Let Them See What They’ve Done – The Kennedys and the Swearing-in of Lyndon B. Johnson

The assassination of John F. Kennedy inevitably came as a huge shock, but this shock was compounded for those people who had to lead the US afterwards. In this article, Christopher Benedict explains what happened in the aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination, and the problems and politics between Bobby Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson as they sought to move forward.

The swearing in of Lyndon B. Johnson in November 1963.

A Heartbeat Away

You would be hard-pressed to find, among the men who peevishly held the office, a favorable opinion uttered of the vice presidency.

John Adams complained to his wife Abigail of the frustrating ineffectiveness affixed to “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”

The vice presidency “ought to be abolished” in the mind of Theodore Roosevelt, who offered his grumpy yet prescient perspective that “the man who occupies it may at any moment be everything, but meanwhile he is practically nothing.”

Franklin Roosevelt’s first VP John Nance Garner proclaimed the position “not worth a bucket of warm piss”, while Harry Truman, FDRs third and final second-in-command, joked that vice presidents “were about as useful as a cow’s fifth teat.”

Lyndon Johnson was certainly no stranger to the discontent of thwarted ambition and irksome exclusion. Consistently and deliberately closed out of the president’s inner circle, it was not exactly a well-kept secret that LBJ reserved the greatest measure of his odious disdain for Kennedy’s Attorney General, brother, and ruthless right-hand man Bobby, who Johnson thought “acted like he was the custodian of the Kennedy dream, some kind of rightful heir to the throne.” Jack, meanwhile, would send Johnson off on as many insignificant overseas diplomatic missions as he could concoct with the express purpose of sparing himself the despondent look pulling down Lyndon’s already droopy features as he moped in a perpetual state of self-pity around the White House.

Power Struggle

Lyndon Johnson was literally and figuratively kept in the dark at Parkland Hospital. Seated with Lady Bird in a small, dimly lit waiting room as physicians down the hall attempted frantically to achieve what everyone knew to be the impossible and save John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s life, he was simultaneously processing the pandemonium of Dealey Plaza while looking as far as he dared into the immediate future and the very real probability of his impending ascendance to the presidency. But, amidst the confusion of emergency responders who did not have the time to give him - and some of Kennedy’s other men – an update, Johnson yet again found himself odd man out.

“The disaster had exposed a hidden weakness, the allegiance of individual agents to a man,” William Manchester penned in his masterful The Death of a President. “As long as Kennedy had been in command the lines of authority were clear. Now the old order had been transformed into hopeless disorder.”

Streaked in gore, Jackie refused to be parted from her husband’s side, insisting “I want to be in there when he dies” and that a priest (Father Oscar Huber) be summoned to administer last rites to Jack before the official pronouncement of death could be made for the sake of his immortal soul.

Johnson, meanwhile, awaited word of the inevitable which he would obstinately accept only from the president’s personal friend and political aide Ken O’Donnell who, with Dave Powers, Larry O’Brien and others, comprised JFKs doggedly loyal ‘Irish Mafia’. Whatever the gruesome reality, Lyndon Johnson would never be their president. Johnson, not for the last time that day, would be left wanting. Secret Service agent Emory Roberts was the first to alert Johnson to the president’s mortal demise, but Assistant Press Secretary ‘Mac’ Kilduff would have to do in satisfying Lyndon’s desire for a spokesman from the Kennedy contingency, the first to address Johnson as “Mr. President”.

Only then was LBJ spirited away, the enormity of the situation pressing down upon Lady Bird in her later recollection of flags already flying at half-mast on buildings between Parkland Hospital and Love Field. Kennedy’s body would make the same journey only after a tense standoff between Parkland’s medical staff backed up by local law enforcement and the Secret Service, Irish Mafia, and Jackie Kennedy who collectively used the president’s coffin on a gurney as a battering ram to force their way out. Kilduff finally addressed the press to formally announce to the nation, “President John F. Kennedy died at approximately one o’clock central standard time today here in Dallas. He died of a gunshot wound in the brain.”

Bobby’s Wounds Ripped Wide

The trauma of Robert Kennedy having to learn of his brother’s assassination was compounded immeasurably by the callous insensitivity with which, and from whom, the news was delivered. Bobby would suffer two indignities dealt out in quick succession by the men he hated most. The feelings of loathing, it goes without saying, were reciprocal.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover phoned Bobby’s Hickory Hill home in McLean, Virginia and, with no pretense at sympathy or human decency, informed Kennedy, “I have news for you. The president’s been shot. I think it’s serious. I am endeavoring to get details. I will call you back when I find out more.”

Bobby’s sudden and abominable grief would be rudely interrupted one hour later.

Lyndon Johnson “had been lobbying his bereaved cabin mates one by one,” writes Jeff Shesol in his book Mutual Contempt, “forcing a consensus that the plane should not leave the ground before the transition of power was properly-constitutionally-confirmed.” Whatever his aims were in assuring that presidential continuity be achieved swiftly and legitimately, Johnson’s decision to seek the guidance of the nation’s Attorney General, who at this moment in time was above all a freshly grieving brother, was consistent with behavior that Godfrey McHugh (Air Force Aide to President Kennedy, who had once dated Jackie Bouvier) found “obscene”.

“A lot of people think I should be sworn in right away,” Johnson urged when he got through to Bobby.

“Do you have any objection to that?” He then tactlessly barraged the slain president’s sibling with very specific legal, procedural questions pertaining to taking the oath of office, forcing Bobby to consult his Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach who was “absolutely stunned” by Johnson’s crass requests.

The Judge

Elected to the Texas legislature in 1931 and subsequently 14th District Judge in Dallas, Sarah T. Hughes became acquainted with Lyndon Johnson “in 1948 when he ran for the Senate and I campaigned for him at that time.” In 1961, she was appointed to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas by President Kennedy over the objections of brother Bobby who was of the opinion that Hughes was “too old” and “would be able to retire after ten years”.

She recounted her drive to Love Field following the entreaty for her specific presence to swear in Lyndon Johnson aboard Air Force One. “I was thinking...that I must get there in a hurry, because Vice President Johnson is always in a hurry and wants things done right now and I shouldn’t delay. And the other thing I was thinking about was what the oath of office was...I was brash enough to think that I could give the oath without having looked it up.” Upon her arrival, she walked into the aircraft’s crowded and stiflingly hot second compartment where she encountered and hugged Lyndon and Lady Bird. Rather than getting directly to the business at hand, Hughes was informed by Johnson that “Mrs. Kennedy wants to be here. We’ll wait for her.”

Ken O’Donnell was charged with the unthinkable task of retrieving Jackie from the rear of the plane for her placement in Johnson’s contrived photo-op and angrily refused. He ultimately relented and was stunned by the nobility of Jackie’s response once she had emerged from freshening up in the restroom.                          

“It’s the least I can do”, she said.

The Photographer

Jacqueline Kennedy was rightfully protective of her children and warned away press members from taking or publishing pictures of them, a wish that, back in those days, could be counted upon to be respected. Her husband, on the other hand, relished the opportunity to ring up his personal photographer Cecil Stoughton for impromptu photo sessions, one of which would produce - among the many iconic images he would capture during Kennedy’s 1,000 day administration - what would forever remain his own personal favorite. Caroline and John Jr. appear to be singing and dancing in front of the president’s desk in the oval office as their doting father sits in his chair and happily claps along. Stoughton is also responsible for the only known picture of Jack, Bobby, and Marilyn Monroe together (at a Democratic fundraiser), as well as Kennedy’s inauguration, state dinners and White House visits, personal vacation snapshots, and national magazine covers. He would also be assigned, as a photojournalist for Time magazine, to Bobby Kennedy’s railway funeral procession.

Kennedy with his children in the oval office.

Accompanying the Kennedys to Dallas, he photographed their arrival on the tarmac at Love Field, rode several cars back in the motorcade, and was rushed along with all other participants to Parkland Hospital. Witnessing Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson being escorted from the premises, Stoughton asked where they were going and, after being told Washington, replied “So am I” and was conveyed to Love Field in the cruiser of a Texas state trooper which was very nearly shot at by police officers guarding Air Force One with good intentions but itchy trigger fingers. He switched out the color film he had been using that day for black and white that would be suitable for the wire services and was mortified when the shutter of his Hasselblad camera would not engage as the makeshift ceremony began. Fortunately, after a vigorous shake or two, he was able to fire off twenty shots while standing on a couch behind and to the right of Judge Hughes who grasped a Catholic missal on which an extraordinarily solemn Lyndon Johnson placed his left hand, the right raised at a ninety degree angle. ‘Mac’ Kilduff held President Kennedy’s Dictaphone between Hughes and Johnson to record audio documentation of the swearing-in. Lady Bird stands to the right of her husband, partially obscured, while Jackie is positioned prominently and strategically to his left, the bloodstains on her skirt and stockings undetectable because of the manner in which Stoughton prudently framed his shots.

Insubordination

Before landing at Andrews Air Force Base, Johnson made certain that the press was aware that their presence was not only permissible, but sanctioned. His hope was to be filmed stepping off of Air Force One, escorting Jackie as well as Kennedy’s coffin in a visible show of personal solidarity and presidential continuity. Kilduff tried to convince Mrs. Kennedy that it was best to offload the president’s body from a side or rear entrance out of view of the cameras, but she maintained, “We’ll go out the regular way. I want them to see what they have done.” Furthermore, Jackie resisted the suggestion that she change into a clean outfit, one that was not befouled by her husband’s blood and brain matter. “No”, she repeated disobediently. “Let them see what they’ve done.”

No sooner had Air Force One touched down in D.C. than Robert Kennedy burst onboard and headed directly for Jackie. In a breach of both protocol and etiquette, he pushed past Lyndon Johnson, the new president, without so much as acknowledging his existence. Along with O’Donnell, Powers, O’Brien, Kilduff, and McHugh, they hurriedly disembarked, carrying the coffin with them to a waiting ambulance. An abandoned and incensed Johnson was thwarted once more by the Kennedy assembly, promising those left to listen that “I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help, and god’s.”

