The Rebuttal: Defending 'American Betrayal' From the Book-Burners (8 page)

The only good to come of this
exercise is that I am now aware of the evidence marshaled by M. Stanton Evans
that makes it patently clear the extent and depth to which Truman was
well-informed by the FBI of Soviet penetration of the federal government
– and long before Venona came on line.

There is one more point to make.
Radosh also sees Truman’s exoneration in what he describes as “a 1949 FBI memo
indicating that Omar Bradley had decided
not
to inform Truman about the
Venona program, which was at the time top-secret.”

That’s not at all what the 1949 FBI
memo says. The memo simply states that Gen. Omar Bradley would assume the
responsibility for briefing the president or anyone else in authority “if the
contents
of
any of this [Venona] material so demanded.”

The memo doesn’t inform us whether Bradley decided one way or
the other; just that he had assumed the responsibility to do so.

Radosh sums up:

“In
short, a third key element in West’s vast conspiracy theory is so much hot
air.”

Radosh can repeat the phrase “conspiracy theory” all he
wants, but the evidence doesn’t back him up.

CHAPTER 5:

THE
AGGRESSIVELY ATTACKED DETAIL #4: GEORGE H. EARLE

Chapter 10 of
American Betrayal
contains the most serious indictment of the US
Communist movement for having spawned the traitors, fellow travellers and dupes
who worked inside the federal government to advance Stalin’s interests. In so
doing, they appear to have successfully thwarted multiple attempts by
anti-Nazi, anti-Communist Germans to gain US assistance that might have helped
them overthrow Hitler, surrender German armies to US and British forces in
exchange for unspecified assistance in keeping the Red Army out of eastern and
central Europe – a mission we spent the next four decades fighting to
achieve from beleaguered bases in Western Europe. This might have brought World
War II to a close much earlier than 1945.

Two high level Roosevelt
administration officials – George H. Earle, former governor of
Pennsylvania and FDR’s special emissary in Europe, and Gen. Albert C.
Wedemeyer, a senior war strategist – would write after the war that they
believed, if successful, these German Underground efforts might have helped
bring World War II to a close as early as 1943.

In other words, there was
a chance not taken due to Communist
penetration
of the policy-making chain in Washington and London that might
have saved millions, even tens of millions of lives.

It is the story of these German Underground
efforts that I discuss in Chapter 10, and the obstacles they faced in both
Washington and London, where pro-Soviet influence – and Soviet influence
operators and agents – were able to keep these anti-Nazi, anti-Communists
at bay.

Why would that be the case? It was
Stalin’s goal to take Europe. In 1943, his Red Army was still inside Russia. At
a certain point in my research it began to dawn on me that as far as Stalin and
his secret agents were concerned, World War II could conceivably end too soon
– before Stalin had extended his evil empire into Europe. I describe
this phenomenon at length in
American
Betrayal.

That’s the story I tell.

SURREALISM
RULES

Typically, Radosh has other, wrong
ideas – that is, ideas that are
not in my book.

He begins:

“Should
the United States have joined Germany to fight the Soviet Union?
Bizarre as it might sound, this is the
fourth pillar of West’s argument.“

You
bet it sounds bizarre. In fact, surrealism rules again: Radosh now embarks on
another discussion that is
not in my book.
In other words, what
Radosh is calling “the fourth pillar of West’s argument” is not contained
within the pages of my book.

He
continues with more statements that are not in my book:

“In her effort to
paint the Roosevelt administration as a puppet of Soviet intelligence, she
argues that towards the end of the war, the American government turned down the
opportunity to arm German soldiers willing to form a new army to go to war
against the USSR. “

Surrealism
still rules: I never discuss any “opportunity” the US government “turned down”
to “arm German soldiers.” Such a subject never comes up. None of these German
efforts got farther than extending “peace feelers” and making inquiries. That
is the whole point of the chapter.

Once
again, the question forms: Did Radosh read my book? Did he understand what he
read? Or did he purposefully distort it?

