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The Truth in Time

(Robert Welch, November 1, 1966.)

Robert Welch founded The John Birch Society in 1958 and led it until just prior to his death in 1985. This essay first appeared in the November 1966 issue of American Opinion, a predecessor to this publication. Because Mr. Welch intended this piece as a summary for Americans already steeped in the history of Communism, and because the passage of time has made much of that history more obscure than it was then, an annotated bibliography has been included in this issue beginning on page 35.

To make the history of the great conspiracy both clear and convincing, we need a hundred volumes of a thousand pages each. And we hope that those scholarly volumes will all be written in due course, as a guide and a warning to future generations. But at present we have a more immediate and more urgent task. We want to give you simply an outline of the progress of this organized evil force, from its beginning up to the present time.

The aim of the conspirators always has been, and still is, to impose the brutal tyranny of their rule over the whole human race. Today they are at last within striking distance of that ultimate goal. And we agree with the Hon. J. Edgar Hoover, who stated in the April 1961 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, that "the way to fight it [Communism] is to study it, understand it, and discover what can be done about it." We think that the only way to stop the Communists is to create sufficient understanding, soon enough, among enough people, as to what is really taking place all around us. So let's do our best, within the limits that are practicable for this occasion, to review the whole fantastic story step by step.

The Illuminati

We must hunt the first steps largely in the shadows rather than in the substance of history. For the conspiracy is deep-rooted. Two hundred years ago, or during the last half of the Eighteenth Century, there were in Europe many secret societies with grandiose dreams of overthrowing all existing human institutions, and of rising out of the resulting chaos as the all-powerful rulers of a "new order" of civilization. Of these groups the Illuminati, founded in Bavaria by Adam Weishaupt on May 1, 1776, was undoubtedly the most important.

By 1789 the Illuminati were already strong enough to have had a great deal to do with planning and precipitating the holocaust known as the French Revolution. In that upheaval we find many elements of Communist strategy and purpose with which we are familiar today. One was the ruthless undermining of rulers and governments in order to destroy them. Another was the destruction of all religion by substituting the worship of "reason" in its place. You will remember that the revolutionaries erected in Paris a statue to the "goddess of reason" as a symbol of this change. A third element was the fomenting by a few professional agitators of mob action made to appear as a spontaneous uprising of the people. A fourth was the massive use of terror to silence all opposition. A fifth was the use of the manufactured smear to destroy the enemies of the revolution or of its temporary leaders. And all of these objectives and methods, which sound like rehearsals for what is happening throughout the world today, had either been specifically set forth by Weishaupt for his order of Illuminati, or were the practical applications of his program.

By 1795 the French Revolution had run its horrible course, and there was a gradual return even in France to traditional beliefs, values, and institutions. Although it led to the Napoleonic wars which, for the next 20 years, devastated so much of Europe, this revolutionary fire in France had failed to set off a continent-wide social conflagration, as the Illuminati and similar groups had hoped and planned. And henceforth the Illuminati observed even more closely than before the original Weishaupt instruction that the very existence of the order should be denied and kept secret at all costs. But the fact that the Illuminati were active, at the end of the Eighteenth Century, with a growing reach and influence in many countries, is clearly proved in the detailed histories of Robison and the Abbé Barruel. And the short-lived Babeuf conspiracy reveals that other groups, though possibly allied or subsidiary to the Illuminati, were working for the same totally destructive purposes.

During the Nineteenth Century some of these secret societies and subversive groups appear to have grown and coalesced into the Communist conspiracy as we know it today. However hidden the controlling nerve centers may have been, by 1848 some of the activities and even organizational structures of the conspiracy were becoming visible. The first important declaration of purposes, using the name of Communism, as we understand the word today, was issued by Karl Marx in 1848. Communist plotting was at work, to some extent, in the numerous uprisings of that year, 1848, as it has been in almost all insurrections and wars involving European nations since that time.

The Insiders

But the Communist movement is only a tool of the total conspiracy. As secret as the Communist activities and organizations generally appear, they are part of an open book compared to the secrecy enveloping some higher degree of this diabolic force. The extrinsic evidence is strong and convincing that by the beginning of the Twentieth Century there had evolved an inner core of conspiratorial power, able to direct and control subversive activities which were worldwide in their reach, incredibly cunning and ruthless in their nature, and brilliantly farsighted and patient in their strategy. Whether or not this increasingly all-powerful hidden command was due to an unbroken continuation of Weishaupt's Illuminati, or was a distillation from the leadership of this and other groups, we do not know. Some of them may never have been Communists, while others were. To avoid as much dispute as possible, therefore, let's call this ruling clique simply the Insiders. But we do need some such term for both clarity and convenience. And it should be recognized that always pushing and promoting each other into higher positions, on every road to power and wealth and fame, has been a vital part of the strategy of this "fraternity" from the beginning -- and of the motivation of its members at any given time. The goal for each generation of conspirators, the tie that bound them together, lay in what this self-perpetuating body was to become; but the contemporary reward and satisfaction was in the becoming.

