This article appeared in the March 12, 1999 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
How Henry Stimson bombed Hiroshima, and Nagasaki too
by Stu Rosenblatt
Book Review:
The Colonel: The Life and Wars of Henry Stimson 1867-1950
Godfrey Hodgson
Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992 402 pages, paperbound
There never was, and never will be any conceivable military justification for the August 1945 U.S. nuclear-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Among all the evidence available on this matter, the documentary record compiled by several among the relevant primary sources, including the signed confessions of U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson himself, is more than sufficient to justify this conclusion. Nonetheless, the witless litany, the lie that that bombing "saved the lives of a million Americans," has widespread credulity to this day.
The most notable recent public furor over the myth of the "million American lives saved," erupted in 1994-95, when the Smithsonian Institution launched an exhibition on the "Enola Gay,"[1] the B-29 which delivered the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. The lobbyists for the litany prevailed, once again, on that occasion, and the truth about the Hiroshima bombing was once again kicked into the ashcan.
So, that Big Lie rolls on, another of those sanctimonious, so-called "patriotic" lies, which continues to contribute so much to the follies of that aberrant species of post-Douglas MacArthur sand-box strategists represented by today's Gore-Cohen-Shelton-Fuerth-Albright Principals Committee.
The fact of the Hiroshima matter has been summarized, and situated afresh within the just-issued campaign statement of Democratic Party Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche. Although the evidence of then-Secretary of War Henry Stimson's role in the affair has been referenced in a variety of relevant secondary sources, such as former London Times editor Godfrey Hodgson's 1992 book, even so-called informed public opinion has yet to grasp the nature and continuing historic significance of Stimson's role.
On the cutting-edge of this matter, Stimson's role in bringing about that bombing, is an outstanding example of one of the deadly varieties of strategic blunders for which our nation is still paying dearly. It is important, for both the honor and future security of our United States, that the policy expressed by the inexcusable Hiroshima bombing, is recognized as one of those types of terrible mistakes we dare not allow, ever again. The evidence fully supporting that judgment of the matter, is there, but, so far, the continuing significance of Stimson's role in that affair, up to the present day, does not "click" in the most relevant circles of either official policy-shaping or public opinion.
On that account, a review of Stimson's role is a timely warning against the kinds of dangers to our national security represented by the recent and continuing bunglings and lunacies of what Vice-President Al Gore and his cronies have lately dominated as the Principals Committee.
The war had already been won
By the time of Germany's unconditional surrender, Japan's military situation had become hopeless for the short term. Emperor Hirohito's diplomats had already been seeking terms of surrender prior to President Roosevelt's death on April 12, 1945. Indeed, the terms of surrender under the MacArthur-led occupation, were approximately those being negotiated through Vatican intermediaries prior to the President's death. Before the bombing of Hiroshima, on Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. expectation had been that the Japanese commanders would be compelled, by force of the circumstances within the main islands of Japan, to bend to the Emperor's will and accept terms of surrender during no later than the autumn. Indeed, already on July 13, 1945, Japan's diplomats had again placed the case before the Soviet government in Moscow.
There was no reason for U.S.--or Japanese--lives to be wasted in an invasion of the main islands of Japan.
Nonetheless, back in Washington, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, by early May now in virtually complete control of the new President Harry Truman, was orchestrating what he intended should become the nuclear-terror bombing of Japan.
From May 1945 on, Stimson took two crucial steps. First, he deliberately prolonged the fighting, including the mass bombings of Japan, increasing the death toll. Second, he proceeded on a forced march to drop the atomic bomb, without warning, on an already-defeated adversary. His intent was to exploit the situation, to usher in the "Age of MAD-ness," i.e., the doctrine of Mutual and Assured Destruction (MAD), to terrorize the world into submission to his "globalist" oligarchical schemes.
To carry out his plan, Stimson had to first put Truman into his pocket. To prevent an early summer peace negotiation, Stimson convinced the suggestible President Truman to delay the planned Potsdam conference until after the bomb's construction had been completed and the design given its first test. He was determined to make the bomb the centerpiece of U.S. and British post-war strategy. This, as he detailed in his later writings on this subject, was his way of dealing with the Soviets, the Japanese, and, in fact, the entire world. Most revisionist historians, who focus solely on U.S.-Soviet relations, such as Gar Alperovitz writing from London, miss the point. London-controlled Stimson had crafted a lawyerly joint strategy of Wall Street and the British monarchy, to pre-set the agenda for the new United Nations and the post-war world as a whole.
Stimson succeeded in convincing Truman to push back the date for the Potsdam meeting with Churchill and Stalin, until July, and also told all witting circles to keep quiet, for the time being, on the reasoning behind this delay. The initial reason to hold the Potsdam conference was to renegotiate the Yalta agreements in the Far East. Stimson noted in his diary that "the questions cut very deep and were powerfully connected with our success with" the atomic bomb.
Stimson wrote on May 14, urging such a delay: "I tried to point out the difficulties which existed and I thought it was premature to ask those questions; at least we were not yet in a position to answer them. . . . It may be necessary to have it out with Russia on her relations to Manchuria and Port Arthur and various other parts of North China, and also the relations of China to us. Over any such tangled weave of problems . . . [the atomic bomb] secret would be dominant and yet we will not know until after that time, probably . . . whether this is a weapon in our hands or not. We think it will be shortly afterwards, but it seems a terrible thing to gamble with such big stakes in diplomacy without having your master card in your hand."[2]
The next day Stimson had a private meeting with his Assistant Secretary of War and protégé John J. McCloy, where he underscored his thinking: "The time now and the method now to deal with Russia was to keep our mouths shut and let our actions speak for words. The Russians will understand them better than anything else. It is a case where we have got to regain the lead and perhaps do it in a pretty rough and realistic way. . . . This is a place where we really held all the cards. I called it a royal straight flush and we mustn't be a fool about the way we play it. They can't get along without our help and industries and we have coming into action a weapon which will be unique. Now the thing is not to get into unnecessary quarrels by talking too much and not to indicate any weakness by talking too much; let our actions speak for themselves."[3]
Not only did Stimson arrange to have the Potsdam Conference postponed; he also intervened on the ongoing surrender talks with the Japanese. He ensured that the language of "unconditional surrender" that had been communicated to the Japanese, which was a huge sticking point in the talks, not be altered. He said that the language "could be changed, but should not, for certain military reasons."[4] (See box.)
