1946

The Benefits of War

United States certainly did benefit from the war. From 1939 to 1945 industrial production in USA had doubled - US factories in ‘45 were producing twice as many war goods as Germany, Italy and Japan put together; agricultural production rose by 20%; farmers' incomes rose by 400%.  For the first time, rural income matched urban.

"By the mid 40s US dominance had reached extraordinary levels. The virtues of economic liberalism were therefore extolled with much fervour, in tandem with calls for extending the huge state subsidies for domestic enterprise. "

The CIG

On January 22nd 1946, Truman issued executive order setting up a national intelligence authority and, under it, a central intelligence group – forerunner of the CIA.

Members – sec of state James F Byrnes; sec of war Robert P Patterson; Sec of Navy Forrestal; Admiral Leahy.

Truman selected Rear Admiral Sidney W Souers to head it (Deputy Chief of Navy Intelligence) – and onetime head of Piggly Wiggly stores in Memphis.

On 24th January, the heads of the NIA and the CIG were appointed. Admiral Sidney Souers became the first Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) after an odd ceremony with Souers and flight admiral William D Leahy in “black cloaks, black hats and wooden daggers, and the president reading on amusing directive to us outlining some of our duties in the Central Intelligence Agency [sic], “cloak and dagger Group of snoopers.”

Leahy was being designated Presidents’ representative to new four member National Intelligence Authority which oversaw the CIG. It had no independent budget, and no statutory mandate.

Souers soon left to get back to his business and in June Truman named AF General Hoyt S. Vandenberg to the post.

The JCS Plan

JCS 1181/5 – JCS William Leahy transmitted it to Secs of Navy and War and they sent it to state department where it languished for several weeks.

The new “Central Intelligence Agency” should, among its duties, perform: ‘Services of common concern’ which meant espionage and liaison with foreign intelligence services – a function the drafters of the JCS plan felt had to be performed centrally.

The G-2, the military intelligence Division of the War Dept. General staff tried to subsume the OSS in 1943. The JCS rescued Donovan this time.

In 1944 Wild Bill’s plan to establish a central intelligence agency – referred to the Joint Chiefs and pigeon-holed .

C-B was an influence on the early OSS

Liaison between OSS and the FBI was “emphasised by British spymaster Bill Cavendish–Bendick, a former soldier who’d been irritated by the constant in-fighting amongst London’s various intelligence services.” Strongman & Parker

Greece

In February there was a crisis over Greece – civil war . Greece became the test case for US policy in Europe. Communists were going to win the forthcoming elections. GB pulled out of Greece on March 31st after losing control there and the US moved in to fill the gap. Acheson warned that “the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the East. It would also carry infection to Africa through Asia Minor and Egypt and to Europe through Italy and France.” “We alone are in a position to break up the play.” Arthur M. Vandenburg, a Republican Senator, said to ensure public backing Truman would have to “scare hell” out of the American people. Which he proceeded to do, and has been US policy right up to the Bush era. “Containment” then is a sham, an excuse to intervene against democracy, whenever it interferes with US interests, and in any country where it may rear its ugly head. Congress approved Truman’s demands for $400m in foreign aid as a swipe against Russia. The money channelled to special interest groups. It was used “to support right-wing forces fighting rebels. For the rest of the Cold war, Washington and the CIA backed notorious Greek leaders with deplorable human rights records.” Congress eventually discovered that there were no connections between Greek communists and Moscow and that Truman and co had lied about the threat. The US supported war resulted in 160,000 deaths. Torture and exile to thousands of Greeks, “re-education” camps for tens of thousands, devestation of unions and independent democratic parties. US investors moved in. Nazi collaborators benefited. Served as the role model for the Vietnam War. After Greece, Acheson formed an ad hoc committee to find “situations elsewhere in the world” for Marshall Plan aid. A mythical “dollar shortage”. Internationalisation of the New Deal.