For more than a hundred years now the conspiracy had pushed on steadily, along many avenues, all leading to the one goal of world rule. During the last half of the Nineteenth Century the Insiders were using the Communists, the anarchists, the socialists of various hues and kinds, and dozens of other groups, to promote their purposes. Many of these groups were largely unconscious of how they were being spurred on and guided by a few clever Insiders. While under the guise of humanitarianism, and in the pretended promotion of freedom and equality and brotherhood, these Insiders, and the gullible idealists who served as their dupes, were busily undermining the very beliefs and institutions which made the Nineteenth Century a high water mark of such civilization as man has laboriously achieved.

In the Name of Progress

One broad avenue down which these conspiratorial forces advanced was known as "progressive legislation." The very same collectivist theories and demagogic pretenses which had destroyed earlier civilizations were now paraded forth in the disguise of new and modern concepts. What Pisistratus had done in Athens in the Sixth Century BC, with the leverage of his vaunted concern for the working classes, Bismarck now began in Germany by basically the same approach. The controls which Diocletian had imposed on the Roman people sixteen hundred years before -- entirely for the good of the people themselves, you understand -- were now matched by one socialist regime in France after another. And in England the advance of government paternalism caused Herbert Spencer to comment that the ultimate result of protecting fools from their own folly must be to fill the planet full of fools.

Now this great and growing stream of socialist legislation was made possible, of course, by idealists with only the noblest of intentions, combined with or led by venal politicians with no more nefarious objectives than glory and pelf for themselves. In the rotting French Republic of 1900 AD, as in the rotting Roman Empire of 300 AD, most of the rot was introduced in the name of progress. Most of the people of Europe and America, for the past hundred years, for instance, have gradually been led to believe fervently that everything in the way of "security" legislation, from the first Workmen's Compensation Acts under Bismarck to the latest Medicare monstrosity under Lyndon Johnson, was a proof of their own nobility of outlook. And this is not the place to go into any discussion as to which pieces of the mosaic may really have been justified and worthwhile.

The Hidden Purpose

For unrecognized by the visionary do-gooders and even by the opportunistic politicians, who alike were inveigled into pushing along this new humanitarianism, was the constant thread of its hidden purpose. That actual purpose was, on the part of the instigators who contrived it, always and by all means, to reduce the responsibilities and rights of individual citizens, while steadily increasing the quantity, the reach, and the potential tyranny of governments. This was the real long-range goal of the Insiders who designed and controlled the movement, but who had realized from the beginning that Communism must largely be advanced by non-Communists who know not what they are doing.

In the United States, with its remaining pioneer spirit and ubiquitous opportunities, the season was not yet ripe for offering this mess of pottage. And timing is always an essential part of Communist strategy. But there was still plenty that could be done as a part of the grand design. So by 1914 the Insiders, with comparatively few agents but tremendous influence and cunning, had already brought about in our own country such decisively important measures in their program as central banking, a graduated personal income tax, and the direct election of senators.

The Fed and the Income Tax

The brilliantly contrived central banking apparatus was called the Federal Reserve System. As in the case of the graduated income tax, its long-range significance and use could be well hidden under the pretended objectives at the time of its founding. And its ultimate value to the conspirators could be tremendously enhanced by the character and ability of the good men drawn into its top positions during the early decades of its existence. But what this function and prestige of the Federal Reserve System would inevitably come to mean, in time and in actual practice, was the control of credit, the control of the money supply, the ability to spend with increasing profligacy, and the means to steal continuously from the people by the debasement of our currency, on the part of the Federal Government. And we have reached the stage today where all of these results have visibly come to pass.