Truman's mentor and personal representative on the Interim Committee, Secretary of State James "Jimmy" Byrnes, was consulting almost daily with Truman on these issues, and strongly favored dropping the atomic bomb; but it was Stimson, not Byrnes, who set the climate, and shaped the curvature that led inexorably toward nuclear detonation.
Japan must not be warned
On May 31, 1945, Stimson chaired the critical meeting of what had been named the Interim Committee dealing with this matter. The committee met first with scientists, and later with the industrialists central to the Manhattan Project. This was both a status report meeting and full discussion of implementation. This was also the only time at which discussion of an explicit, public warning to the Japanese took place. Curiously, this issue was raised by Byrnes. The ensuing discussion was dominated by blunt opposition to any suggestion that Japanese officials be forewarned, and rejection of the U.S. atomic scientists' proposal that a demonstration be made on an uninhabited island. All this was agreed to by most participants in attendance, including Robert Oppenheimer, the latter perhaps under pressure from Gen. Leslie Groves.
Like the convening of any grand jury today, prosecutor Stimson orchestrated the hearing to achieve his desired results.
In Stimson's mind there would be no warning to the Japanese; there could be allowed no pretext that might forestall use of the atomic bomb. The Japanese were to be the guinea pigs for the world. Dropping the bomb was critical to Stimson's scheme. The nuclear attack would serve as his warning to the Soviets, and all other opponents who would not buckle under to the one-world dogma.
Thus, the Interim Committee report to the President, as summarized by Stimson, stated: "The Secretary expressed the conclusion, on which there was general agreement, that we could not give the Japanese any warning; that we could not concentrate on a civilian area; but that we should seek to make a profound psychological impression on as many of the inhabitants as possible. At the suggestion of Dr. Conant (president of Harvard University and member of the Committee), the Secretary agreed that the most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers' houses."
Former Theodore Roosevelt protégé Stimson was determined to not only carry the big stick, but to use it.
`Wars cannot be won by destroying women and children'
Even so, as the time which Stimson had chosen to drop the bombs approached, significant high-level opposition to Stimson's scheme came forward. The opposition included scientists who were in the program, but was centered among upper echelon military officials who had been briefed on the imminent attack.
On the military side, the opponents were powerful and high ranking, including the relevant theater commander, Gen. Douglas MacArthur. They also included Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander; Adm. William D. Leahy, Truman's Chief of Staff; Gen. H.H. (Hap) Arnold, head of the Army Air Force; Ralph A. Bard, Undersecretary of the Navy and member of the Interim Committee; and even John J. McCloy, Undersecretary of War.
Eisenhower, for his part, expressed the hope that the bomb would never be used, "because I disliked seeing the United States take the lead in introducing into war something as horrible and destructive."
In his memoir, Mandate for Change, Eisenhower described his July 1945 meeting with Stimson at Potsdam, when the decision to use the bomb was being made. "During his [Stimson's] recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at the very moment, seeking to surrender with a minimum of loss of `face.'
"The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reasons I gave for my quick conclusions."[5]
Although that is Eisenhower's later reflection on the exchange, it is coherent with his participation in the opposition to the bombing at that time.
More directly to the point, was the view of Admiral Leahy, the relevant senior American military officer, who said that the "bomb was of no material assistance. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. . . . My own feeling was that in being the first to use it we had adopted the ethical standards common to barbarians in the dark ages."
Later, Leahy said, "I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."[6]
Navy Undersecretary Bard later said in a TV interview that "with the proper kind of warning the Japanese would have made peace and we wouldn't have had to drop the bomb."[7]
McCloy, closer to Stimson than any other adviser, had running battles with the Secretary throughout the summer of 1945, passionately arguing against use of the bomb. McCloy read all the intercepts, and knew the military situation intimately. He undoubtedly shared the estimate of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, which was released at the end of the war but certainly known at the time. That conspicuously disingenuous Survey, released in 1946, concluded: "Certainly prior to December 1945, and in all probability prior to November 1, 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."[8]
A stream of peace overtures
With its prospects for victory all but ended, even before President Roosevelt's death on April 12, 1945, Japan's Emperor Hirohito was behind special diplomatic efforts, looking for any and all ways to end the war. In April, the Office of Strategic Services's (OSS) Switzerland-based, but London-controlled Allen Dulles did not, in fact, open such discussions. Dulles intervened in the course of his takeover of previously ongoing U.S. involvement in monitoring peace efforts, which had been in progress under the eye of the OSS's chief on the ground in Italy, Max Corvo. These original discussions had been conducted through Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini (later Pope Paul VI) of the Vatican Office of Extraordinary Affairs. Covering his tracks in this matter, Dulles sent his own manicured version of the case to Stimson.
According to Alperovitz's version, Dulles reported, tendentiously, that he had been approached by "Japanese army and navy spokesmen there and also by some Japanese officials at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel. They wished to determine whether they could not also take advantage of Dulles's secret channels to Washington to secure peace for Japan."[9] In itself, the statement has elements of truth, but was otherwise willfully misleading in what it used its facts to conceal.
According to the official myths of Hiroshima passed down to the present time, by May 1945, the only impediment to peace was the Japanese demand for retention of their Emperor and their constitution, thus to maintain order in the country following a humiliating surrender. This was never an impediment to peace, as the post-Hiroshima U.S. support for leaving the Emperor in his position attests. Many high-ranking administration officials, including Undersecretary of State Joseph Grew, no friend of the Japanese, urged that the government change its posture and support retention of the Emperor. This was successfully opposed by Stimson prior to Hiroshima. Stimson was not actually concerned with the issue of the Emperor remaining as head of state; Stimson was simply concocting every pretext he could fabricate, in support of his one purpose: to hit Japan with the nuclear weapons--then two bombs--in the U.S. arsenal.
