Allied War

Since anti-German propaganda-mills are still working overtime in the wholesale vilification of a people, we would like to present the crimes and hypocrisies of those who seem to glory in their self-righteous role as "liberators" and "teachers" of democracy and humanitarian values. This relentless propaganda in the movies, television and "literature," is not only cruel, but amounts to a form of mental genocide of the German people; a people who, like any other people, come in all variations of good and bad, crude and enlightened, compassionate and cruel as well as so many shades in-between. It is quite obvious who, for reasons of financial extortion and distraction from their own misdeeds is, after 57 years, still beating the drums of hatred and one-sided accusations. How "liberating" it must be in deed, to glory in one's human perfection, not because one is perfect, but, because one is blind to the complexities and intrigues of true history and human nature! Like Jesus said, " let those who are innocent throw the first stone!" Are these relentless stone-throwers as innocent as they see themselves? Or, do they not even have enough honor, to wrestle with their own short-comings as human beings and try to forgive the other as they would forgive themselves? Perhaps more should be said, but in light of the dangers of "free speech" in these times of "politically correct" democracy, we think it best to shut up for the time being and let history reveal its truth as it eventually always does.

The Little-Known Story of the Wilhelm Gustloff, the General Steuben and the Goya

The 1945 Sinkings
of the Cap Arcona and the Thielbek

Allied Attacks Killed Thousands of Concentration Camp Inmates

Mark Weber

All prisoners of German wartime concentration camps who perished while in German custody are routinely regarded as "victims of Nazism" -- even if they lost their lives as direct or indirect result of Allied policy. Similarly, all Jews who died in German captivity during World War II -- no matter what the cause of death -- are counted as "victims of the Holocaust."

This view is very misleading, if not deceitful. In fact, many tens of thousands of camp inmates and Jews lost their lives as direct and indirect victims of Allied action, or of the horrors of the Second World War. For example, the many thousands of Jews who perished in the notorious Bergen-Belsen camp during and after the final months of the war in Europe, including Anne Frank, were primarily victims not of German policy, but rather of the turmoil and chaos of war.

Among the German concentration camp prisoners who perished at Allied hands were some 7,000 inmates who were killed during the war's final week as they were being evacuated in three large German ships that were attacked by British war planes. This little-known tragedy is one of history's greatest maritime disasters.

The Cap Arcona, launched in May 1927, was a handsome passenger ship of the "Hamburg-South America" line. At 27,000 gross registered tons, it was the fourth-largest ship in the German merchant marine. For twelve years -- until the outbreak of war in 1939 -- she had sailed regularly between Hamburg and Rio de Janeiro. In the war's final months she was pressed into service by the German navy to rescue refugees fleeing from areas in the east threatened by the Red Army. This was part of a vast rescue operation organized by the German navy under the supervision of Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz. All but unknown in the United States today, this great undertaking saved countless lives. The Thielbek, a much smaller ship of 2,800 gross registered tons, was also used to transport refugees as part of the rescue operation.

In April 1945, Karl Kaufmann, Gauleiter of Hamburg and Reich Commissioner for merchant shipping, transferred the Cap Arcona and the Thielbek from naval command, and ordered them to Neustadt Bay in the Baltic Sea near the north German city of Lübeck.

Some 5,000 prisoners hastily evacuated from the Neuengamme concentration camp (a few miles southeast of Hamburg) were brought on board the Cap Arcona between April 18 and 26, along with some 400 SS guards, a naval gunnery detail of 500, and a crew of 76. Similarly the Thielbek took on some 2,800 Neuengamme prisoners. Under the terrible conditions that prevailed in what remained of unoccupied Germany during those final weeks, conditions for the prisoners on board the two vessels were dreadful. Many of the tightly packed inmates were ill, and both food and water were in very short supply.

On the afternoon of May 3, 1945, British "Typhoon" fighter-bombers, striking in several attack waves, bombarded and fired on the Cap Arcona and then the Thielbek. The two ships, which had no military function or mission, were flying many large white flags. "The hoisting of white flags proved useless," notes the Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. The attacks were thus violations of international law, for which -- if Britain and not Germany had been the vanquished power -- British pilots and their commanders could have been punished and even executed as "war criminals."

The Thielbek, struck by rockets, bombs and machine gun fire, sank in just 15-20 minutes. British planes then fired on terror-stricken survivors who were struggling in rescue boats or thrashing in the cold sea. Nearly everyone on board the Thielbek perished quickly, including nearly all the SS guards, ship's officers and crew members. Only about 50 of the prisoners survived.

The burning Cap Arcona took longer to go under. Many inmates burned to death. Most of those who were able to leap overboard drowned in the cold sea, and only some 350-500 could be rescued. During the next several days hundreds of corpses washed up on nearby shores, and were buried in mass graves. Having sunk in shallow water, the wreck of the capsized Cap Arcona remained partially above water as a grim reminder of the catastrophe.

A German reference work, Verheimlichte Dokumente, sums up:

A particularly barbaric Allied war crime was the bombing on May 3, 1945, by British Royal Air Force planes of the passenger ships Cap Arcona and Thielbek in the Lübeck bay, packed with concentration camp inmates. Among the many 'nameless' victims were many prominent political figures, a fact that is hushed up today because the fact that concentration camp inmates, many of them resistance fighters against Hitler, perished as victims of the terror of the 'liberators' does not conform to the portrayal of the 'reeducators'.

Another reference work, Der Zweite Weltkrieg (1985), notes:

A unique tragedy is the end on May 3, 1945, of the 'Hamburg-South' passenger steamship Cap Arcona and the steamship Thielbek, both carrying concentration camp prisoners on board who believed that they were saved, but who were now bombed in the Neustadt Bay by Allied air planes. On the Cap Arcona alone, more than 5,000 perished -- ship personnel, concentration camp inmates, and SS guards.

The deaths on May 3, 1945, of some 7,000 concentration camp prisoners -- victims of a criminal British attack -- remains a little-known chapter of World War II history. This is all the more remarkable when one compares the scale of the disaster with other, much better known maritime catastrophes. For example, the well-known sinking of the great British liner Titanic on April 15, 1912, took "only" 1,523 lives.

Actually, among the greatest naval disasters in history are the Baltic Sea sinkings of three other German vessels by Soviet submarines in the first half of 1945: the Wilhelm Gustloff, on January 30, 1945, with the loss of at least 5,400 lives, mostly women and children; the General Steuben on February 10, 1945, with the loss of 3,500, mostly refugees and wounded soldiers; and, above all, the Goya on April 16, 1945, taking the lives of some 7,000 refugees and wounded soldiers.

Sources: Fritz Brustat-Naval, Unternehmen Rettung (Herford: Koheler, 1970), pp. 197-201; C. Zentner & F. Bedürftig, eds., The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich (New York: Da Capo, 1997), pp. 126, 644-645, 952; W. Schütz, Hrsg., Lexikon: Deutsche Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert (Rosenheim: DVG, 1990), pp. 66, 455; Dr. Bernhard Steidle, Hrsg., Verheimlichte Dokumente, Band 2 (Munich: 1995), pp. 212, 230; "Britische RAF mordete Tausende KZ-Häftlinge," National-Zeitung (Munich), May 19, 2000, p. 11; Kay Dohnke, "5 Minuten, 50 Meter, 50 Jahre: Gedenken an die Cap Arcona, nach einem halben Jahrhundert," taz: die tageszeitung (Hamburg Ausgabe), May 3, 1995, also on line at http://www.theo-physik.uni-kiel.de/~starrost/akens/texte/diverses/arcona.html; "The Cap Arcona, the Thielbek and the Athen," on line at http://www.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/rz3a035/arcona.html; Konnilyn G. Feig, Hitler's Death Camps (New York: 1981), p. 214; Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust (New York: 1986), p. 806; M. Weber, "Bergen-Belsen: The Suppressed Story," May-June 1995 Journal of Historical Review, pp. 23-30; M. Weber, "History's Little-Known Naval Disasters," March-April 1998 Journal, p. 22.