Tokyo War crimes tribunal began on 3rd of May. New Japanese constition promulgated on 3rd of November. The Japanese were cruel to their prisoners – of that there is no dispute. However, the conduct of the Americans is being examined here….SEE Page 169 / 170 etc. in “Hell” by L&S

July 29th to October 15th 1946 – Paris Peace Conference

Led to Paris Peace Treaty on February 10th 1947

On Monday 30 September 1946 the IMT delivered the following verdicts and sentences:

(link to these)

Briefly before they started their deliberations, the judges discussed the method of capital punishment to be used. The French judges suggested that a firing squad should be used for the military condemned. The Russian Judge, Major-General Nikitchenko fiercely opposed this idea. The accused were common criminals who had disgraced their military ethos and tradition. The judges voted that all those sentenced to death would be hanged.

The following organisations were also declared as criminal: Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, SS, Gestapo and the SD. The SA and Reich Cabinet lost so much influence after the 1930s that they were not declared criminal organisations. Lawrence explained that the High & Staff Command was such a small organisation that individual trials were more preferable than a blanket judgement.

All the condemned appeal to the Allied Control Council. Raeder appealed for his sentenced to be changed from Life Imprisonment to death. The Allied Control Council informed Andrus that all the appeals for clemency were rejected. Raeder's appeal was also rejected. Under the charter, the Allied Control Council did not have the power to increase the severity of a punishment.

During the late hours of Tuesday 15 October 1946, 2 hours before the time he was due to be hanged, Herman Goering took a cyanide capsule while in his prison cell. There is much conjecture of how he got the capsule. After the other executions, an enquiry was held into this incident. The capsule was probably smuggled to Goering by a friendly American prison guard. Lieutenant "Tex" Wheelis was known to have befriended Goering, and may have played a part in his suicide, by either hiding or smuggling the cyanide capsule.

The Executions

The death sentences were carried into effect in the early hours of Wednesday 16 October 1946. A set of three gallows had been inside the Nuremberg Prison Gymnasium. The executioner was Master Sergeant John C. Woods, the US Third Army executioner. The condemned would be hanged in the order of their indictment: Goering, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Saukel, Jodl and Seyss-Inquart.

As Goering was dead, Ribbentrop was the first to be hanged at 01:11am. Seyss-Inquart was the last hanged at 02:45am. All the corpses, including Goering, were photographed. Following the executions, various accounts emerged that the executions had not been carried out correctly. Some were plainly wild exaggerations, while other witnesses state that the executions had been carried out according to procedure.

Some British newspapers carried sensational headlines that Albert Pierrepoint would be travelling to Germany to perform the executions. However, in his autobiography Pierrepoint makes the obvious point that the executioner would be expected to be an American.

The bodies, together with the nooses and hoods, were placed in coffins. The coffins were then loaded on to a lorry and taken in a heavy-armed convoy to the crematorium in East Munich's Ostfriedhof Cemetery. The ashes were scattered into the nearby River Isar.

Difficult questions about the OSS in October 1945, from congressman and staff Rep Clarence Cannon chair of the House Appropriations Committee two weeks later the House Military Affairs Committee asked why the war department suddenly needed both SSU and the G-2. Committee staff were reassured by answer but wished for SSU & R & A Department to be “considerably reduced in size” and number of Reps in 17th October reduced the OSS terminal budget by $2m.

There eventually ensued a battle of will between Secs of War, state and navy and bureau of the budget and the FBI. Over where SSU would eventually go. Armed services backed JCS plan for National Intelligence Authority outside of the Cabinet Departments. State Department insisted new office would be accountable to the Sec of State.

After the war the Bureau of the Budget took up planning for peacetime intelligence unit – shortly before FDR’s death. Truman was eventually to endorse their efforts. See Donald C Stone.

After Truman had become president he sent for Admiral William D. Leahy and asked him to look at reforming intelligence. On September 20th 1945 Truman disbanded the OSS. Some went to Army Intelligence. Others went to State Department and formed nucleaus of what became “the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, an important branch of the Invisible Government. ”

In 1946, mid term elections left the Republicans in control of congress. Truman’s popularity had plummeted after the war ended. There was the claim that the people wanted curbs in government instead of the planned economy – or was it because of post war depression, low wages, etc? Republican Senator Robert Taft was outspoken against government.