It would not take Johnson long to begin throwing his considerable weight around the White House, ordering Kennedy’s personal secretary Evelyn Lincoln, on the morning of November 23 to gather her things and depart the Executive offices so that he could bring in “my own girls”. Having already met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff the night before, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk prodded the new president to move immediately into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, something even he knew to be imprudent, not to mention insensitive.

Regardless of Bobby Kennedy’s vitriolic evaluation of Johnson’s haste to occupy the oval office or else “the world would fall apart”, LBJ did in fact have sincerely fond feelings for Jackie and sought not to injure her, especially in an already fragile state. Lady Bird, who had quite a way with words, put it like this: “Lyndon would like to take all the stars in the sky and string them on a necklace for Mrs. Kennedy.” He was, however, an egocentric individual and would be deeply wounded by the fact that Jackie kept him at a physical and emotional distance from then on, in favor of Bobby to whom she was bound by grief.

With that in mind, it is a good thing for Johnson that Jackie’s 1964 conversations with Arthur Schlesinger would not be published until forty-seven years later. In them, she reveals these none too flattering sentiments. “I guess it’s very good for the country that he could go around and make this air of good feeling and lull so many people into this sense of security, which they wanted after all the tragedy of November. He can’t bear to ever be alone and face something awful. Maybe he wants to disassociate himself so if it goes wrong, he can say ‘I wasn’t there.’”  

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Sources

• Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours After (2009, Produced by Time Travel Unlimited for History Channel)
• The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin (2014, Simon & Schuster)
• Robert Kennedy and His Times by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (1978, Houghton and Mifflin)
• The Death of a President: November 1963 by William Manchester (1967, Harper & Row)
• Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade (1997, W.W. Norton & Co.)
• Sarah T. Hughes Oral History Interview 10/7/68 by Joe B. Frantz (from the archives of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library
• Cecil Stoughton Dies at 88; Documented White House by Margalit Fox (New York Times, November 6, 2008)
• Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy: Interviews With Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. 1964 (2011, Hyperion)                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Menticide in the Eastern Bloc – But what does it mean?

The story of Mihail Shipkov is indicative of what happened to many people in communist regimes in the years after World War Two. For his opposition to the government, he was to pay a heavy price – the disturbingly titled “Menticide”. In this article, we conclude the Mihail Shipkov story that was started here and explain American reactions to Menticide.

Richard H. Cummings returns to the site (after the podcast based on his book here) and explains.

Only in the contest of ideas can there be a final victory, which will yield us one world dedicated to peace with freedom.

 - Breakdown, April 1950

In April 1950 broadcasting to Bulgaria and other countries behind the Iron Curtain over Radio Free Europe was yet to come. The National Committee for Free Europe (NCFE), reprinted 100,000 copies of the Shipkov story in a 31-page pamphlet in the “public interest” with the long descriptive title Breakdown: how the Communist secret police are able to pry confessions of treason out of men and women who love their country, a story courageously laid bare for the first time in March, 1950. 

The first page contained this summary of the pamphlet: 

Telling how the Communist secret police are able to pry confessions of treason out of men and women who love their country, a story courageously laid bare for the first time by Michael Shipkov.

The cover of the pamphlet Breakdown.

In an April 25, 1950, cover letter to NCFE members, including future President Dwight D. Eisenhower and future CIA Director Allen Dulles, NCFE President DeWitt C. Poole wrote, “Our Committee III --the Committee on American Contacts -- has prepared ... pamphlets as part of our campaign to reach the American public ... I am sure you will agree that these pamphlets will prove useful in our struggle for victory in the contest of ideas.” 

The back cover of the pamphlet told the American public:

The Committee's members are convinced that the danger of the present crisis cannot be exaggerated. Freedom is at stake. At this very moment it is being decided what kind of world our grandchildren are going to live in.

The ultimate decision lies in the contest of ideas. Only a world relieved of totalitarian despotism and held together by the tested ideals of freedom and democracy can live in peace. In the struggle for this consummation the National Committee for Free Europe offers every single citizen the opportunity to throw in his weight.

Allen W. Dulles.

Allen Dulles sent a copy of the NCFE pamphlet to psychiatrist Dr. George Eaton Daniels, M.D., Columbia University, and asked him if he would review it in view of a possible “psychiatric appraisal of the effect of the procedures used by Iron Curtain countries to obtain confessions from their prisoners.”

Dulles followed this up with a telephone conversation with Dr. Daniels, who turned down the appraisal possibility for professional reasons but supplied Dulles with names of other specialists who might be willing to help, including Dr. Iago Galdston.         

On April 27, 1950, Daniels sent a note to Dulles, with Galdston’s telephone number and address, and the comment: “As I mentioned, the Academy has a section on Neurology and Psychiatry from which I believe competent neurologists and psychiatrists could be selected for the study which you have in mind.” Dulles made wrote a note for the file on April 28, 1950:

Dr. Daniels, after talking with Dr. Nolan D. C. Lewis, suggested that possibly the New York Academy of Medicine would be the best organ through which to work and that Dr. Galdston at the Academy would be the appropriate man to approach. The New York Academy could, of course, bring in any nation-wide organization that seemed desirable.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt was an ardent supporter of the NCFE and Crusade for Freedom. In 1950 she wrote about this pamphlet in her national syndicated column, My Day, which was published six days a week from 1935 to 1962. In her March 9, 1950, column she wrote:

I am sure many people were very much interested in the account given by Michael Shipkov, a Bulgarian, who explained how it was possible to make individuals confess treason in a Communist-dominated court, regardless of the truth. I am sorry to say that intimidation has been used in practically every country by some of its officials who felt it legitimate because they were trying to obtain some particular kind of testimony. I have heard with concern of methods used occasionally in some of our police courts. None of them, however, seems to have acquired quite the technique that brings about these mass confessions in the Soviet court-rooms. I was sorry this morning to read that Mr. Shipkov had been taken a prisoner and now has confessed to being a spy for the Americans!

In her June 2, 1950 column, she wrote:

A little booklet I have just read, published by The National Committee for Free Europe, Inc., called: "Breakdown"—"The story of Michael Shipkov in the hands of the secret police." This pamphlet will give you a picture of how, under authoritarian regimes, confessions are finally extorted. One shudders to think what horrors confront people where justice no longer exists; where they live under constant espionage and where freedom is something they may once have dreamed of but no longer know as a reality.

It seems impossible for people ever to free themselves under the circumstances described in this pamphlet. Neither is it conceivable for a nation to go forward and develop economically, spiritually or socially under this type of government. Living must become so utterly futile. Even under the lash of fear one must cease to work and produce because life is so completely valueless. No one could want to bring children into a world where people are no longer allowed any personal freedom and must face moral and mental domination.

Dulles and the Shipkov report

On April 10, 1953, Allen Dulles, now CIA Director, made a speech entitled “Brain Warfare,” at the National Alumni Conference of Graduate Council of Princeton University. He referenced the Shipkov case: “The techniques employed in the case of Shipkov were somewhat crude but give the pattern of the later more refined methods.” 

Dulles then quoted from the Shipkov report:

Out of the jumbled memories, some impressions stand out vivid. One: they are not over interested in what you tell them. It would appear that the ultimate purpose of this treatment is to break you down completely, and deprive you and any will power or private thought or self-esteem, which they achieve remarkably quickly. And they seem to pursue a classic confession, well round off in the phraseology, explaining why you were induced by environment and education to enter the services of the enemies of Communism, how you placed your capacities in their services, what ultimate goal did you pursue – the overthrow of the people’s government through foreign intervention. And they appear to place importance on the parallel appearance of repentance and self-condemnation that come up with the breaking down of their prisoner.

Quite simply, that explains the terrible menticide.

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This article is based on a piece that originally appeared on the fascinating site, http://coldwarradios.blogspot.com.

The Battle of Nis - The True Beginning of the Cold War?

The Cold War between the Soviet Union and United States defined much of the latter half of the twentieth century in international relations. But was the only time that the superpowers actually came to blows when they were allies in World War Two? Mykael Ray explains.

An image reflective of the Cold War. Source: Anynobody, available here.

As history shows us, there is limited adhesive holding America and Russia together. Though there has been peace between them for many years, there have been a number of occasions in which tensions ran much higher than is comfortable between the two countries.

Simply mentioning the Cold War is enough to make this point, but even now, there is “The Mutual-Hostage Relationship between America and Russia”, which is described by Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky as essentially a nuclear standoff between the two nations that creates a system of balance and fear based peace in the world.

With both countries having their hands on the most powerful weapons, other nations can be kept in a state of unwillingness to act on a large scale - just in case one of the triggers gets pulled.

Despite the amount of tension found between the two, direct conflict has never truly ensued.

Or has it?

Friendly fire?

On October 7, 1944, American P-38 Lightning pilots bombed ground troops near Nis in Yugoslavia on their way to assist Soviet troops. What actually happened was that the American fighters rained down upon the Soviets themselves. Out of response to the situation, the Soviets put their own Yak fighters in the air, which resulted in a 15-minute dogfight between the two supposed allies.

US planes must have realized the error a little too late, or maybe not even at all. Or, for all anybody truly knows, they could have realized it from the start and followed through anyway. On the other hand, instead of trying to call off the attacking Americans, the Soviets fought back at full strength, killing an undisclosed number of American airmen.

Accounts vary greatly as to how the friendly fire fight happened. Some believe that the Americans strayed up to 400 kilometers off course, and misidentified the Soviet fleet as hostile German forces. Others claim that the Americans were due to meet up with the Soviets to provide air support, but the Soviets traveled faster than anticipated, putting them 100 kilometers ahead of schedule, leading to the same end result.

