttle diplomacy" involving attempts to secure peace among Middle-Eastern nations. Other work involved the secret bombing of Cambodia, a secret war with Cambodia that was ultimately halted by actions of Congress, cessation of hostilities between South and North Vietnam (and ultimately the collapse of the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese government), and the sharing of the Nobel Peace Prize with Le Duc Tho, the North Vietnamese negotiator at the Paris Peace Talks. While Kissinger's memoirs contained his interpretation of the aforementioned events, his critics did not soften their conclusion that Kissinger often made critical mistakes in developing U.S. foreign policy.
Despite his detractors, Kissinger enjoyed a reputation of being an intellectual in the Nixon administration. While often criticized for some of his personal characteristics, he was also praised for his wit and charm. In addition to his distrust of bureaucracies, Kissinger distrusted the media - particularly the press - and was reputed to berate subordinates who leaked information. In his own interactions with the media he worked closely (and off the record) with foreign affairs correspondents so his viewpoint would be presented favorably.
Kissinger's view of the world - dominated by a setting of bi-polarization - both coincided with that of President Nixon's and colored his interactions with others in the conduct of foreign affairs. His view was deemed "European" because he was born and spent his formative years in Germany and because of his attention to important European actors in history (in his senior thesis and doctoral dissertation - both completed at Harvard). It was a worldview that perceived the necessity for maintaining equilibrium between the two world powers - the United States and the Soviet Union - and of arguing and negotiating from a position of strength. Thus it is possible to see the opening of relations with China for the first time after World War II as related to containment of the Soviet Union - particularly as this transpired when open hostilities between the U.S.S.R. and China were taking place. This was also evident when Kissinger justified secret bombings in Cambodia (on the grounds that there were sanctuaries and transportation routes being used by the North Vietnamese) in an attempt to get the North Vietnamese to negotiate a settlement.
An Expert on International Affairs
Kissinger was born May 27, 1923, in Furth, Germany, with the name Heinz Alfred. His mother, Paula Stern Kissinger, was from Fanconia in southern Germany. His father, Louis, was a teacher who lost his job and career during the Nazi reign and persecution of the Jews in Germany. The family (a younger brother, Walter Bernhard, was born a year after Henry Kissinger) left Nazi Germany in 1938, moving first to England and then several months later to the United States. The family settled in New York City where Kissinger began high school and after a year switched to night school, working days in a factory. During World War II Kissinger joined the military and served in Germany, working ultimately in Army Intelligence. Following the war Kissinger remained in Europe as a civilian instructor at the European Command Intelligence School at Oberammergau, Germany. In 1947 he returned to the United States and enrolled as an undergraduate at Harvard University. He graduated in the class of 1950 (in three years because he entered as a sophomore) summa cum laude and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He continued his studies as a graduate student at Harvard, earning his masters degree in 1952 and his Ph.D. in 1954.
Kissinger served in a variety of roles prior to his entrance into the Nixon administration as chief of the National Security Council. Between 1952 and 1969 he directed the Harvard International Seminar, which was held during the summer months. In this capacity, he was visited by many international figures with whom he would later deal as a foreign affairs official. As part of the Council on Foreign Relations he published Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, a book that was widely read and well accepted. For 18 months beginning in 1956 he was director of a Rockefeller Brothers Fund special studies project - a program developed to investigate potential domestic and international problems. In 1957 he became a lecturer at Harvard, ultimately being promoted to full professor in 1962. Kissinger served as a consultant to the National Security Council (until February of 1962, when he left because of policy differences), to the Arms Control Disarmament Agency (until 1967), and to the Rand Corporation (until 1968). From 1962 to 1965 he worked full time at Harvard. In 1965 he became a consultant to the State Department on Vietnam. He visited Vietnam several times between 1965 and 1967. Most of 1968 was spent working on New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller's unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for the presidency. In spite of Rockefeller's defeat by Richard Nixon, it was at Rockefeller's urging that Nixon considered and appointed Kissinger to head the National Security Council.
Kissinger was critical of U.S. foreign policy toward the Soviet Union developed under the preceding Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He considered their stances inconsistent and too conciliatory; it was these criticisms that had led to Kissinger's departure from McGeorge Bundy's National Security Council in the Kennedy administration. Kissinger viewed the Soviet Union as the principal opponent of the United States in international affairs. Nonetheless, Kissinger accepted as legitimate the role of the Soviet Union as one of the super powers. This approach, known as "détente," facilitated the easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States.
As a consequence, one of Kissinger's early successes during this period of détente was the completion of negotiations on the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty (SALT) with the Soviet Union. The negotiations, highly technical and conducted in part by sophisticated negotiating teams and in part by Kissinger himself, lasted for nearly three years. They culminated in the signing of an agreement in Moscow by President Nixon and Soviet Communist Party Chief Brezhnev.
Kissinger also was influential in the settlement of the Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin (September 3, 1971). A thorn in relations between the East and West for many years, particularly after the Berlin Wall, an agreement was sought to facilitate travel between East and West Berlin. Through regular (official) negotiations, handled by Ambassador Kenneth Rush, and secret negotiations directly involving Kissinger, an easing of relations between the United States and the former Soviet Union was facilitated by the normalization of relations between the four nations that had controlled Berlin since World War II.
China, Vietnam, Middle East
Another of
Kissinger's successes (and one that caught the media by surprise) was the
organization of Richard Nixon's approach to China. The United States had refused to recognize the Peoples Republic
of China
following the civil war that left Communists under Mao Tse-Tung in control
after World War II. Early in Nixon's first term efforts were made to allow
interaction between the Chinese and the United States. Capitalizing on
international conditions and secretly moving through the good auspices of Pakistani
President Yahya Khan, Kissinger flew to China and met with Chou En-lai,
arranging for an invitation for Nixon to make an official state visit. The
resultant Shanghai Communique of 1972 provided guidelines for the establishment
of U.S.-China relations. During his eight years in the National Security
Council and State Department, Kissinger flew to China a total of nine times.
Kissinger perhaps was criticized
most and forgiven least for his conduct of the war(s) in Southeast
Asia. The U.S.
involvement in Vietnam
had driven Lyndon Johnson from office, and it had been the intention of the
Nixon administration to seek "peace with honor." The Kissinger
approach was characteristic: negotiate from a position of strength. Thus not
only was U.S. direct
involvement in Vietnam
reflective of this position, but the bombing of Cambodia
- the "secret war" - was an attempt to use military strength to force
the hands of U.S.
opponents to agree to terminate the war. All efforts, of course, were an
attempt to keep Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos from becoming controlled by
Communist factions. Kissinger successfully negotiated a truce with Le Duc Tho
(over the strong protests of the South Vietnam
government) in Paris
and shared the Nobel Prize in 1973 with him. However, many considered
Kissinger's policies excessive attempts to make right with might.
Following his assumption of
power as secretary of state in 1973 - which he held through the completion of
Gerald Ford's administration - Kissinger abandoned his policy of hands-off the Middle East (it was the one area where he had deferred to
Secretary of State William Rogers while Kissinger was with the National
Security Council). During the three years he was secretary of state, Kissinger
conducted what became known as "shuttle diplomacy," where he served
as the facilitator of negotiations to restore peace among Middle-Eastern
nations. Kissinger would often fly from Egypt
to Israel to Syria
or elsewhere and back again as he played the middleman role in developing
agreements to secure peace. In all, Kissinger made 11 "shuttle"
missions, the longest lasting nearly a month.
After his departure from office
following the 1976 electoral defeat of Gerald Ford at the hands of Jimmy
Carter, Kissinger was self-employed as the director of a consulting firm
dealing with international political assessments. In addition to advising a
variety of clients on the political climate at any given moment, he produced
two books of memoirs to explain the evolution of history while he was in
office.
In 1997 former Secretaries of
State Kissinger and Alexander Haig caused controversy through their role in
facilitating U.S.-China trade. Some say the two stood to profit from contracts
with the Chinese and that some of their dealings put the United States in a "vulnerable
position."
Kissinger is supposed to have once said "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."
India-Pakistan War
Under Kissinger's guidance, the United States
government supported Pakistan
in the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971. Kissinger was particularly
concerned about the expansion of Soviet influence in South Asia as a result of
a treaty of friendship recently signed by India
and the USSR, and sought to
demonstrate to the People's Republic of China
(Pakistan's ally and an
enemy of both India and the USSR) the value of a tacit alliance with the United States.
In recent years, Kissinger has come under fire for private comments he made to Nixon during the Bangladesh-Pakistan War in which he described then-Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as a " bitch" and a "witch". He also said "The Indians are bastards," shortly before the war. Kissinger has since expressed his regret over the comments.
Israeli policy and Soviet Jewry
According to notes taken by H. R. Haldeman, Nixon "ordered his aides
to exclude all Jewish-Americans from policy-making on Israel," including Kissinger.
One note quotes Nixon as saying “get K. [Kissinger] out of the play — Haig
handle it."
In 1973, Kissinger did not feel that pressing the Soviet Union concerning the plight of Jews being persecuted there was in the interest of US foreign policy. In conversation with Nixon shortly after a meeting with Golda Meir on March 1, 1973, Kissinger stated, “The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy, and if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
1973 Yom Kippur War
In
1973, Kissinger negotiated the end to the Yom Kippur War, which had begun on
October 6, 1973 when Egypt
and Syria attacked Israel.
Kissinger has published lengthy and dramatic telephone transcripts from this
period in the 2002 book Crisis. One week later, under Nixon's direction,
and against Kissinger's initial opposition, the US
military conducted the largest military airlift in history to aid Israel
on October 12, 1973. US
action contributed to the 1973 oil crisis in the United States and its Western
European allies, which ended in March 1974.
Israel regained the territory it lost in the early fighting and gained new territories from Syria and Egypt, including land in Syria east of the previously captured Golan Heights, and additionally on the western bank of the Suez Canal, although they did lose some territory on the eastern side of the Suez Canal that had been in Israeli hands since the end of the Six Day War. Kissinger pressured the Israelis to cede some of the newly captured land back to its Arab neighbours, contributing to the first phases of Israeli-Egyptian non-aggression. The move saw a warming in US–Egyptian relations, bitter since the 1950s, as the country moved away from its former independent stance and into a close partnership with the United States. The peace was finalized in 1978 when U.S. President Jimmy Carter mediated the Camp David Accords, during which Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for an Egyptian agreement to recognize the state of Israel.
Latin American policy
The United States continued to recognize and maintain relationships with non-left-wing governments, democratic and authoritarian alike. John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress was ended in 1973. In 1974, negotiations about new settlement over Panama Canal started. They eventually led to the Torrijos-Carter Treaties and handing the Canal over to Panamanian control.
Kissinger initially supported the normalization of United States-Cuba relations, broken since 1961 (all U.S.–Cuban trade was blocked in February 1962, a few weeks after the exclusion of Cuba from the Organization of American States because of US pressure). However, he quickly changed his mind and followed Kennedy's policy. After the involvement of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces in the liberation struggles in Angola and Mozambique, Kissinger said that unless Cuba withdrew its forces relations would not be normalized. Cuba refused.
Intervention in Chile
Chilean
Socialist Party presidential candidate Salvador Allende was elected by a
plurality in 1970, causing serious concern in Washington, D.C.
due to his openly socialist and pro-Cuban politics. The Nixon administration
authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to encourage a military coup
that would prevent Allende's inauguration, but the plan was not successful. The
extent of Kissinger's involvement in or support of these plans is a subject of
controversy.
United
States-Chile relations remained frosty during Salvador Allende's tenure,
following the complete nationalization of the partially U.S.-owned copper mines
and the Chilean subsidiary of the U.S.-based ITT Corporation, as well as other
Chilean businesses. The U.S.
claimed that the Chilean government had greatly undervalued fair compensation
for the nationalization by subtracting what it deemed "excess
profits". Therefore, the U.S.
considered (but never actually implemented)] economic sanctions against Chile.
The CIA also provided funding for the mass anti-government strikes in 1972 and
1973.
The
CIA, acting under the approval of the 40 committee (which Kissinger chaired),
was involved in various covert actions in Chile during this period: it devised
what in effect was a constitutional coup, and, when that failed, remained in
contact with anti-Allende elements. The CIA learned of a number of plots to
establish a military dictatorship. Although it pointedly refused to materially
assist any of them, and actually worked to prevent several of the more unlikely
plots for fear they would fail and strengthen Allende; it also encouraged
several of the plots and did nothing to prevent them. It assured the plotters
that such an event would be welcomed in Washington
and that the US
would not cut off aid over potential human rights violations.
On
September 11, 1973, Allende died during a military coup launched by Army
Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet, who became President.
A document released by the CIA in 2000 titled "CIA Activities in
Chile" revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after
the overthrow of Allende and that it made many of Pinochet's officers into paid
contacts of the CIA or US military, even though many were known to be involved
in notorious human rights abuses, until Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter
defeated President Gerald Ford in 1976.
On September 16, 1973, five days after Pinochet had assumed power, the following exchange about the coup took place between Kissinger and President Nixon:
Nixon: Nothing new of any importance or is there?
Kissinger: Nothing of very great consequence. The Chilean thing is getting consolidated and of course the newspapers are bleeding because a pro-Communist government has been overthrown.
Nixon: Isn't that something. Isn't that something.
Kissinger: I mean instead of celebrating – in the Eisenhower period we would be heroes.
Nixon: Well we didn't – as you know – our hand doesn't show on this one though.
Kissinger: We didn't do it. I mean we helped them. [garbled] created the conditions as great as possible.
Nixon: That is right.
And that is the way it is going to be played.
In 1976, Kissinger cancelled a letter that was to be sent to Chile warning
them against carrying out any political assassinations. Orlando Letelier was
then assassinated in Washington,
D.C. with a car bomb on September
21, 1976, the day the letter was to be sent. In an Aug. 30, 1976 memo,
Shlaudeman discussed the possibility that the U.S.
ambassador in Uruguay
might be endangered by delivering a warning against assassination. The U.S. ambassador to Chile, David H. Popper, said that
Pinochet might take as an insult any inference that he was connected with
assassination plots.
Kissinger has evaded legal summons by investigators in France, Spain, Chile and Argentina seeking to question him regarding his role in the disappearances of numerous citizens of the US and other nations, in regard to his involvement to Operation Condor. These included requests in 2001 by Chilean High Court judge Juan Guzmán, and Argentine judge Rodolfo Canicoba, which were both ignored by Kissinger. On May 28, 2001, police visited Kissinger at the Ritz Hotel, Paris and handed him a warrant, issued by Judge Roger LeLoire, requesting his testimony in the matter of 5 French citizens who had disappeared in Pinochet's Chile. Kissinger refused, referred the matter to the State Department, and left for Italy the next day, however the summons still stands.
In addition to these summons, two cases against Kissinger were filed and dismissed. On September 10, 2001, the family of General René Schneider, former commander of the Chilean military, initiated a civil action in federal court in Washington, DC, by claiming that Kissinger gave the agreement to murder Schneider because the General had refused to endorse plans for a military coup against Allende. As part of the suit Schneider's two sons attempted to sue Kissinger and then-CIA director Richard Helms for $3 million. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed the case based on sovereign and diplomatic immunity, as well as the political question doctrine. On November 13, 2002, 11 individuals who suffered grave human rights violations following the bloody coup that placed Pinochet in power brought suit against Henry Kissinger, the United States government, and Michael Vernon Townley for crimes against humanity, forced disappearance, torture, arbitrary detention, and wrongful death. The suit alleged that Henry Kissinger knowingly provided practical assistance and encouragement to the Chilean repressive regime before, during, and after the coup, with reckless disregard for the lives and well-being of the victims and their families. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed the case based on the same grounds as Schneider vs. Kissinger.
Intervention in Argentina
Kissinger took a similar line as he had toward Chile when the Argentinian military, led by Jorge Videla, toppled the democratic government of Isabel Perón in 1976 with a process named as "National Reorganization Process" by the military, with which they consolidated power, launching brutal reprisals and "disappearances" against political opponents. During a meeting with Argentinian foreign minister César Augusto Guzzetti, Kissinger assured him that the United States was an ally, but urged him to "get back to normal procedures" quickly before the U.S. Congress reconvened and had a chance to consider sanctions.
Africa
In 1974 a leftist military coup overthrew the Caetano government in Portugal in the
Carnation Revolution. The National Salvation Junta, the new government, quickly
granted Portugal's
colonies independence. Cuban troops in Angola supported the left-wing
Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in its fight against
right-wing UNITA and FNLA rebels during the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002).
Kissinger supported FNLA, led by Holden Roberto, and UNITA, led by Jonas
Savimbi, the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) insurgencies, as well as
the CIA-supported invasion of Angola
by South African troops. The FNLA was defeated and UNITA was forced to take its
fight into the bush. Only under Reagan's presidency would U.S. support for UNITA return.
In September 1976 Kissinger was actively involved in negotiations regarding
the Rhodesian Bush War. Kissinger, along with South
Africa's Prime Minister John Vorster, pressured Rhodesian
Prime Minister Ian Smith to hasten the transition to black majority rule in Rhodesia.
With FRELIMO in control of Mozambique
and even South Africa
withdrawing its support, Rhodesia's
isolation was nearly complete. According to Smith's autobiography, Kissinger
told Smith of Mrs. Kissinger's admiration for him, but Smith stated that he
thought Kissinger was asking him to sign Rhodesia's "death
certificate". Kissinger, bringing the weight of the United States, and corralling other relevant
parties to put pressure on Rhodesia,
hastened the end of minority-rule.
East Timor
The Portuguese decolonization process brought US
attention to the former Portuguese colony of East Timor,
which lies within the Indonesian archipelago and declared its independence in
1975. Indonesian president Suharto was a strong US
ally in Southeast Asia and began to mobilize
the Indonesian army, preparing to annex the nascent state, which had become
increasingly dominated by the popular leftist FRETILIN party. In December 1975,
the day before the invasion, Suharto discussed the invasion plans during a
meeting with Kissinger and President Ford in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. Both Ford and
Kissinger made clear that US relations with Indonesia would remain strong and
that it would not object to the proposed annexation. US
arms sales to Indonesia
continued, and Suharto went ahead with the annexation plan.
Later roles
Kissinger was then appointed to Georgetown
University's Center for
Strategic and International Studies. Kissinger published a dialogue with the
Japanese religious leader, Daisaku Ikeda, On Peace, Life and Philosophy.
He taught at Georgetown's
Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service for several years in the late 1970s. In
1982, with the help of a loan from the international banking firm of E.M.
Warburg, Pincus and Company, Kissinger founded a consulting firm, Kissinger
Associates, and is a partner in affiliate Kissinger McLarty Associates with Mack
McLarty, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. He also serves on board
of directors of Hollinger International, a Chicago-based newspaper group, and as
of March 1999, he also serves on board of directors of Gulfstream Aerospace.