US troops in Europe – in the far east – where else?

US in Japan

MacArthur declared that the entire Pacific "had become an Anglo-Saxon lake and our line of defence runs through the chain of islands fringing the coast of Asia. The US had occupatied Japan. This lasted four years (1945 - 1949). Dissidents were purged, US imposed a heavy censorship, and any discussion of the atomic bomb or its effects was forbidden. A film of the aftermath was banned in the USA. August 1949 draft of NSC48 appeared.

In Japan - the Japanese emperor in power, to use his authority to enhance their own control. This meant criticism of the emperor had to be suppressed. A left-wing film critical of emperor was banned by US officials in ‘46. Anything negative about the emperor was kept out of the Tokyo war crimes trial .

The US moved to break Japanese unions, reconstruct industrial-financial conglomerates, supporting fascist collaborators which excluded anti-fascists, restored conservative business rule. The purge of war criminals was ended – essential structure of fascist regime restored. General MacArthur prevented emperor from being indicted or taking stand as witness or being interviewed by international prosecution investigators. This policy which placed Japan into the hands of pro-fascist corporate elements survives to the present day.

Some early genuinely democratic reforms under US occupation (MacArthur). Land reform, unions promoted, new constitution included 'no war' pledge. Some right wing militarists were purged, and some of the Zaibatsu, the corporate behemoths of the Japanese economy, were broken up. "but these reforms were carried out by the New Dealers, the most liberal US government in history". "By 1948, as Washington came to realise that China was not going to become an anti-Communist bastion and that a powerful alternative was needed, US occupation policy in Japan underwent a "reverse course". Japanese economic power would now be rebuilt as part of an anti-Soviet alliance and many of the early reforms were weakened or repealed. War criminals were released. A threatened general strike was banned in '47 and over next three years imposed laws severely weakening the labour movement. In 1949, there was a mass purge of Communists, using regulations originally designed for ultra-right militarists."

"Japan's dominant conservative politicians were allowed to maintain their grip on power by the US occupation authorities and were secretly bankrolled by the CIA through the 1960s."

The US hanged Japanese war criminals in 1948 - (PM Hideko Tojo?). Tojo defended the Pearl Harbor attack as "forced by 'inhuman' economic sanctions imposed by Washington" which "would have meant the destruction of the nation" had Japan not reacted.

China Crisis

Marshall represented Truman on a special mission to China in 1946 - China was plunging into civil war..

The USSR pulled out of Manchuria with Japanese assets stripped. Mao – in the north of china – took over Manchuria. Chiang in south, supported by the US, pushed north to occupy Manchurian cities – overextending his supply lines. Marshall worked to prevent civil war and form coalition between Mao and Chiang.

Did Truman give up any effort to influence the outcome?

“In the Far East – on our west – our policy was “Maintaining the Open Door in china”. If China was free and independent, neither Japan nor Russia, the only two countries that might threaten us, could move against us because China was behind Japan and on Russia’s southern flank. It was worked out by a Republican administration, (William) McKinley and John Hay, his secretary of State. It was supported one hundred percent by President Wilson when the Japanese tried to wreck it in 1915. Then again it was supported by the Republicans in 1921 – 22 at the Washington Nine Power Conference; and again by Democrats FDR and Cordell Hull in 1940 – 41. They went to war with Japan rather than let Japan get control of the manpower, territory and resources of China because that would be too dangerous to ourselves.”

Iran

US troops in Iran 1946 Soviet troops were told to leave the north (Iranian Azerbaijan) by nuclear threat.

Once USSR had pulled out of Iran, Iranians received aid from the US. The USSR later obliterated Azerbaijan? Communist Republic in Azerbaijan.

US foreign policy goals to “ensure German-based Europe and Japan firmly within US dominated world order.” And “undermine anti-fascist resistance and labour (Italy, Greece, France), install traditional conservative rule (French and British empires) and use violence when necessary (Greece and Korea).” It was foreign aid funnelled through the corporate establishment and cloaked in rhetoric of opposition to foreign communism.

