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History See other History Articles Title: The Rosetta Stone of US History: Quigley’s “Tragedy and Hope” As a teenager, I heard John Kennedy’s summons to citizenship. And then, as a student at Georgetown, I heard that call clarified by a professor named Carroll Quigley, who said to us that America was the greatest Nation in history because our people had always believed in two things — that tomorrow can be better than today and that every one of us has a personal moral responsibility to make it so. Yeah, that's Bill Clinton, remembered fondly by millions of people who never googled "mena arkansas CIA." He's referring to his "mentor", Carroll Quigley, who had been teaching at Georgetown since 1941, after moving on from both Princeton and Yale. Quigley was a genius in multiple fields of study, one of the most respected minds of his generation, and in 1966, he wrote a book hardly anyone has read: "Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time". I've known about it for probably ten years and only picked up a copy in January of this year. Having recently finished it -- and yeah, it's 1348 pages -- I'd like to share the most interesting passages with you. Not because it's any great pain in the ass to actually read the book: it's probably the most complete picture of US history, and the chess game behind our foreign policy, I've ever read. It's also 1348 pages, so here's the fresh meat: Honestly Assessing Hiroshima The decision to use the bomb against Japan marks one of the turning points in history of our times. The scientists who were consulted had no information on the status of the war itself, had no idea how close to the end Japan already was. Some people like General Groves wanted it to be used to justify the two billion they had spent. After it was all over, Director of Military Intelligence for the Pacific theatre of War Alfred McCormack, who was probably in as good position as anyone to for judging the situation, felt that the Japanese surrender could have been obtained in a few weeks by blockade alone. “The Japanese had no longer enough food in stock, and their fuel reserves were practically exhausted. We were mining all their harbors and if we had brought this operation to its logical conclusion, the destruction of Japanese cities with incendiary and other bombs would have been quite unnecessary. But General Norstad declared at Washington that this blockading action was a cowardly proceeding unworthy of the Air Force. It was therefore discontinued.” IT was equally clear that the defeat of Japan did not require the A-bomb just as it did not require the Russian entry into the war or an American invasion of the Japanese home islands. But again, other factors involving interests and nonrational considerations were too powerful. However, if the U.S. had not finished the bomb project or had not used it, it seems most unlikely that the Soviet Union would have made its postwar efforts to get the bomb. The Russian leaders would almost certainly not have made the effort to get the bomb if we had not used it on Japan. On the other hand, if we had not used the bomb on Japan, we would have been quite incapable of preventing the Soviet forces from expanding wherever they were ordered in Eurasia in 1946. No Future for Democracy The growth of the army of specialists destroys one of the three basic foundations of political democracy. These three bases are: 1) that men are relatively equal in factual power; 2) that men have relatively equal access to the information needed to make a government’s decisions; 3) that men have a psychological readiness to accept majority rule in return for those civil rights which will allow any minority to work to build itself up to become a majority. It is increasingly clear that in the 20th century, the expert will replace the industrial tycoon in control of the economic system even as he will replace the democratic voter in control of the political system. This is because planning will inevitably replace laissez-faire in the relationships between the two systems. Hopefully, the elements of choice and freedom may survive for the ordinary individual in that he may be free to make a choice between two opposing political groups (even if these groups have little policy choice within the parameters of policy established by the experts) and he may have the choice to switch his economic support from one large unit to another. But in general, his freedom and choice will be controlled within very narrow alternatives by the fact that he will be numbered from birth and followed, as a number, through his educational training, his required military and other public service, his tax contributions, his health and medical requirements, and his final retirement and death benefits. Of Course There's a Conspiracy Behind this unfortunate situation lies another, more profound, relationship, which influences matters much broader than Far Eastern policy. It involves the organization of tax-exempt fortunes of international financiers into foundations to be used for educational, scientific, and “other public purposes.” Sixty or more years ago, public life in the East was dominated by the influence of “Wall Street” referring to international financial capitalism deeply involved in the gold standard, foreign exchange fluctuations, floating of fixed-interest securities and shares for stock-exchange markets. This group, which in the United States, was completely dominated by J.P. Morgan and Company from the 1880s to the 1930s was cosmopolitan, Anglophile, internationalist, Ivy League, eastern seaboard, high Episcopalian and European-culture conscious. Their connection with the Ivy League colleges rested on the fact that large endowments of these institutions required constant consultation with the financiers of Wall Street and was reflected in the fact that these endowments were largely in bonds rather than in real estate or common stocks. As a consequence of these influences, J.P. Morgan and his associates were the most significant figures in policy making at Harvard, Columbia and Yale while the Whitneys and Prudential Insurance Company dominated Princeton. The chief officials of these universities were beholden to these