For further reading, these books are available: Rudi Goguel, Cap Arcona (Frankfurt/Main: Röderberg, 1972); Günter Schwarberg, Angriffsziel Cap Arcona (Hamburg: Stern-Buch, 1983/ Göttingen: Steidi, 1998), with portions on line at http://www.reger-online.de/buchcd/w7506002.htm; Wilhelm Lange, Cap Arcona: Dokumentation (Eutin: Struve, 1988).

American Leaders Planned
Poison Gas Attack Against Japan

A long-suppressed report written in June 1945 by the US Army's Chemical Warfare Service shows that American military leaders made plans for a massive preemptive poison gas attack to accompany an invasion of Japan. The 30-page document designated "gas attack zones" on detailed maps of Tokyo and other major Japanese cities. Army planners selected 50 urban and industrial targets in Japan, with 25 cities, including Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, Kobe and Kyoto, listed as "especially suitable for gas attacks."

In planning the invasion of Japan proper, America's military and political leaders expected the Japanese to fight with fanatic fervor in defense of their home islands. The overall US plan, code-named "Operation Downfall," called for a two-stage invasion. An assault on the southernmost Japanese home island of Kyushu, code-named "Operation Olympic," was set for November 1, 1945. This was to be followed by "Operation Coronet," scheduled for March 1946: an invasion of the main Japanese home island of Honshu, including an assault on Tokyo.

"Gas attacks of the size and intensity recommended on these 250 square miles of urban population," the US Army report declared, "might easily kill 5,000,000 people and injure that many more." In the first attack, which would be launched 15 days before the Kyushu landings, American bombers would drench much of Tokyo and other cities in an early morning attack with 54,000 tons of lethal phosgene gas. Tokyo would be the largest poison gas target, because an "attack of this size against an urban city of large population should be used to initiate gas warfare."

The report's three authors recommended that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff issue "a policy at once directing the use of toxic gas on both strategic and tactical targets in support of Operation Olympic." Planners called for the use of four kinds of gas, including phosgene (or carbonyl chloride), mustard gas, and hydrogen cyanide. The gas attack study was approved by the chief of the US Chemical Warfare Service, Major General William N. Porter. Only five copies were made of the top secret document, whose existence was first made public in July 1991.

After the horrific use of poison gas during the First World War, the major nations formally outlawed the use of this new weapon. This prohibition was included in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, the 1922 Treaty of Washington, and in a 1925 protocol signed by more than 40 countries, including the United States. During the Second World War, both the United States and Germany produced and stockpiled lethal gas for possible use in the European conflict, but neither side -- apparently fearful of retaliation -- actually used the weapon.

Although the public policy in 1945 was that the United States would use gas only in retaliation for a Japanese first use, in private America's military leaders seriously considered striking first with poison gas. By the summer of 1945, American forces were already killing Japanese by the tens of thousands in indiscriminate fire-bombings. Given this, the step to killing by lethal gas was not a lengthy one.

On June 14, 1945, other documents show, Fleet Admiral Ernest King, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, received a secret report on poison gas from Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall. The two men were key presidential advisers. President Truman met at the White House on June 18 with his principal military and civilian advisers to discuss the overall plan for the invasion of Japan. Apparently the gas attack plan was approved at that conference. Three days later, June 21, orders were given to step up production of several types of poison gas to provide stockpiles in the massive quantities urged in the study.

Two American historians, Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar, commented on the long-suppressed document in a 1995 article. The June 1945 report, they wrote, "raised the killing of enemy civilians to a level far beyond anything seen in World War II. No [other] known military document from World War II recommends such wholesale killing of civilians." (T. B. Allen and N. Polmar, "Poisonous invasion prelude," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Aug. 4, 1995 [New York Times special features].)

No American official has ever been demoted or even criticized for approving this murderous plan, which has received scant public attention. If Germany had used poison gas during the Second World War, surely the victorious Allies would have severely punished the responsible officials. Similarly, if German military leaders had approved a plan to gas London comparable to the 1945 American one to drench Tokyo in phosgene, doubtless it would have been cited endlessly as a striking example of Nazi evil, and those responsible for drafting it would have been vilified.

Katyn Massacre -- 'The Lost 10,000'

But 'Katyn' is a collective word used to embrace not only those 4,500 found in the forest of that name, but a further 10,000 murdered at the same time. These were the men imprisoned at Starobielsk Camp (about 4,000) and at Ostashkow Camp (about 6,000). It is customary to refer to them briefly as "the other 10,000 -- whose whereabouts have remained a mystery." But 10,000 murdered prisoners cannot be dismissed in so short a sentence. This figure represents perhaps the total population of a sizeable town, or if seen as an army advancing across the plain it would appear a mighty host indeed. One thing is certain: just as no word ever came from the 4,500 Poles in Kozielsk camp after May 1940, so too was nothing again heard after that date from the 4,000 in Starobielsk camp, nor from the 6,000 in Ostashkow camp. They could not just vanish, and their bodies must be somewhere. But where?

At this point it is interesting to note that when the Germans first uncovered the corpses in Katyn forest they gave out that they had found 11,000. They did this for propaganda purposes and later amended the figure to the true one of 4,254. However, the Soviets also used the figure of 11,000 when trying to pin Katyn on Hermann Göring at Nuremberg, but there was a far more cynical reason. After all the Soviets knew the true figure as they had carried out the massacre. But they quoted 11,000 at Nuremberg in an effort to smudge the truth and somehow 'lose' the victims from Starobielsk and Ostashkow. As most people now know the Soviet accusation about Katyn fell to the ground and it is a matter for international shame that the whole subject was dropped and no mention of Katyn appears in the final judgment of the Nuremberg trials. So in this strange way some 10,000 men were seemingly made to disappear as if they had never existed at all. It is for that reason that I have entitled this lecture: "The Lost 10,000."

No Historical Review would be complete until every effort has been made to unravel this man -- made mystery, compounded as it is by the cowardice of the international community in creating the "cover -- up" which has banned the whole subject of Katyn from the pages of readily available records. But in the very name of humanity these lost men must be found; the manner of their passing must be recorded and proclaimed, and they must be given back their rightful places in the annals of time. To achieve this should be a solemn duty with any positive and sincere research body in the name of Truth as well as in the name of Compassion.

Now I have said that most of the prisoners from Kozielsk Camp were murdered in Katyn forest; in fact the number of corpses was 4,254 + 1 making 4,255. It is known that 245 were capriciously spared so that we arrive at the correct number originally imprisoned in that camp, which was 4,500. We must now consider the numbers spared from the other two camps, and they are as follows:

Thus, of the 6,500 originally imprisoned in Ostashkow Camp 6,376 were murdered, and of the 3,920 originally imprisoned in Starobielsk Camp, 3,841 were murdered. If we now add these last two totals of victims together we arrive at a figure of 10,217 -- and that is the matter we are considering today.

10,217 Polish prisoners each individually shot in the back of the head by the Soviet NKVD in the Spring of 1940. Remember also that the Russian attack upon Poland of 17 September 1939 was all over by 28 September in that year, and recall that the Germans did not attack the Soviet Union until June of 1941. Spring 1940 was, therefore, 'peacetime' in Russia -- and this makes the massacre all the more coldblooded and calculated. But it was, as we know, a deliberate attempt to cut off the flower of Poland by liquidating the leaders so as to leave the remainder of the population rudderless. Such an act is known by no other name than Genocide! In this case not only unpunished, but also unmentioned! We must now return to the two camps at Starobielsk and Ostashkow as being the last places known for certain in connection with the "lost 10,000."

On 5 April 1940 the senior Polish officer at Starobielsk was a Major Niewiarowski and at 9:00 a.m. on that day the Soviet camp commander Lt. Colonel Boreshkov, with Kirshov, the political commissar, called on Niewiarowski and told him that the camp was being wound up and that on the same day the first batch of officer -- prisoners numbering 195 was to leave.