Greece

In February there was a crisis over Greece – civil war. Greece became the test case for US policy in Europe. Communists were going to win the forthcoming elections. GB pulled out of Greece on March 31st after losing control there and the US moved in to fill the gap. Acheson warned that “the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the East. It would also carry infection to Africa through Asia Minor and Egypt and to Europe through Italy and France.” “We alone are in a position to break up the play.” Arthur M. Vandenburg, a Republican Senator, said to ensure public backing Truman would have to “scare hell” out of the American people. Which he proceeded to do, and has been US policy right up to the Bush era. “Containment” then is a sham, an excuse to intervene against democracy, whenever it interferes with US interests, and in any country where it may rear its ugly head. Congress approved Truman’s demands for $400m in foreign aid as a swipe against Russia. The money channelled to special interest groups. It was used “to support right-wing forces fighting rebels. For the rest of the Cold war, Washington and the CIA backed notorious Greek leaders with deplorable human rights records.” Congress eventually discovered that there were no connections between Greek communists and Moscow and that Truman and co had lied about the threat. The US supported war resulted in 160,000 deaths. Torture and exile to thousands of Greeks, “re-education” camps for tens of thousands, devestation of unions and independent democratic parties. US investors moved in. Nazi collaborators benefited. Served as the role model for the Vietnam War. After Greece, Acheson formed an ad hoc committee to find “situations elsewhere in the world” for Marshall Plan aid. A mythical “dollar shortage”. Internationalisation of the New Deal.

In Italy and France communists were strong too and America was worried. The Marshall Plan was hatched. The OEEC was set up to handle the Marshall Plan dosh.

Avrell Harriman, ambassador to Russia, early 1944: “Economic assistance is one of the most effective weapons at our disposal to influence European political events in the direction we desire…” The economic assistance would greatly increase foreign markets, necessary, in turn, to support America’s  “enormously increased production”.

GB, France and US were laying plans to transfer their authority to an independent West Germany. Through '46 and '47, one by one, communists replaced the coalition governments in Poland, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria.

France took back Syria and Lebanon. GB took Palestine, Iraq ad Egypt (Suez canal).

The CIA backed a coup that deposed the elected government of Syria.

NATO was established. Policy on Europe was from Washington’s day, “of no permanent entangling alliances with Europe.” “And we never did have any until establishment of the NATO treaty in 1948 (april 4th), with a group of European countries – 10 European nations, the US and Canada signed the agreement in Washington DC. But from Woodrow Wilson’s time on there had been as great cooperation on European matters, or as much unity of thinking between the two parties and their various leaders as previously.” “Our desire was “…for “an American policy that would be dependable and the world would know that no matter which party was in power, this would be the consistent policy of the United States.”

A plan to take over the world

In the aftermath of WW2 the US suddenly had a unique opportunity to become the dominant power on Earth. There was the United Nations. The General Assembly, Security Council and secretariat of UN was sited in Manhattan. This ensured a certain amount of influence from Wall Street and Washington.

The Monroe doctrine was replaced (embellished?) by Truman Doctrine. - Marshall plan. The Marshall plan would boost US industry and economy as well as providing a way of exerting control over the other powers.

Kennan wrote Policy Planning Study 23 (PPS23) for State Department Planning Staff - "we have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population...In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives...We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratisation. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."

In the UK – a case to research – See “Labour under The Marshall Plan” by Anthony Carew (Manchester UK: Manchester University Press, 1987)

If you wanted the dollar and the goodies, you had to get with the programme. Trade unionsists and politicians were sent on ‘freebies’ to the US. US Labor Attache in London. American Tendancy within the British Labour Movement.

Ramsay, pp.32, 33

In this way – it was conceived – Washington to keep foreign governments sympathetic and create a limit to acceptable debate abroad.

International Government

GATT were appropriately named General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade. They were set up in 1946 under the new international trading system, to intervene in trade disputes.