Regardless of whose fault it was, both countries are keeping their records of the situation classified, and speculation will continue to be the only explanation for the “misunderstanding”. Even with certain facts regarding the incident being omitted, there are aspects of the battle that bring up a resounding question about the relationship between the two superpowers.

Was there some sort of bad blood between the two powers in south-eastern Europe at the time? Assuming that it was actually a case of mistaken identity, once the Soviets put their planes into action, the American pilots would have instantly been made aware of the true identity of their targets after seeing the blaring red star being brandished on the side of the airplanes. At that point, an unwavering ally would have ceased the attack and pulled away from the area. Instead, the battle extended 15 minutes after Soviet pilots were in the air.

So what happened?

Why do we not know the details? The embarrassment surrounding the situation must be shared equally between the two countries. We do not know the exact facts about what happened because both governments have classified as much information about it as possible, leading to much speculation that either both parties regret the event in its entirety, or that there is a mutual benefit to both of them in keeping it secret.

Of course, this was not the only time that the two countries faced each other in battle in the twentieth century. In 1950, during the Korean War, the Soviets provided the Chinese and North Koreans with their MiGs 15 fighters and pilot training. Soon after, evidence revealed that Soviet pilots actually flew against American fighters.

However, the Russian military to this day deny involvement in any direct confrontation in Korea. And with the Russians not taking responsibility (or credit) for the accusations, Nis remains the only direct confrontation between the two powers in which both admit to having participated in.

The debate around Nis will have to continue until the documents are declassified and made public. Whether it was a secret government conspiracy, or an embarrassment swept under the rug, there is an irony in the details.

Over 70 years later, despite many decades of tension between these two superpowers, one of the few times that the the Soviets and Americans actually came to blows was potentially due to a simple case of mistaken identity - and shortly after their alliance during World War Two, the Cold War began.

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Sources

Wolfgang K. H. Panafsky “The Mutual-Hostage Relationship between America and Russia” http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/24463/wolfgang-k-h-panofsky/the-mutual-hostage-relationship-between-america-and-russia

Norwich University “10 Largest Air to Air Battles in Military History” http://militaryhistory.norwich.edu/10-largest-air-to-air-battles-in-military-history/

www.ww2today.com, “USAAF Lightnings vs Soviet Yaks over Yugoslavia 1944” http://ww2today.com/7-november-1944-usaaf-lightnings-vs-soviet-yaks-over-yugoslavia

Menticide in the Eastern Bloc – A shocking tale

The story of Mihail Shipkov is indicative of what happened to many people in communist regimes in the years after World War Two. For his opposition to the government, he was to pay a heavy price – the disturbingly titled “Menticide”. Richard H. Cummings returns to the site (after the podcast based on his book here) and explains.

Mihail Shipkov.

Only in the contest of ideas can there be a final victory, which will yield us one world dedicated to peace with freedom.

 - Breakdown, April 1950

The March 13, 1950 issue of Time magazine carried a story "COMMUNISTS: How They Do it," which, in part, read:

The U.S. State Department last week published a remarkable document. It was one answer to a question which has interested the West since the famous Moscow purge trials of 1936-38, a question which has become increasingly urgent with such postwar trials as that of Hungary's Cardinal Mindszenty, Bulgaria's 15 Protestant leaders and the U.S.'s Robert Vogeler: How do Communist secret police extort "confessions?? The Communists' first victim to tell his first-hand story is Michael Shipkov.

Psychiatrist A. M. Meerloo Joost in the Journal of Psychiatry, February 1951, coined the term "menticide," when he wrote that an "organized system of judicial perversion and psychological intervention, in which a powerful tyrant transfers his own thoughts and words into the minds and mouths of the victims he plans to destroy or to use for his own propaganda."

He presented Nazi propaganda as "social menticide" and the Cardinal Mindszenty case mentioned in the Time magazine article as an example of "individual menticide." We will look at the case of Mihail Shipkov and "individual menticide."

Mihail Shipkov’s life

Mihail (Michael) Todorov Shipkov was born to a wealthy family in Bulgaria on January 1, 1911. His secondary education was at the prestigious American founded and Christian based Robert College on the European side of Istanbul, Turkey. His family had derived its wealth from extracting rose oil. With the coming of Communism in Bulgaria after World War Two, the family lost their wealth when their rose fields and factories were nationalized. Reportedly, Communist authorities confiscated 9,000 kilograms of rose oil. Fluent in English, Mihail Shipkov then became a translator at the American Legation in Sofia.

It was the worst of political times in Bulgaria. The Cold War was hot: staff members of the American Legation were harassed, arrested, and some died under very suspicious circumstances. For example, in August 1949, Ivan Seculov, a Bulgarian translator employed by the American Legation, died after "falling" out of a four-story window three days after his arrest by the state security militia (secret police). One report has him committing suicide rather than being released from prison to work as a police agent. The truth might never be known.

In 1949, the American Legation attempted to get Mihail Shipkov, then 39 years old, and his family exit visas to leave Bulgaria for the United States. The police (militia) opened an investigative file with the code name "Розовият", translated as "Pink" - not referring to the color, but to his family's rose oil production.

Arrest

On Saturday, August 21, 1949, at 2:30 PM, Mihail Shipkov was arrested by the state security militia, after leaving the American Legation, and taken to the National Assembly building. For the next 32 hours, he was subjected to extreme physical and psychological torture (menticide) by seven different militia men to obtain a six-page "confession" that he was an American spy: "At the end, when I wrote down the confession of guilt and repentance, I remember that the whole thing appeared fantastic and ridiculous but it seemed to give them complete satisfaction." He was then released on Sunday evening under the conditions that he work for the Communist militia against the American Legation, using a suggested code name "Kamenov." It is not known if he actually signed any agreement to do so.

Shipkov went home, washed up, had a meal of sausage with red wine, and went to bed. On Monday morning he went to the American Legation and reported what had happened over the weekend. He then submitted a hand-written, 8,000 word report in order to clear his conscience of the sense of guilt he had for the persons he had incriminated in his "confession."

Responding to an official US protest, Foreign Minister Vladimir Poptomov confirmed officially to Donald R. Heath, head of the American Legation, “his conviction that Michael Shipkov was innocent … and assured Mr. Heath on October 11, 1949, that the maltreatment of Shipkov was absolutely against the policy of his Government.” He added that, “He had personally recommended to the Interior Minister that passports and exit visas should be granted to the Shipkovs.” That never happened.

Mihail’s report was later published verbatim in the US Department of State Bulletin, March 13, 1950: "The Story of Michael Shipkov's Detention and Interrogation by the Bulgarian Militia." In part of his report, he described how he was tortured:

I was ordered to stand facing the wall upright at a distance, which allowed me to touch the wall with two fingers of my outstretched arms. Then to step back some twelve inches, keep my heels touching the floor, and maintain balance only with the contact of one finger on each hand. And while standing so, the interrogation continued ... I recall that the muscles on my legs and shoulders began to get cramped and to tremble, that my two fingers began to bend down under the pressure, to get red all over and to ache, I remember that I was drenched with sweat and that I began to faint, although I had not exerted myself in any way. If I would try to substitute [fingers], I would be instantly called to order . . . And when the trembling increased up to the point when I collapsed, they made me sit and speak. I did get several minutes respite, catching my breath and wiping my face, but when I had uttered again that I was innocent, it was the wall again.

After a time of this, I broke down. I told them I was willing and eager to tell them all they wanted ... And if I were to stop and plead fatigue, or poor memory, or ask to rest - the wall again, and the slaps, and the blows in the nape [of the neck]. And I remembered I would come up gasping and talk and talk and feel utterly broken.

Escape?

Newspapers in the U.S. carried the Shipkov story. For example, the Idaho State Journal, March 7, 1950, printed a cartoon showing the torture of Shipkov, with the headline: "Shipkov Reveals Red Torture Methods."

From the time of his reporting what had happened to him in August 1949 until February 1950, Donald Heath hid Shipkov from Bulgarian authorities in the attic of the American Legation. Shipkov spent his time analyzing and translating Bulgarian newspapers for the Embassy staff.

Relations soon worsened between Bulgaria and the United States, and it became clear that official relations were to be broken off and the US Embassy to close. A CIA plan was hatched to secretly send Shipkov out of Bulgaria to safety over the Greek or Turkish border near the town of Svilengrad. 

American diplomat Raymond F. Courtney gave Shipkov a Bulgarian identity document, provided by the British Legation, of Nikolay Boyadjiev, who had previously escaped from Bulgaria to Turkey. He was also given, a knife, compass, money and a cyanide pill, in addition to other items. He departed the Embassy on February 11, 1950, in the company of diplomat Courtney. 

One version of his escape attempt has him staying at two safe houses on his way to meet two couriers, who were to escort him over the snow covered mountains into Greece and presumably then to Turkey. But the couriers did not show up. 

On February 14, 1950, Shipkov was discovered by the militia and arrested at the Plovdiv train station, located about halfway between Sofia and Svilengrad. 

Communist authorities accused Donald Heath of being an intelligence agent, declared him persona non-grata, and ordered him out of Bulgaria. Diplomatic relations between the United States and Bulgaria were broken off and remained so for the next ten years. 

On February 21, 1950, Shipkov was indicted for the following "treasonous" crimes: his family background, his act of seeking employment with the American Legation, his expression of opposition to the Communist creed, and to some of the Government policies." All Sofia newspapers reported on the indictment and 16 persons associated with the American Legation were implicated. On that date, the US Department of State issued a press statement reviewing the Shipkov case.

Trial and exile

On February 24, 1950, the American Legation was evacuated, and American staff and families made it to safely to Trieste, Italy, with a stop over in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Reportedly 30 plain-clothes policemen were at the train station in Sofia as the train departed.