In 1978, Kissinger was named chairman of the North American Soccer League
board of directors.
From 1995 to 2001, he served on the board of directors for Freeport-McMoRan, a multinational
copper and gold producer with significant mining and milling operations in Papua, Indonesia.
In February 2000, then-president of Indonesia Abdurrahman Wahid appointed
Kissinger as a political advisor. He also serves as an honorary advisor to the United
States-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce.
From 2000 - 2006, Kissinger served as chairman of the board of trustees of Eisenhower
Fellowships. In 2006, upon his departure from Eisenhower Fellowships, he
received the Dwight D. Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Service.
Role in U.S.
foreign policy
Kissinger left office when a Democrat, former Governor of Georgia and
"Washington
outsider" Jimmy Carter, defeated Republican Gerald Ford in the 1976
presidential elections. Kissinger continued to participate in policy groups,
such as the Trilateral Commission, and to maintain political consulting,
speaking, and writing engagements. Along with David Rockefeller, he was
instrumental in convincing President Carter to allow the Shah of Iran, Mohammad
Reza Pahlavi into the United
States to receive medical treatment, "a
decision that led directly to the Iranian hostage crisis."
In 2002, President George W. Bush appointed Kissinger to chair a committee
to investigate the September 11 attacks. Kissinger stepped down as chairman on
December 13, 2002 rather than reveal his client list, when queried about
potential conflicts of interest.
The Balkans
In several articles of his and interviews that he gave during the Yugoslav
wars, he criticized the United States' policies in the Balkans, among other
things for the recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign state,
which he described as a foolish act.
Most importantly he dismissed the notion of Serbs, and Croats for that part,
being aggressors or separatist, saying that "they can't be separating from
something that has never existed". In addition, he repeatedly warned the
West of implicating itself in a conflict that has its roots at least hundreds
of years back in time, and said that the West would do better if it allowed the
Serbs and Croats to join their respective countries.
This Kissinger position and statements provoked uncounted number of
articles and was subjected to criticism in numerous books and studies from
prominent authors like Christopher Hitchens, Andras Riedlmayer, Michael A.
Sells, Noel Malcolm, Norman Cigar, Rabia Ali, Lawrence Lifschultz, to name a
few among many others.
Michael A. Sells, professor of comparative religion at Haverford College in
Pennsylvania, is author of several articles on this subject, also wrote a book
in which among other he refuted Kissinger's assertions about Bosnia and its
history and culture. Also in his long article "The U.S., Bosnia, and Henry Kissinger's
Lie" professor Sells leave no room for doubt regarding to Kissinger's
assertions. With Noel Malcolm, Senior Research Fellow at Oxford
University since 2002, English
historian, writer, and columnist, he wrote "Bosnia: A Short History". But
most illustrious is comprehensive study of Andras Riedlmayer, Harvard
University Documentation Center, study on the War on Bosnian Culture, destruction
of Bosnian culture and history in Bosnian War, describing a meticulously
prepared and executed project of erasing of any traces of ancient Bosnian
culture and history. Nonetheless, Kissinger shared similarly critical views on
Western involvement in Kosovo. In particular, he held a disparaging view of the
Rambouillet Agreement:
The Rambouillet text, which called on Serbia
to admit NATO troops throughout Yugoslavia,
was a provocation, an excuse to start bombing. Rambouillet is not a document
that any Serb could have accepted. It was a terrible diplomatic document that
should never have been presented in that form.—Henry Kissinger, Daily Telegraph, June 28, 1999
However, as the Serbs did not accept the Rambouillet text and NATO bombings started, he opted for a continuation of the bombing as NATO's credibility was now at stake, but dismissed the usage of ground forces, claiming that it was not worth it.
Iraq
In 2006, it was reported in the book State of Denial by Bob Woodward that Kissinger
was meeting regularly with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick
Cheney to offer advice on the Iraq War. Kissinger confirmed in recorded
interviews with Woodward that the advice was the same as he had given in an
August 12, 2005 column in The Washington Post: "Victory over the
insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy.
In a November 19, 2006 interview at BBC Sunday AM, Kissinger said, when
asked whether there is any hope left for a clear military victory in Iraq,
"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi Government that can be
established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil
war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that
the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that
is possible... I think we have to redefine the course. But I don't believe that
the alternative is between military victory as it had been defined previously,
or total withdrawal."
In an April 3, 2008 interview by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution,
Kissinger re-iterated that even though he supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq
he thought that the Bush administration rested too much of the case for war on
Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction. Robinson noted that Kissinger
had criticized the administration for invading with too few troops, for
disbanding the Iraqi Army, and for mishandling relations with certain allies.
India
After apologizing for his use of the word 'bitch' in reference to Mrs. Indira
Gandhi, Kissinger met India's
main Opposition Leader Lal Krishna Advani in early October 2007 and lobbied for
the support of his Bharatiya Janata Party for the Indo-US civilian nuclear
agreement.
Kissinger said in April 2008 that "India has parallel objectives to the United States" and he called it an ally of the U.S.
China
Kissinger was present at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summer
Olympics. He was also in the Chinese capital to attend the inauguration of the
new US Embassy complex.
In 2011, Kissinger published On China, chronicling the evolution of Sino-American
relations and laying out the challenges to a partnership of 'genuine strategic
trust' between the U.S. and China.
Iran
Kissinger's position on this issue of U.S.-Iran talks was reported by the Tehran
Times to be that "Any direct talks between the U.S. and Iran on issues such as the nuclear
dispute would be most likely to succeed if they first involved only diplomatic
staff and progressed to the level of secretary of state before the heads of
state meet."
Public perception
At the height of Kissinger's prominence, many
commented on his wit. In one instance, at the Washington Press Club annual
congressional dinner, "Kissinger mocked his reputation as a secret
swinger."
His book Diplomacy
Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy is a very well-written treatise
on the foreign policies of the United States
and Europe from the seventeenth century until
the end of the 1980s. This book would be an excellent main work for an
understanding of international relations; even for those only lightly
interested in the political science field.
Kissinger has written this book from a predominantly American
perspective, though he has made attempts to balance it out by having done a
great deal of research into the British, German and Russian points of view and
attitudes. Since the United
States has historically had a great deal of
interaction with the British since the early 1900s the counterbalancing effect
of these countries to his discussion of American foreign policy is only
natural.
Kissinger's
idea of a new world order, which has
been in the process of developing since the early 1900s, is a common theme
throughout the book as well. He uses the historical background to show the
reasons for and the setting of this development. As a matter of fact, Kissinger
believes that this new
world order is indeed still developing; therefore he leaves us with
some questions and hypotheses to think about in the final chapter of the book.
His
thoughts on the new world order are very likely true but whether his hypotheses
of what is in store for us in the twenty-first century will come true, only
time will tell. His logic and reasoning is impeccable, but since modern-day
diplomacy more often leads to the optimum rather than to the ideal being
settled on may lead to unexpected results. It is these unexpected results which
may alter the theories which Kissinger's hypotheses are built on. Yet, one must
always attempt to see the future in order to be able to plan for the future.
Kissinger states that in this new world order a "confluence of moral and geopolitical aims, of Wilsonianism and Realpolitik, is emerging in the Western Hemisphere" (Kissinger, Diplomacy, pg.831). This statement is made very understandable to the reader throughout the course of the book since Kissinger begins his work setting forth the ideals of Wilson and then, as the world reacts to these ideals, the policy of Realpolitik to the fore as its counterpart in Europe. This is just one example of how Kissinger strove to base his conclusions on information that the reader also has equal access to. If he had not fleshed out his dissertation with so much detail of the different policies and diplomacies which occurred in the past four centuries it might have been tough for the reader to follow his lines of thought. Fortunately for us he did.
From
all of this it becomes quite clear why Kissinger felt he had to start his look
at diplomacy as far back as the seventeenth century despite the non-involvement
of the Americans in the European field until the early twentieth century. We
needed this background to enhance our understanding.
One of the major aspects of this book that
constantly comes through in this work is the great importance of America.
This is not just because of Kissinger's role as Secretary of the State of the United States
in recent times. The reason this could have had influence is because of the
perceived strength of the United
States during this period.
In
fact, it was this perceived strength that has been the root of most of the desires
of other countries for American involvement in their diplomatic and military
actions. One example of this is that Britain
felt that it needed America
desperately in order to succeed at its endeavours on the European continent. If
it had not been for Britain's
fears, America might never
have become so involved in Europe and Wilson
might never have attempted to implement the policy of collective security. At
present, one of the current views of America is that it is now a major
element in a "unipolar" or "one-superpower" world
(Kissinger, Diplomacy, pg.809). This view may in fact be unrealistic due to the
economic decline of the United States
as compared to Europe, Japan
and China
and also because of the current lack of need for the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization. As a result, according to Kissinger, "America's ability to employ it to
shape the rest of the world has actually decreased" (Kissinger, Diplomacy,
pg.809).
Still,
this view of America's
importance has resulted in America
becoming a leader in current world policies. A prime example of this was the
Gulf War. As a result, "this century's major international agreements have
been embodiments of American values" (Kissinger, Diplomacy, pg.18).
From
all of these occurrences, it is apparent that America has been important both
historically and in the present. Kissinger has made wonderful use of historical
comparisons and developments in order to broaden our understanding of the
setting surrounding the diplomacies of the past four centuries and also why the
United States
has always felt that the balance-of-power should be replaced by the policy of
collective security. Without this historical background, it would have been
next to impossible for us to realize why Kissinger believed that the European
balance-of-power doctrine would no longer work; or even for us to understand
what the European balance-of-power doctrine was.
The
reason all of this is possible is that Kissinger has gone out of his way to
ensure that this work was well and extensively researched. In fact, he went out
of his way to make sure that the main bulk of his documentation was in the form
of biographies of important public and historical figures as well as public
records of all of their speeches. When a book is based on this type of evidence
it is very difficult to either dispute or disprove the conclusions reached.
This is especially true because the secondary sources are equally backed up by
the primary sources.
This
is not always the case with other authors in this genre.
Because
of this over-abundant research which Kissinger has done, it is difficult to
discover where more empirical research may be necessary, but there are a few
areas where this does exist. One of the main and, perhaps, most important of
these is the debate over the present-day existence of Wilsonist practices. It
is now "far more difficult to implement the Wilsonian dream of universal
collective security" (Kissinger, Diplomacy, pg.809) but whether or not
this means that Wilson's
doctrine of collective security is completely dead is yet to be determined.
This can only be observed with an in-depth look at diplomacy over the next
twenty years at a minimum.
Another
issue which requires more research is connected to the first one. And this
issue is whether the idea of collective security is in fact folly. It has
proved to be impossible to implement in the past. This is an issue that
definitely needs looking into since the result of that research could lead to a
complete change in American foreign policy. At present, it does seem that a
change in direction is necessary. One way in which this could occur leads to
the final issue requiring empirical research. This is whether or not there is
presently a re-emergence of Metternich's ideals happening. These ideals were the
"eighteenth century conception of the universe as a great clockwork of
intricately meshing parts in which disruption of one part meant upsetting the
interaction of the others" (Kissinger, Diplomacy, pg.127). It is quite
possible that these ideals could easily be the needed replacement for the
currently unworking doctrine of collective security.
One
other solution that may result in a better fulfillment of Kissinger's idea of a
new world order may be a system of diplomacy derived from the systems used in
Europe after the Peace of Westphalia or the Congress of Vienna. These ideas
should also be looked into in order to give as great a selection of
alternatives for future statesmen to choose from when designing extensions to America's
foreign policy.
All in all, this is a very well done work for students or readers in the international relations field to look at. It is very useful in helping to put together the different diplomatic attitudes through the centuries and even between different countries. Without this help it would be much more difficult to get a good overview of both the past attempts at world co-operation and of future attempts to succeed at this.
CHAPTER IX
THE RISE OF THE THIRD REICH
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive
it. SANTAYANA
It was Hitler’s boast that the Third Reich would last a thousand years. Records William Shirer:
Instead it lasted only twelve. But into its short life was packed the most cataclysmic series of events that Western civilizations has ever known.
”I lived through the whole war,” Thucydides remarks in his History of the Peloponnesian War, one of the greatest works of history ever written, “being of an age to comprehend events and giving my attention to them in order to know the exact truth about them”.
Adolf Hitler is probably the last of the great adventurer-conquerors in the tradition of Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon, and the Third Reich the last of the empires which set out on the path taken earlier by France, Rome and Macedonia. The curtain was rung down on that phase of history, at least, by the sudden invention of the hydrogen bomb, of the ballistic missile and of rockets that can be aimed to hit the moon.
In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on an uninhabited planet.
Shortly before noon on Monday, January 30, 1933, Hitler drove over to the Chancellery for an interview with Hindenburg that was to prove fateful for himself, for Germany and for the rest of the world.
A few moments later the man with the Charlie Chaplin mustache, who had been a down-and-out tramp in Vienna in his youth, an unknown soldier of World War I, a derelict in Munich in the first grim postwar days, the somewhat comical leader of the Beer Hall Putsch, this spellbinder who was not even German but Austrian, and who was only forty-three years old, had just been administered the oath as Chancellor of the German Reich.
Tired but happy, Goebbels arrived home that night at 3 A.M. Scribbling in his diary before retiring, he wrote: “It is almost like a dream . . . a fairy tale . . . The new Reich has been born. Fourteen years of work have been crowned with victory. The German revolution has begun!”
”It is one of the great examples,” as Friedrich Meinecke, the eminent German historian, said, “of the singular and incalculable power of personality in historical life.”
Hitler wrote in Mein Kempf “It was perhaps decisive for my whole later life that good fortune gave me a history teacher who understood, as few others did, this principle . . . of retaining the essential and forgetting the nonessential . . . In my teacher, Dr. Leopold Poetsch of the high school in Linz, this requirement was fulfilled in a truly ideal manner. An old gentleman, kind but at the same time firm, he was able not only to hold our attention by his dazzling eloquence but to carry us away with him. Even today I think back with genuine emotion on this gray-haired man who, by the fire of his words, sometimes made us forget the present; who, as if by magic, transported us into times past and, out of the millennium mists of time, transformed dry historical facts into vivid reality. There we sat, often aflame with enthusiasm, sometimes even moved to tears . . . He used our budding national fanaticism as a means of educating us, frequently appealing to our sense of national honor.
Five hours after being sworn in, at 5 P.M. on January 30, 1933, Hitler held his first cabinet meeting. The minutes of the session, which turned up at Nuremberg among the hundreds of tons of captured secret documents, reveal how quickly and adroitly Hitler, aided by the crafty Goering, began to take his conservative colleagues for a ride.
Hindenburg had named Hitler to head not a presidential cabinet but one based on a majority in the Reichstag. However, the Nazis and the Nationalists, the only two parties represented in the government, had only 247 seats out of 583 in Parliament and thus lacked a majority. To attain it they needed the backing of the Center Party with its 70 seats. In the very first hours of the new government Hitler had dispatched Goering to talk with the Centrist leaders, and now he reported to the cabinet that the Center was demanding ”certain concessions.” Goering therefore proposed that the Reichstag be dissolved and new elections held, and Hitler agreed.
For the first time – in the last relatively free election Germany was to have – the Nazi Party now could employ all the vast resources of the government to win votes. Goebbels was jubilant. ”Now it will be easy,” he wrote in his diary on February 3, “to carry on the fight, for we can call on all the resources of the State. Radio and press are at our disposal. We shall stage a masterpiece of propaganda. And this time, naturally, there is no lack of money.
With all the resources of the national and Prussian governments at their disposal and with plenty of money from big business in their coffers, the Nazis carried on an election propaganda such as Germany had never seen before. The Nationalists’ 52 seats, added to the 288 of the Nazis, gave the government a majority of 16 in the Reichstag. This was enough, perhaps, to carry on the day-to-day business of government but it was far short of the two thirds majority which Hitler needed to carry out a new, bold plan to establish his dictatorship by consent of Parliament.
The date chosen for the ceremonial opening of the first Reichstag of the Third Reich, March 21, was significant too, for it fell on the anniversary of the day on which Bismarck had opened the first Reichstag of the Second Reich in 1871. As the old field marshals, generals and admirals from imperial times gathered in their resplendent uniforms in the Garrison Church, led by the former Crown Prince and Field Marshal von Mackensen in the imposing dress and headgear of the Death’s Head Hussars, the shades of Frederick the Great and the Iron Chancellor hovered over the assembly.
Hindenburg was visibly moved, and at one point in the ceremony Goebbels, who was staging the performance and directing the broadcasting of it to the nation, observed – and noted in his diary – that the old Field Marshal had tears in his eyes. Flanked by Hitler, who appeared ill at ease in his formal cutaway morning coat, the President, attired in field-gray uniform with the grand cordon of the Black Eagle, and carrying a spiked helmet in one hand and his marshal’s baton in the other, had marched slowly down the aisle, paused to salute the empty seat of Kaiser Wilhelm II in the imperial gallery, and then in front of the altar had read a brief speech giving his blessings to the new Hitler government.
“May the old spirit of this celebrated shrine permeate the generation of today, may it liberate us from selfishness and party strife and bring us together in national self-consciousness to bless a proud and free Germany, united in herself.” Hitler’s reply was shrewdly designed to play on the sympathies and enlist the confidence of the Old Order so glitteringly represented. “Neither the Kaiser nor the government nor the nation wanted the war. It was only the collapse of the nation which compelled a weakened race to take upon itself, against its most sacred convictions, the guilt for this war.”
And then, turning to Hindenburg, who sat stiffly in his chair a few feet in front of him, “By a unique upheaval in the last few weeks our national honor has been restored and, thanks to your understanding. Heir General Feldmarschall, the union between the symbols of the old greatness and the new strength has been celebrated. We pay you homage. A protective Providence places you over the new forces of our nation.”
Hitler, with a show of deep humility toward the President he intended to rob of his political power before the week was up, stepped down, bowed low to Hindenburg and gripped his hand. There in the flashing lights of camera bulbs and amid the clicking of movie cameras, which Goebbels had placed along with microphones at strategic spots, was recorded for the nation and the world to see, and to hear described, the solemn handclasp of the German Field Marshal and the Austrian corporal uniting the new Germany with the old.
On February 2, 1933, three days after assuming office, he had made a two-hour address to the top generals and admirals at the home of General von Hammerstein, the Army Commander in Chief. Admiral Erich Raeder revealed at Nuremberg the tenor of this first meeting of the Nazi Chancellor with the officer corps. Hitler, he said, freed the military elite from its fears that the armed services might be called upon to take part in a civil war and promised that the Army and Navy could now devote themselves unhindered to the main task of quickly rearming the new Germany. Admiral Raeder admitted that he was highly pleased at the prospect of a new Navy, and General von Blomberg, whose hasty assumption of the office of Minister of Defense on January 30, 1933, had stamped out any temptation on the part of the Army to revolt against Hitler’s becoming Chancellor, declared later in his unpublished memoirs that the Fuehrer opened up “a field of activities holding great possibilities for the future”.