financial powers and usually owed their jobs to them. The significant influence of “Wall Street” (meaning Morgan) both in the Ivy League and in Washington explains the constant interchange between the Ivy League and the Federal Government, and interchange which undoubtedly aroused a good deal of resentment in less-favored circles who were more than satiated with the accents, tweeds, and High Episcopal Anglophilia of these peoples. Poor Dean Acheson, in spite of (or perhaps because of) his remarkable qualities of intellect and character, took the full brunt of this resentment from McCarthy and his allies. The same feeling did no good to pseudo-Ivy League figures like Alger Hiss. In spite of the great influence of this “Wall Street” alignment, an influence great enough to merit the name of the “American Establishment,” this group could not control the Federal Government and, in consequence, had to adjust to a good many government actions thoroughly distasteful to the group. The chief of these were in taxation law, beginning with the graduated income tax in 1913, but culminating above all else with the inheritance tax. The Left-Wing Liberal Puppet Show More than fifty years ago, the Morgan firm decided to infiltrate the Left-wing political movements of the United States. This was relatively easy to do since these groups were starved for funds and eager for a voice to reach the people. Wall Street supplied both. The purpose was not to destroy, dominate or take over but was really three-fold: 1) to keep informed about the Left-wing or liberal groups; 2) to provide them with a mouthpiece so they could blow off steam; 3) to have a final “veto” on their actions if they ever went radical. There was nothing really new about this decision, since other financiers had talked about it and even attempted it earlier. The best example of the alliance of Wall Street and Left-wing publication was “The New Republic” a magazine founded in 1914 by Willard Straight using Payne Whitney money. The original purpose for establishing the paper was to provide an outlet for the progressive Left and to guide it in an Anglophile direction. This latter task was entrusted to Walter Lippmann. The Echo Chamber of History The Eighty-third Congress set up in 1953 a Special Reece Committee to investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations. It soon became clear that people of immense wealth would be unhappy if the investigation went too far and that the “most respected” newspapers in the country, closely allied with these men of wealth, would not get excited enough about any revelations to make the publicity worthwhile. An interesting report showing the Left-wing associations of interlocking nexus of tax-exempt foundations was issued in 1954 rather quietly.. Four years later, the Reece Committee’s general counsel, Rene A Wormser, wrote a shocked, but not shocking, book on the subject called “Foundations: Their Power and Influence.” Jerome Green is a symbol of much more than the Wall Street influence in the IPR. He is also a symbol of the relationship between the financial circles of London and those of the eastern U.S. which reflects one of the most powerful influences in 20th century American and world history. The two ends of this English-speaking axis have sometimes been called, perhaps facetiously, the English and American Establishments. There is, however, a considerable degree of truth behind the joke, a truth which reflects a very real power structure. It is this power structure which the Radical Right in the U.S. has been attacking for years in the belief they are attacking the Communists. These misdirected attacks did much to confuse the American people in 1948-1955. By 1953 most of these attacks had run their course. The American people, thoroughly bewildered at the widespread charges of twenty years of treason and subversion, had rejected the Democrats and put into the White House a war hero, Eisenhower. At the time, two events, one public and one secret, were still in process. The public one was the Korean War; the secret one was the race for the thermonuclear bomb. In Closing Remember who wrote all this: an eminently respected and successful historian and political science intellectual. This is not an outside perspective on The Way Things Really Work, either: he grew up in the middle of the US-European power structure and knew it intimately. He refers to this presumably benign conspiracy as both "the Round Table Groups" and "the Anglo-American Elite," both of which tacitly acknowledge the power and influence of the British establishment here in the United States. As Quigley states in Tragedy and Hope: I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. --page 950 So clearly, this is not an effort to expose some vast, evil conspiracy on his part. He has a genuine admiration for them, which makes lines like this even more chilling: The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. Spread the Research: Looking for more information? Try these related articles. “Changing Images of Man” in PDF Format Four Essential Articles on the US Education System The Best Research Papers I Have Read in My Life Putin Dropping Invisible Bombs
Poster Comment: But in general, his freedom and choice will be controlled within very narrow alternatives by the fact that he will be numbered from birth and followed, as a number, through his educational training, his required military and other public service, his tax contributions, his health and medical requirements, and his final retirement and death benefits. It seems the benefits of death will be a well deserved respite from the ever increasing degradation of being farmed and herded by the system, of being considered cattle. Having lost our independent spirit by forfeiting respect for the sanctity of life, the true gifts of life, liberty and happiness in exchange for the shabby temporal comforts provided by the "masters" as long as one is willing to sell their soul to the "company store", we become the docile beasts of burden beholden to our "masters". Upon discovery that the system is intent upon evil works, how can an honest man/woman continue to support and thereby serve this ideology without sacrificing their own spirit ? I don't think it's possible.