Radosh
continues:

“American leaders
were so pro-Soviet, in other words, that they missed one final opportunity to
halt the Red Army’s advance into Eastern Europe, thereby delivering these
countries to Stalin’s tender mercies and precipitating the Cold War.“

“American
leaders” are not part of this part of the story of Chapter 10. I discuss at
length the parleys between various American (and some English) representatives
abroad, most of whom had connections to the OSS, with various anti-Nazi,
anti-Communist Germans. These efforts invariably reach a point at which the
Americans (or English) are blocked from moving up the command chain, more often
than not from choke points manned or influenced by a Soviet agent or asset.

RADOSH MISSES (AND DISTORTS)
THE CRUX OF MY THESIS – AGAIN

He
continues:

“Her case rests
on a story told by FDR’s old friend and former Governor of Pennsylvania, George
H. Earle.”

This is a falsehood. No, it’s a lie. But
thus begins Radosh’s last aggressive attack on detail: George H. Earle.

It
is utterly false and absurd to say that my case rests on “a story” told by
Earle.

Earle
published his account of his work with the German Underground in an August 1958
article titled “F.D.R.’s Tragic Mistake” in
Confidential
magazine.

Here are some of my other sources besides
Earle:

Ÿ
 
Allen Dulles,
Germany’s Underground
(New
York: Macmillan, 1947).

Ÿ
 
“Full Story of Anti-Hitler Plot Shows
That Allies Refused to Assist,”
New York Times,
March 18, 1946.

Ÿ
 
“Gen. Menzies, Ex-British Intelligence
Chief, Dies,”
New York Times,
May 31, 1968.

Ÿ
 
“Eisenhower Praises Anti-Nazi
Resistance,”
New York Times,
May 11, 1945.

Ÿ
 
Peter Hoffman,
The History of the German Resistance, 1933–1945,
3rd English ed. (Montreal: McGill- 
Queen’s University Press, 2001)

Ÿ
 
“Canaris Hanging Related,”
New York Times,
October 11, 1952.

Ÿ
 
“Lubavitch Jews Want Admiral Canaris Honoured by Yad Vashem,”
Agence
France Presse,
August 6, 2009, 
http://www.ejpress.org/article/38250.
“Following historical research we have established that Admiral Canaris saved
Rabbi Yosef Schneerson—sixth in that lineage—and 500 other Jews
from the Warsaw ghetto,” said [Rabbi Benjamin] Lipshitz.”

Ÿ
 
Czeslaw Milosz,
The Captive Mind
(New York: Vintage Books, 1981)

Ÿ
 
Ian Colvin,
Hitler’s Secret Enemy
(London: Pan Books, 1957).

Ÿ
 
Harry Hopkins Papers, Georgetown University Library.

Ÿ
 
Richard Harris Smith,
OSS: The Secret History of America’s First
Central Intelligence Agency
(Guilford, CT: 
Lyons Press, 2005), 368,
quoting
Secret and Personal,
by F. W. Winterbotham (New York:
HarperCollins, 
1969).

Ÿ
 
Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre,
Is Paris Burning? How Paris
Miraculously Escaped Hitler’s


Sentence of Death in August 1944
(New
York: Grand Central Publishing, 1991).

Ÿ
 
Vassiliev’s White Notebook No. 3 notes (133) that Neumann’s KGB
recruitment was approved on January 2, 1943. In 1942, Vassiliev’s notes also
reveal, three still unidentified KGB agents considered Neumann

“pro-Soviet.”

Ÿ
 
Jürgen Heideking and Christof Mauch, eds.,
American Intelligence and
the German Resistance to Hitler: A


Documentary History
(Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1996).

Ÿ
 
Alexander Vassiliev Papers, White Notebook No. 1 Translation, 51,
http://www.scribd.com/doc/84608249

/Alexander-Vassiliev-Papers-White-Notebook-No-1-Translation.

Ÿ
 
Robert Stripling,
Red Plot Against America

Ÿ
 
Peter Niblo,
Influence

Ÿ
 
Robert Sherwood,
Roosevelt and
Hopkins

Ÿ
 
FRUS: The Conferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca,
1943,
506.
This record, by the way, wasn’t published until
1968—twenty-five years after the conference!