From March 6-8, 1950, Mihail Shipkov and four others were accused of espionage at a show trial, in which Shipkov confessed to his "crimes." The co-defendants were Zhivka Tomova Rindova (former telephone operator in the US Legation), Stefan Kratunkov, Nikolay Liubomirov Tsanov, and Vasil Malchev. The accused reportedly "pleaded guilty and confirmed the written confessions of spying for the Americans that they had made to investigating police before the trial." Shipkov said, "I distorted, slandered and calumniated the initiatives of the fatherland front."

Shipkov was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.  There was widespread coverage in American newspapers of his trial. On March 8, 1950, US Secretary of State Dean Acheson gave a statement to the press, in which he denounced the Shipkov trial and "disregard for human rights and human values demonstrated by the Bulgarian regime." 

After the trial, the Press Department in Sofia published a 125-page report, The Trial of American Spies in Bulgaria. The listed author was Henry Spetter who, ironically, would also be a victim of "individual menticide" in 1974, when he was subjected to psychological torture and forced to sign a confession as a spy for the US and Israel. He was sentenced to death but it was not carried out. In August 1974, he was flown to East Germany, escorted to West Berlin, and emigrated to Israel.

The cover of The Trial of the American Spies in Bulgaria.

Reportedly, Mihail Shipkov was released from prison after serving some 12 years and then exiled to the provincial town Troyan, where his wife and daughter had been exiled in 1950.

Shipkov's exact date of death is unknown but in an interview with journalist Alexenia Dimitrova in the Sofia newspaper 24 Hours, on January 26, 2010, his granddaughter Marina said that Michael Shipkov died in 1990 in Troyan. Alexenia Dimitrova has also written a four-part series on Henry Spetter for the newspaper 24 Hours, which can be read in Bulgarian at:

http://www.24chasa.bg/Article.asp?ArticleId=2257030

http://www.24chasa.bg/Article.asp?ArticleId=2260343

http://www.24chasa.bg/Article.asp?ArticleId=2257497

http://www.24chasa.bg/Article.asp?ArticleId=2257539

But wait! This story is not over yet… Part 2 will be here soon!

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This article is based on a piece that originally appeared on the fascinating site, http://coldwarradios.blogspot.com.

Five Great Historical Buildings… That We’ll Never See

Amazing buildings have been destroyed due to mortars, terrorism, free will and the musings of politicians. It seems mad to us now, in an age when preservation is a priority, that buildings of historical significance have been torn down without any governmental say-so. In every part of the globe, our lands are littered with the remains of what's been left behind, or the spaces where things 'could have been'.

So what are we, as historical tourists, missing exactly in our archaeological passports? What should have been that is no longer here? Hollie Mantle explains…

Sophienkirche - Dresden

World War Two attacked few cities to the same extent it ravaged the German city of Dresden. While people were captured, fled or hid in basements, the city around them, and its beautiful baroque architecture, was being blitzed by a persistent rain of bombs.

Whilst the destruction of baroque architecture was undoubtedly an utter tragedy, one building of unusual note was also left in disrepair by the war. The city’s gothic Sophienkirche, with twin neo-gothic spires, was the admiration of local people. Though the bombs blasted some of the church’s exterior, however, it was not the war which eventually saw to the church’s demise, but the fateful words of a contemporary politician, who said: ‘a socialist city does not need gothic churches’. And so, in the early 1960s, the Sophienkirche was demolished.

The area where the Sophienkirche existed is now a much more unsightly collection of 1990s-style buildings, and not worth a trip for travellers. In the middle of the city, though, the beautiful Frauenkirche cathedral was restored in 2005, and should feature high on any tourist’s ‘to-do’ list.   

Dresden's Sophienkirche.

Carthage – Tunisia

It surprises most to hear of the wide presence of Ancient Roman ruins in northern Africa, and that one of Ancient Rome's most famous sites in fact lies in Tunisia. The ancient city of Carthage was a hot bed of shipbuilding and imports of jewels, glassware, gold, and ivory. However, the city – which was only second to Rome in its splendor in the region – was destroyed around 146BC in the Third Punic War against Rome, after which point the Carthaginian Empire was defeated . After its demise, the city was rebuilt by the Romans, but was eventually destroyed for the second time several centuries later by the Muslim conquest.

Today Carthage lies in ruin in modern Tunisia, and is a great pull for tourists visiting the country. The outlines of homes, palaces and the harbor can still be seen, giving a glimpse of the grandeur of this historic Mediterranean empire. For those who want to avoid the capital, the coastal towns of Sousse, with its ‘Medina’, and Hammamet, are brimming with ancient ruins and museums that will give you a rounded overview of the country’s history.

The Library of Alexandria - Egypt

The loss of this great library, which stood in the city of Alexandria in Egypt, still represents the destruction of public knowledge for many historians. Why, how and when it was exactly lost is difficult to establish, but most books on the subject point fingers at Julius Caesar, Emperor Theodosius I or the Muslim Army of Amr ibn al ‘Aas as culprits, and suggest it was destroyed by fire.

In the last centuries of the period before Christ, the library was the greatest in the ancient world. It had reading rooms, lecture halls, gardens and shelves brimming with papyrus scrolls containing all the knowledge of ancient times. When it was destroyed, some scrolls were preserved and moved to other locations, but most suffered damage again in their second homes.

For visitors wanting to see the ruins now, that is not possible. There are none. Instead, the Biblioteca Alexandrina, a modern library built to commemorate the Library of Alexandria, stands in its place, though with less of the glory of its predecessor. 

The Library of Alexandria

Shakespeare’s House - Stratford upon Avon

Tourists flock to an English town to see the site where the world’s most famous wordsmith was brought into the world.

After his childhood, however, Shakespeare moved to London, where he began his career as an actor and writer – though very few records can mark him down in one particular place at a given time.

As a wealthy, middle aged man, though, we do know this: Shakespeare bought a home in Stratford. New Place was purchased in 1597 for the great sum of £60, and was home to his wife Anne and his children, until he too eventually returned there in 1610, to commence his retirement. It was also the unfortunate stage for his death, six years later, in 1616.

So why do we not visit and revere this home, where the adult Shakespeare housed his family during the prime of his career?

When Anne Hathaway later died in 1623, the house was sold and passed into different hands, before becoming the property of Francis Gastrell. Angered by visitors pestering the outside of his home to see the site where Shakespeare lived, Gastrell tore the place down in 1759.

The piece of land where New Place once stood is protected by the Shakespeare Trust, but is unfortunately just that; a space. All we have now are artists’ drawings and our imaginations to attempt to conjure an image of “the forms of things unknown”.

Ancient Aleppo Markets - Syria

Due to the recent conflict, the cost of disruption and human lives in Syria far outweighs the damage to buildings. But the ancient Aleppo Markets, registered by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, have suffered tremendously during city wide fights, eventually becoming engulfed in flames that destroyed the majority of the ancient 'souk'. Somewhere in the region of 700-1,000 shops were destroyed, as water strikes meant that containing the fire was nigh on impossible. What was once a huge tourist attraction within this thriving city is now just a marker of the tragedy that has taken over and ripped the country apart.

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A changed relationship? Eleanor Roosevelt and President John F. Kennedy

After winning the 1961 election, the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy became ever more intriguing. Roosevelt tried to influence the president in a variety of ways, and JFK was normally ready to listen. Indeed, over the first two years of JFK’s presidency they forged a bond that seemed unlikely to some just a few years before.

Here, Christopher Benedict follows-up on his article about Roosevelt and JFK in the 1950s (available here) and the dramatic 1960 US election between Nixon and Kennedy (available here).

The official presidential portrait of John F. Kennedy.

Support Any Friend, Oppose Any Foe

Although she was not seated prominently on the rostrum beside new first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and her past and future peers Lady Bird Johnson, Mamie Eisenhower, and a disagreeable-looking Pat Nixon, Eleanor Roosevelt was in attendance when John F. Kennedy took the oath of office. On that frigid January morning in 1961, JFK’s breath was billowing visibly from his mouth as he implored his fellow Americans to “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” She would ride past the president on the reviewing stand in the inaugural parade with fellow representative of America’s war years Edith Wilson, Woodrow’s eighty-eight year-old widow, and later write to Kennedy of the “sense of liberation and lift to the spirit” she had experienced during his address.

Six weeks later, President Kennedy hosted Eleanor at the White House on the day he issued the Executive Order making the Peace Corps a reality. She was thankful for the opportunity to “have a glimpse of the children…and of the lovely redecorating that you are doing,” adding that “with all the responsibilities and aggravations that are bound to come your way, it does make a difference if one’s surroundings are pleasant and cheerful.” Kennedy outlined for her the agency’s systemic particulars and stressed how vital public service among the nation’s youth was to the success of his policies and to their own best interests. The Advisory Council for the Peace Corps would be one of several pro-active brain trusts (others including Tractors For Freedom, George McGovern’s Food For Peace, the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, as well as the Cancer Foundation bearing her name) to which Eleanor would contribute during the twenty months of earthly existence left to her.   

I Might Be of Use

Appointed in 1945 by President Harry Truman to the first American delegation to the United Nations, Eleanor Roosevelt was unanimously elected to chair the newly formed Commission on Human Rights. Before magnanimously stepping down from the position in 1951 (then forcibly resigning from the UN altogether a year later, per President Eisenhower’s request), Eleanor was the driving force behind the drafting and passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, still considered, nearly seventy years later, a monumental achievement.

Kennedy, at the urging of UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, reinstated her to the General Assembly just before the official formation of the Peace Corps. She sat in on plenary meetings, consulted with international delegates, traveled the globe extensively on productive good will missions, and used the My Day column to proliferate her message from the exclusivity of private chambers out into the court of public opinion.

In July 1961, with the physical, moral, and ideological wounds sustained by African Americans in Alabama and Mississippi during the Freedom Rides still very fresh, a bulk mailing was sent out across the country with the endorsement of Harry Belafonte, including one addressed directly to President John F. Kennedy in care of the White House, soliciting donations for CORE, or Congress of Racial Equality. Among their esteemed advisory committee were the likes of Reverend Ralph Abernathy, novelist James Baldwin, Jackie Robinson, FDR’s main civil rights critic A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King Jr. Eleanor contributed a note inside each envelope which beseeched that “you and I keep faith with those who suffered” and demanded the continuation of vigilant activity “until buses and terminal facilities are open to all - everywhere - in our country.”