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#5. To: noone222, historian1944 (#0)
Anyone who knew we were making a bomb, and I imagine that included the Russians, would still most certainly have made an effort to get the bomb. The Left-Wing Liberal Puppet Show More than fifty years ago, the Morgan firm decided to infiltrate the Left-wing political movements of the United States. Controlling the opposition is not new.
That whole paragraph is speculation, though Chalmers Johnson talks about a similar process in "The Sorrows of Empire" where the Cold War was basically a self fulfilling system, where neither side really wanted hot war, but could justify continous military expenditure. In the nuclear context, it's unclear how far along Russia was on its own (at least to me, it's not something I've read much about) in developing nuclear weapons. I know they were doing some research (like everyone else at the time) and other stuff, but off the top of my head I'm not sure how much of it. You can guarantee that after we detonated two of them, it was imperative for them get a similar capacity. We can see how restrained the US has been since 1991, so it would have been a far different situation in 1946 with a "hyperpower" US being the sole nuclear power. As to the last sentence, the Soviets probably wouldn't have advanced "anywhere they were ordered" since there really wasn't anywhere more to go. The Soviets performed an extremely impressive feat of moving men and material from the European front to the Pacific front, to attack the Japanese exactly as Stalin had agreed: 90 days after the end of war in Europe. While the Japanese were in bad shape, the Kwantung Army in Manchuria was still a formidable force. The most interesting thing about the operation was how they did it, it was a "deep operation" style of operation using combined arms, extensive deception and tended towards maneuver warfare. It was a quite well executed attack, completely out of the stereotype of the Red Army, incorporating most of the lessons learned fighting the Germans. That attack got Stalin the Kurile islands, and North Sakhalin island. They were prepping for attacking the Japanese mainland when the Japanese surrendered. It's unclear to me where else one would expect the Soviets to try to expand to. By 1946 the Red Army was extremely worn out, the Soviets were tired of war (hell, we were tired of war by that time, and we didn't have our country attacked much at all- only the Aleutians and a few campers in Oregon killed by bombs on ballons launched by the Japanese) and Stalin had achieved everything he desired. He had a large collection of buffer states that would help prevent future invasions- or at least make the war fought in East Germany, Poland and Hungary rather than the Ukraine and Russia proper. He had gained valuable oil rich lands in the far east.
