Burn After Reading (43 page)

It became essential to restore Zacharias' authority. As usual, Secretary Forrestal came to our aid. He called Washington's most influential correspondent, Arthur Krock of
The New York Times,
to his office and asked him to write a column which would tacitly reiterate that Zacharias was not a self-appointed apostle of peace, but an official spokesman, indeed, whose broadcast reflected the views and policies of the U.S. Government. Next morning Krock wrote: “Uneasiness has been expressed in this country over … the broadcast to Japan by Captain Zacharias … Captain Zacharias, though reiterating the requirement of unconditional surrender, told the Japanese people they can make ‘peace with honor' at this juncture and that the benefits of the Atlantic Charter will go with it; and this has aroused fears it will persuade the Japanese we are weakening and that they can get even better terms if they hold out …”

Then followed the crucial portion of his column, inspired by Forrestal: “Captain Zacharias was working on a twofold problem this Government faces in the Pacific war, and the line he took in the broadcast is the high official attempt to deal with it directly. He sought (a) to persuade the Japanese people that their military leaders lie when they predict pillage, enslavement, dismemberment of the home islands, rapine and the overthrow of their sacred institutions as the inevitable consequences of unconditional surrender, the hope being that, if the Japanese masses can be brought to realize this, the war will be shortened and many American lives will be spared. He sought (b) to show the American people the effort that is being made to save those lives.”

We were still apprehensive that Truman, who was maintaining ominous silence at Potsdam, might yet disavow us. Forrestal sought to prevent this. He asked Commodore Vardaman, the President's Naval Aide, to brief Truman on the issue. This intervention saved the day for us. While the President continued to refrain from taking a direct part in the controversy, he authorized Anthony Vaccaro, White House correspondent of the Associated Press covering him at Potsdam, to report that the President “tacitly approved the Zacharias broadcast.”

Now we felt the time had come to invigorate the campaign by establishing direct, personal contact with the Japanese to discuss with them face to face the problems that had to be solved. One of the foremost Japanese militarists, General Oshima, had been captured in Germany, where he represented his country as ambassador to Hitler. We made arrangements to fly him to Washington and then, with him in tow, we prepared to go to an island in the Pacific to meet with emissaries of Tokyo.

As we saw it, Zacharias would go on this secret trip, accompanied by Dennis McEvoy and maybe Commander Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., attached to Admiral King's staff, who worked independently along lines similar to ours, trying to establish contact with personalities close to the Dowager Empress, who wielded great influence on the Emperor. We obtained permission
to bring Oshima to Washington, and began making the arrangements for Zacharias' momentous trip, hoping to assure the participation of Japanese emissaries approximately on Zacharias' level. These were supposed to be preliminary talks, for the real negotiations would have to be conducted on a much higher level. But we expected that even these preliminary talks would produce vast areas of agreement, enabling subsequent negotiators to arrange the surrender without too much further delay.

We again enjoyed Forrestal's wholehearted support. The Secretary asked Zacharias to venture an opinion as to the date by which the surrender would become an accomplished fact. Zacharias answered without the slightest hesitation: “September 1.” The date was exactly one month away, but we felt confident that we could deliver the goods.

On August 6, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. It was followed by the dropping of a second bomb on Nagasaki on August 9. In between, the Red Army sneaked into the Far Eastern war by attacking the Japanese in Manchuria and scoring a few
pro forma
victories in great haste.

Zacharias was bitterly disappointed when his efforts blew up in the poisonous mushroom of two atomic bombs. “The stunning effect of the atomic bombs on world-wide popular imagination,” he wrote in his autobiography, “caused an instant belief that the Japanese surrender was solely the result of atomic bombing. And that erroneous belief still persists very widely … Japan would have accepted our surrender terms even without the prodding which the two atomic bombs provided.

“Aside from its stunning and horrifying impact on human imagination and its production of a spectacular war climax,” he wrote, “the atomic bombs' effect on the Japanese war was only to hasten, by a very short time, the Japanese expression of a decision already made.”