On May 12, William J. Donovan, Director of the OSS and Corvo's boss, sent a memo to Truman on negotiations with the Japanese Minister to Switzerland, who wanted to arrange an end to the war, a report which also reflected Corvo's close eye on the main body of these negotiations through Vatican channels. According to Donovan's report, the Japanese diplomats' major demand was retention of the Emperor.
These are merely samplings of the stream of peace overtures. The war could have been ended by the spring of 1945, and Stimson was fully aware of the situation. But, Stimson was not seeking peace at the time. He was marching to a different drummer.
Thus, despite the desire of the Japanese to sue for peace, and over the objection of groups of scientists and the leadership of the U.S. military, the bomb was dropped. To understand why events transpired so, it will be necessary to look more closely at Stimson and his background.
Nuclear detonation and globalist schemes
By the spring of 1945, it was clear to Secretary of War Stimson that the war with Japan was nearly over. The immediate issue on Stimson's mind, was not ending the war; it was the shape of the post-war order. To this end, he chose to view the Soviets as moving aggressively to cement control over various areas of eastern Europe and as about to enter into the war with Japan. For his own purposes, Stimson desired, even demanded, that that be Soviet policy. For his own purposes, Stimson desired that Soviet war aims would include seizing territory in China, and possibly elsewhere. Within this geopolitical framework, it was his concern to portray the West as being outmaneuvered by Moscow, whether this was actually the situation at that time, or not.
From a reading of the sources which have been reviewed for this report, the question as to whether Stimson was privy to British aims to prolong the war, may appear to have been left unclear. Perhaps Stimson did have some points of difference with some British policy-shapers on the need for some sort of Wilsonian world government; he did disagree, loudly enough to be heard clearly, with Roosevelt's plan for the post-war United Nations configuration. Among other things, Stimson opposed ending the pre-war colonialist regimes of Britain and others. On such premises, for example, he never supported independence for the Philippines.
Stimson wished "Great Power" agreements to lead into the post-war era. The role to be played by the United Nations Organization (UNO) was, in his scheme, merely a secondary, auxiliary one. In his view, for which he argued repeatedly, and in significant detail, Stimson's intentions were identical with those notions of "real world government," as stated by nuclear-terrorist Bertrand Russell, both before and after his elaboration of his preventive nuclear policy in the September 1946 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. For Stimson, as for Russell, these should be Great Power agreements negotiated with a subservient Soviet Union, on the one side, and the U.S.A. and the United Kingdom, on the other.
So, Stimson did not oppose world government categorically; he drew the line at allowing the UNO as such, a free hand in such matters. Like his predecessor, today's Defense Secretary William Cohen,[10] Stimson did not wish the world's military operations to be subject to a UNO Secretariat; he demanded a tamed UNO, one actually functioning at the nuclear whim of Wall Street and the British monarchy. Stimson wished world government, but he wished it to be unequivocally based on feudalistic terms suitable to what he desired as the form of a renewed "Anglo-American" partnership between Wall Street lawyers and bankers, on the one side, and the British monarchy, on the other.
As shown by early-1980s studies of OSS history assembled from the U.S. National Archives and other privileged sources, the shocking and disgusting feature of the OSS, and of the Plattsburgh crowd of Stimson, McCloy, et al. earlier, is the widespread, lackey-like fawning of what should have been American patriots upon the monstrously decadent British monarchy. Then, after World Wars I and II, and, with utter shamelessness under President George Bush, a decadent parade of unmanly, but notable U.S. figures, such as Sir Caspar Weinberger, Sir Henry Kissinger, and Sir George Bush himself, virtually crawled on their bellies, from the street to Buckingham Palace, to receive ceremonial titles of British nobility and related aristocratic honors. Such was the mentality of Secretary of War Henry Stimson.
By April 1945, Stimson began to see the potential inherent in the development of the nuclear bomb. For him, this would be the startling new device that would ensure both Wall Street's and the British monarchy's shared domination of a newly created, pacified world order. Dropping the bomb on Japan would demonstrate to the world the Teddy Roosevelt-style resolve to impose his own solutions upon the world. None of the respect for other nations that was embedded in FDR's UNO would emanate from Stimson. His actions would revive the harsh images of 19th-century British colonial conquest.
In Stimson's rhetoric, disarmament, as he presented it, was critical for preventing another world war, and to guarantee that unbridled militarism and, especially, recalcitrant nationalism, would be subdued. Stimson's sophistry ran, that there were only two paradigmatic symbols for the use of the term "democracies" in the world, the United States and the U.K. All others were not to be trusted. An adamant opponent of FDR's New Deal, Stimson's foreign policy never included a commitment to an interest in future economic growth of the United States or any other part of the world. He seemed indifferent to economic realities. His was the imposition of power politics. Economic development, as enunciated in Lyndon LaRouche's proposal for a New Bretton Woods financial system, would never enter into Stimson's thinking.
Stimson was the type of hard-core Wall Street Morgan Republican depicted in the November 1934 Congressional testimony of Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, on the subject of Wall Street's planned coup d'état against President-elect Franklin Roosevelt.[11] Throughout his career, Stimson had believed in tight budgets, no deficits, and free trade. He was determined to implement the demilitarized outlook he fought for in the 1930s, and punish former opponents, especially Japan, for their military exploits in the 1930s and 1940s.
All of these issues came together for him with the advent of the bomb. This would be the ultimate "Teddy Roosevelt big stick" policy, with which to order the world. For this purpose, it was imperative, for Stimson, that the bomb be used, not merely threatened.
The `condominium' approach
As the Manhattan Project neared its conclusion, Stimson became obsessed with the new range of possibilities that now lay open to him. He went through three phases of strategic appraisal.
From April through July, Stimson succeeded in delaying the Potsdam conference until after the bomb had been tested. For the next two months, Stimson embraced the idea that the bomb could be used to intimidate and bludgeon the world, most notably the Soviets, into accepting his terms for running the planet. This included ending all totalitarian aspects of their system in favor of a more "democratic" approach.