"Where ... ?' Boreshkov drawled his answer, "Home! To your own homes. You will be sent first to transit camps, and then to where you came from; to your wives." Then he laughed. And from then on, transports were sent out daily after roll-calls in Block 20. The daily groups varied from 60 to 240 persons. One day while all this was going on a Lt. Mlynarski asked Boreshkov: "Why do you send us away in groups of 240 at the most? Having brought us all here in thousands, you could surely send us back the same way?"

"We can't," he replied. "The whole world is at war. We have to be ready too. We cannot spare the transport."

On 26 April the transports were stopped until 2 May when again a certain number were sent off. There was another delay until 8, 11 and 12 May on which days the last transports left Starobielsk camp, and it had been noted that each daily group had been selected from many different prison blocks and never included groups of friends but in total comprised men unknown to each other. This was brought to the notice of the Camp Commander who always replied to the effect that it did not matter as all the prisoners would meet up again in the transit camps. It appears that on 25April one group of 63 was herded into railway trucks and sent to Voroshilovgrad and from there to Kharkov, where the train was held up. One of the prisoners managed to poke his head through a gap in the door and speak to a railway worker who was tapping the wheels with a hammer.

"Da -- Yes, Kharkov. Prepare to leave the train. This is where all 'yours' are unloaded and sent further in vehicles."

The railway worker shrugged his shoulders, spat between the wheels and said no more.

Sometimes in history disjointed snippets of information drift in like flotsam, and one such is a report that when the Germans were later being driven back from the Kharkov area Russian shells were bursting north of the town. It is said that one barrage of exploding shells caused "corpses to fly in the air, as if from some burial ground." There is no further corroboration to this item.

It is now time to turn to the camp at Ostashkow which was in a disused monastery in the middle of a lake, joined to the mainland by a bridge. From there too, after 4 April 1940, groups of prisoners were formed and similarly assured that they were being sent home. We have seen that 124 were capriciously spared of the total 6,500. Where did the rest go? Senior Constable of the Polish Police Forces, A. Woronecki, related a story of a conversation he had with one of the camp guards who, in exchange for a pinch of foul black Soviet tobacco, agreed to "let the secret out."

The guard smoothed out a scrap of newspaper, inserted the tobacco, and rolled a cigarette. He inhaled the first puff and said:

Military Police Sergeant J.B. who was also a prisoner at Ostashkow, confirmed everything related by others -- the prisoner transports always comprised groups of between 60 and 300 men. One day he wandered into the camp bakery where he was on friendly terms with Nikityn, the chief baker.

"Na sievier, braktu (To the north, my friend). They are sending you somewhere to the North", answered Nikityn.

On 28 April 1940 this Sergeant was in a group of 300 leaving the camp. And they went northwards along the Leningrad line. At Bologoye, his truck with others was detached and sent off in the direction of Rhzev, while the remainder could be seen still standing at Bologoye..

So here, at least, are two place names: Kharkov and Bologoye. We are, perhaps, getting closer to the solution. It must now be recalled that after the German attack on Russia of 1941 the Soviets were rolled back almost to the gates of Moscow and, in desperation, sought everywhere and anyhow to find the means to halt the advances of the Wehrmacht. One such solution was to form an army from the 1 1/2 million Poles they had fed into the Gulag Archipelago. This army, under the command of General Anders, had come together as Poles dragged themselves across Siberia to join. They came from all parts of Russia -- weary, suffering from dysentery and emaciated from their sufferings. But all were private soldiers; the officers were missing! General Anders set up a special office to try and trace these officers, and it was in that office that a list of the missing was compiled.

On 26 April 1943, a woman named Katarzyna Gasziecka, reported to the office. She was the wife of one of the missing officers, and she had this to say:

This theory of the prisoners from Ostashkow being drowned in the White Sea is the one which most Poles know, and which many believe. The train route to the White Sea leads from Ostashkow through Bologoye. But it was also known that many thousands of Poles had been sent North, all to work as slave laborers on the new railway system, and they had not been officers. Indeed many of these private soldiers found their way back to join General Anders' Army.

Logically this theory of drowning in the White Sea does not stand up. The liquidation of the three camps at Kozielsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkow was centrally planned, and as we know, the inmates of Kozielsk were taken to the nearest conveniently secret place, and there shot -- at Katyn. Further, evidence and commonsense points to the fact that it would be militarily better to take the prisoners by train to a railway station nearest to the place of execution and transport them thence by automobile or truck. To take many thousands of prisoners hundreds of miles to the White Sea was to risk escapes and the operation being witnessed by too many of the local population. However the transport of the prisoners from Starobielsk camp to Kharkov by train does fit in with the Katyn plan and thus there is reason to suppose that the Ostashkow prisoners were dealt with in a similar way, meaning that they were taken by train to Bologoye and thence by diesel truck to some nearby wood for extermination.

This is as far as speculation amongst Poles of my acquaintance goes -- 10,000 men buried; piles of corpses, one above another, compressed into a liquefying mass of putrefaction, just as at Katyn -- but over twice as many. The mind is stunned at the thought of these two mass -- burial places, probably alike in every way to the mass graves at Katyn. Men with bullet holes in the backs of their heads -- some with their hands tied; some with sawdust stuffed into their mouths to prevent them crying out. A scene of horror and satanic purposel

But there was another clue. On 14 May 1962 Congressman Derwinsky made a significant speech in the House of Representatives in which he tried to establish a special House Committee on Captive Nations and used as his main argument the Katyn case and the findings of the Select Committee of 1952. He referred to a resolution passed in 1949 by the National Council of the Polish Republic on the motion of the Polish Government -- in -- Exile. This resolution expressed gratification that the initiative for an independent investigation of the Katyn massacre had been undertaken in the United States, and expressed confidence that:

He told Congress how the Soviets had refused to take part in the Select Committee of 1952 and quoted their Memorandum dated 29 February 1952:

Congressman Derwinsky went on to quote the words of Representative Madden who, in 1952, addressed a mass meeting of Poles in London and, inter alia, said:

Continuing his speech, Congressman Derwinsky then made a statement of great significance, albeit that it was somehow not singled out for special attention at the time. He referred to the publication in 1957 of a Secret Soviet document in a German weekly periodical. Giving the date of the document as 10 June 1940, it was said to contain details of how the three camps (Kozielsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkow) were wound up, and thus contained the solution to the mystery which has bothered so many, and which we are discussing today, namely the whereabouts of "the other 10,000" who were not found in the death -- pits of Katyn.

In 1974 I was actively engaged, as Hon. Secretary, on the work of the Katyn Memorial Fund, and thus was once more contemplating the whole ghastly story. Not for the first time I was filled with a smoldering rage that no nation had forced this issue to the attention of an international tribunal, but instead had allowed the Katyn case to fade away or had participated in the vast cover-up which so many have been at pains to create. And again I found myself pondering the mystery of the "lost 10,000." Somehow these men must be found -- but how? And then I re-read Congressman Derwinsky's speech of 1962 and suddenly the Secret Report of 10 June 1940 seemed to jump out of the page as if highlighted in heavy type. This Report must be found even if it was published in 1957 -- some 17 years previously. But again, how was this nebulous reference to be tracked down?

I made numerous enquiries amongst my many Polish friends, and although some had vaguely heard of the Report none could give a clue as to how it was to be traced, and certainly none had ever seen it. I was astonished to find that no one seemed to have even made any effort to trace this obviously most important document, relating as it appeared to over twice the number of victims as were found at Katyn.

Now all during the work of the Katyn Memorial Fund quiet encouragement had been offered by the German Embassy in London and on several occasions I was privileged to have conversations with Herr Karl Gunther von Hase, the Ambassador. He knew what the Soviet NKVD were like for he had been captured at Stalingrad after which he had spent five years in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp at Vologda, and he had said to me that if there was anything he could ever do to help he would be pleased to do so. At the time I overlooked this kind offer as I did not then see what he could do, but now his words came back to me with startling clarity. The Secret Soviet Report was published in a German weekly newspaper called Sieben Tage (Seven Days) and presumably a copy of it must exist somewhere in Germany. Who better to trace it than the German Ambassador? I approached him with my request immediately.