”It is no victory, for the enemies were lacking,” observed Oswald Spengler in commenting on how easily Hitler had conquered and Nazified Germany in 1933. “This seizure of power – ” the author of The Decline of the West wrote early in the year, ”it is with misgiving that I see it celebrated each day with so much noise. It would be better to save that for a day of real and definitive successes, that is, in the foreign field. There are no others.” The philosopher-historian, who for a brief moment was an idol of the Nazis until a mutual disenchantment set in, was unduly impatient. Hitler had to conquer Germany before he could set out to conquer the world. But once his German opponents were liquidated – or had liquidated themselves – he lost no time in turning to what had always interested him the most: foreign affairs.
The first thing to do, obviously, was to confound Germany’s adversaries in Europe by preaching disarmament and peace and to keep a sharp eye for a weakness in their collective armor. On May 17, 1933, before the Reichstag, Hitler delivered his ”Peace Speech,” one of the greatest of his career, a masterpiece of deceptive propaganda that deeply moved the German people and unified them behind him and which made a profound and favorable impression on the outside world. The day before, President Roosevelt had sent a ringing message to the chiefs of state of forty-four nations outlining the plans and hopes of the United States for disarmament and peace and calling for the abolition of all offensive weapons – bombers, tanks and mobile heavy artillery. Hitler was quick to take up the President’s challenge and to make the most of it.
“The proposal made by President Roosevelt, of which I learned last night, has earned the warmest thanks of the German government. It is prepared to agree to this method of overcoming the international crisis . . . The President’s proposal is a ray of comfort for all who wish to co-operate in the maintenance of peace . . . Germany is entirely ready to renounce all offensive weapons if the armed nations, on their side, will destroy their offensive weapons . . . Germany would also be perfectly ready to disband her entire military establishment and destroy the small amount of arms remaining to her, if the neighboring countries will do the same . . . Germany is prepared to agree to any solemn pact of nonaggression, because she does not think of attacking but only of acquiring security.”
There was one warning. Germany demanded equality of treatment with all other nations, especially in armaments. If this was not to be obtained, Germany would prefer to withdraw from both the Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations.
But Hitler’s warning was not an empty one, and when it became clear early in October that the Allies would insist on an interval of eight years to bring their armaments down to Germany’s level, he abruptly announced on October 14 that, denied equality of rights by the other powers at Geneva, Germany was immediately withdrawing from the Disarmament Conference and from the League of Nation.
This, then, was the first of many crises over a period that would extend for three years – until after the Germans reoccupied the demilitarized left bank of the Rhine in 1936 – when the Allies could have applied sanctions, not for Hitler’s leaving the Disarmament Conference and the League but for violations of the disarmament provisions of Versailles which had been going on in Germany for at least two years, even before Hitler. That the Allies at this time could easily have overwhelmed Germany is as certain as it is that such an action would have brought the end of the Third Reich in the very year of its birth. But part of the genius of this one-time Austrian waif was that for a long time he knew the mettle of his foreign adversaries as expertly and as uncannily as he had sized up that of his opponents at home. In this crisis, as in those greater ones which were to follow in rapid succession up to 1939, the victorious Allied nations took no action, being too divided, too torpid, too blind to grasp the nature or the direction of what was building up beyond the Rhine. On this, Hitler’s calculations were eminently sound, as they had been and were to be in regard to his own people. He knew well what the German people would say in the plebiscite, which he fixed – along with new elections of a single-party Nazi slate to the Reichstag – for November 12, 1933, the day after the anniversary of the 1918 armistice, a black day that still rankled in German memories.
The response of the German people, after fifteen years of frustration and of resentment against the consequences of a lost war, was almost unanimous. Some 96 per cent of the registered voters cast their ballots and 95 per cent of these approved Germany’s withdrawal from Geneva. The vote for the single Nazi list for the Reichstag (which included Hugenberg and a half-dozen other non-Nazis) was 92 per cent. There was no doubt that in defying the outside world as he had done, he had the overwhelming support of the German.
Before Poland could be obliterated, Hitler saw, it must be separated from its alliance with France. The course he now embarked on offered several immediate advantages besides the ultimate one. By renouncing the use of force against Poland he could strengthen his propaganda for peace and allay the suspicions aroused in both Western and Eastern Europe by his hasty exit from Geneva.
When Hitler addressed the Reichstag on January 30, 1934, he could look back on a year of achievement without parallel in German history. Within twelve months he had overthrown the Weimar Republic, substituted his personal dictatorship for its democracy, destroyed all the political parties but his own, smashed the state governments and their parliaments and unified and defederalized the Reich, wiped out the labor unions, stamped out democratic associations of any kind, driven the Jews out of public and professional life, abolished freedom of speech and of the press, stifled the independence of the courts and ”coordinated” under Nazi rule the political, economic, cultural and social life of an ancient and cultivated people. For all these accomplishments and for his resolute action in foreign affairs, which took Germany out of the concert of nations at Geneva, and proclaimed German insistence on being treated as an equal among the great powers, he was backed, as the autumn plebiscite and election had shown, by the overwhelming majority of the German people.
Darkening of the Nazi sky in 1934 was due to three unresolved problems, and they were interrelated: the continued clamor of radical party and S.A. (a paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party) leaders for the “second revolution”; the rivalry of the S.A. and the Army; and the question of the succession to President Hindenburg, the sands of whose life at last began to run out with the coming of spring.
On February 21 he secretly told Anthony Eden, who had come to Berlin to discuss the disarmament impasse, that he was prepared to reduce the S.A. by two thirds and to agree to a system of inspection to make sure that the remainder received neither military training nor arms – an offer which, when it leaked out, further inflamed the bitterness of Roehm and the S.A. As the summer of 1934 approached, the relations between the S.A. chief of staff and the Army High Command continued to deteriorate. There were stormy scenes in the cabinet between Roehm and General von Blomberg, and in March the Minister of Defense protested to Hitler that the S.A. was secretly arming a large force of special staff guards with heavy machine guns – which was not only a threat against the Army but, General von Blomberg added, an act done so publicly that it threatened Germany’s clandestine rearmament under the auspices of the Reichswehr.
It is plain that at this juncture Hitler, unlike the headstrong Roehm and his cronies, was thinking ahead to the day when the ailing Hindenburg would breathe his last. He knew that the aged President as well as the Army and other conservative forces in Germany were in favor of a restoration of the Hohenzollem monarchy as soon as the Field Marshal had passed away. He himself had other plans, and when early in April the news was secretly but authoritatively conveyed to him and Blomberg from Neudeck that the President’s days were numbered, he realized that a bold stroke must soon be made. To ensure its success he would need the backing of the officer corps; to obtain that support he was prepared to go to almost any length The Army and Navy commanders were told of Hindenburg’s worsening condition and Hitler, backed by the compliant Blomberg, bluntly proposed that he himself, with the Reichswehr’s blessing, be the President’s successor. In return for the support of the military, Hitler offered to suppress Roehm’s ambitions, drastically reduce the S.A. and guarantee the Army and Navy that they would continue to be the sole bearers of arms in the Third Reich.
The Nazi Party alone remained after dissolution of all other German parties, and on July 14 a law decreed:
The National Socialist German Workers’ Party constitutes the only political party in Germany. Whoever undertakes to maintain the organizational structure of another political party or to form a new political party will be punished with penal servitude up to three years or with imprisonment of from six months to three years, if the deed is not subject to a greater penalty according to other regulations
Since the decisions of the trustees were to be legally binding, the law, in effect, outlawed strikes. Law promised ”to restore absolute leadership to the natural leader of a factory – that is, the employer . . . Only the employer can decide. Many employers have for years had to call for the ’master in the house.’ Now they are once again to be the ‘master in the house.’
Hitler was, by midsummer of 1933, the master of Germany. He could now carry out his program. Papen, for all his cunning, had been left high and dry, and all his calculations that he and Hugenberg and the other defenders of the Old Order, with their 8-to-3 majority in the cabinet against the Nazis, could control Hitler and indeed use him for their own conservative ends, had exploded in his face. He himself had been booted out of his post as Prime Minister of Prussia and replaced by Goering. Papen remained Vice-Chancellor in the Reich cabinet but, as he ruefully admitted later, “this position turned out to be anomalous.” Hugenberg, the apostle of business and finance, was gone, his party dissolved. Goebbels, the third most important man in the Nazi Party, had been brought into the cabinet on March 13 as Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. Darre, regarded as a “radical,” as was Goebbels, was Minister of Agriculture.
Hitler had conquered Germany with the greatest of ease, but a number of problems remained to be faced as summer came in 1933. There were at least five major ones: preventing a second revolution; settling the uneasy relations between the S.A. and the Army; getting the country out of its economic morass and finding jobs for the six million unemployed; achieving equality of armaments for Germany at the Disarmament Conference in Geneva and accelerating the Reich’s secret rearming, which had begun during the last years of the Republic; and deciding who should succeed the ailing Hindenburg when he died
To augment the enthusiasm of the military leaders Hitler created, as early as April 4, the Reich Defense Council to spur a new and secret rearmament program. Three months later, on July 20, the Chancellor promulgated a new Army Law, abolishing the jurisdiction of the civil courts over the military and doing away with the elected representation of the rank and file, thus restoring to the officer corps its ancient military prerogatives. A good many generals and admirals began to see the Nazi revolution in a different and more favorable light.
Even more than France, Poland was the hated and despised enemy in the minds of the Germans. To them the most heinous crime of the Versailles peacemakers had been to separate East Prussia from the Reich by the Polish Corridor, to detach Danzig and to give to the Poles the province of Posen and part of Silesia, which, though predominantly Polish in population, had been German territory since the days of the partition of Poland. No German statesmen during the Republic had been willing to regard the Polish acquisitions as permanent. Stresemann had refused even to consider an Eastern Locarno pact with Poland to supplement the Locarno agreement for the West. And General von Seeckt, father of the Reichswehr and arbiter of foreign policy during the first years of the Republic, had advised the government as early as 1922, “Poland’s existence is intolerable, incompatible with the essential conditions of Germany’s life. Poland,” he insisted, “must go and will go.” Its obliteration, he added, “must be one of the fundamental drives of German policy . . . With the disappearance of Poland will fall one of the strongest pillars of the Versailles Peace, the hegemony of France.”
Before Poland could be obliterated, Hitler saw, it must be separated from its alliance with France. The course he now embarked on offered several immediate advantages besides the ultimate one. By renouncing the use of force against Poland he could strengthen his propaganda for peace and allay the suspicions aroused in both Western and Eastern Europe by his hasty exit from Geneva. By inducing the Poles to conduct direct negotiations he could bypass the League of Nations and then weaken its authority. And he could not only deal a blow to the League’s conception of ”collective security” but undermine the French alliances in Eastern Europe, of which Poland was the bastion. The German people, with their traditional hatred of the Poles, might not understand, but to Hitler one of the advantages of a dictatorship over democracy was that unpopular policies which promised significant results ultimately could be pursued temporarily without internal rumpus.
On January 26, 1934, four days before Hitler was to meet the Reichstag on the first anniversary of his accession to power, announcement was made of the signing of a ten-year nonaggression pact between Germany and Poland. From that day on, Poland, which under the dictatorship of Marshal Pilsudski was itself just eliminating the last vestiges of parliamentary democracy, began gradually to detach itself from France, its protector since its rebirth in 1919, and to grow ever closer to Nazi Germany. It was a path that was to lead to its destruction long before the treaty of “friendship and nonaggression” ran out.
The dilettante Papen, who had been rudely shoved to the sidelines by Hitler and Goering but who was still nominally Vice-Chancellor and still enjoyed the confidence of Hindenburg, summoned enough courage to speak out publicly against the excesses of the regime which he had done so much to foist on Germany. In May he had seen the ailing President off to Neudeck – it was the last time he was to see his protector alive – and the grizzly but enfeebled old Field Marshal had said to him: “Things are going badly, Papen. See what you can do to put them right.”
Thus encouraged, Papen had accepted an invitation to make an address at the University of Marburg on June 17. The speech was largely written by one of his personal advisers, Edgar Jung, a brilliant Munich lawyer and writer and a Protestant, though certain ideas were furnished by one of the Vice-Chancellor’s secretaries, Herbert von Bose, and by Erich Klausener, the leader of Catholic Action – a collaboration that soon cost all three of them their lives. It was a courageous utterance and, thanks to Jung, eloquent in style and dignified in tone. It called for an end of the revolution, for a termination of the Nazi terror, for the restoration of normal decencies and the return of some measure of freedom, especially of freedom of the press. Addressing Dr, Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister, Papen said: Open manly discussions would be of more service to the German people than, for instance, the present state of the German press. The government [must be] mindful of the old maxim, “Only weaklings suffer no criticism” . . . Great men are not created by propaganda . . . If one desires close contact and unity with the people, one must not underestimate their understanding. One must not everlastingly keep them on leading strings . . . No organization, no propaganda, however excellent, can alone maintain confidence in the long run.
It is not by incitement . . . and not by threats against the helpless part of the nation but only by talking things over with people that confidence and devotion can be maintained. People treated as morons, however, have no confidence to give away . . . It is time to join together in fraternal friendship and respect for all our fellow countrymen, to avoid disturbing the labors of serious men and to silence fanatics. The speech, when it became known, was widely heralded in Germany, but it fell like a bombshell on the little group of Nazi leaders gathered at Gera, and Goebbels moved quickly to see that it became known as little as possible.
He forbade the broadcast of a recording of the speech scheduled for the same evening as well as any reference to it in the press, and ordered the police to seize copies of the Frankfurter Zeitung which were on the streets with a partial text. But not even the absolute powers of the Propaganda Minister were sufficient to keep the German people and the outside world from learning the contents of the defiant address. The wily Papen had provided the foreign correspondents and diplomats in Berlin with advance texts, and several thousand copies were hastily run off on the presses of Papen’s newspaper, Germania, and secretly distributed.
On learning of the Marburg speech, Hitler was stung to fury. In a speech the same afternoon at Gera he denounced the “pygmy who imagines he can stop, with a few phrases, the gigantic renewal of a people’s life.” Papen was furious too, at the suppression of his speech. He rushed to Hitler on June 20 and told him he could not tolerate such a ban “by a junior minister,” insisted that he had spoken ”as a trustee for the President,” and then and there submitted his resignation, adding a warning that he ”would advise Hindenburg of this immediately.”
Shortly after dawn Hitler and his party sped out of Munich toward Wiessee in a long column of cars. They found Roehm and his friends still fast asleep in the Hanslbauer Hotel. The awakening was rude. Heines and his young male companion were dragged out of bed, taken outside the hotel and summarily shot on the orders of Hitler. The Fuehrer, according to Otto Dietrich’s account, entered Roehm’s room alone, gave him a dressing down and ordered him to be brought back to Munich and lodged in Stadelheim prison, where the S.A. chief had served time after his participation with Hitler in the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. After fourteen stormy years the two friends, who more than any others were responsible for the launching of the Third Retch, for its terror and its degradation, who though they had often disagreed had stood together in the moments of crisis and defeats and disappointments, had come to a parting of the ways, and the scar-faced, brawling battler for Hitler and Nazism had come to the end of his violent life.
Hitler, in a final act of what he apparently thought was grace, gave orders that a pistol be left on the table of his old comrade. Roehm refused to make use of it. ”If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself,” he is reported to have said. Thereupon two S.A. officers, according to the testimony of an eyewitness, a police lieutenant, given twenty-three years later in a postwar trial at Munich in May 1957, entered the cell and fired their revolvers at Roehm point-blank.
”Roehm wanted to say something,” said this witness, “but the S.S. officer motioned him to shut up. Then Roehm stood at attention – he was stripped to the waist – with his face full of contempt.” And so he died, violently as he had lived, contemptuous of the friend he had helped propel to the heights no other German had ever reached, and almost certainly, like hundreds of others who were slaughtered that day.
It was crime enough, he said lamely, for any responsible German in the Third Reich even to see foreign diplomats without his knowledge. When three traitors in Germany arrange . . . a meeting with a foreign statesman . . . and give orders that no word of this meeting shall reach me, then I shall have such men shot dead even when it should prove true that at such a consultation which was thus kept secret from me they talked of nothing more than the weather, old coins and like topics.
General von Blomberg expressed to the Chancellor the congratulations of the cabinet, which proceeded to “legalize” the slaughter as a necessary measure ”for the defense of the State.” Blomberg also issued an order of the day to the Army expressing the High Command’s satisfaction with the turn of events and promising to establish “cordial relations” with the new S.A.
When Hindenburg died, Dr. Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, officially announced that no last will and testament of the Field Marshal had been found and that it must be presumed there was none.
Even before Hindenburg’s death, Hitler had made the cabinet promulgate a law giving him the President’s powers. This was on August 1, the day before the Field Marshal died. That the “law” was illegal also made little difference in a Germany where the former Austrian corporal had now become the law itself. That it was illegal was obvious. On December 17, 1932, during the Schleicher government, the Reichstag had passed by the necessary two-thirds majority an amendment to the constitution providing that the president of the High Court of Justice, instead of the Chancellor, should act as President until a new election could be held. And while the Enabling Act, which was the “legal” basis of Hitler’s dictatorship, gave the Chancellor the right to make laws which deviated from the constitution, it specifically forbade him to tamper with the institution of the Presidency.
But what mattered the law now? It mattered not to Papen, who cheerfully went off to serve Hitler as minister in Vienna and smooth over the mess caused by the murder of Chancellor Dollfuss by the Nazis. It mattered not to the generals, who went eagerly to work to build up Hitler’s Army. It mattered not to the industrialists, who turned enthusiastically to the profitable business of rearmament. Conservatives of the old school, “decent” Germans like Baron von Neurath in the Foreign Office and Dr. Schacht in the Reichsbank, did not resign. No one resigned. In fact, Dr. Schacht took on the added duties of Minister of Economics on August 2, the day Hitler seized the powers of the expiring President.
And the German people? On August 19, some 95 per cent of those who had registered went to the polls, and 90 per cent, more than thirty-eight million of them, voted approval of Hitler’s usurpation of complete power. No wonder that Hitler was in a confident mood when the Nazi Party Congress assembled in Nuremberg on September 4. I watched him on the morning of the next day stride like a conquering emperor down the center aisle of the great flagbedecked Luitpold Hall while the band blared forth ”The Badenweiler” thirty thousand hands were raised in the Nazi salute. A few moments later he sat proudly in the center of the vast stage with folded arms and shining eyes as Gauleiter Adolf Wagner of Bavaria read the Fuehrer’s proclamation. The German form of life is definitely determined for the next thousand years. The Age of Nerves of the nineteenth century has found its close with us. There will be no other revolution in Germany for the next one thousand years!
