The Naked Communist (30 page)

In the early dawn of Sunday, June 25, 1950, 8 divisions of the North Korean Red Army spilled across the 38th parallel and plunged southward toward the city of Seoul. Frantic calls went out from President Sigmund Rhee to the Security Council of the United Nations, to President Truman in Washington and to General Douglas MacArthur in Japan. All three responded. The Security Council pronounced North Korea guilty of a breach of the peace and ordered her troops back to the 38th parallel. (If Russia had been represented, she no doubt would have vetoed this action, but the Soviet delegates were boycotting the Security Council because China continued to be represented by the Nationalists rather than by the Chinese Communists.)

General MacArthur responded by flying to Korea and reporting the desperate situation to Washington. President Truman responded by completely reversing the policy of his diplomatic advisers and ordering General MacArthur to pour U.S. ground troops in from Japan to stop the red tide. Thus the war began.

For several weeks the situation looked very black. General MacArthur was made supreme commander of all United Nations forces, but at first these were so limited that the shallow beachhead at Pusan was about all they could hold. Then General MacArthur formulated a desperate plan. It was so difficult and illogical that he felt certain it would come to the Communists as a complete surprise. It did. On September 15, half way up the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. Navy (with two British carriers), the Air Force, Army and Marine Corps combined to launch an ingenious invasion at Inchon -- a point where the 29-foot tide made a landing seem fantastic. Split-second timing permitted landings and the next thing the North Koreans knew they were trapped in the jaws of a mighty military pincer movement which cut across their supply lines and then rapidly closed in to wipe out the flower of the whole North Korean Army which, of course, was concentrated in the South. It was a magnificent victory.

MacArthur then turned his armies toward the north. The ROK's (South Koreans) went up the East Coast while other U.N. troops went up the West Coast. In doing this, General MacArthur was required to act on obscure hints rather than specific directions from Washington and the U.N. For a while it appeared that he might be forbidden to pursue the enemy forces retreating to the North.

By the middle of October the coastal spearheads of the U.N. offensive were nearing the northernmost parts of Korea and the war appeared practically over. There was the immediate prospect of unifying the entire Korean Peninsula and setting up a democratic republic. Then, in November, unexpectedly disaster struck.

From across the northern Korean boundary of the Yalu River came the first flood tide of what turned out to be a Chinese Communist army of one million men. As these troops came pouring into North Korea, the U.N. forces found themselves smothered by a great wave of fanatical, screaming, and suicidal humanity. MacArthur radioed to Washington: "We face an entirely new war!"

The U.N. lines were cut to ribbons as their wall of defense was pushed back below the 38th parallel. General MacArthur could scarcely believe that the Chinese Communists would dare to risk the massive retaliation of the United States atomic bombing Air Force by this inexcusable assault on U.N. forces. However, what he did not know, but soon discovered, was the appalling fact that the Chinese had already been assured by their intelligence agents that the diplomats in Washington, London and New York were not going to allow MacArthur to retaliate with the U.S. Air Force. MacArthur was going to be restricted to "limited" warfare.

It was in this hour that General MacArthur found that pro-Communist forces in the U.N. and left-wing sympathizers in the State Department were swamping the policies of the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and those who had charge of the Korean War. He found that vast supplies which he badly needed were being diverted to Europe in accordance with point No. 1 of the State Department Conference. He was specifically restricted from following Chinese jets to their bases or bombing the Manchurian Railroad which was dumping mountains of supplies on the north banks of the Yalu River. He was forbidden to bomb the Yalu bridge over which troops and supplies were funneled, and his own supplies and replacements were cut back to the point where a counter-offensive became strategically difficult, if not impossible. The final blow came when the diplomats flatly turned down Chiang Kai-shek's enthusiastic offer to send thousands of trained Nationalist troops from Formosa to fight in Korea.

Over a period of four months General MacArthur watched the slaughter resulting from these stalemate policies. Finally, he could contain himself no longer. He violated a presidential gag order dated December 6, 1950, and answered a written inquiry from Congressman Joseph W. Martin concerning the inexplicable reverses which U.N. forces were suffering in Korea. The General's letter giving recommendations for the winning of the war was read in Congress April 5, 1951, and five days later, President Truman ordered MacArthur summarily withdrawn from all commands.

General MacArthur was relieved by General Matthew B. Ridgeway and he returned to the United States completely perplexed by the sudden termination of his military career. It was not until he landed in San Francisco and met the first wave of shouting, cheering, admiring fellow citizens that he realized that the sickness in the American body politic was not in all its members but only in one corner of its head.

It will be recalled that two more years of military stagnation followed the recall of General MacArthur. Subsequently, hearings before Congressional committees permitted General Mark Clark, General George E. Stratemeyer, General James A. Van Fleet, Admiral Charles Joy and others to explain what happened to their commands in Korea. Each one verified the fact that the military was never permitted to fight a winning war. The diplomats had imposed upon them a theory called "Communist Containment," which in actual operation resulted in the containment of the U.N. fighting forces instead of the Communists. It soon became apparent that the Korean War had been run by the same team and according to the same policies as those which resulted in the fall of China.