Japan surrendered on August 14 and her capitulation was formalized on September 2 on board the battleship
Missouri.

To save two weeks, the United States introduced history's most savage weapon into human conflict, and thus endowed
war with an unprecedented horror. The United States did this at a time when a small band of dedicated men was ready to demonstrate that conflicts could be ended in an intellectual sphere by non-military means.

I shall be forever proud that I was privileged to belong to that small band of dedicated men.

As it must be obvious to the reader, part of the material in this book is based on first hand sources—personal interrogations, unpublished eyewitness accounts, documents, as well as my own experiences—and part on published sources, the accounts of men and women who shared in this grand adventure or had a ringside seat at the secret war.

The following bibliography is prepared for those who seek information in greater detail on specific events cited above as well as on those operations not covered in this book.

The available literature is vast. The selection had to be confined to works which I thought were objectively the best or which appealed to me subjectively, for their intrinsic value or beauty. My gratitude goes out to their authors who have thus aided me in the preparation of this volume.

Abshagen, K. H.,
Canaris, Patriot und Weltbuerger,
Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Gesellschaft, 1949

Activities of Soviet Secret Service,
Washington: Government Printing Office, 1954

Alsop, S. (with Braden, T.),
Sub Rosa. The OSS and American Espionage,
New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1946

Amé, C.,
Guerra segreta in Italia, 1939–1943,
Roma: Casine, 1954

Bartz, K.,
Die Tragoedie der deutschen Abwehr,
Salzburg: Pilgram, 1955

Bergier, J.,
Agents secrets contre armes secrètes,
Paris: Arthaud, 1955

Best, S. P.,
The Venlo Incident,
London: Hutchinson, 1951

Borchers, E.,
Monsieur Jean,
Hannover: Sponholtz, 1951

Boveri, M.,
Der Verrat im 20. Jahrhundert,
Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1956–57

Buckmaster, M. J.,
Specially Employed. The Story of British Aid to French Patriots of the Resistance,
London: Batchworth Press, 1952

Buckmaster, M. J.,
They Fought Alone. The Story of the British Agents in France,
London: Odhams Press, 1958

Busch, T. (pseudonym of Arthur Schuetz),
Entlarvter Geheimdienst,
Zuerich: Pegasus, 1946

Butcher, H. C.,
My Three Years With Eisenhower,
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946

Garroll, W.,
Persuade or Perish,
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948

Carré, M.,
I Was the Cat,
London: Souvenir, 1960

Churchill, P.,
Of Their Own Choice,
London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1952

Churchill, P.,
Duel of Wits,
London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1953

Churchill, W. S.,
The Second World War,
6 vols., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948–1952

Ciano Diaries, 1939–1943,
New York: Doubleday, 1946

Collier, R.,
Ten-thousand Eyes,
London: Collins, 1958

Colvin, I.,
Chief of Intelligence,
London: Kimber, 1951

Colvin, I.,
The Unknown Courier,
London: Kimber, 1953

Combined Operations,
London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1943

Confidential Records of the French General Staff,
Berlin, 1940

Cooper, D. A.,
Operation Heartbreak,
New York: Viking, 1951

Dallin, D.,
Soviet Espionage,
New Haven: Yale, 1956

Dalton, H.,
The Fateful Years. Memoirs, 1931–1945,
London: Muller, 1957

Davidson, B.,
Partisan Picture,
Bedford: 1946

Dedijer, V.,
With Tito Through the War,
London: Hamilton, 1951

Derry, T. K.,
The Campaign in Norway,
London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1952

Dixon, C. A. (with Heilbrunn, O.),
Communist Guerilla Warfare,
London: Allen & Unwin, 1954

Dourlein, P.,
Inside North Pole,
London: Kimber, 1953

Downes, D.,
The Scarlet Thread. Adventures in Wartime Espionage,
New York: British Book Centre, 1953