After the bomb was dropped, he changed this outlook. He dropped all demands that the Soviets junk their system in exchange for information on how to acquire the bomb. Instead, he launched what would today be identified as the "condominium" approach. It was this approach which would lead directly to Pugwash and the arms control movement, as later spearheaded by his disciple McCloy. Echoing Britain's Bertrand Russell, he proposed to use the threat of the bomb to lure the Soviets into a tripartite scheme (American-British-Soviet) for global control.
The first phase began in April, when Stimson sent a memo to President Truman, outlining the strategic ramifications of dropping the bomb:
"1. Within four months we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city.
"2. Although we have shared its development with the U.K., physically the U.S. is at present in the position of controlling the resources with which to construct and use it and no other nation could reach this position for some years.
"3. Nevertheless it is practically certain that we could not remain in this position indefinitely. . . . It is extremely probable that much easier and cheaper methods of production will be discovered by scientists in the future. . . . As a result, it is extremely probable that the future will make it possible to be constructed by smaller nations or even groups, or at least by a large nation in a much shorter time.
"4. As a result, it is indicated that the future may see a time when such a weapon may be constructed in secret and used effectively with devastating power by a willful nation or group against an unsuspecting nation or group of much greater size and power. . . . Even a very powerful unsuspecting nation might be conquered within a very few days by a very much smaller one. . . .
"5. The world in its present state of moral advancement compared with its technical development would be at the mercy of such a weapon. . . . Modern civilization might be completely destroyed.
"6. To approach any world peace organization of any pattern now likely to be considered, without an appreciation by the leaders of our country of the power of this new weapon, would seem to be unrealistic. No system of control heretofore considered would be adequate to control this menace. . . . The control of this weapon will undoubtedly be a matter of the greatest difficulty and would involve such thoroughgoing rights of inspection and internal controls as we have never heretofore contemplated.
"7. Furthermore, in light of our present position with reference to this weapon, the question of sharing it with other nations and, if so shared, upon what terms, becomes a primary question of our foreign relations. . . .
"8. On the other hand, if the problem of the proper use of this weapon can be solved, we would have the opportunity to bring the world into a pattern in which the peace of the world and our civilization can be saved."[12]
In July, once the bomb had been successfully tested at Alamogordo, things changed rapidly. Truman and Churchill, with a swagger in their step, negotiated hard with Stalin at Potsdam. A last-ditch peace offer was issued to the Japanese, but with a warning about the atomic bomb that was so vague as to ensure that the offer would be rejected. At this point, Stimson now counselled Truman to use the bomb as blackmail to force the Soviets to give up their entire political system. In exchange, the West would show the Russians how to construct atomic weapons.
In another memo to Truman, issued after Potsdam, Stimson outlined his new perspective:
"1. With each international conference that passes and, in fact, with each month that passes between conferences, it becomes clearer that the great basic problem of the future is the stability of the relations of the Western democracies with Russia.
"2. With each such time that passes it also becomes clear that that problem arises out of the fundamental differences between a nation of free thought, free speech, free elections, in fact a really free people, and a nation which is not basically free but which is systematically controlled from above by secret police and in which free speech is not permitted.
"3. The great problem ahead is how to deal with this basic difference which exists as a flaw in our desired accord. I believe we must not accept the present situation as permanent for the result will then almost inevitably be a new war and the destruction of our civilization.
"4. The foregoing has a vital bearing upon the control of the vast and revolutionary discovery of atomic energy which is now confronting us. Upon the successful control of that energy depends the future successful development or destruction of this modern civilized world. The committee appointed by the War Department which has been considering that control has pointed this out in no uncertain terms and has called for an international organization for that purpose. After careful reflection I am of the belief that no world organization containing as one of its dominant members a nation whose people are not possessed of free speech, but whose governmental action is controlled by the autocratic machinery of a secret political police, can give effective control of this new agency with its devastating possibilities.
"5. I therefore believe that before we share our new discovery with Russia we should consider carefully whether we can do so safely under any system of control until Russia puts into effective action the proposed constitution which I have mentioned. If this is a necessary condition, we must go slowly in any disclosures or agreeing to any Russian participation and constantly explore the question how our head start in the atom bomb and Russian desire to participate can be used to bring us nearer to the removal of the basic difficulties which I have emphasized."[13]
The insanity doctrine
On Aug. 6, 1945, Stimson and Truman, with the implied clearance from Churchill, acted. On that day, in a premeditated act typical of Churchill's penchant for mass murder and terror, Truman dropped one atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, he dropped another, the last in the arsenal, on Nagasaki. More than 100,000 human beings were incinerated, and the world was changed forever.
At the center of this action was the idea of the use of terror, as stressed by Stimson, James Conant, and Gen. George Marshall. In his memoirs, Stimson described the deliberate policy of nuclear terror: "I felt that to extract a genuine surrender from the Emperor and his military advisers, there must be administered a tremendous shock which would carry convincing proof of our power to destroy the empire. Such an effective shock would save many times the number of lives, both American and Japanese, that it would cost."[14]
Marshall was also adamant about the importance of the shock value of the new bomb; and, another member of the Interim Committee, Dr. Carl Compton, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said later: "It was not one atomic bomb, or two, which brought surrender; it was the experience of what an atomic bomb will actually do to a community, plus the dread of many more, that was effective."[15]
With that began what is best named, for lack of a better description, the insanity doctrine, which was developed by such Stimson acolytes as Leo Szilard under-study (Sir) Henry Kissinger. Under this doctrine, the purpose of nuclear attack is to bludgeon an unwilling world into accepting Stimson's warped vision of world government, under the threatened specter of a radioactive mushroom cloud. Japan was only the immediate target. The real targets of such nuclear-terror intimidation, were the Soviets, de Gaulle's France, and other adherents of national sovereignty.
A radical shift had taken place in all U.S. policy since the ascent of Harry Truman to the Presidency. Truman was quickly taken over by the Wall Street bankers and lawyers who were lying in wait for the moment of Franklin Roosevelt's death. These economic royalists of Wall Street lawyers' and bankers' clubs sought to impose tight-fisted bankers' economics--on defeated enemies and allies alike. Where Roosevelt had intended to create a post-war community of principle with other nation-states, these men were allied with their British cohorts to impose British colonialist methods throughout the world.