UNITED NATIONS

It was deemed important that all countries on the UN Security Council held a veto. The US didn't really want the UN to work. Four countries were to sit on the Security Council but China was added at some point. US and USSR were a given; including Britain's inclusion could probably be explained as a social nicety but in reality the US quite liked having their well-behaved poodle on the security council and it would prove very useful in years to come. France, apparently was included at Churchill's insistence. China was seen as too important in America's Far East Strategy to leave out. The first UN meeting was held in London, January 1946.

Truman, once he’d become president, had made the final arrangements for the San Francisco UN meeting.

The SF conference was not plunged into partisan politics because of this policy of the two parties working together. It was important because the Versailles conference had been, “parlty because of intransigence on the part of Wilson, and on the other hand, of Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. and others. Men got their backs up. Each was going to run it his own way. One was the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, as J William Fulbright is now, and the other was President and they got into a tangle.” ”Each was a number one man not willing to be number two.”

South America

After WW2 “the vision of Washington’s planners was so expansive that Latin America had come to play only a minor part, though it was not forgotten. ‘Latin America’s role in the new world order’, Stephen Rabe observes, was ‘to sell its raw materials” and “to absorb surplus US capital”. Chomsky “501” page 156

Kennan writing to ambassadors in South America: a major concern of US foreign policy must be “the protection of our (not South American!) raw materials.” We must therefore combat “the idea that the government has direct responsibility for the welfare of the people.” – the official word for this in the US is “communism”.

Behind the Iron Curtain

Truman said that economically "we held all the cards and the Russians had to come to us."

"In Jan '45 the USSR requested $6bn loan for the post war reconstruction.

 Revolutions in Hungary, Romania and Poland. September – the Comintern was revived by USSR under name, “Cominform”. USSR organised Comecon.

Feb / March '48 a coup in Czechoslovakia overthrew a democratic government and brought about a communist regime.

The USSR banned Disney’s films. Disney’s WW2 propaganda films had been shown to Red army troops during the war.

Reorganisation of government & Intelligence:

The National Security Act put the Secretary of Defence over the Joint Chiefs of Staff - set up a National Security Council and the CIA to continue spy service started during War.

The Central Intelligence Group, a precursor to the CIA, offered an assessment of Latin America’s Cold War geo-strategic position.

Latin America was within striking distance of US Naval and air power and could be shut off by naval blockade. Consequently, nations within the region were of little use to the Russians either as military allies or as sources of supply.

In Latin America, poverty, illiteracy, and repressive governments provided communists with a supportive environment within which to develop a base. To counter  this required increasingly rapid growth of middle classes, greater organisation of and cooperation with anti-communist labour and political groups of the left, both liberal and socialist, and increased cooperation between police, military information and intelligence agencies. 1954.

Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, to create the CIA and National Security Council. The CIA is accountable to the president through the NSC – there is no democratic or congressional oversight. Its charter allows the CIA to “perform such other functions and duties…as the NSC may from time to time direct.” This loophole opens the door to covert action and dirty tricks. In its first year the CIA continues intelligence community’s anti-communist drive. CIA help Mafia sieze total power in Sicily and it sends money to heroin smuggling Corsican mobsters in Marseille to assist in battle with unions for control of city’s docks. Also recruits member of orgnaised crime gangs in Japan to help ensure the country stays in the non-communist world.

The covert action of the early post-war US Intelligence establishment was called the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) – later absorbed into the CIA.

An aspect of the Marshall Plan was the appropriation under the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA).

ECA included secret funding for OPC activities in Europe. See “The CIA and the Marshall Plan” by Pisani, ISBN 0-7006-0502-9. Ex-OSS elites played an active role in making sure that the US aid came with strings attached – often in the form of secretly-funded propaganda fronts that pushed the correct line.

Does this belong here?

Industrial dissent

During the war there were strikes involving 6,770,000 workers America’s worst period of strikes ever. During 1944 alone a million workers went on strike. There was a wave of labour unrest in the spring of 1946 due to huge dissatisfaction at profits rocketing while wages hardly improved at all. Two critical strikes, the coalminers and the railway workers.