The graduated income tax, of course, was the second plank in Karl Marx's program for imposing Communism on any country. From the very beginning the whole scheme included, without the knowledge or understanding of the American people, a parallel gimmick for the benefit of the Insiders, which we can identify as the system of tax-exempt foundations. The actual result of this development has been -- as it was intended to be -- that the wealthiest men in America have been able to accumulate untold billions of liquid wealth in these foundations, by escaping the increasingly confiscatory taxes which prevented such accumulations outside of the foundation formula, and still have practically as much control of what can be done with this money and how it shall be spent, in helping to move our country leftward, as if these billions were in their private bank accounts.

Since the founding of the Illuminati, each generation of Insiders has visibly followed, so far as they were able, Weishaupt's stated and aggressive policy of pulling within their conspiratorial circle the sons of the very powerful and the very rich. In the United States this policy, combined with the income-tax squeeze on one side and the foundation loophole on the other, has gradually brought fantastic wealth into the service of the conspiracy, while putting ever greater handicaps and stronger brakes on the acquisition or the uses of money by those who might oppose the plans of the Insiders.

Direct Election of Senators

And the direct election of senators was of tremendously more importance than was realized when the Seventeenth Amendment was adopted in 1913. For as long as the senators for any state had been elected by the legislature of that state, they clearly represented the state itself as a sovereign entity within a federal union, and not just the citizens of the United States within certain boundaries, as was the case for the members of the House of Representatives. This distinction had been carefully planned by our Founding Fathers, in their studied effort to extend and improve upon what Cicero had praised so highly as the diffusion of government in the early Roman Republic. We had a division of federal governmental power into three branches, the executive, legislative, and judicial; the grand division between federal power and governmental power retained by the states; and the further division of this state power, again between three branches. The Insiders, however wanted gradually and eventually to bring a concentration of all governmental power into the hands of the executive department of one central government. And the direct election of senators was actually their first huge legalistic step in that direction.

It was during this period, too, that the Insiders learned to foment, nourish, magnify, and utilize every natural division among men, whether based on race, color, language, or religion; to create strife ranging from a precinct political feud to a major war between nations; to stimulate and control both sides of all such bitter divisions among mankind; and to profit enormously from the opportunities thus offered them to grasp more power amid the resulting chaos, resignation, and despair.

Today the most important basic split among mankind lies in color. The Communists are making the greatest possible capital for themselves out of that division, and are planning to make even more capital in the future. But in the Nineteenth Century the division of greatest significance was between Jew and Gentile. So the most valuable plank in this area of Communist strategy was the revival, nourishment, and magnification of the dislike, distrust, and bitterness now associated with the term anti-Semitism. The Communists are always sharpening and using both edges of this sword. In their efforts to weaken and destroy The John Birch Society, just for an illustration, they have dupes and agents clamoring incessantly that the Society is anti-Semitic; and at the very same time they have agents-provocateurs everywhere trying to persuade members of the Society that the whole Communist movement is simply a Jewish conspiracy, and that these members are wasting their time in The John Birch Society because its leaders do not have the courage to name the enemy. And by this typical Communist method, they have made anti-Semitism into one of the most powerful weapons in their whole arsenal of destruction.

World War I

But the decisive success of the Insiders, and of the various groups and forces through which they have worked, in this more shadowy period of their machinations and advance prior to 1917, lay in their instigation of the first World War. Looking back now it is easy to see how this great beginning of the long deliberate destruction of the soundest values and most stable institutions of our civilization, at the cost of the cruel killing of so many of the finest youth of Europe and America, was deliberately contrived by power-hungry criminal megalomaniacs in this clique of Insiders, simply to serve their own purposes.

The very slogan, "To make the world safe for democracy," by which Americans were inspired to greater enthusiasm in their contribution to this holocaust, should have been a giveaway to any intelligent student of history and political science. For at least since the time of the Greeks it has been well known, as it clearly was to our Founding Fathers, that democracy was not only the worst of all forms of government, but was the last direct step of any nation and any people on the road to an unbridled mobocratic dictatorship. By 1916 it was already so important to the Insiders to convert our constitutional republic into a democracy that Edward Mandell House* House was President Woodrow Wilson's chief advisor. A book written by House, Philip Dru: Administrator, is reviewed in this issue beginning on page 41.

* (book review) and his dupes and allies even used their war in part to promote the proper attitude for such a change on the part of the American people.

But this was only a comparatively small part of the mighty betrayal, not only of the United States but of our whole human race and of its reasonably humane civilization. For once America had been enticed by lying propaganda and tremendous cunning into this great senseless European war, the world could never be the same again -- nor as happy and sane a world again, for at least a long, long time -- as the Insiders were well aware. And they undoubtedly rejoiced at the success of their satanic schemes.