Being mortal, he would not live a thousand years, but as long as he lived he would rule this great people as the most powerful and ruthless autocrat they had ever had. Hitler had unleashed a dynamic force of incalculable proportions which had long been pent up in the German people. To what purpose, he had already made clear in the pages of Mein Kampf and in a hundred speeches which had gone unnoticed or unheeded or been ridiculed by so many – by almost everyone – within and especially without the Third Reich.
In 1934 Hitler was liquidating the past, with all its frustrations and disappointments. Step by step, and rapidly (as we shall see in detail later), he was freeing Germany from the shackles of Versailles, confounding the victorious Allies and making Germany militarily strong again. This was what most Germans wanted and they were willing to make the sacrifices which the Leader demanded of them to get it: the loss of personal freedom, a Spartan diet (”Guns before Butter”) and hard work. By the autumn of 1936 the problem of unemployment had been largely licked, almost everyone had a job again and one heard workers who had been deprived of their trade-union rights joking, over their full dinner pails, that at least under Hitler there was no more freedom to starve. ”
The racial laws which excluded the Jews from the German community seemed to a foreign observer to be a shocking throwback to primitive times, but since the Nazi racial theories exalted the Germans as the salt of the earth and the master race they were far from being unpopular.
The Olympic games held in Berlin in August 1936 afforded the Nazis a golden opportunity to impress the world with the achievements of the Third Reich, and they made the most of it.
In what was perhaps the only popular revolt in German history, the peasant uprising of 1525, Luther advised the princes to adopt the most ruthless measures against the ”mad dogs,” as he called the desperate, downtrodden peasants. Here, as in his utterances about the Jews, Luther employed a coarseness and brutality of language unequaled in German history until the Nazi time. The influence of this towering figure extended down the generations in Germany, especially among the Protestants. Among other results was the ease with which German Protestantism became the instrument of royal and princely absolutism from the sixteenth century until the kings and princes were overthrown in 1918. In the spring of 1938 Bishop Marahrens took the final step of ordering all pastors in his diocese to swear a personal oath of allegiance to the Fuehrer. In a short time the vast majority of Protestant clergymen took the oath, thus binding themselves legally and morally to obey the commands of the dictator.
What really aroused the Germans in the Thirties were the glittering successes of Hitler in providing jobs, creating prosperity, restoring Germany’s military might, and moving from one triumph to another in his foreign policy.
Not many Germans lost much sleep over the arrests of a few thousand pastors and priests or over the quarreling of the various Protestant sects.
On the evening of May 10, 1933, some four and a half months after Hitler became Chancellor, there occurred in Berlin a scene which had not been witnessed in the Western world since the late Middle Ages. At about midnight a torchlight parade of thousands of students ended at a square on Unter den Linden opposite the University of Berlin. Torches were put to a huge pile of books that had been gathered there, and as the flames enveloped them more books were thrown on the fire until some twenty thousand had been consumed. Similar scenes took place in several other cities. The book burning had begun. Many of the books tossed into the flames in Berlin that night by the joyous students under the approving eye of Dr. Goebbels had been written by authors of world reputation.
The new Nazi era of German culture was illuminated not only by the bonfires of books and the more effective, if less symbolic, measures of proscribing the sale or library circulation of hundreds of volumes and the publishing of many new ones, but by the regimentation of culture on a scale which no modern Western nation had ever experienced. As early as September 22, 1933, the Reich Chamber of Culture had been set up by law under the direction of Dr.Goebbels. Its purpose was defined, in the words of the law, as follows: “In order to pursue a policy of German culture, it is necessary to gather together the creative artists in all spheres into a unified organization under the leadership of the Reich. The Reich must not only determine the lines of progress, mental and spiritual, but also lead and organize the professions.
Music fared best, if only because it was the least political of the arts and because the Germans had such a rich store of it from Bach through Beethoven and Mozart to Brahms. But the playing of Mendelssohn was banned because he was a Jew (the works of all Jewish composers were verboten) as was the music of Germany’s leading modern composer, Paul Hindemith.
The excellent music fare did much to make people forget the degradation of the other arts and of so much of life under the Nazis. The theater, it must be said, retained much of its excellence as long as it stuck to classical plays.
The modern art was described by the Nazis as Works of art that cannot be understood but need a swollen set of instructions to prove their right to exist and find their way to neurotics who are receptive to such stupid or insolent nonsense will no longer openly reach the German nation. Let no one have illusions!
National Socialism has set out to purge the German Reich and our people of all those influences threatening its existence and character . . . With the opening of this exhibition has come the end of artistic lunacy and with it the artistic pollution of our people . . .
Every morning the editors of the Berlin daily newspapers and the correspondents of those published elsewhere in the Reich gathered at the Propaganda
Ministry to be told by Dr. Goebbels or by one of his aides what news to print and suppress, how to write the news and headline it, what campaigns to call off or institute and what editorials were desired for the day. In case of any misunderstanding a daily written directive was furnished along with the oral instructions. For the smaller out-of-town papers and the periodicals the directives were dispatched by telegram or by mail.
The radio and the motion pictures were also quickly harnessed to serve the propaganda of the Nazi State. Goebbels had always seen in radio (television had not yet come in) the chief instrument of propaganda in modern society and through the Radio Department of his ministry and the Chamber of Radio he gained complete control of broadcasting and shaped it to his own ends. His task was made easier because in Germany, as in the other countries of Europe, broadcasting was a monopoly owned and operated by the State. In 1933 the Nazi government automatically found itself in possession of the Reich Broadcasting Corporation.
The films remained in the hands of private firms but the Propaganda Ministry and the Chamber of Films controlled every aspect of the industry, their task being – in the words of an official commentary – “to lift the film industry out of the sphere of liberal economic thoughts . . . and thus enable it to receive those tasks which it has to fulfill in the National Socialist State.
Hitler’s contempt for “professors” and the intellectual academic life had peppered the pages of Mein Kampf, in which he had set down some of his ideas oneducation. ”The whole education by a national state,” he had written, ”must aim primarily not at the stuffing with mere knowledge but at building bodies which are physically healthy to the core.” But, even more important, he had stressed in his book the importance of winning over and then training the youth in the service “of a new national state” – a subject he returned to often after he became the German dictator. ”When an opponent declares, “I will not come over to your side,’ ” he said in a speech on November 6,1933, “I calmly say, ’Your child belongs to us already . . . What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short tune they will know nothing else but this new community.’ ”
And on May 1, 1937, he declared, ”This new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing.” It was not an idle boast; that was precisely what was happening.
The result of so much Nazification was catastrophic for German education and for German learning. History was so falsified in the new textbooks and by the teachers in their lectures that it became ludicrous. The teaching of the ”racial sciences,” exalting the Germans as the master race and the Jews as breeders of almost all the evil there was in the world, was even more so.
”It was a scene of prostitution,” Professor Roepke later wrote, “that has stained the honorable history of German learning.” And as Professor Julius Ebbinghaus, looking back over the shambles in 1945, said, “The German universities failed, while there was still time, to oppose publicly with all their power the destruction of knowledge and of the democratic state. They failed to keep the beacon of freedom and right burning during the night of tyranny.”
To Adolf Hitler it was not so much the public schools, from which he himself had dropped out so early in life, but the organizations of the Hitler Youth on which he counted to educate the youth of Germany for the ends he had in mind. In the years of the Nazi Party’s struggle for power the Hitler Youth movement had not amounted to much. In 1932, the last year of the Republic, its total enrollment was only 107,956, compared to some ten million youths who belonged to the various organizations united in the Reich Committee of German Youth Associations. In no country in the world had there been a youth movement of such vitality and numbers as in republican Germany. Hitler, realizing this, was determined to take it over and Nazify it.
From the age of six to ten, a boy served a sort of apprenticeship for the Hitler Youth as a Pimpf. Each youngster was given a performance book in which would be recorded his progress through the entire Nazi youth movement, including his ideological growth. At ten, after passing suitable tests in athletics, camping and Nazified history, he graduated into the Jungvolk (”Young Folk”), where he took the following oath:
In the presence of this blood banner, which represents our Fuehrer, I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the savior of our country, Adolf Hitler. I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God.
At fourteen the boy entered the Hitler Youth proper and remained there until he was eighteen, when he passed into the Labor Service and the Army.
The final twist to education in the Third Reich came in the establishment of three types of schools for the training of the elite: the Adolf Hitler Schools, under the direction of the Hitler Youth, the National Political Institutes of Education and the Order Castles – the last two under the aegis of the party. Though their minds were deliberately poisoned, their regular schooling interrupted, their homes largely replaced so far as their rearing went, the boys and the girls, the young men and women, seemed immensely happy, filled with a zest for the life of a Hitler Youth.
”My party comrades, make yourselves clear about one thing: There is only one last, one final last chance for the German peasantry,” Hitler warned at the outset of his chancellorship, and in October 1933 he declared that ”the ruin of the German peasant will be the ruin of the German people. the Nazi regime did inaugurate a sweeping new farm program accompanied by much sentimental propaganda about “Blut und Boden” (Blood and Soil) and the peasant’s being the salt of the earth and the chief hope of the Third Reich The best the country could do, despite all Nazi efforts in the much-advertised “Battle of Production,” was to reach 83 per cent of self-sufficiency and it was only by the conquest of foreign lands that the Germans obtained enough food to enable them to hold out during the second war as long as they did.
The foundation of Hitler’s success in the first years rested not only on his triumphs in foreign affairs, which brought so many bloodless conquests, but on Germany’s economic recovery, which in party circles and even among some economists abroad was hailed as a miracle.
For the first year Nazi economic policies, which were largely determined by Dr. Schacht – for Hitler was bored with economics, of which he had an almost total ignorance – were devoted largely to putting the unemployed back to work by means of greatly expanded public works and the stimulation of private enterprise. Government credit was furnished by the creation of special unemployment bills, and tax relief was generously given to firms which raised their capital expenditures and increased employment.
But the real basis of Germany’s recovery was rearmament, to which the Nazi regime directed the energies of business and labor – as well as of the generals – from 1934 on. The whole German economy came to be known in Nazi parlance as Wehrwirtschaft, or war economy, and it was deliberately designed to function not only in time of war but during the peace that led to war. All of Schacht’s admitted wizardry in finance was put to work to pay for getting the Third Reich ready for war. Printing banknotes was merely one of his devices. He manipulated the currency with such legerdemain that at one time it was estimated by foreign economists to have 237 different values. He negotiated amazingly profitable (for Germany) barter deals with dozens of countries and to the astonishment of orthodox economists successfully demonstrated that the more you owed a country the more business you did with it.
The heavy industries, chief beneficiaries of rearmament, increased theirs from 2 percent in the boom year of 1926 to 6.5 per cent in 1938, the last full year of peace. Besides his pleasant profits, the businessman was also cheered by the way the workers had been put in their place under Hitler. There were no more unreasonable wage demands. Actually, wages were reduced a little despite a 25 per cent rise in the cost of living. And above all, there were no costly strikes.
In fact, there were no strikes at all. Such manifestations of unruliness were verboten in the Third Reich. Deprived of his trade unions, collective bargaining and the right to strike, the German worker in the Third Reich became an industrial serf, bound to his master, the employer, much as medieval peasants had been bound to the lord of the manor.
Tied down by so many controls at wages little above the subsistence level, the German workers, like the Roman proletariat, were provided with circuses by their rulers to divert attention from their miserable state. ”We had to divert the attention of the masses from material to moral values,” Dr. Ley once explained. ”It is more important to feed the souls of men than their stomachs.
From the very first weeks of 1933, when the massive and arbitrary arrests, beatings and murders by those in power began, Germany under National Socialism ceased to be a society based on law, ”Hitler is the law!” the legal lights of Nazi Germany proudly proclaimed, and Goering emphasized it when he told the Prussian prosecutors on July 12, 1934, that ”the law and the will of the Fuehrer are one.” It was true. The law was what the dictator said it was and in moments of crisis, as during the Blood Purge, he himself, as we have seen in his speech to the Reichstag immediately after that bloody event, proclaimed that he was the ”supreme judge” of the German people, with power to do to death whomever he pleased
Gestapo, like Hitler, was also the law. It originally was established for Prussia by Goering on April 26, 1933, to replace Department IA of the old Prussian political police. He had at first intended to designate it merely as the Secret Police Office (Geheimes Polizei Amt) but the German initials GPA sounded too much like the Russian GPU. An obscure post office employee who had been asked to furnish a franking stamp for the new bureau suggested that it be called the Geheime Staatspolizei, simply the ”Secret State Police” – GESTAPO for short – and thus unwittingly created a name the very mention of which was to inspire terror first within Germany and then without.
Shortly after the Roehm purge, Hitler turned the concentration camps over to the control of the S.S., which proceeded to organize them with the efficiency and ruthlessness expected of this elite corps. In them, before the end mercifully came, millions of hapless persons were done to death and millions of others subjected to debasement and torture more revolting than all but a few minds could imagine.
Allied with the Gestapo was the Security Service, the Sicherheitsdienst, or S.D., which formed another set of initials that struck fear in the bosoms of all Germans – and later of the occupied peoples. Originally formed by Himmler in 1932 as the intelligence branch of the S.S., and placed by him under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich, later internationally renowned as “Hangman Heydrich,” its initial function had been to watch over members of the party and report any suspicious activity. In 1934 it became also the intelligence unit for the secret police, and by 1938 a new law gave it this function for the entire Reich.
On June 16, 1936, for the first time in German history, a unified police was established for the whole of the Reich – previously the police had been organized separately by each of the states – and Himmler was put in charge as Chief of the German Police. The Third Reich, as is inevitable in the development of all totalitarian dictatorships, had become a police state.
Though the Weimar Republic was destroyed, the Weimar Constitution was never formally abrogated by Hitler. Indeed – and ironically – Hitler based the “legality” of his rule on the despised republican constitution. Thus thousands of decreed laws – there were no others in the Third Reich – were explicitly based on the emergency presidential decree of February 28, 1933, for the Protection of the People and the State, which Hindenburg, under Article 48 of the constitution, had signed. It will be remembered that the aged President was bamboozled into signing the decree the day after the Reichstag fire when Hitler assured him that there was grave danger of a Communist revolution. The decree, which suspended all civil rights, remained in force throughout the time of the Third Reich, enabling the Fuehrer to rule by a sort of continual martial law.
The Enabling Act too, which the Reichstag had voted on March 24, 1933, and by which it handed over its legislative functions to the Nazi government, was the second pillar in the ”constitutionality” of Hitler’s rule.
Hitler was bored by the details of day-to-day governing and after he had consolidated his position following the death of Hindenburg he left them largely to his aides. Old party comrades such as Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Ley and Schirach were given free rein to carve out their own empires of power and usually profit.
The Road to War
To talk peace, to prepare secretly for war and to proceed with enough caution in foreign policy and clandestine rearmament to avoid any preventive military action against Germany by the Versailles powers – such were Hitler’s tactics during the first two years.
On Saturday, March 16,1936 – most of Hitler’s surprises were reserved for Saturdays – the Chancellor decreed a law establishing universal military service and providing for a peacetime army of twelve corps and thirty-six divisions – roughly half a million men. That was the end of the military restrictions of Versailles – unless France and Britain took action. As Hitler had expected, they protested but they did not act.
On the evening of May 21 he delivered another ”peace” speech to the Reichstag – perhaps the most eloquent and certainly one of the cleverest and most misleading of his Reichstag orations . Hitler was in a relaxed mood and exuded a spirit not only of confidence but – to the surprise of his listeners – of tolerance and conciliation. There was no resentment or defiance toward the nations which had condemned his scrapping of the military clauses of Versailles. Instead there wereassurances that all he wanted was peace and understanding based on justice for all. He rejected the very idea of war; it was senseless, it was useless, as well as a horror.
Germany, Hitler proclaimed, had not the slightest thought of conquering other peoples. Our racial theory regards every war for the subjection and domination of an alien people as a proceeding which sooner or later changes and weakens the victor internally, and eventually brings about his defeat . . . As there is no longer any unoccupied space in Europe, every victory . . . can at best result in a quantitative increase in the number of the inhabitants of a country. But if the nations attach so much importance to that they can achieve it without tears in a simpler and more natural way – [by] a sound social policy, by increasing the readiness of a nation to have children. No! National Socialist Germany wants peace because of its fundamental convictions. And it wants peace also owing to the realization of the simple primitive fact that no war would be likely essentially to alter the distress in Europe . . . The principal effect of every war is to destroy the flower of the nation . . .
Germany needs peace and desires peace. At the end he made thirteen specific proposals for maintaining the peace which seemed so admirable that they created a deep and favorable impression not only in Germany but in all of Europe. He prefaced them with a reminder:
Germany has solemnly recognized and guaranteed France her frontiers as determined after the Saar plebiscite . . . We thereby finally renounced all claims to Alsace-Lorraine, a land for which we have fought two great wars . . . Without taking the past into account Germany has concluded a non-aggression pact with Poland . . . We shall adhere to it unconditionally. . . . We recognize Poland as the home of a great and nationally conscious people. As for Austria: Germany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria, to annex Austria, or to conclude an Anschluss. Hitler also pledged Germany to abide by the demilitarization of the Rhineland.
As for disarmament, Hitler was ready to go the limit:
The German government is ready to agree to any limitation which leads to abolition of the heaviest arms, especially suited for aggression, such [as] the heaviest artillery and the heaviest tanks . . . Germany declares herself ready to agree to any limitation whatsoever of the caliber of artillery, battleships, cruisers and torpedo boats. In like manner, the German government is ready to agree to the limitation of tonnage for submarines, or to their complete abolition.
On March 2, 1936, in obedience to his master’s instructions, Blomberg issued formal orders for the occupation of the Rhineland. It was, he told the senior commanders of the armed forces, to be a “surprise move.” Blomberg expected it to be a “peaceful operation.”
That evening Hitler Fuehrer was standing at the rostrum of the Reichstag before a delirious audience, expounding on his desire for peace and his latest ideas of how to maintain it. The scene in Shirer’s words:
”Germany no longer feels bound by the Locarno Treaty [Hitler said].In the interest of the primitive rights of its people to the security of their frontier and the safeguarding of their defense, the German government has re-established, as from today, the absolute and unrestricted sovereignty of the Reich in the demilitarized zone!” Now the six hundred deputies, personal appointees all of Hitler, little men with big bodies and bulging necks and cropped hair and pouched bellies and brown uniforms and heavy boots . . . leap to their feet like automatons, their right arms upstretched in the Nazi salute, and scream ”Heils” . . . Hitler raises his hand for silence. . . He says in a deep, resonant voice, ”Men of the German Reichstag!” The silence is utter.
”In this historic hour, when, in the Reich’s western provinces, German troops are at this minute marching into their future peacetime garrisons, we all unite in two sacred vows.