 “Truman was no-where near as enthusiastic in his support of the nation’s unions” as Roosevelt . He asked congress for power to draft the striking railway workers into the army. Truman was not, as has been suggested, “sensitive to union demands”.

Even in Hollywood there was a strike - at Warner Brothers . The studio retaliated by hiring scabs, backed with thugs and used tear gas and water hoses to disrupt the picket lines. Aldous Huxley’s 23 year old son Matthew, who was working as a script writer at Warner Brothers, was among a handful of pickets who were beaten bloody in one of IATSE’s goon-squad attacks. Aldous Huxley spoke out against the IATSE and fell out with his friend Walt Disney over the issue. Walt Disney was one of the organisers/instigators of the violent strike breaking activities of the IATSE.

Taft-Hartley Act forbade closed shops and "militant" strike tactics used in late 1930s by Congress of Industrial Organisations.

Despite all this activism from workers there was a right wing back lash in the US. The Republicans came to power in both houses and obstructed social security and minimum wage changes. The Republicans had been out of power for 14 years. Taxes for rich were reduced. Public housing projects thrown out.

But flexible govt support of farm prices was indefinitely continued as Republicans needed Corn Belt support.

Big problem - How to turn 10m American military men into civilian workers?

In October - Al Jolson sang “Swanee River” and “Hold onto Your Hats” His career was declining fast. “The Jolson Story” – a movie – Jolson supplied the voice and made a triumphant come-back. Jolson had 3 or 4 years yet to live.

Defence

After World War 2 the state had become dependent on the war economy. Between 1939 and 1945 industrial production in the US had doubled (see page 20). From then on there was a huge state component of the economy which under-pinned all of high technology industry during the "golden age of free market capitalism”. "the general expectation was that without state intervention there would be a return to the Depression after pent-up consumer demand was satisfied. It appeared to be confirmed by the 1948 recession."  Bairoch -  claims that the US embraced a liberal economy.

James W Forrestal founded the “Association of Industry for National Security” (1945?) – the beginnings of the Pentagon System, and the modern arms trade (page 25).

The PR of arms manufacturers was particularly agreeable to the Pentagon. For example, the PR Department  of Martin Aviation of Baltimore offered a “long weekend of relaxation” with appropriate recreational activities (operation 3B, for bathing, blondes and bars) to 27 high ranking officers including General Nathan F Turning, Chairman of the JCS. It paid off, as in 1960 Martin Aviation was awarded $800m worth of defence contracts. Companies like Hughes Aricraft, Sperry Gyroscope and Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone employed similar techniques. From JFK: Farewell America.

Military

Nuclear Weapons

The US had managed to acquire this technology from defeated Germany and by freezing out their "ally" Great Britain from reaping benefits of the Allied development programme.

Nuclear weapons started off as primitive devices, but this changed rapidly. By the late 1940s the first US long range weapons were available; free-fall atom bombs to be carried on B-29 or B-36 bombers.

May, the Atomic Energy Act 1946, known as the McMahon Act, established the US Atomic Energy Commission and imposed the mantle of security over all security aspects of nuclear energy.

Nuclear Tests

In July 1946, there followed the first set of test explosions at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. USSR’s first nuclear test, in August 1949. They publicly announced this on 23rd September 1949. See links:

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/Sovwpnprog.html

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/index.html

As a result of the Soviet explosion Truman set up a committee to explore possibility of developing the hydrogen bomb, 1000 times more destructive than an A-bomb. Acheson was largely responsible for driving this project forward.

30th January 1950 Truman approved H-bomb development

The Missile Gap

…(erased bit )…and the west should make a pre-emptive strike. In the 1950s he produces a fictitious "missile gap".

The new Sec of State (??) Louis Johnson wants active US defence of Formosa, but Acheson opposes.