This brings us out of the shadows, into the historically clear past, with regard to the steps we are listing in the progress of the conspirators. For in 1917 Lenin, Trotsky, and a relative handful of ruthless criminals, financed and directed by Insiders in various European countries and in the United States, seized power in Russia. Communism, from being solely a tenuous invisible net of influence, intrigue, and undercover activity, materialized into a palpable, visible force with a working headquarters on solid ground. Since that time the Communist arm of the conspiracy has come to be regarded, however inaccurately, as its whole body. And while there undoubtedly still are Insiders, aiding and directing and controlling worldwide Communist activities, and benefitting from Communist progress, without themselves ever having carried a Communist card or belonged to the Communist Party, their own power will now rise or fall with the power of their agency and front called Communism. For practical considerations the agency has become almost the equivalent of the principal. The enemy which we need to oppose, expose, and destroy, in order to save our country and our civilization, can properly be identified as the Communist conspiracy. But to understand this enemy it is important to remember and to understand its roots.

After 1917 the Communists quickly and ruthlessly solidified their first physical conquests. In 1922, after unlimited use of terror and torture in establishing their tyranny, this Communist gang led by Lenin consolidated Russia proper, Russian Armenia, Azerbaidzhan, Georgia, Byelorussia, and the Ukraine into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It is worth remembering, however, that the USSR was founded in 1922, not 1917.

Stalin's Consolidation

After Lenin's death in 1924 Joseph Stalin gradually took his place, and then rose far above it. By 1929 Stalin had succeeded in exiling Trotsky from Russia, and in making himself the recognized dictator. Then, through merciless massacres in the Ukraine and elsewhere, and later through a ruthless purge of most of his old fellow revolutionaries, Stalin made himself the absolute boss of the Russia-based Communist operation. What his relationship finally became to any hierarchy of Insiders -- of which Lenin, for instance, had visibly been merely an agent -- we have no way of even guessing with assurance. But for the practical purposes of our brief history we can consider Stalin as having been supreme in the Communist world from 1939 until his death in 1953.

In 1933, sixteen years after the Communists seized power in Russia, they achieved their next tremendous victory. The United States, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, officially recognized the Soviet regime, thus saving it from impending financial collapse, and at the same time opening our doors to an ever increasing army of Communist diplomats, agents, and spies. Even more important, this step marked the beginning of the alliance between Washington and Moscow which has steadily grown stronger, despite some occasional and transparent pretenses to the contrary.

World War II

Stalin's next great success was in bringing on World War II. Through the Sorge spy ring and other vast diplomatic, espionage, and propaganda activities, he had engaged in long and extensive plans for plunging the world into another war. There is no doubt that he had plenty of help in this endeavor from Insiders within the governments, and occupying other positions of great influence, in most of the important nations involved. By 1939 all of this planning was ready for fruition. Stalin then precipitated the war by encouraging Hitler (through a temporary alliance) to invade Poland.

By the end of 1941 Stalin had exactly the alinement he had wanted. He had broken with his carefully built up foil, Adolph Hitler, who had then invaded both France and Russia itself. The United States had been brought into the war in Europe by massive propaganda, with the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor as the blinding flash which overcame all resistance to our involvement. The alliance of the Western capitals with Moscow, already largely in effect through the work of Stalin's agents and the influence of the Insiders, now became official. The Western powers not only blindly accepted Stalin as an ally, but then conducted the war largely according to his dictation, in a manner to serve his purposes. Hypocrisy and propaganda reigned supreme, with treason in the background behind them.

Although the officially stated purpose of the whole war in Europe was to protect the territorial integrity of Poland and other small nations, it was never even suggested that Stalin give up that part of Poland which he had seized in his joint crime with Hitler. Nor were the American people allowed to grasp the fact that Soviet Russia remained practically an ally of our enemy, Japan, through the Molotov-Matsuoka "non-aggression pact," during all the years we were supporting Stalin so mightily in the war with Germany. Nor were the American people allowed to realize the further fact that Stalin's agent, Mao Tse-tung, was keeping huge armies of our real ally, Chiang Kai-shek, tied up in preventing Mao's Communist forces from overrunning all of the northern provinces of China, right while Chiang's armies were so badly needed to fight Japan, the joint enemy of both China and ourselves. And it was kept especially well hidden from the American people that Stalin, by cruel trickery, managed to keep our war with Japan going for many months after the Japanese were trying desperately to surrender. Everything about this war, in Asia as in Europe, was grist for the Communists' mill. And the killing and destruction on so vast a scale did not cause Stalin -- or the Insiders -- any more compunction than if they had overturned an ant heap.