He can go no further. It is news to this “parliamentary” mob that German soldiers are already on the move into the Rhineland. All the militarism in their German blood surges to their heads. They spring yelling and crying, to their feet . . . Their hands are raised in slavish salute, their faces now contorted with hysteria, their mouths wide open, shouting, shouting, their eyes, burning with fanaticism, glued on the new god, the Messiah. The Messiah plays his role superbly .
His head lowered, as if in all humbleness, he waits patiently for silence. Then his voice, still low, but choking with emotion, utters the two vows:
”First, we swear to yield to no force whatever in restoration of the honor of our people . . . Secondly, we pledge that now, more than ever, we shall strive for an understanding between the European peoples, especially for one with our Western neighbor nations . .
We have no territorial demands to make in Europe! . . . Germany will never break the peace!”
It was a long time before the cheering stopped . . . A few generals made their way out. Behind their smiles, however, you could not help detecting a nervousness . . . I ran into General von Blomberg . . . His face was white, his cheeks twitching.
In retrospect, it is easy to see that Hitler’s successful gamble in the Rhineland brought him a victory more staggering and more fatal in its immense consequences than could be comprehended at the time. At home it fortified his popularity and his power, raising them to heights which no German ruler of the past had ever enjoyed. It assured his ascendancy over his generals, who had hesitated and weakened at a moment of crisis when he had held firm. It taught them that in foreign politics and even in military affairs his judgment was superior to theirs. They had feared that the French would fight; he knew better. And finally, and above all, the Rhineland occupation, small as it was as a military operation, opened the way, as only Hitler (andChurchill, alone, in England) seemed to realize, to vast new opportunities in a Europe which was not only shaken but whose strategic situation was irrevocably changed by the parading of three German battalions across the Rhine bridges.
On January 30, 1937, Hitler addressed the Reichstag, proclaiming ”the withdrawal of the German signature” from the Versailles Treaty – an empty but typical gesture, since the treaty was by now dead as a doornail – and reviewing with pride the record of his four years in office. He could be pardoned for his pride, for it was an impressive record in both domestic and foreign affairs. He had, as we have seen, abolished unemployment, created a boom in business, built up a powerful Army, Navy and Air Force, provided them with considerable armaments and the promise of more on a massive scale. He had singlehandedly broken the fetters of Versailles and bluffed his way into occupying the Rhineland.
Completely isolated at first, he had found a loyal ally in Mussolini and another in Franco, and he had detached Poland from France. Most important of all, perhaps, he had released the dynamic energy of the German people, reawakening their confidence in the nation and their sense of its mission as a great and expanding world power.
On September 25, 1937 Hitler invited Mussolini to impress him with Germany’s strength and thus play on Mussolini’s obsession to cast his lot with the winning side. The Duce was rushed from one side of Germany to the other; to parades of the S.S. and the troops, to Army maneuvers in Mecklenburg, to the roaring armament factories in the Ruhr.
His visit was climaxed by a celebration in Berlin on September 28 which visibly impressed him. A gigantic crowd of one million persons was gathered on the Maifeld to hear the two fascist dictators speak their pieces. Mussolini, orating in German, was carried away by the deafening applause – and by Hitler’s flattering words.
If Germany made use of war to settle the Czech and Austrian questions, it was to be assumed that Britain – herself at war with Italy – would decide not to act against Germany. Without British support, a warlike action by France against Germany was not to be expected.
The time for our attack on the Czechs and Austria must be made dependent on the course of the Anglo-French-Italian war . . . This favorable situation . . . would not occur again . . . The descent upon the Czechs would have to be carried out with ”lightning speed.” Thus as evening darkened Berlin on that autumn day of November 5, 1937 by Hitler’s words at a meeting with his Generals – the die was cast. Hitler had communicated his irrevocable decision to go to war. Germany must have Lebensraum in the East and must be prepared to use force to obtain it
”What influence a woman, even without realizing it, can exert on the history of a country and thereby on the world!” Colonel Alfred Jodl exclaimed in his diary on January 26, 1938. ”One has the feeling of living in a fateful hour for the German people.” The woman this brilliant young staff officer referred to was Fraulein ErnaGruhn, and as the year 1937 approached its end she must have regarded herself as the last person in Germany who could possibly propel, as Jodl declared, the German people into a fateful crisis and exercise a profound influence on their history. Perhaps only in the eerie, psychopathic world in which the inner circle of the Third Reich moved at this time with such frenzy would it have been possible.
Fraulein Gruhn was the secretary of Blomberg and toward the end of 1937 he felt sufficiently enamored of her to suggest marriage. His first wife, the daughter of a retired Army officer, whom he had married in 1904, had died in 1932. the bride of the Field Marshal and Commander in Chief had a police record as a prostitute and had been convicted of having posed for pornographic photographs. The young Frau Field Marshal, it developed, had grown up in a massage salon run by her mother which, as sometimes happened in Berlin, was merely a camouflage for a brothel. On January 25, Jodl learned through Keitei that Hitler had dismissed his Field Marshal. Two days later the sixty-year-old fallen officer left Berlin for Capri to resume his honeymoon. After their return to Germany Blomberg and his wife settled in the Bavarian village of Wiessee, where they lived in complete obscurity until the end of the war. As was the case of a former English King of the same era, he remained to the end loyal to the wife who had brought his downfall.
February 4, 1938, is a major turning point in the history of the Third Reich, a milestone on its road to war. On that date the Nazi revolution, it might be said, was completed. The last of the conservatives who stood in the way of Hitler’s embarking upon the course which he had long determined to follow, once Germany was sufficiently armed, were swept away. Blomberg, Fritsch and Neurath had been put in office by Hindenburg and the old-school conservativesto act as a brake upon Nazi excesses, and Schacht had joined them. But in the struggle for control of the foreign and economic policy and the military power of Germany they proved to be no match for Hitler, They had neither the moral strength nor the political shrewdness to stand up to him, let alone to triumph over him. Schacht quit. Neurath stepped aside. Blomberg, under pressure from his own brother generals, resigned. Fritsch, though he was framed in gangster fashion, accepted his dismissal without a gesture of defiance.
On Friday, March 11, Ribbentrop, departing German Ambassador, was lunching at Downing Street with the Prime Minister and his associates when a Foreign Office messenger broke in with urgent dispatches for Chamberlain telling of the startling news from Vienna. Only a few minutes before, Chamberlain had asked Ribbentrop to inform the Fuehrer “of his sincere wish and firm determination to clear up German-British relations.” Now, at the receipt of the sour news from Austria, the statesmen adjourned to the Prime Minister’s study, where Chamberlain read to the uncomfortable German Foreign Minister two telegrams from the British Legation in Vienna telling of Hitler’s ultimatum. ”The discussion,” Ribbentrop reported to Hitler, “took place in a tense atmosphere and the usually calm Lord Halifax was more excited than Chamberlain, who outwardly at least appeared calm and cool-headed.” Ribbentrop expressed doubts about “the truth of the reports” and this seems to have calmed down his British hosts, for “our leave-taking,” he reported, ”was entirely amiable, and even Halifax was calm again.”
It may have been that even the astute Czech President, Eduard Benes, did not have time to realize that evening that Austria’s end meant Czechoslovakia’s as well.
When it became clear that London’s and Paris’ “frame of mind” was to do nothing more than utter empty protests President Miklas, a little before midnight, gave in. He appointed Seyss-Inquart Chancellor and accepted his list of cabinet ministers. “I was completely abandoned both at home and abroad,” he commented bitterly later. Having issued a grandiose proclamation to the German people in which he justified his aggression with his usual contempt for the truth and promised that the Austrian people would choose their future in ”a real plebiscite” – Goebbels read it over the German and Austrian radio stations at noon on March 12 –Hitler set off for his native land. He received a tumultuous welcome. At every village, hastily decorated in his honor, there were cheering crowds. During the afternoon he reached his first goal, Linz, where he had spent his school days. The reception there was delirious and Hitler was deeply touched. The next day, after getting off a telegram to Mussolini – “I shall never forget you for this!” – he laid a wreath on the graves of his parents at Leonding and then returned to Linz to make a speech:
When years ago I went forth from this town I bore within me precisely the same profession of faith which today fills my heart. Judge the depth of my emotion when after so many years I have been able to bring that profession of faith to its fulfillment. If Providence once called me forth from this town to be the leader of the Reich, it must in so doing have charged me with a mission, and that mission could only be to restore my dear homeland to the German Reich. I have believed in this mission, I have lived and fought for it, and I believe I have now fulfilled it.
Hitler did not make his triumphal entry into Vienna, where he had lived so long as a tramp, until the afternoon of Monday, March 14.
In Koenigsberg Hitler also answered the taunts of the foreign press at his use of brutal force and his trickery in having proclaimed the Anschluss without even waiting for the decision of the plebiscite:
Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say: even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators . . . Under the force of this impression I decided not to wait until April tenth but to effect the unification forthwith . . .
And so Austria, as Austria, passed for a moment out of history, its very name suppressed by the revengeful Austrian who had now joined it to Germany. The ancient German word for Austria, OesterReich, was abolished. Austria became the Ostmark and soon even that name was dropped and Berlin administered the country by Gaite (districts) which corresponded roughly to the historic Laender such as Tyrol, Salzburg, Styria and Carinthia. Vienna became just another city of the Reich, a provincial district administrative center, withering away.
The former Austrian tramp become dictator had wiped his native land off the map and deprived its once glittering capital of its last shred of glory and importance. Disillusionment among the Austrians was inevitable. Without firing a shot and without interference from Great Britain, France and Russia, whose military forces could have overwhelmed him, Hitler had added seven million subjects to the Reich and gained a strategic position of immense value to his future plans. Not only did his armies flank Czechoslovakia on three sides but he now possessed in Vienna the gateway to Southeast Europe. As the capital of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, Vienna had long stood at the center of the communications and the trading systems of Central and Southeast Europe. Now that nerve center was in German hands.
Case Green was the code name of the plan for a surprise attack on Czechoslovakia. It had first been drawn up, as we have seen, on June 24, 1937, by Field Marshal von Blomberg, and Hitler had elaborated on it in his lecture to the generals on November 5, admonishing them that “the descent upon the Czechs” would have to be “carried out with lightning speed” and that it might take place “as early as 1938”.
The German warlord, as he now was – since he had taken over personal command of the armed forces – emphasized to General Keitel the necessity of speed in the operations. The first four days of military action are, politically speaking, decisive. In the absence of outstanding military successes, a European crisis is certain to rise. Faits accomplis must convince foreign powers of the hopelessness of military intervention.
Did an officer have a higher allegiance than the one to the Fuehrer? At Nuremberg dozens of generals excused their war crimes by answering in the negative. They had to obey orders, they said. But Beck on July 16 held a different view, which he was to press, unsuccessfully for the most part, to the end. There were “limits,” he said, to one’s allegiance to the Supreme Commander where conscience, knowledge and responsibility forbade carrying out an order. The generals, he felt, had reached those limits. If Hitler insisted on war, they should resign in a body. In that case, he argued, a war was impossible, since there would be nobody to lead the armies.
On June 1, Prime Minister Chamberlain had spoken, partly off the record, to British correspondents, and two days later the Times had published the first of its leaders which were to help undermine the Czech position; it had urged the Czech government to grant “self-determination” to the country’s minorities ”even if it should mean their secession from Czechoslovakia” and for the first time it had suggested plebiscites as a means of determining what the Sudetens and the others desired. A few days later the German Embassy in London informed Berlin that the Times editorial was based on Chamberlain’s off-the-record remarks and that it reflected his views. On June 8 Ambassador von Dirksen told the Wilhelm-strasse that the Chamberlain government would be willing to see the Sudeten areas separated from Czechoslovakia providing it was done after a plebiscite and ”not interrupted by forcible measures on the part of Germany.”
All this must have been pleasing for Hitler to hear. The news from Moscow also was not bad. By the end of June Friedrich Werner Count von der Schulenburg, the German ambassador to Russia, was advising Berlin that the Soviet Union was “hardly likely to march in defense of a bourgeois state,” i.e., Czechoslovakia. By August 3, Ribbentrop was informing the major German diplomatic missions abroad that there was little fear of intervention over Czechoslovakia by Britain, France or Russia
Chamberlain instructed his ambassador in Berlin to do two things: convey a sober warning to Hitler and, secondly, prepare secretly a “personal contact” between himself and the Fuehrer. According to his own story, Henderson persuaded the Prime Minister to drop the first request. As for the second, Henderson was only too glad to try to carry it out.
This was the first step toward Munich and Hitler’s greatest bloodless victory.
”Good heavens!” (”Ich bin vom Himmel gejallen!”) Hitler exclaimed when he read Chamberlain’s message. He was astounded but highly pleased that the man who presided over the destinies of the mighty British Empire should come pleading to him, and flattered that a man who was sixty-nine years old and had never traveled in an airplane before should make the long seven hours’ flight to Berchtesgaden at the farthest extremity of Germany. Hitler had not had even the grace to suggest a meeting place on the Rhine, which would have shortened the trip by half. Whatever the enthusiasm of the English, who seemed to believe that the Prime Minister was making the long journey to do what Mr. Asquith and Sir Edward Grey had failed to do in 1914 – warn Germany that any aggression against a small power would bring not only France but Britain into war against it – Hitler realized, as the confidential German papers and subsequent events make clear, that Chamberlain’s action was a godsend to him. Already apprised by the German Embassy in London that the British leader was prepared to advocate ”far-reaching German proposals,” the Fuehrer felt fairly certain that Chamberlain’s visit was a further assurance that, as he had believed all along, Britain and France would not intervene on behalf of Czechoslovakia. The Prime Minister had not been with him more than an hour or so before this estimate of the situation became a certainty.
In the beginning there was a diplomatic skirmish, though Hitler, as was his custom, did most of the talking. Chamberlain had landed at the Munich airport at noon on September 15, driven in an open car to the railroad station and there boarded a special train for the three-hour rail journey to Berchtesgaden. He did not fail to notice train after train of German troops and artillery passing on the opposite track. Hitler did not meet his train at Berchtesgaden, but waited on the top steps of the Berghof to greet his distinguished visitor. It had begun to rain, Dr. Schmidt, the German interpreter, later remembered, the sky darkened and clouds hid the mountains. It was now 4 P.M. and Chamberlain had been on his way since dawn.
After tea Hitler and Chamberlain mounted the steps to Hitler’s study on the second floor. Hitler began the conversation, as he did his speeches, with a long harangue about all that he had done for the German people, for peace, and for an AngloGerman rapprochement. There was now one problem he was determined to solve “one way or another.” The three million Germans in Czechoslovakia must ”return” to the Reich.
Chamberlain, who had scarcely been able to get a word in, was a man of immense patience, but there were limits to it. At this juncture he interrupted to say, ”If the Fuehrer is determined to settle this matter by force without waiting even for a discussion between ourselves, why did he let me come? I have wasted my time.”
The German dictator was not accustomed to such an interruption – no German at this date would dare to make one – and Chamberlain’s retort appears to have had its effect. Hitler calmed down. He thought they could go “into the question whether perhaps a peaceful settlement was still possible after all.” And then he sprang his proposal.
Would Britain agree to a secession of the Sudeten region, or would she not? . . . A secession on the basis of the right of self-determination? The proposal did not shock Chamberlain. Indeed, he expressed satisfaction that they “had now got down to the crux of the matter.” According to Chamberlain’s own account, from memory, he replied that he could not commit himself until he had consulted his cabinet and the French. According to Schmidt’s version, taken from his own shorthand notes made while he was interpreting, Chamberlain did say that, but added that “he could state personally that he recognized the principle of the detachment of the Sudeten areas . . . He wished to return to England to report to the Government and secure their approval of his personal attitude.” From this surrender at Berchtesgaden, all else ensued.
Toward the end of, their conference Chamberlain had extracted a promise from Hitler that he would take no military action until they had again conferred. In this period the Prime Minister had great confidence in the Fuehrer’s word, remarking privately a day or two later, “In spite of the hardness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face, I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word.”
While the British leader was entertaining these comforting illusions Hitler went ahead with his military and political plans for the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The Fuehrer declared that he would present the German demands to Chamberlain with brutal frankness. In his opinion, action by the Army would provide the only satisfactory solution. There was, however, a danger of the Czechs submitting to every demand.
”Do I understand that the British, French and Czech governments have agreed to the transfer of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia to Germany?” Hitler asked. He was astounded as he later told Chamberlain, that the concessions to him had gone so far and so fast. ”Yes,” replied the Prime Minister, smiling.
”I am terribly sorry,” Hitler said, “but after the events of the last few days, this plan is no longer of any use.” Chamberlain saw the house of peace which he had so ”laboriously” built up at the expense of the Czechs collapsing like a stack of cards. He was, he told Hitler, “both disappointed and puzzled. He could rightly say that the Fuehrer had got from him what he had demanded.”
In order to achieve this he [Chamberlain] had risked his whole political career . . . He was being accused by certain circles in Great Britain of having sold and betrayed Czechoslovakia, of having yielded to the dictators, and on leaving England that morning he actually had been booed. ”You are one of the few men for whom I have ever done such a thing,” he said breezily. ”I am prepared to set one single date for the Czech evacuation – October first – if that will facilitate your task.” And so saying, he took a pencil and changed the dates himself. This, of course, was no concession at all. October 1 had been X Day all along. But it seems to have impressed the Prime Minister. ”He fully appreciated,” Schmidt recorded him as saying, “the Fuehrer’s consideration on the point.”
On another occasion Hitler screamed, “The Germans are being treated like niggers . . . On October first I shall have Czechoslovakia where I want her. If France and England decide to strike, let them . . . I do not care apfennig.”
In Munich where in the murky back rooms of rundown little cafes he had made his lowly start as a politician and in whose streets he had suffered the fiasco of the Beer Hall Putsch, Adolf Hitler greeted, like a conqueror, the heads of governments of Great Britain, France and Italy at half past noon on September 29. Shortly after 1 A.M. on September 30 Hitler, Chamberlain, Mussolini and Daladier, in that order, affixed their signatures to the Munich Agreement providing for the German Army to begin its march into Czechoslovakia on October 1, as the Fuehrer had always said it would, and to complete the occupation of the Sudetenland by October 10.
Next morning the Prime Minister went to see Hitler and drew out of his pocket a sheet of paper on which he had written something which he hoped they would both sign and release for immediate publication.
We, the German Fuehrer and Chancellor, and the British Prime Minister have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognizing that the question of Anglo-German relations is of the first importance for the two countries and for Europe. We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again .We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.
Hitler read the declaration and quickly signed it, much to Chamberlain’s satisfaction.
”My good friends,” he said, on returning to London, “this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace in our time.” The Times declared that “no conqueror returning from a victory on the battlefield has come adorned with nobler laurels.