Spies

Alan Nunn May was sentenced to 10 years’ hard labour in 1946 for passing information on the western allies’ atomic bomb project. It led to the US ending the sharing of details of its nuclear weapons programme. May first passed information to USSR in 1942 after being asked to analyse a US report that the Nazis were planning to create radioactive “dirty bombs”. This report caused panic in the USA. May feared consequences for the USSR, invaded by Hitler in 1941. In a year he was transferred to Canada to work on the British atomic bomb project. He set up a radio communication centre to send information to Russia from Canada. He arrived in early 1943, just as the Germans had been defeated at Stalingrad. He was then reluctant to set up communication, didn’t see a point to it any more, USSR was safe again.

Later he was approached by a Soviet agent inquiring about nuclear project. “It seemed to me that [the Soviets] ought to be informed, so I have decided to provide information.”. His cover was blown by the defection of Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk at the Soviet embassy in Ottowa, in 1945.

MI5 followed him till he made a partial confession. He was released from prison in 1952 .

Early in 1948 - Paranoia and the Cold War both received a boost by Klaus Fuchs - a British scientist - working on the Manhattan Project during WW2 handing over secrets to the USSR about developing the A-bomb.

FBI arrested Julius Rosenburgh – who supplied the USSR with A-bomb research from the Manhattan Project.

Republicans swept the 1946 mid-term elections on an anti-big government platform.

80th Congress (1947-49) that had Republican majorities in both houses.

Bits

December 31st, the USA v. Paramount Pictures Inc. et al – Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers challenged the majors’ monopolistic hold over production, distribution and exhibition. The majors lost and appealed, ready to take it to the Supreme Court.

Rockefeller was now falling to the 3rd generation. John D Rockefeller III, Nelson, Laurence, Winthrop and David. The Rockefellers offered UN a tract of land on their Pocantio estate as a site for its headquarters. This fell through so Nelson persuaded JD Rockefeller Jr. to buy land next to NYC’s East River and donate it to te UN.

What Happened to Hitler?

Sightings of Hitler continued despite the fact that all the evidence being turned up corroborated T-R's conclusions. He had been "seen" in Spain, and Argentina.

Just before Xmas a report claimed Hitler was living in a cave in the Bauerska Mountains. It was taken vaguely seriously. Another report had placed Hitler in a coffee room in Amsterdam, another in Zurich. Some GI's said they'd seen him with Braun in Bernheim collecting laundry.

Berliners on the whole, still believed Hitler was alive and children referred to him as Onkel Adolf. He was still fondly remembered in those days.

A French report that Hitler was hiding in the area of Heideberg and in touch with resistance leaders in Weinheim. US CIC agents and 25 US Constabulary investigated_.

March, Trevor-Roper's report " the last days of Hitler" was published.

Secret Nazi Network

“A US Treasury Department analysis in 1946 reported that the Germans had transferred $500m out of the country before the war’s end to countries such as Spain, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Portugal, Argentina ans Turkey where it was used to buy up hundreds of companies.” As soon as the (Nazi) party becomes strong enough to re-establish its control over Germany, the industrialists will be paid for their efforts and co-operation by concessions and orders,” the intelligence document said.”

“The meeting was presided over by a Dr Scheid, described as an SS Obergruppenfuhrer (general) and director of Hermsdorff and Schonburg Company. Attending were representatives of seven German companies including Krupp, Roehling, Messerschmidt and Volkswagenwerk and officials of the ministries of armaments and the navy.

The industrialists were from companies with extensive interests in france and Scheid is quoted as saying the battle of France was lost and “from now…German industry must realise that the was cannot be won and it must take steps in preparation for a post-war commercial campaign.” He said.

German industry must make contacts and alliances with foreign firms and lay the groundwork for borrowing considerable sums in foreign countries. He cited the Krupp company’s sharing of patents with US companies so that they would have to work with Krupp. A representative of the armaments ministry then presided over a smaller second meeting with Scheid and representatives of Krupp and Roehilinbg, who were told the war was lost and would continue only until the unity of Germany was guaranteed. He said they must prepare themselves to finance the Nazi Party when it went underground.