She personally appealed to Kennedy for mercy in the case of fifteen year-old Preston Cobb Jr., a black Georgian found guilty and condemned to death for the murder of a seventy year-old white farmer. Though Cobb admitted in an unsworn statement to having shot Frank Coleman Dumas to death, Eleanor branded “unthinkable” the County Superior Court’s eye-for-an-eye retribution against “a boy of fifteen, whether black or white.”

She also petitioned the president on behalf of convicted Communist Junius Scales who, after weighing the facts of his case, Eleanor believed was “deserving of compassion”, determining that “in a democracy, the fate of an individual is important”.

You Can Take the Boy Out of Boston…

Kennedy’s elocution, and the general delivery of his speeches, which could be mistaken by some for condescension, caused Eleanor to remark that his public addresses would never “take the place of fireside chats”, FDR’s famous form of communication while he was in the White House. As for his harsh Boston accent, which she wished he would “deepen and strengthen” to convey more sincere “strength and personality”, Jack could only volley back light-heartedly, “It is difficult to change nature, but I will attempt to nudge it.” In the very next sentence he mirrors Eleanor’s somber concern over the nuclear arms race with the Soviets in which there could be no winner. “It would be possible to be among the dead rather than the quick,” he wrote. “This has been the weapon on which we have relied for our security…we are going to attempt to improve this, however.”

In light of this, it seems a bit ironic that Eleanor would forward to President Kennedy, “with every good wish and apologies for the number of things I keep sending your way”, the January 1962 issue of Computers and Automation. The cover story was a report on the advancements made to military weapons capabilities called Computers and War Safety Control, which she hoped would be of use to Kennedy and the scientific community in beating their Soviet counterparts to the atomic punch. 

This Great Society of Ours

In recognition of her numerous global humanitarian endeavors, President Kennedy sent a letter to the Nobel selection committee nominating Eleanor Roosevelt for 1962’s Nobel Peace Prize. “I am grateful for your kindness,” she humbly wrote to him, “but shall not be surprised if nothing comes of it.” Unfortunately, nothing did. The golden medallion went instead to molecular biologist Linus Pauling who had previously won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1954.

Kennedy was the special guest on Eleanor’s Prospects of Mankind program, broadcast in April 1962 on WGBH, Boston’s public television affiliate. Discussing their joint venture, the Committee on the Status of Women, the president opined that “providing equal pay and equal conditions for women” was a “matter of great national concern”. After acknowledging the sincerity of his sentiments, Eleanor laments the dichotomy of the situation in relation to foreign nations wherein “women can be found in higher positions, policy-making positions or legislative decisions than they are in this country.” A recurring theme of the president’s boys’ club mentality throughout the interview centered around “how a mother can meet her responsibilities to her children and at the same time contribute to society.” To prove his commitment to the cause, Kennedy, just weeks later, joined Eleanor for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Housing Project dedication in New York City.

These Particularly Difficult Days

In mid-June, with the Cold War heating up daily by calculable degrees, Kennedy responded to Eleanor’s despair in regard to National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy’s proposal to conduct high altitude nuclear testing, recognizing “an apparent contradiction between our efforts to advance the peaceful uses of outer space at the UN and experiments like these.”

Unwell yet unwavering, Eleanor dictated a September 27 letter to President Kennedy asking for the use of his name as Honorary Chairman of the Wiltwyck School for Boys, “a unique residential treatment center for deprived, neglected, and disturbed children all under the age of twelve” of which she was a founder and member of its Board of Directors. Five days later, Eleanor mailed Kennedy a typed thank you note for the flowers he sent, along with the cryptic disclosure that “the cause of my fever has been discovered” above her alarmingly shaky signature. The unspecified “cause” was bone marrow tuberculosis.

The handwritten note Eleanor received from Kennedy for her 78th birthday would sadly conclude their personal correspondence. She passed away in her Manhattan apartment on November 7, 1962. An Executive Order issued the following day decreed that, until her internment, flags of all buildings, grounds, embassies, legations, consular offices, military facilities and vessels be flown at half-mast. Mary Todd Lincoln was the only other first lady up to that point to be accorded such a distinctive honor, and only then because of her husband’s extraordinary achievements.

Typically defiant, even while staring into the grim face of her own mortality, Eleanor expressed her desire for her public farewell to be quiet and intimate, a wish which even she must have known on some level was absurd and would be disregarded. She was laid to rest on November 10 beside Franklin in Hyde Park, New York in what was tantamount to a state funeral, attended by her dear old friend Adlai Stevenson, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, former Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower alongside Bess and Mamie, and Vice President Lyndon Johnson with Lady Bird. 

John and Jackie Kennedy arrived on the first flight made by the new Air Force One, the very same plane that would, not much more than a year later, convey the body of the assassinated President Kennedy back to Washington from Dallas and on which Lyndon B. Johnson would assume command of the mourning nation as Jackie stood boldly by his side in her blood-spattered pink suit.

In a statement issued on October 11, 1963, Kennedy (as both President of the United States and Chairman of the Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial Foundation) celebrated what would have been her 79th birthday with the release of the Eleanor Roosevelt commemorative stamp.

“Her memory serves as an abiding reminder of the ideals of which she provided the most complete embodiment among Americans of this age,” declared Kennedy. “The ideals of justice, of compassion, and of hope.”

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And remember, you can read Chris’ article on JFK and Roosevelt in the 1950s here, and his article on 1960 election between Nixon and Kennedy here.

Sources

• Papers of John F. Kennedy (with relation to Eleanor Roosevelt) from the Archives of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
• Eleanor vs. JFK: The Back Story by Elizabeth Deane (Inside the Open Vault, WGBH Boston).
• Eleanor Roosevelt’s Anything But Private Funeral by Marc Peyser and Timothy Dwyer (The Atlantic, November 4, 2012).

The trial of Religion versus Science – And one amazing day in court

One of the most important trials of the twentieth century, the Scopes Trial, took place in 1925 and pitched religion against science. And one of the key participants was former presidential contender William Jennings Bryan. Here, we look at the amazing scenes that occurred when he took the stand and faced defense attorney Clarence Darrow.

In this article, Edward J. Vinski follows up on his pieces about how Hollywood blurred the facts of the trial (here) and what William Jennings Bryan believed (here).

Clarence Darrow, defense attorney in the Scopes Trial.

The most intriguing moment of the Scopes trial, in which Tennessee school teacher John T. Scopes was tried for teaching evolutionary theory to his students, no doubt occurred on its seventh day. Having been denied the opportunity to question scientists about the validity of evolutionary theory, the defense called prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan as a witness. Bryan, a former three-time presidential nominee and a well-known lay religious speaker, was to be questioned on the Bible. The Tennessee statute specifically prohibited public schools from teaching an account of human evolution that contradicted the Biblical account of creation. The defense hoped, in the first place, to show that what Thomas Scopes taught in his biology classroom was not, in fact, contradictory to the Bible. In the second place, they also wanted to show that the Bible is filled with events that were not scientific and thus its creation account should not be treated as such.

Reporters and spectators alike salivated at the prospect of the country’s most famous trial lawyer, defense attorney Clarence Darrow, questioning its most famous political figure and lay preacher. As if this weren’t enough, Bryan’s agreement hinged on his being able to question Darrow and the other defense attorneys in return (see the Scopes Trial Transcript). Even the setting proved unorthodox. Anticipating that closing arguments would take place during the session, and fearing that the crowds would be too great for the courtroom floor to support, presiding judge John T. Raulston had moved the trial to the yard outside the courthouse. Thus, he guaranteed that one of the most famous events in American legal history would have the largest possible audience (Larson, 2006).

Darrow’s questioning involved “the well-worn questions of the village skeptic” (Larson, 2006, p. 187). In so doing, Darrow often pinned Bryan into a corner where he was forced to choose between Biblical literalism (a position not entirely in keeping with Bryan’s own beliefs), a scientific account of the phenomena in question (which might run counter to the prosecution’s case), and admitting his own ignorance. As a result, most contemporary accounts gave the victory to Darrow and the defense (Larson, 2006; Kazin, 2008; and Farrell, 2011). More recently, in 1999 evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould suggested that while “Darrow may have come out slightly ahead… Bryan parried fairly well, and certainly did not embarrass himself” (Gould; p. 137). But even this latter, more generous, view still gives the Darrow the win. What had happened to Bryan on the witness stand that led to his defeat?

The Rusty Attorney

The first and easiest explanation is that, although Bryan had practiced law for several years, he had not been in a courtroom for decades. As a politician and as a popular speaker, he was without peer when giving prepared speeches. He was no match, however, for an aggressive and fast-thinking trial attorney like Darrow. When he needed to think quickly and off the top of his head, Bryan was generally ill equipped to do so.

Bryan Was Not A Theologian

A second explanation emerges with a close reading of the transcript. Bryan had truly studied the Bible, but he did so as a member of the faithful. His reading was designed to bring him closer to God and as such, his Christian metaphysics runs through his testimony. This metaphysics allows him to account for miraculous events in ways that Darrow, with his agnostic and skeptical point of view, would dismiss as nonsense. This is clearly evident in Bryan’s explanation of the Jonah story about which he said “I believe in a God who can make a whale and can make a man and make both do what he pleases,” and later “it is just as easy to believe the miracle of Jonah as any other miracle” (Scopes Trial Transcript). For Bryan, God intercedes in human events, and while we should be awestruck by His power and His willingness to do so, we should not be surprised by it or question it. But this point of view created its own problems. As a religious speaker, Bryan was most interested in the greatest of miracles: the Creation (which set humanity above all other creatures) and the Resurrection of Christ (which gave humanity its hope beyond the grave). Unfortunately for him, those miracles were not part of Darrow’s questioning. Thus, when Bryan placed all biblical miracles on the same plane, “laudable simple faith became laughable crude belief” (Larson, 2006, p. 189).