At first he was hesitant, but I pointed out that it had been the Germans who had discovered the mass graves of Katyn in 1943 so why not complete the exercise and discover the vital clue to "The Other 10,000." He took the point and promised to make enquiries.

Time passed and I heard no more. I made a further enquiry and was told that Sieben Tage had been out of print for many years and, as a publication, was now defunct. Nevertheless, I was informed, investigations were going on for the methodical Germans felt sure that a copy of the relevant issue must be on file somewhere.

And then late in a December evening of that same 1974 the German Press attache telephoned me to say that a photocopy of the vital page was on his desk at that moment. I grabbed a taxi and drove straight to the German Embassy at 23 Belgrave Square. Like a man whose spade hits metal in a treasure hunt I felt a great thrill of expectation. And then, quite suddenly, I had the report in my hand. Was it authentic? Why was it that only this insignificant and now defunct weekly paper had published it?

I showed a copy to a friend who is the Communist Affairs correspondent of the British Daily Telegraph and after examining the photocopy report and the rubber stamps upon it, he pronounced that in his opinion it was genuine. The answer to the second question as to why it had not received greater publicity lay in the fact that in 1957 the war had been over only twelve years and the great mass of guilt piled upon the German nation still lay heavy and leaden upon all. Germans just did not want to hear any more about massacres, mass -- graves, war crimes or even the war. Further mention of Katyn would inevitably bring down a hail of abuse based on the "Holocaust" story and thus it was best left alone. Such had been Allied propaganda that even some Germans thought they were responsible for Katyn and not the Soviets. In view of all this it seemed reasonable to suppose that this was the reason why the Report was never fully publicized nor followed up. But the Secret Soviet Report is probably one of the most significant documents in recent history and it should be re -- printed a million times over. Copies should be sent to every international jurist and every responsible politician. It stands as a terrible indictment of a most horrendous crime committed in peace -- time against defenseless prisoners -- of -- war as a gross act of Genocide and one of the darkest chapters of recent centuries.

Thus, if the report is authentic (and what reason is there to suppose it is not?) the riddle is solved.

4,254 Polish prisoners were shot at Katyn, 3,841 were shot ot Dergacki, near Kharkov and 6,376 were shot near Bologoye, a total of 14,471 -- and none of them have received an iota of justice nor has any man paid anything for this most dastardly crime!

At this time, in September 1979, we are nearly at the fortieth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland; an invasion which led to the deportation of 1 1/2 million Poles eastwards from whom the cream was skimmed and brutally murdered. It seems an appropriate moment again to call for an international pronouncement on the Katyn massacre, for one thing is certain: the case will never die until that pronouncement is made and the perpetrators condemned. Neither will history be complete until those missing thousands are restored to their rightful place within it. It is a solemn duty to put this matter to rights. No one can bring back the dead but at least this awful chapter must no longer be covered up, as it has been to the eternal shame of human conscience. I call, therefore, for a fresh investigation in the forthcoming twelve months so that the year 1980, the fortieth anniversary of the Katyn Crime, may bear as fruit an awakening of public desire for Truth such as will lead to the missing judgment in this case. This call for justice should best come from a country which for so long has cherished Freedom and justice -- the United States of America.

Book Review

Nuremberg:
Woe to the Vanquished

This book is vintage Irving, bearing all the familiar hallmarks of the British historian's skilled treatment of World War II: original research based on primary sources, vivid writing, and consideration for the German point of view, all with a defiant thumb to the nose to "court historians" and their "politically correct" adherents.

As he has amply demonstrated in his 30 published works of history, Irving is a master of excavating nuggets of historical gold from neglected archive files and ignored private diaries and letters. Because of his reputation as a scrupulous chronicler, numerous survivors of the Second World War era who are mistrustful (often with good reason) of establishment historians have, over the decades, entrusted him with their private papers.

In writing this "intimate look at the origins and conduct" of the 1945-1946 International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Irving has relied heavily on many hitherto neglected papers and documents, above all the official and private papers of Robert H. Jackson, a US Supreme Court Justice who served as the chief American prosecutor. Throughout this book, Irving shows considerable sympathy for Jackson, whom he portrays as an essentially decent man caught up in a tragic drama. "If this story needs a hero," writes Irving, "then he is Jackson."

As we learn, Jackson was initially enthusiastic about his important appointment, hoping to be the main architect of a new framework of international law. But even before the Tribunal's opening session, he was arguing in Washington with his superiors, emphatically expressing his ethical and professional position:

Early on, Irving relates, Jackson had a serious disagreement about his job with "Wild Bill" Donovan, head of the United States' OSS intelligence service (predecessor to the CIA):

As Jackson came to more fully understand the nature of the role he was expected to play at Nuremberg, he became more troubled and dismayed. Confronted with the reality of the Nuremberg process, Irving shows, Jackson's idealism subsided, but never entirely vanished.

High-Level Decisions

As Germany's defeat became more obvious, the Allied leaders began discussing more specifically how to deal with the vanquished nation and its leadership. President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin readily agreed that many prominent German leaders would be put to death, and that Germany itself would be so crippled industrially that it would never again be a major European economic and military power. "We have got to be tough with Germany," said President Roosevelt, "and I mean the German people, not just the Nazis. You either have to castrate the German people or you have got to treat them in such a manner so they can't go on reproducing people who want to continue the way they have in the past."

Because the Allies had already publicly branded the German leaders as criminals, the discussions focused on whether they should be executed straight-away or after a public trial of some sort. Roosevelt and Churchill initially favored simply shooting most of Germany's military and political leaders outright as they were found or surrendered. (This is what happened to Italy's Duce, Benito Mussolini, who was simply murdered, along with his entourage.) It was Stalin who, mindful of his success in destroying rivals with the help of elaborate show trials, insisted that the German leaders be put on trial. Roosevelt and Churchill fell in line. Considering the adulation accorded the Nuremberg Tribunal by many in the United States and Britain today, it is strange (Irving notes) that it might never have come into being if the Soviet dictator had not insisted on it.

Not surprisingly, Soviet officials were under no illusions about the real nature and purpose of the Nuremberg proceedings. The Tribunal's Soviet judge, Ion T. Nikitchenko, candidly summed up his government's view of the proceedings: "We are dealing here with the chief war criminals who have already been convicted and whose conviction has already been announced by the heads of the governments." He objected to the "fiction" that the Tribunal was objective, explaining that the judges' job was merely to decide the appropriate punishment, and the prosecutors' simply to assist the judges.

Double Standard

As Irving shows, the victorious Allies who sat in judgment at Nuremberg were guilty of many of the same actions or crimes for which they tried (and hanged) the German defendants. Indeed, the Allies very probably outdid the Germans in crimes and atrocities.

Irving cites, for example, the British-American fire bombings of Dresden, Hamburg and other German cities, killing tens of thousands of civilians at a time, the "ethnic cleansing" mass expulsion of German civilians from eastern and central Europe, of whom some two million perished or were killed, the widespread summary shootings of German prisoners, and the Allies' use of hundreds of thousands of German prisoners as slave laborers. He also cites such lesser-known incidents as the sinking by British aircraft during the war's final days of a clearly marked German Red Cross refugee ship, the Cap Arcona, killing 7,300 refugees, mostly women and children.

At the Yalta conference in February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin agreed to use millions of German POWs and German civilians as slave labor in Soviet Russia, France, and Belgium as partial "reparations in kind." Jackson was shocked to learn that the Soviets wanted five million of these forced laborers, and France two million. (No final accounting has ever been made of the total number deported to the USSR for this purpose, or of the number who ever returned.) President Roosevelt endorsed this policy, which was in blatant violation of international law, concerned only about the possibly negative impact on public opinion and election prospects back home.