During the war, and throughout the Western nations, it became increasingly fashionable, "patriotic," and profitable for everybody to sympathize with the Communists, "understand" the Communists, and help the Communists in all feasible ways. The world had never before seen so many countries led towards their own ruin by treasonous pressures within their own boundaries. And in Washington (as in London) from 1941 through 1945, Communist agents and sympathizers, taking full advantage of the mood and the opportunities created by our alliance with Soviet Russia in the European war, entrenched themselves so solidly that Communist influences became dominant in our government. They have remained dominant ever since. At the same time the Communist infiltration into positions of power in our Press, our educational system, and every other division of our national life, which had already been steadily increasing, was given new impetus and new openings by the official pro-Communist attitude of the war-time Administration.

The Communist principle of reversal now came fully into play. It must be realized that everything about Communism is part of one Big Lie. And this is so not merely as a means, but as an end in itself. It is the very purpose of the Insiders who control and use the Communist movement to turn the world upside down. They seek everywhere and always to replace truth with falsehood, construction with destruction, religious ideals with satanic amorality, government by consent with tyranny by force, freedom with slavery, man's upward reach with complete surrender to his most bestial appetites, compassion with cruelty, and love with hate. This has all been dearly spelled out in the Communists' own literature for more than a hundred years. But its application on a worldwide scale really got under way at the end of World War II.

Once this diabolic and basic principle is thoroughly grasped and kept in mind, it is easy to see and understand specific manifestations of the Big Lie at work. Communism itself, for instance, is not at all the movement which it pretends to be, of downtrodden masses rising up against a ruling class which exploits them. It is exactly the opposite. Communism is, in every country, a drive for absolute power on the part of a closely knit gang of criminal megalomaniacs. In most countries these treasonous criminals come largely from the top social, educational, economic, and political circles. Cunningly and ruthlessly using the mechanics and pretenses of revolution, they seek to impose their rule ever more rigidly and tyrannically, from the top down, on the total population.

The condition of the masses is always made worse, of course, in every respect, by the success of these conspirators -- as they have fully realized and intended in advance. They seek to rule a world of slaves and not of peers. The Communist Party, with its considerable percentage of idealistic dupes and misguided fools, has been simply a tool of these power-hungry conspirators, in any country at any time. And especially since 1945 the most cruel exploiters in human history have made their greatest progress largely under the guise of condemning exploitation.

“Anti-Imperialism”

A direct extension of this division of the one Big Lie which is Communism has been the anti-colonialism theme. In one "colonial" area after another Communist guerrillas have terrorized the natives, by massive tortures and massacres, into some semblance of at least passive support of a movement for "freedom and independence." This was not with any expectation of bringing about the so-called "liberation" of the area by armed insurrection. The strategy was simply to have the show and pretense of a revolution serve eventually as a basis for Communist-controlled negotiations. The diplomats could then literally force "freedom and independence" on the betrayed peoples. This was all done with the blessing, and frequently with the active help, of traitorous influences in the top levels of government in such imperial capitals as London, Paris, Brussels, and The Hague. This surrender of empire, and of the responsibility that goes with empire for the protection of the people it has absorbed, has been one of the most disgraceful developments in contemporary history.

For the "independent nation" phase, even when there was any substantial pretense of such a condition, was merely a transition stage in making the same area a colony of the Soviet empire. It was then ruled by a Communist viceroy with infinite brutality, instead of the benevolent orderliness and gradually rising standard of living which had been brought to such areas by pioneers of the civilized "imperial" nations to which such areas formerly belonged. Yet the Communist lie of anti-colonialism has been sold to millions of gullible people, in America and everywhere else, as a movement of "liberation." And since 1945 the Soviets have thus put together the most cruel empire of all time, primarily by using the battlecry of anti-imperialism.

American Aid

By the end of World War II many other important uses of this whole principle of reversal were being initiated right under the eyes of a world blinded by so gigantic a deception. One was the American foreign aid program. It was conceived by Communists, started and nourished along by Communists, and built eventually by Communist influences and propaganda into colossal proportions, as a means of helping the Communists and their socialist forerunners all over the world in taking over their respective countries. But it was sold to the American people, of course, as exactly the opposite; as a means of preventing the Communist advance.