The intelligence report added that the meetings signalled a new Nazi policy “whereby industrialists with government assistance will export as much of their capital as possible. “Sybil Milton, senior historian at Washington’s Holocaust Museum, said it has long been known that the Nazis planned to do something after the war and the document’s importance ,may be in pointing researchers in a direction where they could determine what had been done.

“Now that the Nazi secret plan has been confirmed, the central question is whether it has been carried out,” said Elan Steiberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress.”

Interesting article on US army working with pro-Nazi “pioneer fund” to do Eugenics experiment in America:

 http://alexconstantine.50megs.com/ws_journal_on.html.

The Pioneer fund helped finance “The Bell Curve” a modern classic promoting eugenics which was written at the Manhattan Institute (MI) and is directly related to both GW Bush and Giuliani’s policies. Both men claim the MI, funded by David Rockefeller, founded by William Casey, is where they got their “ideas”.

Palestine crumbling – Menachin Begin’s Irgun blew up the British hq at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. British executing Jewish Terorrists. Jews hanged two kidnapped British army seargents. Jaj amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem – was on Nazi side during war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

NOTES

US plane shot down over Yugoslavia – US responded – Navy sent to Yugoslavia.

Latin America and the Caribbean 1940 to 1945

A fascist coup in Colombia, military coup in Venezuela, restoration of a fascist sympathiser in Panama, democratic government in Guatemala condemned by the US.

Cuba – the seeds of revolution

The US had not given up on its own imperial policies. Anti-US feeling in Cuba had been running high for some time. Were America taking the piss? The youth of Cuba were looking back, romantically to Marti, and forward to a leader to deliver his values. Cuban politics at the time resembled pre-revolutionary Irish politics. Passions ran high, popular antipathy for foreign manipulation. Cuban politics were never simply a matter of voting. The gun was very much part of the process. Parties maintained links to gunmen who occasionally would assassinate rivals.

The US set up the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development , what we know as the World Bank, in July 1944. It was ostensibly for the purpose of rebuilding Europe, Japan and promoting free flow of investment capital in member countries. The meeting took place in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. A framework was hammered out for economic stability. The World Bank and the IMF were set up at this meeting. The criteria for this stability were: stable exchanging rates, removal of barriers to free trade – ie, US products, allied money, and help for temporary trade deficits – no excuse to stop spending. The bank was to finance long term development projects in Europe and Japan. The US was going to buy Europe and Japan.

Bretton Woods was an international conference which “largely established the rules and institutions by which the post-war economy would be managed. Currencies would be pegged. With some provision for occasional adjustment; the new IMF would step in to make emergency loans to any countries having trouble maintaining their currency rate; and a world bank would make loans to poorer countries to facilitate their development. In theory these provisions should have ensured the stability of national economies and encouraged the progress of smaller nations, especially those struggling to emerge from the shadows of imperialism and colonialism. In practice, however powerful obstacles stood in the way of achieving these aims.” Nicholas Guyatt “Another American Century?”

“The conference…depended on the ideas of British economist John M Keynes, who had become the most prominent spokesperson for the view that governments had a biog role to play in managing and encouraging economic growth.” Guyatt, “AAC?” page 3

John Maynard Keynes was one of the prime advocates of a new global financial system, including a fund that would offer loans to tide countries over balance-of-payments difficulties. But he also argued that the world needed a balanced trade system and strict controls on the movement of capital across borders – he believed that the free movement of all goods and capital, advocated by the US delegation, would be bound to lead to instability, as well as inequality. Infamously the US view won the day and the IMF and the World Bank were created as a result. The third pillar of the system erected at Bretton woods was the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which mutated in 1995 into the World Trade Organisation. NI March 2004

GB, France and US were laying plans to transfer their authority to an independent West Germany. Through '46 and '47, one by one, communists replaced the coalition governments in Poland, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria.

Yugoslavia

US troops responded to a shooting down of US plane by deploying the navy to Yugoslavia 1946.

USA interfere in European Politics

When the war ended the idealism that history attaches to WW2 was far from apparent. Early wranglings in the UN were over the British in Greece and the Soviets still in Azerbaijan, some time after the end of the war.