In some cases, the Nuremberg defendants were charged with or held guilty of crimes that were actually committed by the Allies. Most noteworthy, perhaps, is the massacre, at Katyn and elsewhere, of some 11,000-15,000 Polish officers and intellectuals. At Nuremberg Soviet prosecutors presented seemingly persuasive evidence of German responsibility for this crime, and several Germans whom a Soviet court had found guilty of these killings were publicly hanged in Leningrad. It was only decades later that Soviet officials formally acknowledged that the massacre had been carried out by the Soviet secret police, acting on Stalin's orders.

Predictably, the Allies grandly exploited the Tribunal for propaganda purposes. As Irving relates, the Americans forced the defendants to watch US-made "documentary" films of German atrocities that deceitfully included scenes of corpses filmed in the wake of Allied air raids on German cities and factories. Some of the German viewers spotted the deception, and one former Messerschmitt worker said he even recognized himself in the film.

Unprecedented Legal Procedures

In these unprecedented proceedings, the Allies discarded basic principles of Western jurisprudence, perhaps most notably the well-established principle that in the absence of a law there can be neither crime nor punishment -- nullum crimen sine lege, nulla poene sine lege. Instead, the Tribunal established new laws for the occasion, which were applied not only retroactively, but uniquely and exclusively to the German defendants. The Allies thus refused to consider the German defense argument of tu quoque or "you too" -- that is, punishing the German defendants for actions that the Allies themselves also carried out.

The Tribunal rejected defendants' pleas of obeying higher orders, even though, as Irving points out, precisely this had been affirmed as a valid defense under both British and American military law. Article 347 of the American Rules of Land Warfare, for example, specifically declares: "Members of the armed forces are not punished for these crimes, provided they were committed on the orders or with the permission of their governments or commanders."

The Tribunal's procedures, which were a blend of Allied procedures, differed markedly from German practice. In Germany, as in most of continental Europe, the court's primary objective is to ascertain the truth. However, the Nuremberg Tribunal adopted a version of the American confrontational system, in which each side introduces only the evidence that benefits its own case. But because the Allies had confiscated all pertinent German documents and records, and refused access to them by the defense attorneys, the prosecution had a tremendous advantage over the German defendants.

'Semitism Gone Wild'

With President Roosevelt's approval, high-ranking Washington officials of Jewish origin played a major role in setting America's policy on the postwar occupation of Germany, including the Nuremberg Tribunal. These included Isadore Lubin, Samuel Rosenman, Murray Bernays, and Herbert Wechsler. Above all, the malevolent role played by Henry Morgenthau, Jr., US Treasury Secretary and Roosevelt's trusted adviser, insured that the spirit of the Talmud and the Old Testament would prevail.

As Irving shows, at least some Allied figures involved with the Nuremberg proceedings were honorable men who were dismayed by the heavy spirit of revenge. Some American and British officials were repelled by the general tenor of American and Soviet occupation policy toward defeated Germany. No less a figure than US Secretary of War Henry Stimson expressed concern:

On still another occasion, Stimson confided: "I have yet to meet a man who is not horrified with the 'Carthaginian' attitude of the Treasury [Morgenthau]. It is Semitism gone wild for vengeance..." Britain's Anthony Eden had much the same opinion of Morgenthau and his Jewish circle: "These ex-Germans seem to wish to wash away their ancestry in a bath of hate."

In addition, Irving relates, officials of "several powerful Jewish organizations" intervened in the Nuremberg process. A few days before leaving for London in June 1945, Robert Jackson met in New York with Judge Nathan Perlman, Dr. Jacob Robinson, and Dr. Alexander Kohanski, who made quite clear their intention to play an important role in running the trial. (See also: M. Weber, "The Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust," Summer 1992 Journal, pp. 170-171.)

It was at this meeting that Robinson, an official of the World Jewish Congress, told Jackson that six million Jews had been lost during the war, and that he had arrived at this figure "by extrapolation." As Irving tartly comments, "in other words his figure was somewhere between a hopeful estimate and an educated guess."

As it happens, this same six million figure, Irving notes, had been cited 26 years earlier in a leading Jewish-American periodical. In a 1919 essay by a former Governor of New York state, readers were told that "six million" Jews "are dying" in a "threatened holocaust of human life" as victims of "the awful tyranny of war and a bigoted lust for Jewish blood." (Facsimile in the Nov.-Dec. 1995 Journal, p. 31.)

Grave Misgivings

Responsible Allied military leaders disapproved of the postwar trials, especially of their counterparts in the German armed forces. Many American combat officers ardently opposed the prosecution of soldiers for obeying harsh orders issued by politicians. (See: H.K. Thompson and H. Strutz, eds., Dönitz at Nuremberg: A Reappraisal [IHR, 1983].)

In occupied Germany, American officers disliked having to enforce the vengeful Morgenthau directive 1067, and condemned as un-American the "so-called Gestapo methods used in handling Germans" that were being employed by (Jewish) refugees who had hurriedly been drafted into the US Army.

A few high-ranking British and American officers even spoke out on behalf of their German counterparts. For example, US Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Chester Nimitz issued a statement on behalf of Nuremberg defendant Admiral Karl Dönitz, who headed Germany's wartime U-boat fleet, confirming that American submarines had operated in the Pacific just as German submarines had operated under Dönitz' command in the Atlantic.

Francis Biddle, the Tribunal's senior American judge, was moved to conclude that "the Germans fought a much cleaner war at sea than we did." To his credit, Biddle also refused, in an important dissenting opinion, to sanction the handing over of Russian prisoners to the Soviets. (Regrettably, though, both British and American forces did so anyway in such transfers as the infamous "Operation Keelhaul.")

Harlan F. Stone, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, was outspoken in his criticism of the proceedings. While he admitted that he would not be disturbed if the victors put the vanquished to the sword as was customary in days of old, Stone said he was disturbed to have the action dressed up in "the habiliments of common law."

Fraudulent and Suppressed Evidence

As Irving shows, some of the evidence presented by the Allies to the Tribunal was fraudulent. This includes the widely-quoted report of a speech by Hitler to his generals on August 22, 1939, Nuremberg document 003-L, which Irving refers to as a "now notorious forgery."

No testimony had a more profound impact on everyone, including the defendants, than the "confession" of former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss. As Irving shows, this widely-quoted statement, which was extracted after "three days of torture" by British military men, "contained numerous perhaps deliberate errors." Höss had attempted to smuggle out of prison a letter to his wife in which he apologized for "confessing" to horrible atrocities at Auschwitz, relating that he had been tortured into making spurious admissions. The letter was seized by prison officials and never delivered, and is now in private hands in the United States.

The "protocol" of the January 1942 Wannsee conference, Irving writes, has been given "a wholly undeserved reputation as a key document in the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem." As he points out, it "contains no explicit reference to the killing of Jews," and Irving casts doubt on its authenticity.

A key German document on this matter, Irving notes, was suppressed for decades. This is a spring 1942 memorandum by Justice Ministry Staatssekretär Franz Schlegelberger recording that Dr. Hans Lammers, chief of the Reich chancellery, had informed him that Hitler had "repeatedly" ordered the solution of the Jewish problem "postponed until after the war."

On the basis of bogus evidence, Irving relates, a number of familiar Holocaust horrors were supposedly proven at Nuremberg, including gassings at Dachau, steaming of Jews at Treblinka, and manufacturing of soap from human bodies.

As Irving reports, important documentary evidence, including the private papers and diaries of Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring, were looted by Allied troops and have disappeared.

Unjust Selection Standards

The Allies were never able to decide just who should be put on trial, or on what basis. As Irving repeatedly points out, at least several of the defendants should not have been in the dock at all. This was particularly true of the military men -- Göring, Jodl, Keitel, Dönitz and Raeder. As prisoners of war, they were supposedly protected by the provisions of the Geneva Convention, which prohibited such trials. To get around this awkward legalism, the Tribunal arranged for these defendants to be technically "discharged" from the (no longer existing) German armed forces so they could "legally" be put on trial. After being "discharged," their military ranks were obliterated. Even their medals (from both world wars) were taken from them and, after removing any precious stones or metals, destroyed.