At the time of President Roosevelt's death, Stimson was a leader of this grouping, that also included Dean Acheson, W. Averell Harriman, John J. McCloy, Robert Lovett, and others. These men staged a de facto coup within the government, and Stimson used the dropping of the bomb to assert Wall Street's leading role in its partnership with the British monarchy intended to dominate the post-war world.
Skull and Bones and TR, too
Stimson himself had been groomed for the part. He admired his patron, Theodore Roosevelt: "Teddy's" exaggerated compensation for a deep-seated sense of personal inferiority, his bully-boy pose of toughness, his deep sense of need to prove that he was not as weak as he sensed himself to be, his sado-masochist's need to play the inwardly tormented, frightened, and enraged schoolyard bully, his bi-polar lust to both wield the stick and use it to achieve his aims. Stimson himself went the usual route for the Eastern Establishment: Andover "prep," Yale undergraduate, and Harvard Law. While at Yale, Stimson was tapped for induction into the Skull and Bones fraternity, and he travelled in those elite Harrimanite circles for the rest of his life.
After Harvard Law, Stimson was moved into a law partnership with Elihu Root, Teddy Roosevelt's imperial-minded Secretary of War. He was soon appointed by Roosevelt as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. In this capacity, Stimson served, in what were misnamed as "trust-busting" cases directly under the brutal Charles Bonaparte, then U.S. Attorney-General, and a cousin and, essentially, political co-religionist of Napoleon Bonaparte. These cases, which reflected Stimson's own variety of Wall Street thinking, were actually political swindles, intended to shift economic power into the hands of London-connected rentier-financier interests.[16] Stimson followed in Root's footsteps as Secretary of War under fellow Skull and Bonesman William Howard Taft. He continued the expansion, albeit with a modernized image of U.S. imperialism.
A close friend of Rough Rider Gen. Leonard Wood, in 1915-16 Stimson enrolled, along with many others of the "best and the brightest," in the Plattsburgh Training Camps. One year after that stint, despite being nearly 50 years of age, Stimson enlisted in the U.S. Army, and he served as a colonel in World War I. There he befriended British soldiers, and emerged from the war a hardened and lifelong Anglophile.
Along with his Plattsburgh and Skull and Bones connections, Stimson was quickly enmeshed in the center of those Wall Street banking and legal circles which have been responsible for most of the rapine which has been perpetrated from that corner of the world over the last 75 years. By the 1920s, Stimson, friend and ally of Wall Street fixers including Grenville Clark and Thomas Lamont, emerged as a major power in the Anglophile foreign policy establishment.
What Stimson had become by the 1920s and 1930s was not, like his later aide John J. McCloy, a "hired hand," but a creature of that variety which delights in thinking of itself as "an American patrician." He modelled himself on what fancy suggested to him were specimens of the British gentry. His sprawling estate, Highold, was next door to that of Teddy Roosevelt, on Long Island. Each year during the holidays, Stimson, a fanatical outdoorsman like Teddy Roosevelt, would display his noblesse oblige, by sponsoring a sporting contest for the local townsfolk.
As Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State in the 1930s, Stimson participated in the destruction of Europe that paved the way for the ascension of Hitler. Stimson used the Naval Conference of 1930 to both cement the Anglo-American alliance that had been all but dead for decades, and to launch his own plan for "disarmament" that would find its echo in the post-H-bomb era. In this effort, he became a close friend and ally of British Labour Party Prime Minister (and early 1930s fascist) Ramsay MacDonald.
Stimson was at the center of the financial crises during 1929-31, and engaged in the same type of "crisis management" that is today bringing the world again to the brink of catastrophe. His closest allies in these operations included future Nazi collaborator Pierre Laval, Hjalmar Schacht asset and sometime German Chancellor Heinrich Brüning, and Italian dictator and long-standing crony of Winston Churchill, Benito Mussolini.[17]
The `Stimson Doctrine'
In the Far East, Stimson became a vociferous opponent of Japanese aggression during the 1930s. He opposed, but never really comprehended, the British-inspired Japanese moves against Manchuria. However, he crafted the "Stimson Doctrine" for President Hoover, which opposed all violation of neutrals' rights with threatened reprisals by the United States. However, in effect, he was upholding the murderous Versailles agreements. This was dubbed the "non-recognition doctrine," but it laid the basis for all "Teddy Roosevelt-style" U.S. interventions into local conflicts, real or contrived, ever since.
This neo-colonialist method is still at work today in Iraq, a tradition currently maintained by the Principals Committee.
When Stimson was brought into the Franklin Roosevelt administration as Secretary of War in 1940, it was presumably to shepherd Republican support for the impending world war, an undertaking which rabid Wall Street Anglophile Stimson readily accepted. Stimson's appointment was arranged by Wall Street fixer and Bertrand Russell ally Grenville Clark. Clark cemented the move by having his law partner, Robert Patterson, appointed as Stimson's Assistant Secretary.
This brings us to the closing several months of the war, May-August 1945. Such is the background which brought Secretary of War Henry Stimson to that place in time.
One month after the bomb was dropped, the international situation had changed dramatically, and the Anglo-American cabal had achieved the upper hand for which Stimson had aimed. However, for all intents and purposes, the Cold War had begun at the point the bomb was detonated. Stimson, like his co-thinker Bertrand Russell, sought to avoid an all-out arms race with the Russians, but tried instead, to co-opt the Soviet Union into the world-government scheme which was his ultimate aim. He offered to share the bomb with the Russians within the emerging framework of "arms control." That was the initial adoption by the U.S. government itself, of Bertrand Russell's nuclear-terrorist doctrine of world government through arms control. That is the nuclear Sword of Damocles hanging over the world today.
With the unleashing of nuclear terror came the babbling obsession with another among today's witless litanies: preventing governments from getting their hands on "weapons of mass destruction."
The memorandum on `control of atomic bombs'
Stimson saw this as a unique, golden opportunity to create the outline of his world government apparatus, with the immediate purpose being control over nuclear proliferation.