Another manifestation of the same principle at work was the establishment of the United Nations. This organization was conceived by Communists, founded by Communists, has always been controlled by Communists, and has been used increasingly -- and ever more brazenly -- to carry out Communist purposes. But it was sold by propaganda and pretense to the American people, and to most of the rest of the world, as a means of maintaining peace and preventing Communist aggression.

Most important of all of these gigantic reversals of the truth, in the realm of strategy, has been the cruel pretense, all over the world and to the American people, that the United States was the one great enemy of Communism. The fact has been exactly the opposite. Since early in 1945 the most powerful single force in promoting Communism everywhere, and in turning one nation after another over to Communist tyranny -- as in CzechoSlovakia and China and Cuba and the Congo -- has been the help of the United States Government to that end. The record to support this statement is absolutely clear to anybody who will give it objective study.

With all of these great means and mechanics of deception well oiled and beginning to operate, one final item of preparation was necessary. This was the crushing of the very backbone of potential resistance, before any cohesive body of such resistance could arise, and while all was yet chaos and confusion. The carefully studied and unbelievably coldblooded campaign for this purpose was carried on during 1945 and 1946, throughout most of Europe.

The operation could be said to have started in Poland, because Stalin's agents early seized control there. In fact, some million and a half of the most stable and patriotic citizens of eastern Poland had been snatched away from their homes and transplanted to various Communist dumping grounds, soon after Stalin seized that part of Poland during his compact with Hitler. But in 1944 this new drive, to inflict such terror and hopelessness on the Polish people as to make their submission inevitable, began with the betrayal of General Bor-Komorowski's underground army in Warsaw.

Eliminating Resistance

General Bor's 250,000 men were lured out into open attacks on the German troops and tanks which still occupied the city, by assurances from a London radio station that the Russian army had arrived at the Vistula River, and was now ready to "liberate" the Polish capital. These brave and intensely patriotic Poles, who would later have resisted the Communist conquerors of their homeland exactly as they had resisted the Nazis, were killed almost to a man, as just about the last thing the Germans did before themselves retreating westward -- while Stalin's army remained stationary on the other side of the river and waited for the massacre to be complete. And the coldly systematic destruction of all Polish resistance, by Stalin's Lublin Gang, really got under way only a few months later.

In France during 1945 Stalin's long-time agent, Charles de Gaulle,* For background information on Charles de Gaulle, see France: The Tragic Years 1939-1947 by Sisley Huddleston (Devin-Adair, New York, 1955, and Western Islands, Boston, 1965) and "If You Want It Straight" in the September 1962 issue of American Opinion.

* established himself in dictatorial power without a shred of legal authority, as the head of the so-called "résistance." Although the Germans were now completely defeated, and all German troops and occupation authorities had been withdrawn from France, so that there was no longer any legitimate activity for members of the "résistance," Communist thugs from many countries now poured into France, to join forces with similar activists in the de Gaulle movement. And this motley rabble now set out, in the name of the "résistance," to destroy whatever potential real resistance there might be to Communist control. In this "purification," as they called it (or, in French, "l'épuration"), more than a hundred thousand of the most patriotic Frenchmen were ruthlessly murdered, and more than a million incarcerated -- while de Gaulle remained aloof and above these actions of his followers -- before the terror had run its course.

But it was in Hungary and Romania and Yugoslavia and other parts of central Europe and the Balkans that the most heartless crime of modern history was perpetrated, under the authority of General Eisenhower, in command of American occupation troops. (Although it was later proved that General Eisenhower was exceeding his own authority in carrying out this program of "repatriation" by force.) For Stalin demanded that all refugees from Soviet territory, civilians and military alike, who had fled from Soviet rule since 1939, now be forcibly returned to Russia. And Eisenhower made it a function of the armies of occupation to carry out that demand.

Operation Keelhaul

In this compliance with Communist purposes, somewhere between two million and five million human beings, including tens of thousands who had fought valiantly on our side in the war against Germany, were forced into boxcars at bayonet point -- amid epidemics of suicides by the most pitiful means and beyond all calculations -- and were transported to Soviet territory, and to the torture and death which awaited them there. This whole massive procedure was so merciless that it was officially known in Pentagon records as "Operation Keelhaul" -- referring to the most savage of all the punishments meted out by the sea captains of old.

In the united States today there are still huge numbers of former GI's who remember with horror the part they were compelled to play in so cruel a campaign of betrayal and extirpation of Stalin's most dangerous enemies. But very few large-scale crimes have ever been kept so little known. When even these former soldiers, as American citizens now on American soil, have found it so futile or so unwise to speak up about the orders they had to carry out, you can readily imagine the effectiveness of this massive horror, in deterring and destroying resistance on the part of central Europeans to the ensuing enslavement of their countries by the Communists.