Winston Churchill, in England, alone seemed to understand. No one stated the consequences of Munich more succinctly than he in his speech to the Commons of October 5:
We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat . . . We are in the midst of a disaster of the first magnitude. The road down the Danube . . . the road to the Black Sea has been opened . . . All the countries of Mittel Europa and the Danube valley, one after another, will be drawn in the vast system of Nazi politics . . . radiating from Berlin . . . And do not suppose that this is the end. It is only the beginning . . .
But Churchill was not in the government and his words went unheeded. Hitler’s tortuous thoughts after Munich: “It was clear to me from the first moment,” he later confided to his generals, ”that I could not be satisfied with the Sudeten-German territory. That was only a partial solution.” A few days after Munich the German dictator set in motion plans to achieve a total solution.
It was agreed to solve the Jewish question in the following manner: eliminate the Jews from the German economy; transfer all Jewish business enterprises and property, including jewelry and works of art, to Aryan hands with some compensation in bonds from which the Jews could use the interest but not the capital.
As Heydrich put it toward the close of the meeting: “In spite of the elimination of the Jews from economic life, the main problem remains, namely, to kick the Jew out of Germany. – Goering brought the meeting to a close with these words: German Jewry shall, as punishment for their abominable crimes, et cetera, have to make a contribution for one billion marks. That will work. The swine won’t commit another murder. Incidentally, I would like to say that I would not like to be a Jew in Germany. Much worse was to be inflicted on the Jews by this man and this State and its Fuehrer in the course of time, and a brief time it turned out to be. On the flaming, riotous night of November 9, 1938, the Third Reich had deliberately turned down a dark and savage road from which there was to be no return.
A good many Jews had been murdered and tortured and robbed before, but these crimes, except for those which took place in the concentration camps, had been committed mostly by brown-shirted rowdies acting out of their own sadism and greed while the State authorities looked on, or looked the other way. Now the German government itself had organized and carried out a vast pogrom
Not long after Munich Ribbentrop journeyed to Rome. His mind was “fixed” on war, Ciano noted in his diary of October 28. The Fuehrer [the German Foreign Minister told Mussolini and Ciano] is convinced that we must inevitably count on a war with the Western democracies in the course of a few years, perhaps three or four . . . The Czech crisis has shown our power! We have the advantage of the initiative and are masters of the situation. We cannot be attacked. The military situation is excellent: as from September [1939] we could face a war with the great democracies.
What had happened to the German guarantee of the rest of Czechoslovakia which Hitler had solemnly promised at Munich to give? When the new French ambassador in Berlin, Robert Coulondre, inquired of Weizsaecker on December 21, 1938, the State Secretary replied that the destiny of Czechoslovakia lay in the hands of Germany and that he rejected the idea of a British-French guarantee. With reference to the “liquidation of the Rump Czech State,” the Fuehrer has given the following orders: The operation is to be prepared on the assumption that no resistance worth mentioning is to be expected.
To the outside world it must clearly appear that it is merely a peaceful action and not a warlike undertaking. The action must therefore be carried out by the peacetime armed forces only, without reinforcement by mobilization . . At the Foreign Office that night Ribbentrop also drafted the Slovak proclamation of ”independence” and had it translated into Slovak in time for Tiso to take it back to Bratislava, where the “Premier” read it – in slightly altered form, as one German agent reported – to Parliament on the following day, Tuesday, March 14. Attempts by several Slovak deputies to at least discuss it were squelched by Karmasin, the leader of the German minority, who warned that German troops would occupy the country if there was any delay in proclaiming independence. Faced with this threat the doubting deputies gave in. Thus was “independent” Slovakia born on March 14, 1939.
The life of the Czechoslovak Republic of Masaryk and Benes had now run out. And once again the harassed leaders in Prague played into Hitler’s hands to set up the final act of their country’s tragedy. The aging, bewildered President Hacha asked to be received by the Fuehrer. Hitler graciously consented. It gave him an opportunity to set the stage for one of the most brazen acts of his entire career.
They (Hacha and Chvalkovsky) were not summoned to Hitler’s presence until 1:15 A.M. The text had been prepared “beforehand by Hitler,” Schmidt recounts, and during Hacha’s fainting spells the German interpreter had been busy copying the official communique, which had also been written up ”beforehand,” and which Hacha and Chvalkovsky were also forced to sign. It read as follows:
Berlin, March 15, 1939
At their request, the Fuehrer today received the Czechoslovak President, Dr. Hacha, and the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, Dr.Chvalkovsky, in Berlin in the presence of Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop. At the meeting the serious situation created by the events of recent weeks in the present Czechoslovak territory was examined with complete frankness. The conviction was unanimously expressed on both sides that the aim of all efforts must be the safeguarding of calm, order and peace in this part of Central Europe. The Czechoslovak President declared that, in order to serve this object and to achieve ultimate pacification, he confidently placed the fate of the Czech people and country in the hands of the Fuehrer of the German Reich. The Fuehrer accepted this declaration and expressed his intention of taking the Czech people under the protection of the German Reich and of guaranteeing them an autonomous development of their ethnic life as suited to their character.
Hitler’s chicanery had reached, perhaps, its summit. According to one of his woman secretaries, Hitler rushed from the signing into his office, embraced all the women present and exclaimed, “Children! This is the greatest day of my life! I shall go down in history as the greatest German!” It did not occur to him – how could it? – that the end of Czechoslovakia might be the beginning of the end of Germany. From this dawn of March 15, 1939 – the Ides of March – the road to war, to defeat, to disaster, as we now know, stretched just ahead. It would be a short road and as straight as a line could be. And once on it, and hurtling down it, Hitler, like Alexander and Napoleon before him, could not stop.
At 6 A.M. on March 15 German troops poured into Bohemia and Moravia. They met no resistance, and by evening Hitler was able to make the triumphant entry into Prague which he felt Chamberlain had cheated him of at Munich.
By the end of the day of March 15, which had started in Berlin at 1:15 A.M. when Hacha arrived at the Chancellery, Czechoslovakia, as Hitler said, had ceased to exist. Neither Britain nor France made the slightest move to save it, though at Munich they had solemnly guaranteed Czechoslovakia against aggression.
On March 31, sixteen days after Hitler entered Prague, the Prime Minister told the House of Commons: In the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty’s Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power. They have given the Polish Government an assurance to this effect. I may add that the French Government have authorized me to make it plain that they stand in the same position in this matter.
The turn of Poland had come.
As 1938 approached its end, the year that had seen the bloodless occupation of Austria and the Sudetenland, Hitler was preoccupied with further conquest: the remainder of Czechoslovakia, Memel, and Danzig. It had been easy to humble Schuschnigg and Benes. Now it was Jozef Beck’s turn.
During a speech on April 28, 1939, Hitler next turned to President Roosevelt, and here the German dictator reached the summit of his oratory. Mr. Roosevelt declares that it is clear to him that all international problems can be solved at the council table.
Answer: . . . I would be very happy if these problems could really find their solution at the council table. My skepticism, however ,is based on the fact that it was America herself who gave sharpest expression to her mistrust in the effectiveness of conferences. For the greatest conference of all time was the League of Nations . . .representing all the peoples of the world, created in accordance, with the will of an American President. The first State, however, that shrank from this endeavor was the United States . . . It was not until after years of purposeless participation that I resolved to follow the example of America. . . The freedom of North America was not achieved at the conference table any more than the conflict between the North and the South was decided there. I will say nothing about the innumerable struggles which finally led to the subjugation of the North American continent as a whole.
I mention all this only in order to show that your view, Mr. Roosevelt, although undoubtedly deserving of all honor, finds no con firmation in the history of your own country or of the rest of the world:
I have taken the trouble to ascertain from the States mentioned, firstly, whether they feel themselves threatened, and secondly whether he addressed to us at their suggestion, or at any rate, with their consent. The reply was in all cases negative . . . It is true that I could not cause inquiries to be made of certain of the States and nations mentioned because they themselves – as for example, Syria – are at present not in possession of their freedom, but are occupied and consequently deprived of their rights by the military agents of democratic States. Apart from this fact, however, all States bordering on Germany have received much more binding assurances . . . than Mr. Roosevelt asked from me in his curious telegram. . . .
And then came the peroration – the most eloquent for German ears he ever made.
Mr. Roosevelt! I fully understand that the vastness of your nation and the immense wealth of your country allow you to feel responsible for the history of the whole world and for the history of all nations. I, sir, am placed in a much more modest and smaller sphere . . .I once took over a State which was faced by complete ruin, thanks to its trust in the promises of the rest of the world and to the bad regime of democratic governments . . . I have conquered chaos in Germany, re-established order and enormously increased production . . . developed traffic, caused mighty roads to be built and canals to be dug, called into being gigantic new factories and at the same time endeavored to further the education and culture of our people. I have succeeded in finding useful work once more for the whole of the seven million unemployed . . . Not only have I united the German people politically, but I have also rearmed them. I have also endeavored to destroy sheet by sheet that treaty which in its four hundred and forty-eight articles contains the vilest oppression which peoples and human beings have ever been expected to put up with.
I have brought back to the Reich provinces stolen from us in 1919. I have led back to their native country millions of Germans who were torn away from us and were in misery . . . and, Mr. Roosevelt, without spilling blood and without bringing to my people, and consequently to others, the misery of war . . . You, Mr. Roosevelt, have a much easier task in comparison. You became President of the United States in 1933 when I became Chancellor of the Reich. From the very outset you stepped to the head of one of the largest and wealthiest States in the world . . . Conditions prevailing in your country are on such a large scale that you can find time and leisure to give your attention to universal problems . . . Your concerns and suggestions cover a much larger and wider area than mine, because my world, Mr. Roosevelt, in which Providence has placed me and for which I am therefore obliged to work, is unfortunately much smaller, although for me it is more precious than anything else, for it is limited to my people! I believe however that this is the way in which I can be of the most service to that for which we are all concerned, namely, the justice, well-being, progress and peace of the whole community.
As it turned out, this was the last great peacetime public speech of Hitler’s life.
On a sudden impulse, after more than a year of hesitation, Mussolini committed himself irrevocably to Hitler’s fortunes on May 22, 1939. This was one of the first signs that the Italian dictator, like the German, was beginning to lose that iron self-control which up until this year of 1939 had enabled them both to pursue their own national interests with ice-cold clarity. The consequences for Mussolini would soon prove disastrous. The “Pact of Steel,” as it came to be known, was duly signed with considerable pomp at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.
On May 23, 1939, then, Hitler, as he himself said, burned his boats. There would be war. Germany needed Lebensraum in the East. To get it Poland would be attacked at the first opportunity. Danzig had nothing to do with it. That was merely an excuse. Britain stood in the way; she was the real driving force against Germany. Very well, she would be taken on too, and France. It would be a life-and-death struggle
On August 22, 1939, Hitler, having been assured by Stalin himself that Russia would be a friendly neutral, once more convoked his top military commanders to the Obersalzberg, lectured them on his own greatness and on the need for them to wage war brutally and without pity and apprised them that he probably would order the attack on Poland to begin four days hence, on Saturday, August 26 – six days ahead of schedule.
The generals found Hitler in one of his most arrogant and uncompromising moods. “I have called you together,” he told them, “to give you a picture of the political situation in order that you may have some insight into the individual factors on which I have based my irrevocable decision to act and in order to strengthen your confidence. After that we shall discuss military details.” First of all, he said, there were two personal considerations. My own personality and that of Mussolini. Essentially, all depends on me, on my existence, because of my political talents. Furthermore, the fact that probably no one will ever again have the confidence of the whole German people as I have. There will probably never again in the future be a man with more authority than I have. My existence is therefore a factor of great value. But 1 can be eliminated at any time by a criminal or a lunatic.
He had made his decision in the spring, he said, that a conflict with Poland was inevitable, but he had thought that first he would turn against the West. In that case, however, it became”clear” to him that Poland would attack Germany. Therefore she must be liquidated now. The time to fight a war, anyway, had come. For us it is easy to make the decision. We have nothing to lose; we can only gain. Our economic situation is such that we cannot hold out more than a few years. Goering can confirm this. We have no other choice, we must act .
Besides the personal factor, the political situation is favorable to us; in the Mediterranean, rivalry among Italy, France and England; in the Orient, tension . . . England is in great danger. France’s position has also deteriorated. Decline in birth rate . . . Yugoslavia carries the germ of collapse . . .Rumania is weaker than before . . . Since Kemal’s death, Turkey has been ruled by small minds, unsteady, weak men. All these fortunate circumstances will not prevail in two to three years. No one knows how long I shall live. Therefore a showdown, which it would not be safe to put off for four to five years, had better take place now.
Having disposed, to his own satisfaction, at least, of Poland, Britain and France, Hitler pulled out his ace card. He turned to Russia. The enemy had another hope, that Russia would become our enemy after the conquest of Poland. The enemy did not count on my great power of resolution. Our enemies are little worms. I saw them at Munich. a proposition came from the Russians for a nonaggression treaty. Four days ago I took a special step which brought it abou tthat Russia announced yesterday that she is ready to sign. The personal contact with Stalin is established. The day after tomorrow Ribbentrop will conclude the treaty. Now Poland is in the position in which 1 wanted her . . . A beginning has been made for the destruction of England’s hegemony. The way is open for the soldier, now that I have made the political preparations.
I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war – never mind whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterward whether he told the truth or not. In starting and waging a war it is not right that matters, but victory .Close your hearts to pity! Act brutally! Eighty million people must obtain what is their right . . . The stronger man is right . . . Be harsh and remorseless! Be steeled against all signs of compassion! . . . Whoever has pondered over this world order knows that its meaning lies in the success of the best by means of force
By assenting to a shoddy deal with Nazi Germany, Stalin had given the signal for the commencement of a war that almost certainly would develop into a world conflict. This he certainly knew. As things turned out, it was the greatest blunder of his life.
The Sunday edition (August 27) of the Voelkischer Beobachter. Across the whole top of the front page were inch-high headlines: WHOLE OF POLAND IN WAR FEVER! 1,500,000 MEN MOBILIZED! UNINTERRUPTED TROOP TRANSPORT TOWARD THE FRONTIER! CHAOS IN UPPER SILESIA!
There was no mention, of course, of any German mobilization, though, as we have seen, Germany had been mobilized for a fortnight.
On the evening of August 29, British Ambassador, Henderson, arrived at the Chancellery to receive from the Fuehrer Germany’s actual reply regarding the Polish question. It soon became evident how hollow had been the optimism of Goering and his Swedish friend for aversion of the looming war. The meeting, as the ambassador advised Halifax immediately afterward, “was of a stormy character and Herr Hitler was far less reasonable than yesterday.”
The formal, written German note itself reiterated the Reich’s desire for friendship with Great Britain but emphasized that “it could not be bought at the price of a renunciation of vital German interests.” After a long and familiar rehearsal of Polish misdeeds, provocations and “barbaric actions of maltreatment which cry to heaven,” the note presented Hitler’s demands officially and in writing for the first time: return of Danzig and the Corridor, and the safeguarding of Germans in Poland. To eliminate ”present conditions,” it added, ”there no longer remain days, still less weeks, but perhaps only hours.”
And then, at the very end, came the trap. The German Government accordingly agrees to accept the British Government’s offer of their good offices in securing the dispatch to Berlin of a Polish emissary with full powers. They count on the arrival of this emissary on Wednesday, August 30, 1939. The German Government will immediately draw up proposals for a solution acceptable to themselves and will, if possible, place these at the disposal of the British Government before the arrival of the Polish negotiator.
At 10 A.M. that morning of August 30, the British ambassador in Warsaw had wired Halifax that he felt sure “that it would be impossible to induce the Polish Government to send M. Beck or any other representative immediately to Berlin to discuss a settlement on the basis proposed by Hitler. They would sooner fight and perish rather than submit to such humiliation, especially after the examples of Czechoslovakia, Lithuania and Austria.” He suggested that if negotiations were to be “between equals” they must take place in some neutral country.
When Henderson ventured to ask for the German proposals for a Polish settlement, which had been promised the British in Hitler’s last note, Ribbentrop retorted contemptuously that it was now too late since the Polish emissary had not arrived by midnight. However, the Germans had drawn up proposals and Ribbentrop now proceeded to read them. He read them in German “at top speed, or rather gabbled to me as fast as he could, in a tone of utmost annoyance,” Henderson reported.
Of the sixteen articles I was able to gather the gist of six or seven, but it would have been quite impossible to guarantee even the exact accuracy of these without a careful study of the text itself. When he had finished I accordingly asked him to let me see it. Ribbentrop refused categorically, threw the document with a contemptuous gesture on the table and said that it was now out of date since no Polish emissary had arrived by midnight.
It may have been out of date, since the Germans chose to make it so, but what is important is that these German ”proposals” were never meant to be taken seriously or indeed to be taken at all. In fact they were a hoax. Compared to his demands of recent days, they were generous, astonishingly so. In them Hitler demanded only that Danzig be returned to Germany. The future of the Corridor would be decided by a plebiscite, and then only after a period of twelve months when tempers had calmed down. Poland would keep the port of Gdynia. Whoever received the Corridor in the plebiscite would grant the other party extraterritorial highway and railroad routes through it – this was a reversion to his ”offer” of the previous spring. There was to be an exchange of populations and full rights accorded to nationals of one country in the other.
They were broadcast to the German people at 9 P.M. on August 31, eight and one half hours after Hitler had issued the final orders for the attack on Poland.
Lipski, the Polish Ambassador, was received by Ribbentrop at 6:15 P.M., more than five hours after he had requested the interview. It did not last long. The ambassador, despite his fatigue and his worn nerves, behaved with dignity. He read to the Nazi Foreign Minister a written communication. Last night the Polish Government were informed by the British Government of an exchange of views with the Reich Government as to a possibility of direct negotiations between the Polish and German Governments.
The Polish Government are favorably considering the British Government’s suggestion, and will make them a formal reply on the subject during the next few hours. He had expected, Ribbentrop said, that Lipski would come as a ”fully empowered delegate,” and when the ambassador again declared that he had no such role he was dismissed. Ribbentrop said he would inform the Fuehrer.”
”On my return to the embassy,” Lipski later related, “I found myself unable to communicate with Warsaw, as the Germans had cut my telephone. In his testimony, Field Marshal Goering made much of this during his vain effort to convince the Nuremberg judges that Poland had “sabotaged” Hitler’s last bid for peace and that, as he said, he, Goering, did not want war and had done everything he could to prevent it. But Goering’s veracity was only a shade above Ribbentrop’s and one example of this was his further assertion to the court that only after Lipski’s visit to the Wilhelmstrasse at 6:15 P.M. on August 31 did Hitler decide ”on invasion the next day.”
The truth was quite otherwise. In fact, all these scrambling eleventh-hour moves of the weary and exhausted diplomats, and of the overwrought men who directed them on the afternoon and evening of that last day of August 1939, were but a flailing of the air, completely futile, and, in the case of the Germans, entirely and purposely deceptive.