On Sept. 11, Stimson sent Truman his final memorandum on "Proposed Action for Control of Atomic Bombs." Long excerpts from documents may represent a strain on the busy reader, but this is one of those which every literate and concerned citizen needs to know. It is important to get the flavor, the crucial innuendos permeating Stimson's typically Wall-Street-lawyer style in flatulence. To understand a musical score, or a policy, it is often of crucial importance that the passion in the performance be heard, even if it is a nasty passion. That memorandum reads, in part:
"The advent of the atomic bomb has stimulated great military and probably even greater political interest throughout the civilized world. In a world atmosphere already extremely sensitive to power, the introduction of this weapon has profoundly affected political considerations in all sections of the globe.
"In many quarters it has been interpreted as a substantial offset to the growth of Russian influence on the continent. We can be certain that the Soviet Government has sensed this tendency and the temptation will be strong for the Soviet political and military leaders to acquire this weapon in the shortest possible time. Britain, in effect, already has the status of a partner with us in the development of this weapon. Accordingly, unless the Soviets are voluntarily invited into the partnership upon a basis of co-operation and trust, we are going to maintain the Anglo-Saxon bloc over against the Soviet [sic] in the possession of this weapon. Such a condition will almost certainly stimulate feverish activity on the part of the Soviet toward the development of this bomb in what will in effect be a secret armament race of a rather desperate character. There is evidence to indicate that such activity may have already commenced.
"If we feel, as I assume we must, that civilization demands that some day we shall arrive at a satisfactory international arrangement respecting the control of this new force, the question then is how long we can afford to enjoy our momentary superiority in the hope of achieving our immediate peace council objectives. Whether Russia gets control of the necessary secrets of production in a minimum of, say, four years or a maximum of twenty years is not nearly as important to the world and civilization as to make sure that when they do get it they are willing and co-operative partners among the peace-loving nations of the world. . . .
"Those relations may be perhaps irretrievably embittered by the way in which we approach the solution of the bomb with Russia. For if we fail to approach them now and merely continue to negotiate with them, having this weapon rather ostentatiously on our hip, their suspicions and their distrust of our purposes and motives will increase. . . .
"The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.
"If the atomic bomb were merely another though more devastating military weapon to be assimilated into our pattern of international relations, it would be one thing. We could then follow the old custom of secrecy and nationalistic military superiority relying on international caution to prescribe future use of the weapon as we did with gas. But I think the bomb instead constitutes merely a first step in a new control by man over the forces of nature too revolutionary and dangerous to fit into the old concepts. I think it really caps the climax of the race between man's growing technical power for destructiveness and his psychological power of self-control and group control--his moral power. If so, our method of approach to the Russians is a question of the most vital importance in the evolution of human progress. . . ."
Then, comes a passage which is directly from the pages of the utopian nuclear science-fiction of Britain's H.G. Wells:
"My idea of an approach to the Soviets would be a direct proposal after discussion with the British, that we would be prepared in effect to enter an arrangement with the Russians, the general purpose of which would be to control and limit the use of the atomic bomb as an instrument of war and so far as possible to direct and encourage the development of atomic power for peaceful and humanitarian purposes. Such an approach might more specifically lead to the proposal that we would stop work on the further improvement in, or manufacture of, the bomb as a military weapon, provided the Russians and the British would agree to do likewise. It might also provide that we would be willing to impound what bombs we now have in the United States provided the Russians and the British would agree with us that in no event will they or we use a bomb as an instrument of war unless all three Governments agree to that use. . . .
"I emphasize perhaps beyond all other considerations the importance of taking this action with Russia as a proposal of the United States--backed by Great Britain but peculiarly the proposal of the United States. Action of any international group of nations, including many small nations who have not demonstrated their potential power or responsibility in this war would not, in my opinion, be taken seriously by the Soviets. . . .
"After the nations which have won this war have agreed to it, there will be ample time to introduce France and China into the covenants and finally to incorporate the agreement into the scheme of the United Nations. The use of this bomb has been accepted by the world as the result of the initiative and productive capacity of the United States, and I think this factor is a most potent lever toward having our proposals accepted by the Soviets, whereas I am most skeptical of obtaining any tangible results by way of any international debate. I urge this method as the most realistic means of accomplishing this vitally important step in the history the world."
Stimson's swan song: first use
Shortly after Stimson sent this memorandum to Truman, he retired from public office. For the next two years, United States foreign policy, under the guidance of Stimson heirs Robert Patterson, Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, John J. McCloy, and others, reconstituted the prostrate "special relationship" with the British monarchy, and began the Cold War. Globally, it was increasingly the British establishment that shaped the climate of the post-war world, whose immediate architecture was the geopolitical division between East and West.
On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill delivered his infamous Fulton, Missouri speech that pulled an Iron Curtain down between the Soviet Union and the West. At this point, the Soviet Union did not possess the bomb, although they had already accelerated the Soviet ATOM project launched by V.I. Vernadsky and Josef Stalin in 1940. They would not yet buckle under to the world government demands of Churchill, Bertrand Russell, and company, until, as Russell had hoped, Stalin obligingly died, in 1953.
At the center of the globalist agenda set into motion by Stimson and Russell, was the assertion of the political legitimacy of use of the nuclear weapon, and willingness to use that weapon in support of the new utopian policies of "globalism." The bomb had become the putative Sword of Damocles hanging over civilization as a whole.
In the wake of Hiroshima, a growing chorus of opposition to the bomb had begun to emerge in the West. This threatened to remove the critical device, the legitimacy of use of "the bomb," which the utopians of Wall Street and London considered essential, to compel nations to accept the H.G. Wells-inspired "new world order." If the bomb were removed as a viable threat, Stimson's utopian vision of a new world order could be exploded, rather than the bomb, and the world, possibly, returned to the principles animating Franklin Roosevelt's notion of a community of principle among sovereign nation-states.
In February 1947, the heirs of Stimson recalled him from retirement, to launch one final bold stroke in defense of his actions of August 1945. In a widely publicized article appearing in Harper's magazine, Stimson defended his actions and outlined his new world order.