General Alfred Jodl, whom nearly everyone recognized as an honorable professional soldier, had not even met Hitler until 1939. (Jackson "privately felt the greatest respect for Jodl," Irving relates.) In fact, Jodl was later posthumously exonerated by a German court, which cited the view of the Tribunal's French judge, Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, that Jodl's conviction had been without merit and a miscarriage of justice.

On what legitimate grounds could Rudolf Hess, Irving queries, be accused of war crimes? He played no role in determining Germany's war aims or occupation policies. Indeed, in carrying out his ill-fated "peace flight" to Britain in May 1941, he was "the only man to have undertaken, at risk to his own life, a step to end the madness of war." All the same, the Allied judges sentenced this humane and peace-loving man to life imprisonment. (He died, under mysterious circumstances by strangulation, in Berlin's Spandau prison in 1987. His son, Wolf Hess, says he was murdered. See: "The Life and Death of My Father Rudolf Hess," and "The Legacy of Rudolf Hess," both in the Jan.-Feb. 1993 Journal.)

Hans Fritzsche, a German propaganda ministry department chief and wartime radio commentator, was on trial only as a stand-in for Goebbels, and because he happened to be the most important German prisoner in Soviet hands.

Göring's Spirited Defense

Hermann Göring, once the second most powerful man in Germany, put up the most spirited and memorable defense. This was especially apparent in a remarkable back and forth confrontation over several days with Robert Jackson. "Everything had gone pretty well with the trial until Göring took the witness stand," the American prosecutor himself privately remarked.

Norman Birkett, one of the British judges, commented that Göring was dominating the entire proceedings, and that no one seemed to have been quite prepared for the former Reichsmarschall's immense ability and knowledge, or for his mastery of the captured documents. Of Göring's bravura performance, Birkett wrote:

Allied journalists were speechless, having believed their own stories that Göring was a dope fiend, a physical wreck and a neurotic.

When at one point an American official murmured something to Göring about Germany's aggressive wars of conquest, the Reichsmarschall shot back:

Even after the judges had sentenced him to death, Göring delivered a final embarrassing slap to the Tribunal by taking his own life, denying the victors the pleasure of hanging him.

Streicher's Anti-Jewish Fervor

At the other end of the sophistication scale, defendant Julius Streicher, notorious for his anti-Jewish weekly, Der Stürmer, was certain from the outset that the trial was a "triumph of world Jewry," and that "the Jews will make sure enough that we hang." As Irving explains, Streicher was convinced

When Streicher tried to protest from the witness stand the beatings he had received at the hands of his American captors, Jackson had the remarks stricken from the official record.

The Tribunal's proceedings confirmed everything he had ever believed or taught about the Jews. In Streicher's view:

Mistreatment

Irving details the maltreatment and tortures inflicted on the defendants by their American and British captors, including a near-starvation diet imposed during the Tribunal's proceedings. The defendants' wives were also arrested and thrown into prison -- and separated from their children, who were put in orphanages.

Even worse was the treatment of defendants in the American-run post-Nuremberg trials. Thus, the US Army war crimes trials at Dachau "were a mockery of the law," writes Irving, at which "defendants and witnesses there were savagely beaten or intimidated to make them sign false confessions."

(See also Joseph Halow's Innocent at Dachau, available from the IHR for $16.50, postpaid.)

Tests conducted by an American psychologist showed that the Nuremberg defendants were of above average intelligence. Several had IQ levels in the genius range: Schacht 143, Seyss-Inquart 141, Göring 141, and Dönitz 138. (A single exception was Streicher, whose 106 IQ was in the normal range.)

To help illustrate the defendants' character and personalities, Irving quotes from letters written by them to their loved ones from their prison cells. For example, Irving cites a passage from a letter Jodl wrote to his wife two days before his hanging:

Each of the condemned went to the gallows calmly, bravely, and with as much dignity as possible under the circumstances. Their last words were expressions of love for Germany and for international reconciliation. Because the Nuremberg hangman botched his grim job, the Tribunal's sentence of death by hanging amounted, in practice, to strangulation.

'Fair' Trial or 'Victors' Justice'

This book's central protagonist, Robert Jackson, finished the trial convinced, Irving believes, that all in all it had been fair. Considering the political pressures, the ethnic hatreds, the legacy of millions of war dead, and the vengeful the spirit of the times, the American prosecutor probably did the best he could.

Irving himself, perhaps identifying and sympathizing with Jackson, avoids any condemnation of the Tribunal as such. Indeed, citing such Third Reich misdeeds as "the killings after the Röhm putsch, the widespread liquidation of political enemies or racial groups, [and] the murder of enemy prisoners of war," he expresses the view that "in most cases, the basic justice of the sentences passed at Nuremberg was undeniable." Irving believes that in many cases German courts would have dealt more severely with the defendants than did the Nuremberg judges.

In this reviewer's opinion, though, Nuremberg was -- however honorable the intentions of such participants as Robert Jackson and Henri Donnedieu de Vabres -- a hypocritical undertaking that failed in its great stated goal of establishing a lasting and impartial framework of new international law. This failure was tragically inherent in the Tribunal's origins and makeup. As Jackson himself declared at one point during the proceedings, "this Tribunal is a continuation of the war effort of the Allied nations."

Furthermore (and as Irving mentions), the "International Military Tribunal" was neither truly international nor even military. Its judges, as well as its prosecutors, were chosen by the four main victorious Allied powers. It could have succeeded only if its judges had been chosen from non-belligerent (neutral) states. Moreover, it would have required impartial rules of procedure, including equal access to evidence, humane treatment of the defendants, and the Allies being held to the same standards they applied to the German defendants.

The leaders of the three main Allied countries -- Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill -- settled on this judicial facade to justify an unprecedented act of political vengeance. Because it was, in essence, victors' justice, inevitably its most telling lesson, therefore, was vae victis -- woe to the vanquished.

Having thoroughly demonized the enemy through wartime propaganda, and having attributed all war guilt and crimes to him, the victorious Allies felt comfortable demonstrating their own righteousness to the world by executing the evil-doers. As Chronicles editor Thomas Fleming wrote (in the June 1997 issue), at Nuremberg "the Allies institutionalized the hypocrisy of their own propaganda."

Still Defiant

Irving tells the story of the Nuremberg Tribunal with great style and verve, painting a broad and vivid portrait. He does so, moreover, sine ira et studio -- without anger or partiality. Adding to the impact and immediacy of this handsome hardcover volume are more than 70 photographs, many in full color, and an attractive four-color dust jacket.

Because Irving is one of the few Western historians who has tried to give due consideration to the German view of 20th- century history, he is often unfairly dismissed as a "Nazi apologist" by those who are eager to castigate the Third Reich and its leadership as evil, and who insist that, therefore, there is no "other side" seriously to consider. Americans especially find it difficult to believe that an enemy in war could possible have a just cause, believing (as our politicians remind us) that America always occupies the moral high ground. As any open-minded reader of this book must conclude, though, the German defendants had valid if not compelling arguments to make for their actions.

Reading this book, one can dismiss fears that Irving has somehow "given up." If Nuremberg: The Last Battle is any indication, the gutsy British historian has lost none of his familiar determination or fire. Even if he must keep struggling to keep a few steps ahead of the thought-control police, he seems as dedicated as ever to defying his critics and discomforting the enforcers of the prevailing Zeitgeist with his provocative and enduring historical chronicles.

About the Author

Daniel W. Michaels is a Columbia University graduate (Phi Beta Kappa, 1954), a Fulbright exchange student to Germany (1957), and recently retired from the US Department of Defense after 40 years of service.

Nuremberg:
A Nation On Trial

This new book is easily the best so far on the hideous aberration of justice known as the "Nuremberg War Crimes Trials." The author is a well-known German historian; his biography of Hitler having been an international bestseller.