Duke, M.,
Slipstream. The Story of Anthony Duke,
London: Evans, 1955

Duke, M.,
No Passport. The Story of Jean Felix,
London: Evans, 1957

Dulles, A. W.,
Germany's Underground,
New York: Macmillan, 1947

Eisenhower, D. D.,
Crusade in Europe,
Garden City: Doubleday, 1949

Eppler, J. W.,
Rommel ruft Kairo,
Guetersloh: Bertelsman, 1959

Farago, L. (ed.),
Axis Grand Strategy,
New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1942

Farago, L.,
War of Wits. The Anatomy of Espionage and Intelligence,
New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1954

Feldt, E. A.,
The Coast Watchers,
Melbourne: Cumberlege, 1946

Fernandez Artucio, H.,
The Nazi Octopus in South America,
London: Hale, 1943

Firmin, S.,
They Came to Spy,
London: Hutchinson, 1946

Fischer, G.,
Soviet Opposition to Stalin,
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952

Flicke, W. F.,
Spionagegruppe Rote Kapelle,
Kreuzlingen: Neptun, 1949

Flicke, W. F.,
Agenten funken nach Moskau,
Kreuzlingen: Neptun, 1954

Foote, A.,
Handbook for Spies,
Garden City: Doubleday, 1949

Ford, C. (with McBain, A.),
Cloak and Dagger. The Secret Story of the OSS,
New York: Random House, 1946

Fuller, J. O.,
Madeleine. The Story of Noor Inayat Khan,
London: Gollancz, 1952

Fuller, J. O.,
The Starr Affair,
London: Gollancz, 1953

Fuller, J. O.,
Double Webs,
London: Putnam, 1958

Galang, R. C.,
Secret Mission to the Philippines,
Manila: University Publications, 1948

Gauché, G.,
Le Deuxième Bureau au travail (1935-1940),
Paris: Amiot-Dumont, 1954

Gerson, L. D.,
Schreider und die Spione,
Muenchen: Dom, 1950

Gestapo i Norge. Mennene, Midlene og Metodene,
Oslo: Gyldendal, 1946

Gimpel, E.,
Spion fuer Deutschland,
Muenchen: Suedd. Verl., 1956

Gisevius, H. B.,
Bis zum bitteren Ende,
2 vols., Zurich: Fretz & Wasmuth, 1954

Giskes, H. J.,
London Calling North Pole,
London: Kimber, 1953

Goerlitz, W.,
Der zweite Weltkrieg,
Stuttgart: Steingraeben, 1951

Goudsmit, S. A.,
Alsos,
New York: H. Schuman, 1947

Guillaume, P.,
La sologne au temps de l'heroism et de la trahison,
Orleans: Imp. Nouevelle, 1950

Haestrup, J.,
Kontakt med England,
Copenhagen: Thuning & Appel, 1954

Hagen, W. (pseudonym of Wilhelm Hoettl),
Die geheime Front. Organisation, Personen und Aktionen des deutschen Geheimdienstes,
Zuerich: Europa, 1950

Hagen, W.,
Unternehmen Bernhard. Ein historischer Tatsachenbericht ueber die groesste Geldfaelschungsaktion aller Zeiten,
Wels: Welsermuehl, 1955

Hassell, U.v.,
Vom anderen Deutschland. Aus den nachgelassenen Tagebuechern,
1938–1944, Zuerich: Atlantis, 1946

Haukelid, K.,
Skis Against the Atom,
London: Kimber, 1954

Hawemann, W.,
Achtung, Partisanen! Der Kampf hinter der Ostfront,
Hannover: Sponholtz, 1953

Hesse, F.,
Das Spiel um Deutschland,
Muenchen: List, 1953

Hobatsch, W.,
Die deutsche Besetzung von Daenemark und Norwegen, 1940,
Goettingen: Musterschmidt, 1952

Hofer, W.,
Die Entfesselung des zweiten Weltkrieges,
Frankfurt: Fischer, 1960

Hollingworth, C.,
The Three Weeks
'
War in Poland,
London: Dyckworth, 1940

Howarth, D.,
The Shetland Bus,
London: Longmans, Green, 1953

Howarth, P. (ed.),
Special Operations
, London: Routledge & Paul, 1955