The article was signed by Stimson, but written by committee. Harvard University president and Anglophile sympathizer James Conant, who would succeed McCloy as High Commissioner for Germany, organized the project. Other contributors included Stimson aide and fellow Skull and Bonesman Harvey Bundy and his son McGeorge, who coordinated the article; Gen. Leslie Groves, who ran the Manhattan Project; Interim Committee member Gordon Arneson; and former New York Federal Reserve Board chairman and Interim Committee member George Harrison.
The article rewarmed the Big Lie, with a few side-dishes added. The lying myth it propagated would grip the minds of the susceptible for more than four decades to come. It was released in tandem with a similar piece by Dr. Karl Compton, president of MIT and also a member of the Interim Committee, which appeared in the December 1946 issue of Atlantic magazine. The same edition of the Atlantic included a foreword by President Truman.
A coordinated barrage of press coverage hit the news stands either defending the article or reprinting it in its entirety. Coverage appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the New York Herald Tribune; it was published by United Press International, and appeared in countless journals. The cover-up was on. It is important to quote several key sections of the Harper's article signed by Stimson.
"It was in the fall of 1941 that the question of atomic energy was first brought directly to my attention. At that time President Roosevelt appointed a committee consisting of Vice President Wallace, General Marshall, Dr. Vannevar Bush, Dr. James B. Conant, and myself. The function of this committee was to advise the President on questions of policy relating to the study of nuclear fission which was then proceeding both in this country and in Great Britain. For nearly four years thereafter I was directly connected with all major decisions of policy on the development and use of atomic energy, and from May 1, 1943, until my resignation as Secretary of War on September 21, 1945, I was directly responsible to the President for the administration of the entire undertaking; my chief advisers in this period were General Marshall, Dr. Bush, Dr. Conant, and Major General Leslie R. Groves, the officer in charge of the project. At the same time I was the President's senior adviser on the military employment of atomic energy. . . .
"But the first and greatest problem was the decision on the use of the bomb--should it be used against the Japanese, and if so, in what manner?
"The Interim Committee, on June 1, recommended that the bomb should be used against Japan, without specific warning, as soon as possible, and against such a target as to make clear its devastating strength. Any other course, in the opinion of the committee, involved serious danger to the major objective of obtaining a prompt surrender from the Japanese. An advisory panel of distinguished atomic physicists reported that: `We can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.'
"The committee's function was, of course, entirely advisory. The ultimate responsibility for the recommendation to the President rested upon me, and I have no desire to veil it. The conclusions of the committee were similar to my own, although I reached mine independently. I felt that to extract a genuine surrender from the Emperor and his military advisers, there must be administered a tremendous shock which would carry convincing proof of our power to destroy the Empire. Such an effective shock would save many times the number of lives, both American and Japanese, than it would cost. . . .
"The principal political, social, and military objective of the United States in the summer of 1945 was the prompt and complete surrender of Japan. Only the complete destruction of her military power could open the way to lasting peace.
"Japan, in July 1945, had been seriously weakened by our increasingly violent attacks. It was known to us that she had gone so far as to make tentative proposals to the Soviet Government, hoping to use the Russians as mediators in a negotiated peace. These vague proposals contemplated the retention by Japan of important conquered areas and were therefore not considered seriously."
At precisely that point in the article, the guilt-ridden minds of Stimson et al. prompted the Committee to call attention to the transparent fraud lurking behind, and motivating the entirety of the account from this point onward:
"There was as yet no indication of any weakening in the Japanese determination to fight rather than accept unconditional surrender. If she should persist in her fight to the end, she had still a great military force. . . .
"We estimated that if we should be forced to carry this plan to its conclusion, the major fighting would not end until the latter part of 1946, at the earliest. I was informed that such operations might be expected to cost over a million casualties, to American forces alone. Additional large losses might be expected among our allies and, of course, if our campaign were successful and if we could judge by previous experience, enemy casualties would be much larger than our own.
"It was already clear in July that even before the invasion we should be able to inflict enormously severe damage on the Japanese homeland by the combined application of `conventional' sea and air power. The critical question was whether this kind of action would induce surrender. It therefore became necessary to consider very carefully the probable state of mind of the enemy, and to assess with accuracy the line of conduct which might end his will to resist. . . .
"Because of the importance of the atomic mission against Japan, the detailed plans were brought to me by the military staff for approval. With President Truman's warm support I struck off the list of suggested targets the city of Kyoto. Although it was a target of considerable military importance, it had been the ancient capital of Japan and was a shrine of Japanese art and culture. We determined that it should be spared. I approved four other targets including the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, and Nagasaki on August 9. These two cities were active working parts of the Japanese war effort. One was an army center; the other was naval and industrial. Hiroshima was the headquarters of the Japanese Army defending southern Japan and was a major military storage and assembly point. . . .
"My chief purpose was to end the war in victory with the least possible cost in the lives of the men in the armies which I had helped to raise. In the light of the alternatives which, on a fair estimate, were open to us I believe that no man, in our position and subject to our responsibilities, holding in his hands a weapon of such possibilities for accomplishing this purpose and saving those lives, could have failed to use it and afterwards looked his countrymen in the face. . . .
"As I read over what I have written, I am aware that much of it, in this year of peace, may have a harsh and unfeeling sound. It would perhaps be possible to say the same things and say them more gently. But I do not think it would be wise. As I look back over the five years of my service as Secretary of War, I see too many stern and heart-rending decisions to be willing to pretend that war is anything else than what it is. The face of war is the face of death; death is an inevitable part of every order that a wartime leader gives. The decision to use the atomic bomb was a decision that brought death to over a hundred thousand Japanese. No explanation can change that fact and I do not wish to gloss it over. But this deliberate, premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent choice. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to the Japanese war. It stopped the fire raids, and the strangling blockade; it ended the ghastly specter of a clash of great land armies.