It was also to be revealed at a later date that not only had the machinations of confused diplomats contributed to the semi-defeat in Korea but that fulltime under-cover agents of Soviet Russia had often stood at the elbows of officials in London, Washington and at the U.N. in New York to argue the Moscow line. Among the high-level spies for Russia during this critical period were two top British diplomats, Donald MacLean and Guy Burgess. MacLean was head of the American desk in Britain's diplomatic headquarters at London; Burgess was the second secretary of the British Embassy in Washington. Both fled behind the Iron Curtain when they were about to be arrested by British Intelligence.

By the time President Eisenhower took office in January, 1953, there was a general feeling of gloom and despair concerning Korea. The people desperately desired to somehow stop the bloodshed. The hopes for peace were suddenly accelerated by a news flash of March 5 which swept round the world. Joseph Stalin was dead!

The next day a new government took over in Russia and the leader turned out to be Stalin's former secretary and the keeper of the secret Communist files -- Georgi Malenkov. He had seized power by joining forces with Lavrenti P. Beria, head of the secret police who had an army of agents and troops numbering two million. Beria also had charge of the forced labor camps and supervised the atomic energy plants.

However, when Malenkov and Beria took over as heirs of Stalin they immediately found themselves confronted by an explosive economic crisis. Pressure was building up inside Russia (and her satellites) just as it did in 1922 and again in 1932. Malenkov therefore offered respite to his people: "Let us now lay heavy industry aside for awhile. The people cannot eat heavy industry.... We should care for the needs of our people." This was the beginning of a radical new policy for the USSR. At home the slogan was "More Food"; abroad Malenkov's slogan was a campaign for "Peaceful Coexistence" with all the democracies.

It was just twenty-three days after Stalin died that the Communist Chinese acted on their new signals and opened negotiations with the U.N. commanders for an armistice. This finally led to the signing of a truce on July 27, 1953. It became effective twelve days later.

Thus ended the Korean War. It had cost the United States 20 billion dollars and more than 135,000 casualties. It had cost South Korea 1 million dead; another million maimed and wounded 9 million left homeless and saddled South Korea with 4 million refugees from North Korea.

The people of the United States came out of the Korean War sadder and wiser than when they went in. Authorities have stated that two things happened in the Korean War which may yet brand it as the greatest blunder the Communist strategists ever made. First, it awakened the United States to the necessity of vigorously rearming and staying armed so long as the Communist threat exists. Second, it demonstrated to the people of the United States the inherent weaknesses of the United Nations. As Senator Robert A. Taft summed it up: "The United Nations serves a very useful purpose as a town meeting of the world ... but it is an impossible weapon against forcible aggression."

Back in 1950 when the U.N. called upon all its members to furnish the means to resist the Communists, only 16 countries responded with the highly essential ingredient of armed troops. Altogether, these 16 nations furnished an army of 35,000 fighting men. Little South Korea maintained a fighting force of 400,000 men while the United States made up the difference by furnishing a force of 350,000. More than one million American GI's had to be rotated through Korea to maintain the U.S. quota of military strength. In the mind of the average American the U.N. had therefore ceased to represent "collective security."

It was difficult to forget that while Americans and South Koreans were taking the brunt of the war, Russia and Britain had both violated the U.N. embargo by shipping strategic materials to Red China. On the floor of the U.N., Andrei Vishinsky had thrown down the Russian challenge: "The Soviet Union has never concealed the fact that it sold and continues to sell armaments to its ally, China!"

The end of the Korean War marked the end of an era. During the summer of 1953 the United States served notice on Britain and France that if the Communists broke the cease-fire agreement in Korea we would immediately launch a major war against China. Both Britain and France agreed to support this stand. Many did not realize it at the time, but by this action the United States was passing the death sentence a twenty-year-old policy of Communist appeasement.

No one could have welcomed the end of appeasement with greater relief than John Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI and the number-one law enforcement personality in the United States. Since 1919 he had struggled to illuminate the minds of government leaders as well as the public generally concerning the conspiratorial nature of Communism. As an assistant to the Attorney General in 1919 he had prepared one of the first legal briefs reflecting the subversive aspects of the worldwide Communist movement.

During the twenty years of appeasement, when many Americans had been lulled into a sense of security by the "sweet talk of Communist United Front propaganda," John Edgar Hoover had struck out with two-listed blows at the Red menace which was gnawing at the vitals of American life:

"The American Communist ... must be placed in the same category as the Ku Klux Klan, the now defunct German-American Bund, and other totalitarian groups.... As common criminals seek the cover of darkness, Communists, behind the protection of false fronts, carry on their sinister and vicious program, intent on swindling and robbing Americans of their heritage of freedom."

John Edgar Hoover was a great disappointment to the Communists. In most countries the Red leaders had been able to completely discredit the agencies handling the police powers of government by blasting them with charges of corruption and violation of civil liberties. However, the Director of the FBI had spent his adult lifetime building the FBI so that the public would know that any such charges would be false and fraudulent.

Over the years the public had learned that FBI agents spent as much time checking out innocent suspects as they spent in ferreting out the guilty. In fact, by careful investigation and humane treatment of the guilty, the FBI had secured confessions in 85 percent of its cases.
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Therefore, the Communists were deeply disappointed with the results of their campaign to portray the FBI as an American Gestapo. The Communists leaders were further embittered by the knowledge that the FBI had trained its personnel to be just what governmental officers in a free nation should be -- alert, intelligent, scientific and hard working. And what particularly frightened the Reds was the quiet methodical way in which Bureau agents went after subversives -- all of which foreshadowed a day of reckoning for Communist strategists.