Many of the more repulsive aspects of Nuremberg which were brought to light in Richard Harwood's Nuremberg a Other War Crimes Trials are underlined in this new book. This time, they are backed up with hard facts and figures, references and interviews. This book is the product of many years of painstaking research. To take just a few samples of Herr Maser's revelations:

Contrary to Harwood, Maser states that the bodies were not cremated in the "gas ovens" at Dachau, but at a city mortuary in Munich, and their ashes dumped into a brook running at the bottom of the yard (p l3 and p 256). The remaining prisoners at Nuremberg were made to clean up the blood-spattered gallows (p256). The uncanny thing about this new book is that it originated in Germany. Anglo-American Revisionists have become so used to modern German historians running a mile from any criticism of the "Liberation" that many had almost given up hope altogether. But with the Diwald book last year, and now this magnificent work this year, the standard of historiography in the Bundesrepublik certainly seems to be improving.

Why the Atomic Bombings Could Have Been Avoided
Was Hiroshima Necessary?

On August 6, 1945, the world dramatically entered the atomic age: without either warning or precedent, an American plane dropped a single nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion utterly destroyed more than four square miles of the city center. About about 90,000 people were killed immediately; another 40,000 were injured, many of whom died in protracted agony from radiation sickness. Three days later, a second atomic strike on the city of Nagasaki killed some 37,000 people and injured another 43,000. Together the two bombs eventually killed an estimated 200,000 Japanese civilians.

Between the two bombings, Soviet Russia joined the United States in war against Japan. Under strong US prodding, Stalin broke his regime's 1941 non-aggression treaty with Tokyo. On the same day that Nagasaki was destroyed, Soviet troops began pouring into Manchuria, overwhelming Japanese forces there. Although Soviet participation did little or nothing to change the military outcome of the war, Moscow benefitted enormously from joining the conflict.

In a broadcast from Tokyo the next day, August 10, the Japanese government announced its readiness to accept the joint American-British "unconditional surrender" declaration of Potsdam, "with the understanding that the said declaration does not compromise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler."

A day later came the American reply, which included these words: "From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the State shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers." Finally, on August 14, the Japanese formally accepted the provisions of the Potsdam declaration, and a "cease fire" was announced. On September 2, Japanese envoys signed the instrument of surrender aboard the US battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

A Beaten Country

Apart from the moral questions involved, were the atomic bombings militarily necessary? By any rational yardstick, they were not. Japan already had been defeated militarily by June 1945. Almost nothing was left of the once mighty Imperial Navy, and Japan's air force had been all but totally destroyed. Against only token opposition, American war planes ranged at will over the country, and US bombers rained down devastation on her cities, steadily reducing them to rubble.

What was left of Japan's factories and workshops struggled fitfully to turn out weapons and other goods from inadequate raw materials. (Oil supplies had not been available since April.) By July about a quarter of all the houses in Japan had been destroyed, and her transportation system was near collapse. Food had become so scarce that most Japanese were subsisting on a sub-starvation diet.

On the night of March 9-10, 1945, a wave of 300 American bombers struck Tokyo, killing 100,000 people. Dropping nearly 1,700 tons of bombs, the war planes ravaged much of the capital city, completely burning out 16 square miles and destroying a quarter of a million structures. A million residents were left homeless.

On May 23, eleven weeks later, came the greatest air raid of the Pacific War, when 520 giant B-29 "Superfortress" bombers unleashed 4,500 tons of incendiary bombs on the heart of the already battered Japanese capital. Generating gale-force winds, the exploding incendiaries obliterated Tokyo's commercial center and railway yards, and consumed the Ginza entertainment district. Two days later, on May 25, a second strike of 502 "Superfortress" planes roared low over Tokyo, raining down some 4,000 tons of explosives. Together these two B-29 raids destroyed 56 square miles of the Japanese capital.

Even before the Hiroshima attack, American air force General Curtis LeMay boasted that American bombers were "driving them [Japanese] back to the stone age." Henry H. ("Hap") Arnold, commanding General of the Army air forces, declared in his 1949 memoirs: "It always appeared to us, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse." This was confirmed by former Japanese prime minister Fumimaro Konoye, who said: "Fundamentally, the thing that brought about the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing by the B-29s."

Japan Seeks Peace

Months before the end of the war, Japan's leaders recognized that defeat was inevitable. In April 1945 a new government headed by Kantaro Suzuki took office with the mission of ending the war. When Germany capitulated in early May, the Japanese understood that the British and Americans would now direct the full fury of their awesome military power exclusively against them.

American officials, having long since broken Japan's secret codes, knew from intercepted messages that the country's leaders were seeking to end the war on terms as favorable as possible. Details of these efforts were known from decoded secret communications between the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo and Japanese diplomats abroad.

In his 1965 study, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (pp. 107, 108), historian Gar Alperovitz writes:

A Secret Memorandum

It was only after the war that the American public learned about Japan's efforts to bring the conflict to an end. Chicago Tribune reporter Walter Trohan, for example, was obliged by wartime censorship to withhold for seven months one of the most important stories of the war.

In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials. (The complete text of Trohan's article is in the Winter 1985-86 Journal, pp. 508-512.)

This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms virtually identical to the ones ultimately accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 -- that is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. Specifically, the terms of these peace overtures included:

Is this memorandum authentic? It was supposedly leaked to Trohan by Admiral William D. Leahy, presidential Chief of Staff. (See: M. Rothbard in A. Goddard, ed., Harry Elmer Barnes: Learned Crusader [1968], pp. 327f.) Historian Harry Elmer Barnes has related (in "Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe," National Review, May 10, 1958):

Peace Overtures

In April and May 1945, Japan made three attempts through neutral Sweden and Portugal to bring the war to a peaceful end. On April 7, acting Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu met with Swedish ambassador Widon Bagge in Tokyo, asking him "to ascertain what peace terms the United States and Britain had in mind." But he emphasized that unconditional surrender was unacceptable, and that "the Emperor must not be touched." Bagge relayed the message to the United States, but Secretary of State Stettinius told the US Ambassador in Sweden to "show no interest or take any initiative in pursuit of the matter." Similar Japanese peace signals through Portugal, on May 7, and again through Sweden, on the 10th, proved similarly fruitless.

By mid-June, six members of Japan's Supreme War Council had secretly charged Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo with the task of approaching Soviet Russia's leaders "with a view to terminating the war if possible by September." On June 22 the Emperor called a meeting of the Supreme War Council, which included the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the leading military figures. "We have heard enough of this determination of yours to fight to the last soldiers," said Emperor Hirohito. "We wish that you, leaders of Japan, will strive now to study the ways and the means to conclude the war. In doing so, try not to be bound by the decisions you have made in the past."

By early July the US had intercepted messages from Togo to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, Naotake Sato, showing that the Emperor himself was taking a personal hand in the peace effort, and had directed that the Soviet Union be asked to help end the war. US officials also knew that the key obstacle to ending the war was American insistence on "unconditional surrender," a demand that precluded any negotiations. The Japanese were willing to accept nearly everything, except turning over their semi-divine Emperor. Heir of a 2,600-year-old dynasty, Hirohito was regarded by his people as a "living god" who personified the nation. (Until the August 15 radio broadcast of his surrender announcement, the Japanese people had never heard his voice.) Japanese particularly feared that the Americans would humiliate the Emperor, and even execute him as a war criminal.

On July 12, Hirohito summoned Fumimaro Konoye, who had served as prime minister in 1940-41. Explaining that "it will be necessary to terminate the war without delay," the Emperor said that he wished Konoye to secure peace with the Americans and British through the Soviets. As Prince Konoye later recalled, the Emperor instructed him "to secure peace at any price, notwithstanding its severity."

The next day, July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow: "See [Soviet foreign minister] Molotov before his departure for Potsdam ... Convey His Majesty's strong desire to secure a termination of the war ... Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace ..."

On July 17, another intercepted Japanese message revealed that although Japan's leaders felt that the unconditional surrender formula involved an unacceptable dishonor, they were convinced that "the demands of the times" made Soviet mediation to terminate the war absolutely essential. Further diplomatic messages indicated that the only condition asked by the Japanese was preservation of "our form of government." The only "difficult point," a July 25 message disclosed, "is the ... formality of unconditional surrender."