Ÿ
 
George McJimsey,
Hopkins,
277.
FRUS: Washington and
Casablanca,
703.

Ÿ
 
Albert C. Wedemeyer,
Wedemeyer Reports!

Ÿ
 
B. H. Liddell Hart,
The German Generals Talk
(New York: William
Morrow, 1948), 292–93; see also Manly,
Twenty-Year Revolution,
122–23.

Ÿ
 
M. B. B. Biskupski,
Hollywood’s War with Poland

Ÿ
 
Stanislaw Mikolajczyk,
The Rape of Poland
(New York: Whittlesey
House, 1948), 25.

Ÿ
 
M. Stanton Evans,
Blacklisted by History,
95–97.

Ÿ
 
Klaus P. Fischer,
Hitler and America
(Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 237.

Ÿ
 
John Dietrich,
The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American
Postwar Policy
(New York: Algora Publishing, 2002)

Ÿ
 
Geoffrey T. Hellman, “Profiles—House Guest II,”
New Yorker,
August
14, 1943

Ÿ
 
Bentley testimony of May 29, 1952,
Interlocking Subversion in
Government Departments,
Report of the 
Subcommittee to Investigate
the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security
Laws to the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 83rd Congress,
1st Session, July 30, 1953,
http://www.archive.org/stream/interlockingsubv1953unit/interlockingsubv1953unit_djvu.txt.

Ÿ
 
Douglas Waller,
Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS
and Modern American Espionage
(New York: Free Press, 2011)

Ÿ
 
Sudoplatov and Sudoplatov,
Special Tasks

Ÿ
 
Francis Biddle Papers, Georgetown Special 
Collections

Radosh
continues:

“She spends pages
relating how Earle contacted German intelligence chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris
in 1943, and tried to persuade him to accept U.S. “peace feelers.” Although
this is another well-known episode, West organizes the material to make the
reader believe that it was ignored when first made public years ago, and that
her own book is finally revealing its momentous significance.”

Alas,
if it’s so “well-known,” you would think Radosh would get the facts straight.
But no.
Canaris
contacted Earle (not
vice versa).
Canaris
issued the
“peace feelers” to Roosevelt, which were conveyed to no avail to Hopkins, most
likely, by Earle (not vice versa).

Radosh
mixes everything up again.

As
for me organizing material first made public “years ago”: What was that ho hum
book about the Rosenbergs’ guilt somebody co-wrote three decades after Judge
Kaufman found the atomic spies guilty as charged?

MY TRUE CRIME REVEALED -
AGAIN

Radosh
continues:

“It is apparent
that West is unfamiliar with much of the research that has been done on World
War II, or the fact that her counterfactual speculations are not regarded as
realistic possibilities by any reputable historian of the era.”

Here
we go again.

My
“speculations” are “counterfactual” only so long as Radosh hides my copious
sources.

Similarly,
such “speculations” are “not regarded as realistic possibilities” so long as my
sources remain hidden.

I
am not a “reputable [read: liberal, conventional] historian of the era” because
I am drawing from sources that are usually ignored so that I might try to
better understand history of this era.

Those
“reputable” historians Radosh cites not to debate me but to impugn me
continually fail to consider evidence of Soviet infiltration of the US
policy-making-chain as important enough to include in the “reputable” histories
they write and teach.

No
thanks.

Now
that I’ve uncovered the larger canvas, both front and back, and the broader
stage, both in public view and behind the scenes, there is no returning to the
blinkered, false narrative again.

THE LAST LECTURE FROM THE
LIBERAL, MAINSTREAM ORTHODOXY

Radosh:

“She does not
seem to know the context of the decisions that FDR, Churchill and the generals
in the field made, or appreciate the factors they had to take into account. Or
more likely she prefers to ignore them because her theories could not survive
the encounter.”

Again, I
have found a larger, grimier, and, in my opinion, more realistic context in
which to assess all of those decisions and factors. Meanwhile, Radosh, as has
been established repeatedly, cannot be trusted to determine what theories I
ignore or consider, He clearly doesn’t know himself what I have written.