For at half after noon on August 31, before Lord Halifax had urged the Poles to be more accommodating and before Lipski had called on Ribbentrop and before the Germans had made publicly known their “generous” proposals to Poland and before Mussolini had tried to intervene, Adolf Hitler had taken his final decision and issued the decisive order that was to throw the planet into its bloodiest war.
Good propaganda, to be effective, as Hitler and Goebbels had learned from experience, needs more than words. It needs deeds, however much they may have to be fabricated. Having convinced the German people that the Poles had rejected the Fuehrer’s generous peace offer, there remained only the concocting of a deed which would ”prove” that not Germany but Poland had attacked first. S.S. men outfitted in Polish Army uniforms were to do the shooting, and drugged concentration camp inmates were to be left dying as ”casualties” – this last delectable part of the operation had the expressive code name ”Canned Goods.” There were to be several such faked “Polish attacks” but the principal one was to be on the radio station at Gleiwitz.
Admiral Canaris, chief of the Abwehr in OKW and one of the key anti-Nazi conspirators, was in a different mood. Though Hitler was carrying Germany into war, an action which the Canaris circle had supposedly sworn to prevent by getting rid of the dictator, there was no conspiracy in being now that the moment for it had arrived. In a voice choked with emotion he said: “This means the end of Germany.”
CHAPTER X
WHO WAS MILTON FRIEDMAN?
Paul Krugman wrote in 2007:
The history of economic thought in the twentieth century is a bit like the history of Christianity in the sixteenth century. Until John Maynard Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money in 1936, economics—at least in the English-speaking world—was completely dominated by free-market orthodoxy. Heresies would occasionally pop up, but they were always suppressed. Classical economics, wrote Keynes in 1936, “conquered England as completely as the Holy Inquisition conquered Spain.” And classical economics said that the answer to almost all problems was to let the forces of supply and demand do their job.
But classical economics offered neither explanations nor solutions for the Great Depression. By the middle of the 1930s, the challenges to orthodoxy could no longer be contained. Keynes played the role of Martin Luther, providing the intellectual rigor needed to make heresy respectable. Although Keynes was by no means a leftist—he came to save capitalism, not to bury it—his theory said that free markets could not be counted on to provide full employment, creating a new rationale for large-scale government intervention in the economy.
Keynesianism was a great reformation of economic thought. It was followed, inevitably, by a counter-reformation. A number of economists played important roles in the great revival of classical economics between 1950 and 2000, but none was as influential as Milton Friedman. If Keynes was Luther, Friedman was Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. And like the Jesuits, Friedman’s followers have acted as a sort of disciplined army of the faithful, spearheading a broad, but incomplete, rollback of Keynesian heresy. By the century’s end, classical economics had regained much though by no means all of its former dominion and Friedman deserves much of the credit.
I don’t want to push the religious analogy too far. Economic theory at least aspires to be science, not theology; it is concerned with earth, not heaven. Keynesian theory initially prevailed because it did a far better job than classical orthodoxy of making sense of the world around us, and Friedman’s critique of Keynes became so influential largely because he correctly identified Keynesianism’s weak points. And just to be clear: although this essay argues that Friedman was wrong on some issues, and sometimes seemed less than honest with his readers, I regard him as a great economist and a great man.
Milton Friedman played three roles in the intellectual life of the twentieth century. There was Friedman the economist’s economist, who wrote technical, more or less apolitical analyses of consumer behavior and inflation. There was Friedman the policy entrepreneur, who spent decades campaigning on behalf of the policy known as monetarism—finally seeing the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England adopt his doctrine at the end of the 1970s, only to abandon it as unworkable a few years later. Finally, there was Friedman the ideologue, the great popularizer of free-market doctrine.
Did the same man play all these roles? Yes and no. All three roles were informed by Friedman’s faith in the classical verities of free-market economics. Moreover, Friedman’s effectiveness as a popularizer and propagandist rested in part on his well-deserved reputation as a profound economic theorist. But there’s an important difference between the rigor of his work as a professional economist and the looser, sometimes questionable logic of his pronouncements as a public intellectual. While Friedman’s theoretical work is universally admired by professional economists, there’s much more ambivalence about his policy pronouncements and especially his popularizing. And it must be said that there were some serious questions about his intellectual honesty when he was speaking to the mass public.
But let’s hold off on the questionable material for a moment, and talk about Friedman the economic theorist. For most of the past two centuries, economic thinking has been dominated by the concept of Homo economicus. The hypothetical Economic Man knows what he wants; his preferences can be expressed mathematically in terms of a “utility function.” And his choices are driven by rational calculations about how to maximize that function: whether consumers are deciding between corn flakes or shredded wheat, or investors are deciding between stocks and bonds, those decisions are assumed to be based on comparisons of the “marginal utility,” or the added benefit the buyer would get from acquiring a small amount of the alternatives available.
It’s easy to make fun of this story. Nobody, not even Nobel-winning economists, really makes decisions that way. But most economists—myself included—nonetheless find Economic Man useful, with the understanding that he’s an idealized representation of what we really think is going on. People do have preferences, even if those preferences can’t really be expressed by a precise utility function; they usually make sensible decisions, even if they don’t literally maximize utility. You might ask, why not represent people the way they really are? The answer is that abstraction, strategic simplification, is the only way we can impose some intellectual order on the complexity of economic life. And the assumption of rational behavior has been a particularly fruitful simplification.
The question, however, is how far to push it. Keynes didn’t make an all-out assault on Economic Man, but he often resorted to plausible psychological theorizing rather than careful analysis of what a rational decision-maker would do. Business decisions were driven by “animal spirits,” consumer decisions by a psychological tendency to spend some but not all of any increase in income, wage settlements by a sense of fairness, and so on.
But was it really a good idea to diminish the role of Economic Man that much? No, said Friedman, who argued in his 1953 essay “The Methodology of Positive Economics” that economic theories should be judged not by their psychological realism but by their ability to predict behavior. And Friedman’s two greatest triumphs as an economic theorist came from applying the hypothesis of rational behavior to questions other economists had thought beyond its reach.
In his 1957 book A Theory of the Consumption Function—not exactly a crowd-pleasing title, but an important topic—Friedman argued that the best way to make sense of saving and spending was not, as Keynes had done, to resort to loose psychological theorizing, but rather to think of individuals as making rational plans about how to spend their wealth over their lifetimes. This wasn’t necessarily an anti-Keynesian idea—in fact; the great Keynesian economist Franco Modigliani simultaneously and independently made a similar case, with even more care in thinking about rational behavior, in work with Albert Ando. But it did mark a return to classical ways of thinking—and it worked. The details are a bit technical, but Friedman’s “permanent income hypothesis” and the Ando-Modigliani “life cycle model” resolved several apparent paradoxes about the relationship between income and spending, and remain the foundations of how economists think about spending and saving to this day.
Friedman’s work on consumption behavior would, in itself, have made his academic reputation. An even bigger triumph, however, came from his application of Economic Man theorizing to inflation. In 1958 the New Zealand–born economist A.W. Phillips pointed out that there was a historical correlation between unemployment and inflation, with high inflation associated with low unemployment and vice versa. For a time, economists treated this correlation as if it were a reliable and stable relationship. This led to serious discussion about which point on the “Phillips curve” the government should choose. For example, should the United States accept a higher inflation rate in order to achieve a lower unemployment rate?
In 1967, however, Friedman gave a presidential address to the American Economic Association in which he argued that the correlation between inflation and unemployment, even though it was visible in the data, did not represent a true trade-off, at least not in the long run. “There is,” he said, “always a temporary trade-off between inflation and unemployment; there is no permanent trade-off.” In other words, if policymakers were to try to keep unemployment low through a policy of generating higher inflation, they would achieve only temporary success. According to Friedman, unemployment would eventually rise again, even as inflation remained high. The economy would, in other words, suffer the condition Paul Samuelson would later dub “stagflation.”
How did Friedman reach this conclusion? (Edmund S. Phelps, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics this year, simultaneously and independently, arrived at the same result.) As in the case of his work on consumer behavior, Friedman applied the idea of rational behavior. He argued that after a sustained period of inflation, people would build expectations of future inflation into their decisions, nullifying any positive effects of inflation on employment. For example, one reason inflation may lead to higher employment is that hiring more workers becomes profitable when prices rise faster than wages. But once workers understand that the purchasing power of their wages will be eroded by inflation, they will demand higher wage settlements in advance, so that wages keep up with prices. As a result, after inflation has gone on for a while, it will no longer deliver the original boost to employment. In fact, there will be a rise in unemployment if inflation falls short of expectations.
At the time Friedman and Phelps propounded their ideas, the United States had little experience with sustained inflation. So this was truly a prediction rather than an attempt to explain the past. In the 1970s, however, persistent inflation provided a test of the Friedman-Phelps hypothesis. Sure enough, the historical correlation between inflation and unemployment broke down in just the way Friedman and Phelps had predicted: in the 1970s, as the inflation rate rose into double digits, the unemployment rate was as high as or higher than in the stable-price years of the 1950s and 1960s. Inflation was eventually brought under control in the 1980s, but only after a painful period of extremely high unemployment, the worst since the Great Depression.
By predicting the phenomenon of stagflation in advance, Friedman and Phelps achieved one of the great triumphs of postwar economics. This triumph, more than anything else, confirmed Milton Friedman’s status as a great economist’s economist, whatever one may think of his other roles.
One interesting footnote: although Friedman made great strides in macroeconomics by applying the concept of individual rationality, he also knew where to stop. In the 1970s, some economists pushed Friedman’s analysis of inflation even further, arguing that there is no usable trade-off between inflation and unemployment even in the short run, because people will anticipate government actions and build that anticipation, as well as past experience, into their price-setting and wage-bargaining. This doctrine, known as “rational expectations,” swept through much of academic economics. But Friedman never went there. His reality sense warned that this was taking the idea of Homo economicus too far. And so it proved: Friedman’s 1967 address has stood the test of time, while the more extreme views propounded by rational expectations theorists in the Seventies and Eighties have not.
“Everything reminds Milton of the money supply. Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I keep it out of the paper,” wrote MIT’s Robert Solow in 1966. For decades, Milton Friedman’s public image and fame were defined largely by his pronouncements on monetary policy and his creation of the doctrine known as monetarism. It’s somewhat surprising to realize, then, that monetarism is now widely regarded as a failure, and that some of the things Friedman said about “money” and monetary policy—unlike what he said about consumption and inflation—appear to have been misleading, and perhaps deliberately so.
To understand what monetarism was all about, the first thing you need to know is that the word “money” doesn’t mean quite the same thing in Economies that it does in plain English. When economists talk of the money supply, they don’t mean wealth in the usual sense. They mean only those forms of wealth that can be used more or less directly to buy things. Currency—pieces of green paper with pictures of dead presidents on them—is money, and so are bank deposits on which you can write checks. But stocks, bonds, and real estate aren’t money, because they have to be converted into cash or bank deposits before they can be used to make purchases.
If the money supply consisted solely of currency, it would be under the direct control of the government—or, more precisely, the Federal Reserve, a monetary agency that, like its counterpart “central banks” in many other countries, is institutionally somewhat separate from the government proper. The fact that the money supply also includes bank deposits makes reality more complicated. The central bank has direct control only over the “monetary base”—the sum of currency in circulation, the currency banks hold in their vaults, and the deposits banks hold at the Federal Reserve—but not the deposits people have made in banks. Under normal circumstances, however, the Federal Reserve’s direct control over the monetary base is enough to give it effective control of the overall money supply as well.
Before Keynes, economists considered the money supply a primary tool of economic management. But Keynes argued that under depression conditions, when interest rates are very low, changes in the money supply have little effect on the economy. The logic went like this: when interest rates are 4 or 5 percent, nobody wants to sit on idle cash. But in a situation like that of 1935, when the interest rate on three-month Treasury bills was only 0.14 percent, there is very little incentive to take the risk of putting money to work. The central bank may try to spur the economy by printing large quantities of additional currency; but if the interest rate is already very low the additional cash is likely to languish in bank vaults or under mattresses. Thus Keynes argued that monetary policy, a change in the money supply to manage the economy, would be ineffective. And that’s why Keynes and his followers believed that fiscal policy—in particular, an increase in government spending—was necessary to get countries out of the Great Depression.
Why does this matter? Monetary policy is a highly technocratic, mostly apolitical form of government intervention in the economy. If the Fed decides to increase the money supply, all it does is purchase some government bonds from private banks, paying for the bonds by crediting the banks’ reserve accounts—in effect, all the Fed has to do is print some more monetary base. By contrast, fiscal policy involves the government much more deeply in the economy, often in a value-laden way: if politicians decide to use public works to promote employment, they need to decide what to build and where. Economists with a free-market bent, then, tend to want to believe that monetary policy is all that’s needed; those with a desire to see a more active government tend to believe that fiscal policy is essential.
Economic thinking after the triumph of the Keynesian revolution—as reflected, say, in the early editions of Paul Samuelson’s classic textbook—gave priority to fiscal policy, while monetary policy was relegated to the sidelines. As Friedman said in his 1967 address to the American Economic Association:
The wide acceptance of [Keynesian] views in the economics profession meant that for some two decades monetary policy was believed by all but a few reactionary souls to have been rendered obsolete by new economic knowledge. Money did not matter.
Although this may have been an exaggeration, monetary policy was held in relatively low regard through the 1940s and 1950s. Friedman, however, crusaded for the proposition that money did too matter, culminating in the 1963 publication of A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, with Anna Schwartz.
Although A Monetary History is a vast work of extraordinary scholarship, covering a century of monetary developments, its most influential and controversial discussion concerned the Great Depression. Friedman and Schwartz claimed to have refuted Keynes’s pessimism about the effectiveness of monetary policy in depression conditions. “The contraction” of the economy, they declared, “is in fact a tragic testimonial to the importance of monetary forces.”
But what did they mean by that? From the beginning, the Friedman-Schwartz position seemed a bit slippery. And over time Friedman’s presentation of the story grew cruder, not subtler, and eventually began to seem—there’s no other way to say this—intellectually dishonest.
In interpreting the origins of the Depression, the distinction between the monetary base (currency plus bank reserves), which the Fed controls directly, and the money supply (currency plus bank deposits) is crucial. The monetary base went up during the early years of the Great Depression, rising from an average of $6.05 billion in 1929 to an average of $7.02 billion in 1933. But the money supply fell sharply, from $26.6 billion to $19.9 billion. This divergence mainly reflected the fallout from the wave of bank failures in 1930–1931: as the public lost faith in banks, people began holding their wealth in cash rather than bank deposits, and those banks that survived began keeping large quantities of cash on hand rather than lending it out, to avert the danger of a bank run. The result was much less lending, and hence much less spending, than there would have been if the public had continued to deposit cash into banks, and banks had continued to lend deposits out to businesses. And since a collapse of spending was the proximate cause of the Depression, the sudden desire of both individuals and banks to hold more cash undoubtedly made the slump worse.
Friedman and Schwartz claimed that the fall in the money supply turned what might have been an ordinary recession into a catastrophic depression, itself an arguable point. But even if we grant that point for the sake of argument, one has to ask whether the Federal Reserve, which after all did increase the monetary base, can be said to have caused the fall in the overall money supply. At least initially, Friedman and Schwartz didn’t say that. What they said instead was that the Fed could have prevented the fall in the money supply, in particular by riding to the rescue of the failing banks during the crisis of 1930–1931. If the Fed had rushed to lend money to banks in trouble, the wave of bank failures might have been prevented, which in turn might have avoided both the public’s decision to hold cash rather than bank deposits, and the preference of the surviving banks for stashing deposits in their vaults rather than lending the funds out. And this, in turn, might have staved off the worst of the Depression.
An analogy may be
helpful here. Suppose that a flu epidemic breaks out, and later analysis
suggests that appropriate action by the Centers for Disease Control could have
contained the epidemic. It would be fair to blame government officials for
failing to take appropriate action. But it would be quite a stretch to say that
the government caused the epidemic, or to use the CDC’s failure as a demonstration of the superiority
of free markets over big government.
Yet many economists,
and even more lay readers, have taken Friedman and Schwartz’s account to mean
that the Federal Reserve actually caused the Great Depression—that the
Depression is in some sense a demonstration of the evils of an excessively
interventionist government. And in later years, as I’ve said, Friedman’s
assertions grew cruder, as if to feed this misperception. In his 1967
presidential address he declared that “the US monetary
authorities followed highly deflationary policies,” and that the money supply
fell “because the Federal Reserve System forced or permitted a sharp reduction
in the monetary base, because it failed to exercise the responsibilities
assigned to it”—an odd assertion given that the monetary base, as we’ve seen,
actually rose as the money supply was falling. (Friedman may have been
referring to a couple of episodes along the way in which the monetary base fell
modestly for brief periods, but even so his statement was highly misleading at
best.)
By 1976 Friedman was telling readers of Newsweek that “the elementary truth is that the Great Depression was produced by government mismanagement,” a statement that his readers surely took to mean that the Depression wouldn’t have happened if only the government had kept out of the way—when in fact what Friedman and Schwartz claimed was that the government should have been more active, not less.
Why did historical disputes about the role of monetary policy in the 1930s matter so much in the 1960s? Partly because they fed into Friedman’s broader anti-government agenda, of which more below. But the more direct application was to Friedman’s advocacy of monetarism. According to this doctrine, the Federal Reserve should keep the money supply growing at a steady, low rate, say 3 percent a year—and not deviate from this target, no matter what is happening in the economy. The idea was to put monetary policy on autopilot, removing any discretion on the part of government officials.
Friedman’s case for monetarism was part economic, part political. Steady growth in the money supply, he argued, would lead to a reasonably stable economy. He never claimed that following his rule would eliminate all recessions, but he did argue that the wiggles in the economy’s growth path would be small enough to be tolerable—hence the assertion that the Great Depression wouldn’t have happened if the Fed had been following a monetarist rule. And along with this qualified faith in the stability of the economy under a monetary rule went Friedman’s unqualified contempt for the ability of Federal Reserve officials to do better if given discretion. Exhibit A for the Fed’s unreliability was the onset of the Great Depression, but Friedman could point to many other examples of policy gone wrong. “A monetary rule,” he wrote in 1972, “would insulate monetary policy both from arbitrary power of a small group of men not subject to control by the electorate and from the short-run pressures of partisan politics.”
Monetarism was a powerful force in economic debate for about three decades after Friedman first propounded the doctrine in his 1959 book A Program for Monetary Stability. Today, however, it is a shadow of its former self, for two main reasons.
First, when the United States and the United Kingdom tried to put monetarism into practice at the end of the 1970s, both experienced dismal results: in each country steady growth in the money supply failed to prevent severe recessions. The Federal Reserve officially adopted Friedman-type monetary targets in 1979, but effectively abandoned them in 1982 when the unemployment rate went into double digits. This abandonment was made official in 1984, and ever since then the Fed has engaged in precisely the sort of discretionary fine-tuning that Friedman decried. For example, the Fed responded to the 2001 recession by slashing interest rates and allowing the money supply to grow at rates that sometimes exceeded 10 percent per year. Once the Fed was satisfied that the recovery was solid, it reversed course, raising interest rates and allowing growth in the money supply to drop to zero.