While such a reading of scripture may be an admirable quality in a man of God, it is clear that Bryan never studied scripture in the manner of a theologian or Biblical scholar. He was, therefore, ill prepared to address the inconsistencies it contained. He knew large parts by heart and tried to live by its precepts, but he never considered its contradictions. For instance when asked by Darrow where Cain found his wife (if in the beginning there was only Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel), Bryan could only answer that it “never bothered me” and “I never tried to find out” (Scopes Trial Transcript).

He Was Not A Scientist Either

This lack of inquisitiveness led to a third explanation for his failure: If Bryan was no theologian, he was still less a scientist. He was interested in the potential science and technology held for humankind, but did not view the world through a scientific lens. In response to many of Darrow’s questions about the Bible (e.g. the age of the earth), Bryan frequently responded with statements such as “I don’t know,” “I couldn’t say,” and “I wouldn’t attempt to tell you that” (Scopes Trial Transcript). When he was willing to make a definitive statement on an issue, he typically did so in one of two self-destructive ways. First, he hand-picked research and books that supported his own views while ignoring those that contradicted them. For instance, his reference to George M. Price, a creationist geologist, caused Darrow to exclaim “he has quoted a man that every scientist in this country knows is a mountebank and a pretender and not a geologist at all” (Scopes Trial Transcript). Second, he would respond in ways that played directly into Darrow’s hands. When Bryan conceded, for instance, that the “days” mentioned in the Genesis creation account were not necessarily 24-hour days, and that “it would be just as easy for the kind of God we believe in to make the earth in six days as in six years or in 600,000,000 years” (Scopes Trial Transcript), he was interpreting the Bible. This would prove fatal. For if the biblical account can be subject to interpretation, then one must question whether John Scopes’ biology lesson actually “den(ied) the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible?” (Tennessee House Bill 185).

All For Naught?

For Bryan the trouble didn’t stop there as insult was soon added to injury. When the trial recessed for the day, Chief Prosecutor, Tom Stewart, seeing his deftly managed case unraveling before his eyes, informed Bryan that should he insist on continuing with his testimony, the prosecution would drop the charges against Scopes (Larson, 2006). In the end, perhaps, none of it mattered. The next day, Judge Raulston struck Bryan’s testimony from the record, ruling that it could shed no light on the particulars of the Scopes case. As a result, Bryan was denied his chance to cross-examine the defense attorneys. Then the defense rested its case and asked for a guilty verdict so that they could begin the appeal process. By doing so, they robbed Bryan of the chance to make his closing statement. It is almost certain that, with a script to follow and a chance to prepare, he would have fared much better than he did on the witness stand. A few days after the trial, Bryan died in his sleep. Sometime later, the guilty verdict would be overturned due to a technicality.

By testifying, Bryan had hoped to show the world that he was “trying to protect the word of God against the greatest atheist or agnostic in the United States” and that he was “not afraid to get on the stand in front of him and let him do his worst” (Scopes Trial Transcript). He was, no doubt, courageous for doing so. Courage alone, however, could not win this day. He was over confident in his knowledge and his ability. As such, he was also clearly overmatched. Like David of old, Bryan brought his sling and stones into battle. But this time, Goliath was waiting with a Kalashnikov.   

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References

• Farrell, J. A. (2011). Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned. New York: Doubleday.
• Gould, S.J. (1999). Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York: Ballantine Books. 
• Kazin, M. (2006). A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. New York: Anchor Books.
• Larson, E. J. (2006). Summer for the gods: The scopes trial and America’s continuing debate over science and religion. New York: Basic Books.
• Scopes Trial Transcript.
• 1925 Tennessee House Bill 185.

Italy’s role in World War One

World War I was a stage for many battles, big and small. Often overlooked or overshadowed by the more famous battles taught in the classroom, the fighting on the Italian Front proved to be very important for Italy’s reputation as a country and its inhabitants. It led to a significant loss of life, the absorption and reclamation of new territories, domestic unrest, and new alliances… for a while.   Georgie Broad introduces World War One's Italian Front.

Italian Alpini troops in 1915. From the Bibliotheque Nationale de France.

Italy enters the war… But only just

In the years leading up to World War One, Italy had been allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary, a group more commonly and widely known as the “Triple Alliance”. Italy and Austria-Hungary had canonically be considered foes since 1832, and this tension showed in the August of 1914 when the Italian Government refused to enter the war alongside Austria-Hungary, and politicians began to consider the advantages of backing the Allies.

Many at the time, citizens and people in power alike, believed that Italy’s entering into the war at all was a bad move for the country. Even so, Italy as an entity was a relatively new nation state, becoming a unified country only after the Risorgimento in the nineteenth century, and as a result, it was eager to establish itself on the European political scene as a force to be reckoned with. This ambition was all very well and good, though compared to other European powers (especially the countries Italy would be fighting should it enter the war), Italy lacked major industry. Most of its economy remained agriculturally based. But most importantly, it lacked a competent military. Such was the indecision that two groups formed – the “neutralisti” (who wanted to stay out of the war and who formed a majority), and the “interventisti” (who wanted Italy to enter the war). After much debate, those who wanted to enter won the debate, helped by the backing of Prime Minister Antonio Salandra and Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino. With the promise of territorial expansion and resources from Britain, on May 3, 1915, Italy ceased to be a part of the Triple Alliance, and 20 days later declared war on Austria-Germany.

Early battles on the Italian Front

Fighting along the Italian Front was comprised of several battles, many of which took place in the Isonzo region. As was widely suspected, the Italian Army proved to be militarily inexperienced, leading to Italian officers overcompensating for their lack of military prowess with risky and overly aggressive tactics. Despite the fact that the Austrians were heavily outnumbered, the early battles in the Isonzo region lasted over two years and caused a significant loss of Italian life. As unequal as the number of troops was, the armies eventually reached a stalemate and the battles bogged down to the most base trench warfare.

Meanwhile, on the home front….

This turn of events made the controversial Italian involvement in the war even more unpopular, causing the already angry neutralisti to start saying “I told you so”. This attitude started to spread to the wider Italian population from Pope Benedict XV to the poorer citizens living in the small, far flung foothills of the country. While disapproval from the Pope was damning enough, it was in fact the unrest among the average citizen that caused more problems for the Italian war effort. Rumors of the lack of progress and high death rate began to spread around Italy, fuelling opposition in the population. It also led to the refusal of some to enlist and the rejection of conscription. Meanwhile, desertion in the army itself reached its highest ever level.

Such a high level of opposition eventually forced the awkward resignation of Italy’s Prime Minister and former avid supporter of Italy’s entry into the war, Antonio Salandra. Salandra was replaced by the ageing Paolo Boselli, which turned out to be a rather bittersweet progression. Boselli was the political equivalent of beige paint; he possessed no immediately obvious initiative, charisma, or talent – but he was a safe bet. He was not exactly the morale boost Italy needed, but any leader was better than no leader at all.

Later battles and victory

After the early battles that took place in the Isonzo region led to a stalemate, Italy’s bullish officers got tired of waiting and launched a counteroffensive in 1916, known as the Asiago Offensive. Alas for the Italians, this offensive resulted in no real gains.

However, the situation did improve with time. Later in 1916, fighting continued in the Isonzo and eventually the Italians captured the town of Gorizia. This was exactly the shot of morale that the Italian Army so desperately needed. From then on, victory for the Italians seemed a more realistic prospect, and in 1918, two vital battles occurred that secured the Italians victory for good. The Battle of the Piave River left Austrian troops in dire need of supplies and Italian troops in grave need of reinforcements (which eventually came from Britain, France, and the USA). After Italy received reinforcements, Armando Diaz – an Italian general - launched an offensive over the River Piave on Vittorio Veneto. This attack crushed the Austrian defensive line, resulting in an eventual truce flag being sent to Italian commanders on November 3, 1918, along with Austrian requests for peace terms. It was accepted, and fighting along the Italian front ceased.

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Selected bibliography

www.alphahistory.com/worldwar1/italian-front
www.firstworldwar.com/features/minorpowers_italy.htm
www.faregliitaliani.it/FareItaliani/temi/la-prima-guerra-mondial.htm

The Dramatic 1960 US Election – JFK vs. Nixon

The 1960 US presidential election is surely one of the most famous in history. It pitched the glamor of JFK against political heavyweight Richard Nixon. Here, Christopher Benedict looks at the fascinating key areas in the election including JFK’s religion, civil rights, and those TV debates.

You can read Chris’ article on JFK and Eleanor Roosevelt’s uneasy relationship in the 1950s here.

Kennedy and Nixon before the first presidential debate in September 1960.

Step Right Up!

“There’s a sucker born every minute” is a phrase which continues to live its wrongfully folkloric life as having been fathered by P. T. Barnum, the greatest showman on earth and four-term Connecticut legislator whose abolitionist ideals led him to switch allegiances from the Democratic Party to become a sworn Lincoln Republican.

Though the origin of the aphorism is believed to trace instead to David Hannum, who financed the exhibition of the alleged ten-foot tall mummified remains of the ‘Cardiff Giant’ in 1869 and took great exception to Barnum’s simultaneous display of a mold he had made and passed off as the real deal (a fake of a fake), journalist and Gangs of New York author Herbert Asbury attributes the saying in his 1940 book Gem of the Prairie: Chicago Underworld to Michael Cassius McDonald. A charismatic Irish immigrant whose four-story gambling house ‘The Store’ was often referred to as Chicago’s “unofficial City Hall”, McDonald is said to have uttered the immortal words to calm the nerves of his business partner Harry Lawrence over his concern as to how they could possibly attract enough of the Windy City’s inhabitants to patronize their establishment. Wielding great enough influence, both criminal and political, he formed a syndicate known as McDonald’s Democrats which strong-armed the mayoral election of 1879 in the direction of Carter Harrison Sr., a distant cousin of President William Henry Harrison. 