It's unclear to me where else one would expect the Soviets to try to expand to. By 1946 the Red Army was extremely worn out, the Soviets were tired of war (hell, we were tired of war by that time, and we didn't have our country attacked much at all- only the Aleutians and a few campers in Oregon killed by bombs on ballons launched by the Japanese) and Stalin had achieved everything he desired. He had a large collection of buffer states that would help prevent future invasions- or at least make the war fought in East Germany, Poland and Hungary rather than the Ukraine and Russia proper. He had gained valuable oil rich lands in the far east. Stalin really was a winner. I wasn't that aware of the justifiable fears of more Russian incursions in the Pacific rim. Nor had I ever heard about the Oregon campers!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fi re_balloon Above is the wikipedia entry for the balloon bombs, and tells of six people who were killed by them, the sole deaths attributed to the bombs. Not particularly effective weapons. I'll expand a bit on my previous post since I've got a few minutes, and I like to hear myself talk. Prior to the German invasion, the Soviet Union and Japan had signed an agreement basically saying that if one didn't attack, the other wouldn't. Stalin was terrified that the Germans would invade and then the Japanese would help from the other direction. There was a significant amount of combat power that was required to stay in the east to deter such an event. The agreement worked well for both sides, the Soviets could concentrate on the east (the far graver and near term threat) while the Japanese could concentrate on SE Asia. There was a unit that actually began moving from the Lake Baikal area of Siberia to Moscow after the beginning of the invasion. Their trek (at least a significant portion of which was on foot) started in August 1941, and they arrived in Moscow around 5 December 1941, an amazing feat. The NEXT DAY they participated in a counterattack that began to push the Wehrmacht away from Moscow. Without that agreement with Japan, that force would have remained in the east, so it didn't do Germany any good (declaring war on us didn't do Germany any good either.) We tend to think of the Soviet leadership as some monolithic, inexorable ideological group that always had the long view of the big picture for communist domination in mind, but a lot of the decisions made don't necessarily indicate that. Stalin was above all a pragmatist, taking what he could when possible. The decisions he made at the various conferences and the future foreign policy decisions were driven by one overriding thought: July 1941 must never happen again. That's why Stalin could be very effective in the conferences: he knew exactly what he wanted. I'm going to cut FDR the only slack I ever cut the rotten bastard right here. Besides being woefully ill equipped to deal with conferences like the wartime ones (similar to Wilson a few decades before), the options he had were quite limited. Our Lend Lease aid of food, raw materials and railroad cars was vitally important to the Soviet Union. But they probably would have survived without it, the war would have taken a bit longer, but probably with the same result. So there wasn't too much of a threat to cut off supplies. But we really needed the Soviets to keep fighting. 63 percent of German casualties were on the Eastern front. Western histories have always used El Alamein as the turning point in the war (Oct 1942) when Montgomery's 250K British and Commonwealth troops finally attacked Rommel's 90K man Afrika Korps for good, at a small train station in Egypt. Rommel was actually stopped for good a month or so earlier at Alam Halfa, Montgomery just took a lot of time to build morale, gather supplies and conduct training. We point to the surrender of PanzerArmee Afrika under Von Armin in Tunisia in 1943 and the capture of 250K German and Italian troops as a huge deal. It was, and Rommel begged for the Germans to be evacuated since they had a lot of combat experience. They weren't and some of them ended up a mile from my childhood home, at the Michigan State Fairgrounds. My father remembers seeing some of them there. At the same time, on the eastern front, the Soviets destroyed an entire Army (Sixth under Von Paulus), mauled another Army (I forget the designation) and destroyed a Romanian Army Group. They removed well over 500K Axis soldiers permanently from the German order of battle. WWII was a team effort. We provided strategic air forces, material, and later a second front. The Soviets provided the blood. Stalin never would have done it, but he could have threatened to make peace with Germany. For us that would have had huge consequences. Instead of the reconstituted 21st Pz Div under General Feutchinger (not the Afrika Korps 21 Pz which had passed into captivity), that was referred to as the "Bread and Water" Division since it was populated by men with stomach ailments we might have faced Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, or Das Reich, or any of a number of other well equipped SS formations. FDR must have had this in the back of his mind (among other things) which helped his decision making process. For the most part the conferences just admitted situations that either existed or would exist in the near future. Were we going to tell Stalin that he shouldn't occupy Poland when he was already there? He knew that he needed to have lot of sympathetic land between him and a future invasion. Paranoid fear of invasion drove a lot of the decisions, and the Soviets could justify it: hadn't the US participated in the attempted but futile British invasion at Murmansk in 1919? We had. So, Stalin refused to budge on the things he knew he wanted. FDR wasn't so sure of what his aims were (aside from a cool photo-op and a personal meeting with Stalin), so Stalin probably had an easy time of it. Above all, we tend to dismiss the Soviet fears of invasion, but we don't have the same internal references. We say stuff like 9/11 changed things, and we can't let it happen again. That was due to an attack that killed 3K people. In the first six months of Operation Barbarossa, the Soviets had 7.5M soldiers permanently removed from their order of battle, and uncounted civilians killed. Around half of the soldiers were killed in battle, half captured. Most of the captured never returned, and the ones who did were probably killed by Stalin. 80% of all males born in 1923 in the Soviet Union perished in WWII. Death on such a scale leaves an indelible mark, so perhaps they can be forgiven a bit for being a touch paranoid about invasion. I think our attitudes towards things would be a bit different if right now, after 4 years of war we had suffered 27M dead.
Fascinating! I just bookmarked this thread for future reference. Thank You!
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