Similar preventive measures, on a similar scale as to both ferocity and numbers, were carried out in other parts of Europe, in addition to the three illustrations we have outlined here. The Communists make full and repeated use of the ancient Chinese precept that the surest way to conquer any enemy is to break his will to resist. They are still applying that strategy in full force against the anti-Communists in the United States today, as against their remaining unconquered enemies everywhere in the world.

And so, as World War II was coming to an end, the great global conquest by the Communists began. During the six years of 1945 through 1950, with the constant help of various agencies and officials of our government, Stalin extended his European empire to include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czecho-Slovakia, and East Germany. During that same period, and with the same help from Washington, Stalin extended his Asiatic empire to include North Korea, Mongolia, Manchuria, and all the mainland of China. And the march of Soviet imperialism towards world rule was well under way.

Since 1950 the global conquest has steadily continued. Stalin died in 1953 without causing any break whatsoever in this Communist advance. His death simply revealed two important facts: First, that the worldwide Communist organization was now entirely too strong and solid to be shaken by the disappearance from the scene of any one man, no matter how important; and second, that the hold of the Insiders and Communists over the Western governments was so complete as to prevent any slightest effort being made by any supposedly anti-Communist nation to take advantage of any temporary weakness or indecision in Communist ranks, such as the death of Stalin might have been expected to provide.

Hiding Their Success

With the advent of Malenkov to temporary command, however -- and perhaps to more permanent command than has been recognized, although that is only a wild surmise -- there was now a relatively minor change in Communist strategy. Henceforth the Communists, instead of flaunting their conquests before the world for the psychological advantage of showing that they were winning, began to make dependencies instead of satellites out of their new conquests. The emphasis was put on hiding, rather than boastfully revealing, how rapidly they were moving in taking over the remainder of the planet. Their success and assurance was now so great that they could afford a bluff in reverse as to how well they were succeeding. And it was particularly important to keep the American people from becoming aware of the progress that they were making on every continent and in every corner of the globe.

The one huge new step, nevertheless, ... was the all-out drive for "peace." What the Communists mean by the word "peace," quite literally and simply, is a situation in which there is no opposition to Communism. "Peace," therefore, is exactly synonymous in their Aesopian language with complete submission to Communism. But they expect the word to be understood entirely differently by such gullible innocents as the American people. And with the Communists themselves stirring up guerrilla wars and international "police actions" all over the world, it is as natural as day for them to appeal to the universal human desire for "peace." Hence, as Louis Budenz so ably pointed out years ago, the Communist cry has been "peace." And they have promoted, and are still promoting, limitless bloodshed and wartime horrors, which always serve their purposes under this guise of constantly seeking to find some formula for "peace."

Since the United States was regarded, however incorrectly, by the enslaved or threatened people all over the world as the one great bastion against final and total Communist victory, there has been an unceasing demoralization of these peoples, and a breaking down of their will to resist, by a steady destruction of the prestige, moral leadership, military superiority, dependability as an ally, and even the independence, of our nation. And the most effective contributions to this erosion of American greatness have been made by traitorous influences within our own government. The Korean war offered many illustrations of this Communist formula at work. The present action in Vietnam is offering, among other immense gains for the Communists, a further and final shattering of all remaining American prestige. When the supposedly most powerful nation on earth appears unable to lick a bunch of half-starved guerrillas in an area the size of Missouri, it is obvious to all the world that the anti-Communists, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, are indeed putting their dependence on a paper tiger.

Calling It Conspiracy

The Communists have extended their strategic plan of "divide and conquer" to include the formula "divide and keep conquered." They have deliberately precipitated revolts in one subjugated country after another, in order to destroy potential future resistance at a time that was safest and most convenient to themselves; and in order to avoid the dangerous possibility that the enslaved peoples of several nations might all revolt at the same time. For any such simultaneous revolt in many different areas might spread and coalesce into a conflagration which could wipe out the whole world-wide Communist conspiracy. In some instances, as in the case of the Hungarian uprising, which they precipitated in the late fall of 1956, the Communists have had many other gains in mind as well, such as the bringing to this country of thousands of carefully selected Communists and turning them loose as Hungarian "freedom fighters." But the primary purpose still remained as stated.