Politics and show business have long been cozy bedfellows. There are carnival-like elements inherent to campaigns, conventions, and elections which rub shoulders with those of traveling ten-in-one sideshows and three-ring, big-top circuses of old. So, it seems only natural that both of 1960’s presidential aspirants would invoke similarly germane imagery as the election cycle wound down through the home stretch.

“The people of the United States, in this last week, have finally caught up with the promises that have been made by our opponents,” said Vice President Richard Nixon from the steps of Oakland’s City Hall on a windswept November 5. “They realize that it’s a modern medicine-man show. A pied piper from Boston and they’re not going to go down that road.”

John F. Kennedy, meanwhile, speaking before a frenzied constituency at the Boston Garden two days later, took the analogy one step further by quipping, “I run against a candidate that reminds me of the symbol of his party. The circus elephant, with his head full of ivory, a long memory, and no vision. And you have seen elephants being led around the circus ring. They grab the tail of the elephant in front of them.”

The Religion Issue

Not since anti-Prohibitionist New York Governor Alfred E. Smith in 1928 had there been a Catholic nominee for the U.S. presidency. While it may be difficult today to fathom what a substantial stumbling block this presented then to upwardly mobile politicians, the very notion of a non-Protestant potentially merging church and state was very real and simply unthinkable, making Kennedy’s Catholicism an allegorical cross to bear. So much so that his Press Secretary Pierre Salinger recalls attempting to enlist the staunchly conservative Reverend Billy Graham to aid their cause during a train ride from West Virginia to Indianapolis. 

“We were in the process of trying to get the nation’s leading Protestant churchmen to sign a public statement urging religious tolerance in the political process,” Salinger said. After initially promising his signature to the document’s final draft, Kennedy confidante and speechwriter Ted Sorensen later received a far less amenable response, in the form of “a flat-out no”, remarking that it would be wrong “to interfere in the political process.” Salinger noted that “later that year, however, Graham appeared at a number of political rallies for Richard Nixon. Apparently, it would have been wrong to interfere in the political process on behalf of a Democrat.”

Forced to directly confront the issue, Kennedy addressed the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, not to mention the nation at large, on September 12, 1960.

“Contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for President”, he stated in clear defiance without the tone of agitated self-defense. “I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.”

The Red Menace

With the domino theory put in place in the 1950s and threatening to set off a chain reaction of toppled democracies across the map, replaced by Communist adherents to the tenets of Marxism-Leninism, the incoming Commander-in-Chief would be expected to deal assertively with the bogeymen of the “red scare” in the forms of South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem, Castro in Cuba, and particularly First Secretary of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev. 

Nixon had earned a reputation as a hard-liner in the struggle to seek and destroy socialist tendencies with tough words and even tougher endeavors. First serving as legal counsel on Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, he became a household name for his successful prosecution of Communist spy Alger Hiss in 1948. It was suggested that Hiss represented all that Nixon despised. Wealthy, liberal, Harvard-educated, and handsome. Sound familiar?

Senator Kennedy was persistently needled as being “soft on Communism” by Nixon, who had slapped his 1950 Senatorial opponent Helen Gahagan Douglas with the libelous epithet “pink lady” for her New Deal progressiveness and references to HUAC as a “smear organization”. Interestingly enough, in 1950 Kennedy, his father Joe an anti-Communist McCarthy crony, privately supported Nixon. “I obviously can’t endorse you,” he admitted, “but it isn’t going to break my heart if you can turn the Senate’s loss (Douglas, herself a former actress) into Hollywood’s gain.”

Khrushchev, who would go toe-to-toe with Kennedy during the Vienna Summit, Cuban Missile Crisis, Berlin Wall standoff, and Test Ban Treaty, offered this after-the-fact personal assessment of both candidates in his memoirs. “I was impressed with Kennedy. I remember liking his face which was sometimes stern but which often broke into a good-natured smile. As for Nixon...he had been a puppet of Joseph McCarthy until McCarthy’s star began to fade, at which point Nixon turned his back on him. So, he was an unprincipled puppet, which is the most dangerous kind,” he wrote. “I was very glad Kennedy won the election... I could tell he was interested in finding a peaceful solution to world problems and avoiding conflict with the Soviet Union.”

Civil Rights

An initial Kennedy backer until he felt snubbed during a personal meeting and came to the conclusion that the Democrat was unwilling to move forward on civil rights issues, retired Brooklyn Dodger and destroyer of baseball’s color barrier Jackie Robinson campaigned instead for the Republican nominee but bemoaned the fact that “the Negro vote was not at all committed to Kennedy, but it went there because Mr. Nixon did not do anything to win it.”

Kennedy, in a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt who was pushing the reluctant Senator into progressive action in courting the support of the black community, wrote, “With respect to Jackie Robinson… he has made uncomplimentary statements to the press about me,” sulking that, “I know that he is out to do as much damage as possible.” Nixon’s running mate Nelson Rockefeller, with Robinson’s blessing, was eventually called upon to espouse the ticket’s fidelity to civil rights in what was considered a too-little, too-late effort.

Kennedy, meanwhile, placed a conciliatory phone call to Coretta Scott King following the arrest of her husband Martin and fifty-two fellow protestors staging a sit-in at the Magnolia Room of Rich’s Department Store in Atlanta. Sentenced to four months of hard labor after all others involved had been released, Martin Luther King was freed only when news of Kennedy’s gesture, as well as brother Robert’s personal intervention on King’s behalf, reached the Georgian judge who had presided over the case. “Because this man was willing to wipe the tears from my daughter’s eyes,” said an emotional King, “I’ve got a suitcase of votes and I’m going to take them to Mr. Kennedy and dump them in his lap.”  

It is worth noting that these maneuvers on the part of the Kennedy brothers carried more than a slight whiff of patronizing opportunism and that, although the both of them did evolve dramatically and genuinely in later years on race relations, it was a birthing process which was painful and sluggish.

The Debates

“Without the many panels and news shows, without his shrewd use of TV commercials and telecast speeches, without television tapes to spread wherever needed his confrontation with the Houston ministers, without the four great debates with Richard Nixon, John Kennedy would never have been elected President,” asserted Ted Sorensen. 

Though they squared off four times (Kennedy lobbied fruitlessly for a fifth), it was the first on September 26, 1960 in Chicago’s CBS Studios which proved to be as visually revealing as it was historically significant. The first ever televised presidential debate, the new medium did Nixon no favors. Having just been released from the hospital after the knee he injured on the campaign trail had become dangerously infected, the Vice President, underweight and sporting a five o’clock shadow, was still susceptible to feverish sweats and a sickly complexion which may have been alleviated somewhat had he not refused a cosmetic touch-up. Nixon’s poor physical appearance was augmented by his unfortunate choice of a grey suit which was ill-fitting and represented poorly in black and white against the studio’s similarly drab backdrop. 

Contrasted against Kennedy’s navy blue suit, copper-colored tan, and million dollar smile, Nixon staggered into a situation which found him already at a decided disadvantage. Like college kids cramming for an exam, Kennedy went through hours of dry runs with Sorensen and Salinger and his levels of confidence and preparedness were evident for all to see. Falling back on practices learned while starring on Whittier College’s esteemed debate club, Nixon continually addressed Kennedy personally, looking away from the television cameras to do so, appearing anxious and adversarial. Poll results differ to this day, but most seem to suggest that the two combatants were evenly matched in terms of verbal content as heard by radio listeners which was betrayed by the pair’s physical incongruities visible to home viewers.

One person who concurred was Nixon’s own running mate Henry Cabot Lodge who remarked, “That son of a bitch just lost the election.”

First Ladies

On assignment for the April 1953 edition of the Washington Times-Herald, their Inquiring Camera Girl Jackie Bouvier interviewed both Vice President Richard Milhouse Nixon and newly elected Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy. Jack and Jackie had been quietly seeing one another since a dinner party the year before where, as then-Congressman Kennedy recalled, “I leaned across the asparagus and asked for her for a date.” Their relationship attained a public profile in January 1953 when the Hamptons-born beauty (with brains to match) accompanied Kennedy to Dwight Eisenhower’s inaugural ball. Pregnant with John Jr. and confined to bed rest for much of the 1960 campaign, Jackie may not have been an observable presence, but did contribute in the way of a syndicated newspaper column called Campaign Wife which combined personal anecdotes with political affairs, as well as handling correspondence and giving interviews. 

Pat Nixon, on the other hand, was never far from Richard’s side, or the public consciousness. A “Pat For First Lady” movement gained strength among the schoolteachers and housewives to whom she tailored her message, and her likeness could be seen on nearly as many buttons and bumper stickers as that of her husband. An attempt was even made in the press, ill-conceived and ill-fated, to manufacture a race for First Lady between Pat and Jackie based on clothing choices as much as, if not more than, party platform.

Dismissed by Mamie Eisenhower as “that woman” for her inimitable fashion sense, Jackie, in turn, took a catty swipe at her 1960 rival for First Lady by telling historian and Kennedy think-tank member Arthur Schlesinger Jr. that Jack “wasn’t thinking of his image, or he would have made me get a little frizzy permanent like Pat Nixon.” 

Postlude

Both men would, of course, achieve the Presidency. Nixon not until 1968, and only after the path had been paved by Lyndon Johnson’s concession to neither seek nor accept his party’s nomination as well as the assassination of Robert Kennedy a mere four and a half years after his own brother, on that fateful November day in Dallas, was made a national martyr on equal footing, in the hearts and minds of generations of Americans, with the beloved Abraham Lincoln.

All of this calls to mind something P. T. Barnum actually did say. “You have to throw a gold brick into the uncertain waters of the future, and faith because there will be many difficult days before you will see the returns start rolling in.”