Summarizing the messages between Togo and Sato, US naval intelligence said that Japan's leaders, "though still balking at the term unconditional surrender," recognized that the war was lost, and had reached the point where they have "no objection to the restoration of peace on the basis of the [1941] Atlantic Charter." These messages, said Assistant Secretary of the Navy Lewis Strauss, "indeed stipulated only that the integrity of the Japanese Royal Family be preserved."

Navy Secretary James Forrestal termed the intercepted messages "real evidence of a Japanese desire to get out of the war." "With the interception of these messages," notes historian Alperovitz (p. 177), "there could no longer be any real doubt as to the Japanese intentions; the maneuvers were overt and explicit and, most of all, official acts. Koichi Kido, Japan's Lord Privy Seal and a close advisor to the Emperor, later affirmed: "Our decision to seek a way out of this war, was made in early June before any atomic bomb had been dropped and Russia had not entered the war. It was already our decision."

In spite of this, on July 26 the leaders of the United States and Britain issued the Potsdam declaration, which included this grim ultimatum: "We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces and to provide proper and adequate assurance of good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."

Commenting on this draconian either-or proclamation, British historian J.F.C. Fuller wrote: "Not a word was said about the Emperor, because it would be unacceptable to the propaganda-fed American masses." (A Military History of the Western World [1987], p. 675.)

America's leaders understood Japan's desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender -- that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place -- the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives.

The sad irony is that, as it actually turned out, the American leaders decided anyway to retain the Emperor as a symbol of authority and continuity. They realized, correctly, that Hirohito was useful as a figurehead prop for their own occupation authority in postwar Japan.

Justifications

President Truman steadfastly defended his use of the atomic bomb, claiming that it "saved millions of lives" by bringing the war to a quick end. Justifying his decision, he went so far as to declare: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."

This was a preposterous statement. In fact, almost all of the victims were civilians, and the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (issued in 1946) stated in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population."

If the atomic bomb was dropped to impress the Japanese leaders with the immense destructive power of a new weapon, this could have been accomplished by deploying it on an isolated military base. It was not necessary to destroy a large city. And whatever the justification for the Hiroshima blast, it is much more difficult to defend the second bombing of Nagasaki.

All the same, most Americans accepted, and continue to accept, the official justifications for the bombings. Accustomed to crude propagandistic portrayals of the "Japs" as virtually subhuman beasts, most Americans in 1945 heartily welcomed any new weapon that would wipe out more of the detested Asians, and help avenge the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the young Americans who were fighting the Japanese in bitter combat, the attitude was "Thank God for the atom bomb." Almost to a man, they were grateful for a weapon whose deployment seemed to end the war and thus allow them to return home.

After the July 1943 firestorm destruction of Hamburg, the mid-February 1945 holocaust of Dresden, and the fire-bombings of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, America's leaders -- as US Army General Leslie Groves later commented -- "were generally inured to the mass killing of civilians." For President Harry Truman, the killing of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians was simply not a consideration in his decision to use the atom bomb.

Critical Voices

Amid the general clamor of enthusiasm, there were some who had grave misgivings. "We are the inheritors to the mantle of Genghis Khan," wrote New York Times editorial writer Hanson Baldwin, "and of all those in history who have justified the use of utter ruthlessness in war." Norman Thomas called Nagasaki "the greatest single atrocity of a very cruel war." Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the President, was similarly appalled.

A leading voice of American Protestantism, Christian Century, strongly condemned the bombings. An editorial entitled "America's Atomic Atrocity" in the issue of August 29, 1945, told readers:

A leading American Catholic voice, Commonweal, took a similar view. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the magazine editorialized, "are names for American guilt and shame."

Pope Pius XII likewise condemned the bombings, expressing a view in keeping with the traditional Roman Catholic position that "every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man." The Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano commented in its August 7, 1945, issue: "This war provides a catastrophic conclusion. Incredibly this destructive weapon remains as a temptation for posterity, which, we know by bitter experience, learns so little from history."

Authoritative Voices of Dissent

American leaders who were in a position to know the facts did not believe, either at the time or later, that the atomic bombings were needed to end the war.

When he was informed in mid-July 1945 by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson of the decision to use the atomic bomb, General Dwight Eisenhower was deeply troubled. He disclosed his strong reservations about using the new weapon in his 1963 memoir, The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956 (pp. 312-313):

"The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing ... I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon," Eisenhower said in 1963.

Shortly after "V-J Day," the end of the Pacific war, Brig. General Bonnie Fellers summed up in a memo for General MacArthur: "Neither the atomic bombing nor the entry of the Soviet Union into the war forced Japan's unconditional surrender. She was defeated before either these events took place."

Similarly, Admiral Leahy, Chief of Staff to presidents Roosevelt and Truman, later commented:

If the United States had been willing to wait, said Admiral Ernest King, US Chief of Naval Operations, "the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines, and other essential materials."

Leo Szilard, a Hungarian-born scientist who played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb, argued against its use. "Japan was essentially defeated," he said, and "it would be wrong to attack its cities with atomic bombs as if atomic bombs were simply another military weapon." In a 1960 magazine article, Szilard wrote: "If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them."

US Strategic Bombing Survey Verdict

After studying this matter in great detail, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey rejected the notion that Japan gave up because of the atomic bombings. In its authoritative 1946 report, the Survey concluded:

Historians' Views

In a 1986 study, historian and journalist Edwin P. Hoyt nailed the "great myth, perpetuated by well-meaning people throughout the world," that "the atomic bomb caused the surrender of Japan." In Japan's War: The Great Pacific Conflict (p. 420), he explained:

In a trenchant new book, The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb (Praeger, 1996), historian Dennis D. Wainstock concludes that the bombings were not only unnecessary, but were based on a vengeful policy that actually harmed American interests. He writes (pp. 124, 132):

General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of US Army forces in the Pacific, stated on numerous occasions before his death that the atomic bomb was completely unnecessary from a military point of view: "My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender."

General Curtis LeMay, who had pioneered precision bombing of Germany and Japan (and who later headed the Strategic Air Command and served as Air Force chief of staff), put it most succinctly: "The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war."

Bombs on Britain

Rarely have I come across a television broadcast more vicious in intent and more warped in execution than your recent "Blitz on Britain." As a survivor of the mass air raid executed against my native city of Prague, Bohemia, on the Christian Holy Day of Palm Sunday, 1945, by the Anglo-American strategic bomber force -- a raid that maimed or murdered thousands a few seconds before the conclusion of the Second World War -- I say this:

1. There can be no comparison between the brutality of the Anglo-American bomber offensive, on one hand, and the minimality of the German-Italian efforts, on the other.

As the commander of the British strategic air offensive, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris shows in his Bomber Offensive (Macmillan, New York, 1947) 23 German cities had more than 60 percent of their built-up area destroyed; 46 had half of it destroyed. 31 communities had more than 500 acres obliterated: Berlin, 6427 acres: Hamburg, 6200 acres; Duesseldorf, 2003; Cologne (through air attack), 1994. By contrast, the three favorite targets of the Luftwaffe: London, Plymouth and Coventry, had 600 acres, 400, and just over 100 acres destroyed.

2. Anglo-American strategic bombers, according to official sources of the West German government in 1962, dropped 2,690,000 metric tons of bombs on Continental Europe; 1,350,000 tons were dropped on Germany within its 1937 boundaries; 180,000 tons on Austria and the Balkans; 590,000 tons on France; 370,000 tons on Italy; and 200,000 tons on miscellaneous targets such as Bohemia, Slovakia and Poland. By contrast, Germany dropped a total of 74,172 tons of bombs as well as V-1 and V-2 rockets and "buzz bombs" on Britain -- five percent of what the Anglo-Saxons rained down on Germany.

The Federal German Government has established the minimum count -- not an estimate -- of 635,000 German civilians were killed in France, Italy, Rumania, Hungary, Czecheslovakia, and elsewhere.

3. Both Germany and Britain initiated air raids on naval and military targets as of 3

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