"In this last great action of the Second World War we were given final proof that war is death. War in the twentieth century has grown steadily more barbarous, more destructive, more debased in all its aspects. Now, with the release of atomic energy, man's ability to destroy himself is very nearly complete. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended a war. They also made it wholly clear that we must never have another war. This is the lesson men and leaders everywhere must learn, and I believe that when they learn it they will find a way to lasting peace. There is no other choice."[18]
A revival of the Roman imperial code
There, Stimson is not only justifying the bombing of Hiroshima and laying out his plea for world government. A subsidiary, but crucial, feature of the call, is the demand for resources control as well as weapons control. He and his cohorts in the Eastern Establishment already knew the vast potential of nuclear energy as a power source, and were determined to run all the allocation decisions. Here we see the harbinger of not only arms control, but also non-proliferation, prohibition of dual-use technologies, the looming "energy crises," and population control operations of the coming decades. Here we see the echoes of the doctrine of zero-technological growth characteristic of the Roman imperial code of the Emperor Diocletian.
On all grounds, the article was a carefully constructed fiction. It deliberately misstates the military situation on the ground in Japan, omitting the bare facts proving that there was no need to drop the bomb.
Japan was an already-defeated nation, its military situation a hopeless one. No invasion was needed; the extremely effective blockade of the islands was devastating; Japan had no choice but surrender. MacArthur had but to maintain the blockade and wait. Stimson's run-on litany of lying on this particular matter of fact, does more to reveal than to conceal Stimson's awareness of the truth of the military situation.
Also, it carefully avoids serious discussion of the imminent declaration of war by Russia, which would have sealed Japan's fate, if anything more were needed. It downplays the heated debate concerning changing the terms of surrender to include that recognition of Japan's Emperor which had already been the intended terms of surrender before the nuclear bombs had been dropped.
Most importantly, the article refuses to identify the actual reason why the paper was written in the first place.
In a letter to Stimson, James Conant pointed to such a refusal to allow the truth to be said publicly: "If the propaganda against the use of the atomic bomb had been allowed to grow unchecked, the strength of our military position by virtue of having the bomb would have been correspondingly weakened, and with this weakening would have come a decrease in the probabilities of an international agreement for the control of atomic energy. . . . I am firmly convinced that the Russians will eventually agree to the American proposals for the establishment of an atomic energy authority of worldwide scope, provided they are convinced that we would have the bomb in quantity and would be prepared to use it without hesitation in another war."[19]
The real issue is thus stated clearly: The world must know the United States is prepared to use the bomb as an implied threat in all foreign policy. There must be no breach in the wall. The inheritors of the mantle of the Interim Committee, the foreign policy cabal that has already given us the Cuban Missile Crisis and nuclear brinksmanship, are today gathered around the buzzard's nest of the Principals Committee. They are lurching inexorably toward another nuclear confrontation, perhaps in the Middle East, perhaps against Russia, or more likely again in the Far East, against North Korea or even China.
Under these circumstances, nothing could ruin the reputation of the Henry Stimson who had already fully ruined his own: the only man who ever dropped the bomb.
[1] See Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., "Hiroshima: Hamlet Bombs Out," and Paul Goldstein, "Lying Media Shape Hiroshima `Debate,' " EIR, Aug. 18, 1995.
[2] Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy (New York: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 49.
[3] Ibid., p. 49.
[4] Ibid., p. 37.
[5] Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America (New York: Avon Books, 1995), p. 213.
[6] Alperovitz, op. cit., p. 14. Admiral Leahy's objection here is consistent with Classical professional military competence. Compare Machiavelli's Commentaries on the Ten Books of Livy, respecting the folly of continuing war against a defeated adversary, a point which military incompetents such as Defense Secretary Cohen and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Henry H. Shelton do not grasp.
[7] Godfrey Hodgson, The Colonel: The Life and Wars of Henry Stimson (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992), p. 330.
[8] Alperovitz, op. cit., pp. 10-11.
[9] Alperovitz, op. cit., p. 12. How much of this version of the matter is actually Dulles, and how much Alperovitz's gloss on Dulles's report, is to be held in doubt. The negotiations were actually represented at that time by an OSS field boss for Italy, Max Corvo, who maintained the connection to Monsignor Montini's office. Dulles's intervention in the matter was a part of the continuing process of the London OSS crowd's factional power-grab, involving Dulles's dubious hack James J. Angleton and others of those who had been resident in the London OSS centers until the end of the actual war in Europe.
[10] Feb. 6, 1999 remarks of Secretary Cohen, at the Munich Wehrkunde conference, in reply to request for his comments on remarks by Richard Perle. Cohen stated, that if the UNO Security Council did not support joint British-U.S.A. proposals for military action anywhere in the world, the British and U.S.A. would act together, unilaterally, in defiance of the UNO. Shades of Nazi Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop? Yes, and Secretary of War Stimson, too.
[11] L. Wolfe, "The Morgan-Fascist Coup Plot Against FDR," New Federalist, Feb. 1, 1999.
[12] Henry Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947), pp. 635-36.
[13] Ibid., pp. 640-41.
[14] Ibid., p. 617.
[15] Ibid., p. 617.
[16] Napoleon Bonaparte established a state religion, in which he, like the Claudian Caesars, cast himself as the head (Pontifex Maximus) of that state religion. It was this cult of the Emperor Napoleon which was parodied by Adolf Hitler's Nazis. Specifically, Charles Bonaparte's assigned function, under President Theodore Roosevelt, was to establish in the U.S.A. a national political police force like that under the notorious Fouche in France. That national political police agency was known as the National Bureau of Investigation, later renamed as the FBI.
[17] When last reported alive, Mussolini was in desperate flight toward the Switzerland border, accompanied by a van filled with materials with which Mussolini hoped to blackmail Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill, then waiting in Switzerland for Mussolini's arrival. Mussolini was hotly pursued by the OSS's Max Corvo. Whether British agents successfully intercepted Mussolini to protect Churchill from embarrassment, remains a tantalizing mystery. Mussolini was taken, by whomever, in the vicinity of Lake Como. On April 28, 1945, Mussolini, his mistress Carla Petacci, and two companions were displayed, hanging upside-down in Milan's Piazza Loretto. Italian partisans were credited. Later, some of Mussolini's papers turned up, but not the sensitive portion of the files which might have been used to blackmail Churchill into saving former Churchill crony Mussolini's hide.
[18] Stimson and Bundy, op. cit., pp. 612-633, excerpts.
[19] Lifton, op. cit., p. 105.