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And remember… You can read Chris’ article on JFK and Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1950s by clicking here.

Sources

• The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore White (1961, Atheneum House).
• With Kennedy by Pierre Salinger (1966, Doubleday).
• Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady by Greg Mitchell (1998, Random House).
• Khrushchev Remembers by Nikita Khrushchev, edited by Edward Crankshaw (1970, Little, Brown, and Co.).
• Letter from Jackie Robinson to Theodore L. Humes, November 16, 1960.
• Letter from John F. Kennedy to Eleanor Roosevelt, September 3, 1960.
• The Kennedy Legacy: A Peaceful Revolution for the Seventies by Theodore Sorensen (1969, MacMillan).
• Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, Interviews with Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. 1964, with introduction and annotations by Michael Beschloss (2011, Hyperion).
• Jack Kennedy: The Illustrated Life of a President (2009, Chronicle Books).

What if… The Nazis had not invaded Crete in World War Two?

In 1941, Nazi Germany launched a successful invasion of the Greek island of Crete. But what if this had been unsuccessful? In this article, Nick Tingley examines how it could have seriously impacted the German invasion of Russia – and may have even changed the course of World War Two itself.

Italian marines after landing on Crete in May 1941.

Operation Tidal Wave

“In the midst of the dark sea is a land called Crete, fair and fertile, surrounded by the waves.”

-       Homer, The Odyssey

In the early hours of a June morning in 1942, Maleme airfield was a hive of activity. For the first time since the failed German attempt to capture Crete in 1941, American bombers rolled up to the airstrip and their crews began their final preparations for a great attack, codenamed “Operation Tidal Wave”. Finally, a flare was launched into the sky and the rows of bombers began to race along the strip before leaping up into the sky. Once in the air, they were joined by escort craft from the nearby airfields of Heraklion and Rethymnon, and soon the bomber force began to turn north and disappeared away from the island. Their targets were the nine Ploiesti oil refineries in Romania that, under continuous air attack from the island fortress, soon became unusable for the Axis powers.

As the bombers disappeared into the distance, the commander of the Allied ground troops on Crete, Major-General Bernard Freyberg VC, watched with satisfaction. As he watched, his mind returned to the two weeks in May 1941, when the determined soldiers of “Creforce” successful beat back a large German airborne invasion and showed the world that the Allies would not be defeated by Nazi Germany.

Operation Mercury

Unfortunately for Freyberg this was not the case. A year earlier, on the morning of May 20, 1941, the Germans launched an airborne invasion of Crete, codenamed Operation Mercury. Whilst the Germans had suffered heavy casualties, enough to convince Adolf Hitler that the German military should never again conduct a large-scale airborne operation, the 40,000 men of the Allied defense were soon overwhelmed and Crete became the latest possession of the Third Reich.

The capture of Crete was perfect for the German military machine. Not only did it mean that the Balkan flank was secured only a few days before the invasion of Russia, Operation Barbarossa, was launched, but it also allowed the Germans to create a staging point to allow for easy troop movement between Europe and North Africa. From the airfields, the Germans were able to launch significant convoy strikes on ships travelling between Egypt and the Allies’ other island possessions in the Mediterranean: Malta and Cyprus.

For the Allies, it represented a significant blow to their morale. The Battle of Crete had depended largely on the Allies holding the island’s airfields but disorganization and an unclear defensive plan had led to the airfields being captured and the Allied troops being overrun and forced to evacuate to Egypt. But the capture of Crete was more than just a military embarrassment; there was also a considerable fear that the Germans might use Crete as a staging point for an invasion of Cyprus or Egypt to support the German and Italian forces that were operating out of Libya further to the west. It was only when the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa that it became clear that this was not the intention.

In Crete itself, the invasion and occupation led to a civil uprising amongst the civilians who lived there. For the first time in the war, the German Army encountered widespread resistance from the civilian population, with thousands of civilians taking up arms against their German invaders. During the first few months of the occupation, the Germans routinely executed male civilians in reprisal for the deaths of German soldiers. In the Massacres of Kondomari and Viannos alone, the death toll exceeded 500.

The Barbarossa Question

The Battle of Crete is one of the more interesting what ifs to have come out of the Second World War. For decades, historians have placed differing amounts of weight on the importance of the battle. For some, the capture of Crete was incidental and, had the battle gone the other way, would have made very little difference to the outcome of the war. Others have suggested that Crete was vitally important and point to its strategic location as the main reason for its importance.

One of the key subjects that is always discussed when talking about the Battle of Crete is the impact it had on Operation Barbarossa. Some historians are keen to point out that Barbarossa was launched shortly after the Battle of Crete was won and make the suggestion that the invasion of Russia might not have gone ahead at all if Crete had not been captured. To discover whether this is indeed the case, we must examine several links between Operation Barbarossa and Operation Mercury: Hitler’s intentions towards both operations, the troop units that both operations shared, and the impact that the units used in the Battle of Crete made on the invasion of Russia.

Hitler authorized the invasion of Crete in April 1941, making it clear that he wanted to use units that were already in the area as they were used during the invasion of Greece. He also stated that any units involved in the operation that had already been earmarked for Barbarossa should conclude their missions by the end of May so that they would be available for the invasion of Russia. In doing this, Hitler had made his position completely clear – Barbarossa was the priority and, if the invasion of Crete could not be launched in time, Operation Mercury would not go ahead at all.

This would indicate that, in Hitler’s view at least, the inevitable capture or destruction of troops from a failed attempt to take Crete would have implications on Barbarossa. Hitler had made himself completely clear and by putting emphasis on his orders to have the units returned in time for Barbarossa, we can begin to suggest that a failed attempt on Crete may have had far greater implications for the German army than one might first think.

The Deployment of Troops

One of the things that the invasion of Crete did for the Germans was to help secure the Balkan flank. With Crete and, more importantly, its airfields in German hands, Hitler felt confident of launching the invasion of Russia without fearing a flanking attack through Greece. However, if the invasion had failed, and the units had been lost, this could have been quite a different story.

The three main units that were involved in the German attack on Crete were the 7th Flieger Division, the 5th Mountain Division and the 8th Air Corps. The 7th Flieger Division were the main thrust of the attack and were dropped across Crete with the simple task to secure the airfields so that the 5th Mountain Division could follow. The 8th Air Corps operated from Greece, providing aerial support for the troops on the ground.

In order to accurately determine how the loss of these units would have affected Barbarossa, we must address two scenarios. In the first, the 7th Flieger Division land on Crete but fail to take the airfields meaning that the 5th Mountain Division would never join the battle. In the second, the airfields are taken but an Allied counter-attack overruns them leaving both divisions to their fate. In the first scenario, the 7th Flieger Division would be all but destroyed meaning that it would not be available for Barbarossa, however the Mountain Division would have survived.

But would this have made a vast difference to Barbarossa? In reality, whilst both units survived the battle, the number of German casualties was so high that neither unit took part in the opening stages of Barbarossa. The 7th Flieger Division would not return to full strength until September 1941 and the 5th Mountain Division would not end up on the Eastern Front until April the following year. In fact, out of the three main units, only the 8th Air Corps was ready to take part in Barbarossa and was swiftly returned to the Eastern Front to conduct pre-emptive strikes in June 1941.

Even so, an Allied victory on Crete would have had a profound impact on the deployment of German troops in the region. If the Allies had held Crete, it is almost certainly true that Germany would have had to redeploy troops to protect the Greek coast against a possible Allied attack there. This would have meant rushing some of the units intended for Barbarossa down to Greece. In addition to this, the Allies would have still had three fully functioning airfields as the Germans would have left those intact to help supply their invasion. In order to combat the potential British attacks that may have followed, it is almost certain that the 8th Air Corps would have remained in Greece to conduct regular operations to knock out the British Air bases. It may have even been the case that, because of the threat from an Allied Crete, more aerial units would be moved down to Greece to help protect the convoys of supplies that travelled between Europe and Libya.

A Different Tidal Wave

In reality, it seems unlikely that an Allied Crete would have had much of an impact on the war in Russia. Whilst some inconvenience may have been caused to the Germans, their air power would have been more than enough to suppress the forces there, at least until the arrival of the Americans the following year. However, the main difference may lie in one of the most unknown operations in the Second World War – Operation Tidal Wave.

In June 1942 and August 1943, American bombers were sent from Egypt and Libya respectively to bomb the oil refineries at Ploiesti in Romania. One of the largest producers of crude oil in Europe, Ploiesti is estimated to have supplied 35% of the Axis oil supplied in 1943 and the Americans wanted it destroyed. However, the mission itself was a failure. The initial attack in 1942 did little damage to the refineries and only alerted the Germans to the vulnerability of the area. During Operation Tidal Wave, the following year, the Germans had drastically improved their air defenses, an improvement that led to the loss of 55 American bombers.

One cannot help but wonder that, had the bombers been able to launch from Crete, and had been escorted part of the way by fighters that could be launched from there as well, the result might have been quite different. If this attack had happened in the summer of 1942, and had resulted in fewer losses, the Allies might have been able to completely obliterate the Axis’ primary source of crude oil. At a time when the defense of the Soviet Union hung in the balance, this would have come as a tremendous blow to the German military machine and may well have caused it to come grinding to a halt.

As well as that, with the Allies achieving victory in North Africa, the Germans would have been forced to consider the idea of an Allied invasion of Europe through Greece and would have had to prepare defenses accordingly. This would have inevitably taken a huge amount of pressure off the Russians in the east and the D-Day landings in the west. It may have even ended the war that much sooner.

In the end, we will never know what would have happened had the Allies held on to Crete. But it is always important to remember that Crete was only a sideshow for the main event that was the invasion of Russia. Crete was the battle that Hitler was prepared to lose. That, in itself, speaks volumes.

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You can also read Nick’s previous articles on what if D-Day did not happen in 1944 here and what if Hitler had been assassinated in July 1944 here.