Second, since the early 1980s the Federal Reserve and its counterparts in other countries have done a reasonably good job, undermining Friedman’s portrayal of central bankers as irredeemable bunglers. Inflation has stayed low, recessions—except in Japan, of which more in a second—have been relatively brief and shallow. And all this happened in spite of fluctuations in the money supply that horrified monetarists, and led them—Friedman included—to predict disasters that failed to materialize. As David Warsh of The Boston Globe pointed out in 1992, “Friedman blunted his lance forecasting inflation in the 1980s, when he was deeply, frequently wrong.”
By 2004, the Economic Report of the President, written by the very conservative economists of the Bush administration, could nonetheless make the highly anti-monetarist declaration that “aggressive monetary policy”—not stable, steady-as-you-go, but aggressive—”can reduce the depth of a recession.”
Now, a word about Japan. During the 1990s Japan experienced a sort of minor-key reprise of the Great Depression. The unemployment rate never reached Depression levels, thanks to massive public works spending that had Japan, with less than half America’s population, pouring more concrete each year than the United States. But the very low interest rate conditions of the Great Depression reemerged in full. By 1998 the call money rate, the rate on overnight loans between banks, was literally zero.
And under those conditions, monetary policy proved just as ineffective as Keynes had said it was in the 1930s. The Bank of Japan, Japan’s equivalent of the Fed, could and did increase the monetary base. But the extra yen were hoarded, not spent. The only consumer durable goods selling well, some Japanese economists told me at the time, were safes. In fact, the Bank of Japan found itself unable even to increase the money supply as much as it wanted. It pushed vast quantities of cash into circulation, but broader measures of the money supply grew very little. An economic recovery finally began a couple of years ago, driven by a revival of business investment to take advantage of new technological opportunities. But monetary policy never was able to get any traction.
In effect, Japan in the Nineties offered a fresh opportunity to test the views of Friedman and Keynes regarding the effectiveness of monetary policy in depression conditions. And the results clearly supported Keynes’s pessimism rather than Friedman’s optimism.
In 1946 Milton Friedman made his debut as a popularizer of free-market economics with a pamphlet titled “Roofs or Ceilings: The Current Housing Problem” coauthored with George J. Stigler, who would later join him at the University of Chicago. The pamphlet, an attack on the rent controls that were still universal just after World War II, was released under rather odd circumstances: it was a publication of the Foundation for Economic Education, an organization which, as Rick Perlstein writes in Before the Storm (2001), his book about the origins of the modern conservative movement, “spread a libertarian gospel so uncompromising it bordered on anarchism.” Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, sat on the FEE’s board. This first venture in free-market popularization prefigured in two ways the course of Friedman’s career as a public intellectual over the next six decades.
First, the pamphlet demonstrated Friedman’s special willingness to take free-market ideas to their logical limits. Neither the idea that markets are efficient ways to allocate scarce goods nor the proposition that price controls create shortages and inefficiency was new. But many economists, fearing the backlash against a sudden rise in rents (which Friedman and Stigler predicted would be about 30 percent for the nation as a whole), might have proposed some kind of gradual transition to decontrol. Friedman and Stigler dismissed all such concerns.
In the decades ahead, this single-mindedness would become Friedman’s trademark. Again and again, he called for market solutions to problems—education, health care, the illegal drug trade—that almost everyone else thought required extensive government intervention. Some of his ideas have received widespread acceptance, like replacing rigid rules on pollution with a system of pollution permits that companies are free to buy and sell. Some, like school vouchers, are broadly supported by the conservative movement but haven’t gotten far politically. And some of his proposals, like eliminating licensing procedures for doctors and abolishing the Food and Drug Administration, are considered outlandish even by most conservatives.
Second, the pamphlet showed just how good Friedman was as a popularizer. It’s beautifully and cunningly written. There is no jargon; the points are made with cleverly chosen real-world examples, ranging from San Francisco’s rapid recovery from the 1906 earthquake to the plight of a 1946 veteran, newly discharged from the army, searching in vain for a decent place to live. The same style, enhanced by video, would mark Friedman’s celebrated 1980 TV series Free to Choose.
The odds are that the great swing back toward laissez-faire policies that took place around the world beginning in the 1970s would have happened even if there had been no Milton Friedman. But his tireless and brilliantly effective campaign on behalf of free markets surely helped accelerate the process, both in the United States and around the world. By any measure—protectionism versus free trade; regulation versus deregulation; wages set by collective bargaining and government minimum wages versus wages set by the market—the world has moved a long way in Friedman’s direction. And even more striking than his achievement in terms of actual policy changes has been the transformation of the conventional wisdom: most influential people have been so converted to the Friedman way of thinking that it is simply taken as a given that the change in economic policies he promoted has been a force for good. But has it?
Consider first the macroeconomic performance of the US economy. We have data on the real income—that is, income adjusted for inflation—of American families from 1947 to 2005. During the first half of that fifty-eight-year stretch, from 1947 to 1976, Milton Friedman was a voice crying in the wilderness, his ideas ignored by policymakers. But the economy, for all the inefficiencies he decried, delivered dramatic improvements in the standard of living of most Americans: median real income more than doubled. By contrast, the period since 1976 has been one of increasing acceptance of Friedman’s ideas; although there remained plenty of government intervention for him to complain about, there was no question that free-market policies became much more widespread. Yet gains in living standards have been far less robust than they were during the previous period: median real income was only about 23 percent higher in 2005 than in 1976.
Part of the reason the second postwar generation didn’t do as well as the first was a slower overall rate of economic growth—a fact that may come as a surprise to those who assume that the trend toward free markets has yielded big economic dividends. But another important reason for the lag in most families’ living standards was a spectacular increase in economic inequality: during the first postwar generation income growth was broadly spread across the population, but since the late 1970s median income, the income of the typical family, has risen only about a third as fast as average income, which includes the soaring incomes of a small minority at the top.
This raises an interesting point. Milton Friedman often assured audiences that no special institutions, like minimum wages and unions, were needed to ensure that workers would share in the benefits of economic growth. In 1976 he told Newsweek readers that tales of the evil done by the robber barons were pure myth:
There is probably no other period in history, in this or any other country, in which the ordinary man had as large an increase in his standard of living as in the period between the Civil War and the First World War, when unrestrained individualism was most rugged.
(What about the remarkable thirty-year stretch after World War II, which encompassed much of Friedman’s own career?) Yet in the decades that followed that pronouncement, as the minimum wage was allowed to fall behind inflation and unions largely disappeared as an important factor in the private sector, working Americans saw their fortunes lag behind growth in the economy as a whole. Was Friedman too sanguine about the generosity of the invisible hand?
To be fair, there are many factors affecting both economic growth and the distribution of income, so we can’t blame Friedmanite policies for all disappointments. Still, given the common assumption that the turn toward free-market policies did great things for the US economy and the living standards of ordinary Americans, it is striking how little support one can find for that proposition in the data.
Similar questions about the lack of clear evidence that Friedman’s ideas actually work in practice can be raised, with even more force, for Latin America. A decade ago it was common to cite the success of the Chilean economy, where Augusto Pinochet’s Chicago-educated advisers turned to free-market policies after Pinochet seized power in 1973, as proof that Friedman-inspired policies showed the path to successful economic development. But although other Latin nations, from Mexico to Argentina, have followed Chile’s lead in freeing up trade, privatizing industries, and deregulating, Chile’s success story has not been replicated.
On the contrary, the perception of most Latin Americans is that “neoliberal” policies have been a failure: the promised takeoff in economic growth never arrived, while income inequality has worsened. I don’t mean to blame everything that has gone wrong in Latin America on the Chicago School, or to idealize what went before; but there is a striking contrast between the perception that Friedman was vindicated and the actual results in economies that turned from the interventionist policies of the early postwar decades to laissez-faire.
On a more narrowly focused topic, one of Friedman’s key targets was what he considered the uselessness and counterproductive nature of most government regulation. In an obituary for his one-time collaborator George Stigler, Friedman singled out for praise Stigler’s critique of electricity regulation, and his argument that regulators usually end up serving the interests of the regulated rather than those of the public. So how has deregulation worked out?
It started well, with the deregulation of trucking and airlines beginning in the late 1970s. In both cases deregulation, while it didn’t make everyone happy, led to increased competition, generally lower prices, and higher efficiency. Deregulation of natural gas was also a success.
But the next big wave of deregulation, in the electricity sector, was a different story. Just as Japan’s slump in the 1990s showed that Keynesian worries about the effectiveness of monetary policy were no myth, the California electricity crisis of 2000– 2001—in which power companies and energy traders created an artificial shortage to drive up prices—reminded us of the reality that lay behind tales of the robber barons and their depredations. While other states didn’t suffer as severely as California, across the nation electricity deregulation led to higher, not lower, prices, with huge windfall profits for power companies.
Those states that, for whatever reason, didn’t get on the deregulation bandwagon in the 1990s now consider themselves lucky. And the luckiest of all are those cities that somehow didn’t get the memo about the evils of government and the virtues of the private sector, and still have publicly owned power companies. All of this showed that the original rationale for electricity regulation—the observation that without regulation, power companies would have too much monopoly power—remains as valid as ever.
Should we conclude from this that deregulation is always a bad idea? No—it depends on the specifics. To conclude that deregulation is always and everywhere a bad idea would be to engage in the same kind of absolutist thinking that was, arguably, Milton Friedman’s greatest flaw.
In his 1965 review of Friedman and Schwartz’s Monetary History, the late Yale economist and Nobel laureate James Tobin gently chided the authors for going too far. “Consider the following three propositions,” he wrote. “Money does not matter. It does too matter. Money is all that matters. It is all too easy to slip from the second proposition to the third.” And he added that “in their zeal and exuberance” Friedman and his followers had too often done just that.
A similar sequence seems to have happened in Milton Friedman’s advocacy of laissez-faire. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, there were many people saying that markets can never work. Friedman had the intellectual courage to say that markets can too work, and his showman’s flair combined with his ability to marshal evidence made him the best spokesman for the virtues of free markets since Adam Smith. But he slipped all too easily into claiming both that markets always work and that only markets work. It’s extremely hard to find cases in which Friedman acknowledged the possibility that markets could go wrong, or that government intervention could serve a useful purpose.
Friedman’s laissez-faire absolutism contributed to an intellectual climate in which faith in markets and disdain for government often trumps the evidence. Developing countries rushed to open up their capital markets, despite warnings that this might expose them to financial crises; then, when the crises duly arrived, many observers blamed the countries’ governments, not the instability of international capital flows. Electricity deregulation proceeded despite clear warnings that monopoly power might be a problem; in fact, even as the California electricity crisis was happening, most commentators dismissed concerns about price-rigging as wild conspiracy theories. Conservatives continue to insist that the free market is the answer to the health care crisis, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
What’s odd about Friedman’s absolutism on the virtues of markets and the vices of government is that in his work as an economist’s economist he was actually a model of restraint. As I pointed out earlier, he made great contributions to economic theory by emphasizing the role of individual rationality—but unlike some of his colleagues, he knew where to stop. Why didn’t he exhibit the same restraint in his role as a public intellectual?
The answer, I suspect, is that he got caught up in an essentially political role. Milton Friedman the great economist could and did acknowledge ambiguity. But Milton Friedman the great champion of free markets was expected to preach the true faith, not give voice to doubts. And he ended up playing the role his followers expected. As a result, over time the refreshing iconoclasm of his early career hardened into a rigid defense of what had become the new orthodoxy.
In the long run, great men are remembered for their strengths, not their weaknesses, and Milton Friedman was a very great man indeed—a man of intellectual courage who was one of the most important economic thinkers of all time, and possibly the most brilliant communicator of economic ideas to the general public that ever lived. But there’s a good case for arguing that Friedmanism, in the end, went too far, both as a doctrine and in its practical applications. When Friedman was beginning his career as a public intellectual, the times were ripe for a counterreformation against Keynesianism and all that went with it. But what the world needs now, I’d argue, is a counter-counterreformation.
CHAPTER XI
THUS SPAKE THE WISE – AND UNWISE
What follow are 28 quotations from some wise people.
1."We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery." -- H. G. Wells
2."Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment." -- Benjamin Franklin
3. "There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot."—Plato
4. "In reality, the most important things happen when you don't look for them." -- Phil Donahue
5. It may be comforting to know that everyone gets scared, and it is perfectly OK. Sometimes just acknowledging our fears is enough to make us feel better. And while it sometimes takes a lot more to ease our mind, we can console ourselves with the knowledge that life can be scary at times. Giving ourselves permission to be scared lets us move through our fears so we can let it go. It also makes it alright to share our fears with others. Sharing our apprehensions with other people can make our fears less overwhelming because we are not letting them grow inside of us as pent up emotions. Sharing our fears also can lighten our burden because we are not carrying our worries all by ourselves. Remember that you are not alone. -- Anon
6. "You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself." Anon
7. "The successful
person has the habit of doing the things failures don't like to do. They don't
like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength
of their purpose."
-- E.M Gray
8. When I pray for others, the words I speak resonate in the very depths of my being, assuring that a right solution is unfolding for me as well. --- Anon
9. To endeavor to always maximize joy and minimize irritation is to recognize that we ultimately have full control over our feelings. --- Anon
10. There is bliss in the simple knowledge that we have been given the gift of another day of existence. We are inspired by sights and sounds of the sun's gentle ascension. Birds serenade the luminosity, which grows richer by the minute. And though we may feel a residual lethargy, our vitality returns as our meditation helps us to become one with the stirring of other beings rubbing the sleep from their eyes. At the start of each day, our destiny has not yet been written, and so there is nothing we cannot do. --Anon
11. "We can throw stones, complain about them, stumble on them, climb over them, or build with them." -- William Arthur Ward
12. Before I begin my day, I rest in the silence of the morning, close my eyes and breathe in deeply. A smile comes to my lips as I feel the loving presence of God. --- Anon
13. "An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching." – Gandhi
14. "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." -- George Bernard Shaw
15. "A room without books is like a body without a soul." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
16. "You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, love like you'll never be hurt, sing like there's nobody listening, and live like it's heaven on earth." -- William W. Purkey
17. "All of us are born for a reason, but all of us don't discover why. Success in life has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others." -- Danny Thomas
18. Because we are all mirrors for each other, looking at the people in your life can tell you a lot about yourself. Who you are can be laid bare to you through what you see in others. It is easy to see the traits you do not like in others. It is much more difficult to realize that you possess those same traits. Often, the habits, attitudes, and behaviors of others are closely linked to our unconscious and unresolved issues.
When you come into contact with someone you admire, search your soul for similarly admirable traits. Likewise, when you meet someone exhibiting traits that you dislike, accept that you are looking at your reflection. Looking at yourself through your perception of others can be a humbling and eye-opening experience. You can also cultivate in you the traits and behaviors that you do like. Be loving and respectful to all people, and you will attract individuals that will love and respect you back. Nurture compassion and empathy and let the goodness you see in others be your mirror.
19. Faith is not a substance of which there's only a limited supply, available to some but not others. We can create and nourish faith by taking actions. One of the most powerful is simply to put ourselves in an atmosphere of faith: a spiritual retreat, healing circle, or religious service. The effects on us of meditation, prayer, or ritual are amplified when we practice them together. Hearing others speak from their faith kindles and supports our own. Alone, we can cultivate the habit of prayer or of reading spiritual literature as if we were exploring a new relationship, suspending judgment, seeing what comes to us from listening and reaching out to Spirit.
20. "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
-- Maya Angelou
21. "Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do." -- Apple Inc.
22. Like many people, you have no doubt longed for a device that would give you the power to fast forward through certain periods of your existence. Yet haste is by its very nature vastly more stressful than serene fortitude. When you feel yourself growing impatient because the pace of your development is deceptively slow, remember that everything that will occur in your life will occur in its own time. Quelling your urge to rush will enable you to witness yourself learning, changing, and becoming stronger. There is so much to see and do in between the events and processes that we deem definitive. If you are patient enough to take pleasure in your existence's unfolding, the journey from one pinnacle to the next will seem to take no time at all. --- Anon
23. I maintain a positive attitude and a cheerful heart as I create harmony in my life. Divine love erases doubt and fear and frees me to create a life of meaning. I use wisdom and strength to discern what is best for me and to release thoughts and feelings that no longer serve my good. I am free to establish harmony in my life and to be a blessing to the world. I am free! --- Anon
24. "The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism." -- Norman Vincent Peale
25. Just as worry uses the imagination, so does the antidote to worry. Next time you find that you are worrying, imagine the best result instead of anticipating the worst outcome. Visualize your loved ones’ path bathed in white light and clearly see in your mind’s eye their safe arrival. Imagine angels or guides watching over them as they make their way home. Generate peace and well-being instead of nervousness and unease within yourself. --- Anon
26. "I don't know the key to
success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone."
-- Bill Cosby
27. Lord Buddha was asked, What you gained by
Meditation? He replied, Nothing……But let me tell you what I lost: Anger, Depression,
Insecurity,
Fear Of Old Age & Death.
28. "Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will." -- Vernon Howard
And now some quotations from the otherwise:
"Man will never reach the moon regardless of
all future scientific advances." Dr. Lee DeForest, "Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television."
"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in
explosives."
- -
Admiral William Leahy , US Atomic Bomb Project
"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the
atom."
-- Robert
Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
--
Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
"I think there is a world market for maybe
five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with
the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't
last out the year. "But what is it good for?" -- Engineer
at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the
microchip.
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." Bill Gates, 1981
This 'telephone' has too many
shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device
is inherently of no value to us,"
-- Western Union internal memo, 1876.
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who
would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" - David
Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in
1920s.
"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better
than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible,"
-- A Yale
University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing
reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express
Corp.)
"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper," -- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."
"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the
market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy
cookies like you make,"
--
Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out,"
Decca Recording
Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible,"
--
Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The
literature was full of examples that said you can't do this,"
- -
Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M
"Post-It" Notepads.
"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're
crazy," Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his
project to drill for oil in 1859.
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high
plateau."
- - Irving
Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale
University , 1929.
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value,"
-- Marechal
Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre , France
..
"Everything that can be invented has been invented,"
--
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.
"The super computer is technologically impossible. It would take all of
the water that flows over Niagara
Falls to cool the heat generated by the number of
vacuum tubes required."
--
Professor of Electrical Engineering, New
York University
"I don't know what use any one could find for a machine that would make
copies of documents. It certainly couldn't be a feasible business by
itself." -- the head
of IBM, refusing to back the idea, forcing the inventor to found Xerox.
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
-- Pierre
Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse , 1872
"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the
intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon," -- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed
Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria
1873.
And last but not least...
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their
home." -- Ken
Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