There have been other formulas, of course. For the Insiders have now had almost two hundred years of cumulative experience by which to guide their steps. But this is an outline, not a comprehensive treatise. So let's summarize quickly our conclusions up to this point. To do so we simply note that the Communists have now established their formal rule over almost half the peoples, and their informal but preponderant influence over almost all of the governments, of the whole earth. The exceptions to the latter category include Spain, Portugal, West Germany, South Africa, Rhodesia, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Nationalist China, New Zealand, and Australia -- but not, unfortunately, the United States.* Since this essay was first published in 1966, Rhodesia (renamed Zimbabwe) and Nicaragua have been subjugated by the Communists. Other countries in this list have been neutralized as bastions of anti-Communism. South Africa, still an obstacle in the path of the Communist advance, is now under heavy attack in a war that is political and economic as well as military.

* Although at least 98 percent of all federal employees are, we believe, entirely loyal and patriotic, the Communists -- and the Insiders above them, who of course include some Communists -- now have full working control over our government because of the prestige and position and influence of this other two percent.

Our greatest problem in getting people to understand this picture derives from the fact that what we are dealing with is nothing more nor less than a gigantic conspiracy; and that the controlling order, which we have dubbed the Insiders, has given more careful attention and ruthless enforcement to keeping its very existence a secret than to any other objective in its whole satanic program. Anybody who even starts to point out the truth is mercilessly ridiculed as a believer in the "conspiratorial theory of history"; and anybody who approaches too close to an authoritative exposure of the higher levels of the conspiracy meets the fate of a William Morgan, a Dr. William Wirt, or a Joe McCarthy -- a fate which is visibly intended for ourselves.

So now let's move out of the past, for a quick and much too concise look at the present. The one great job left for the Communists is the subjugation of the people of the United States. Even with the help of all the power of our government, which the Communists already own, and with the brazen coercion and insidious bribery for which that power is now being used, the Insiders do not underrate the magnitude of this undertaking. They leave no stone unturned, and must be patient enough to run no risk of failure. So their exhaustive strategy for achieving their final goal includes the following methods.

(a) The deliberate and insidious breaking down of all morality and of every sound sense of values; (b) the distortion and destruction of religious influences, especially on the lives of the young; (c) the constant indoctrination of young and old alike, through our educational system, and through our communications and entertainment media, in a preference for "welfare" and "security" against responsibility and opportunity; (d) making an ever larger and larger percentage of American industry, commerce, agriculture, education, and individuals accustomed to receiving, and dependent on, government checks; (e) a constant increase in legislation, taxation, and bureaucracy, leading directly towards one hundred percent government; (f) the gradual conversion by judicial fiat of our republic into a democracy, as the one best legalistic road to a mobocratic dictatorship; (g) the creation of riots and the semblance of revolution under the guise and excuse of promoting "civil rights"; (h) developing this "Negro Revolutionary Movement," as the Communists describe it, into a broader "proletarian revolution" of the "have-nots" against the "haves"; (i) destroying the power of local police forces to preserve law and order; (j) carrying on and steadily "escalating" a completely phony foreign war in Vietnam (because the Communists are actually running both sides of it), as an excuse for gradually establishing more and tighter government controls over every detail of our dally lives; (k) under carefully contrived conditions of famine and the threat of starvation, using ration cards as leverage to bribe and coerce the heads of families to submit to a Communist regime, exactly as was done by Menshikov in Poland and by the followers of Madame Sun Yat-sen in China; and (1), eventually bringing about "peace" -- a few years from now -- by surrendering all remaining American sovereignty to the United Nations, and enabling that Communist one-world government to "police" our country with foreign troops and mercilessly suppress all opposition, with exactly the same cruelties and terror that have already been used in dozens of other countries.

Except for the threat of famine, which has still been well hidden from the American people, you can see all of these things taking place today all around you. If you have not been too blinded by Communist propaganda, you will understand that they are not just happening as a result of natural causes, but are the product of long, extensive, brilliant, and ruthless planning by the evil forces which seek to destroy us. And the only thing which can possibly prevent a successful culmination of these Communist plans is exposure. The one thing no conspiracy can withstand is the light of day on its activities. If enough people can be brought in time to see and understand that it is happening here, now, the process can still be stopped, and the chains thrown off, before the shackling is complete. But more tiny chains of every kind are now being added every month -- and time is running short.

To prevent this arousing of the American people before it is too late, the Communists are counting on certain basic accomplishments of their long-range strategy and its supporting propaganda. We list those basic accomplishments below, with a few comments that seem in order.

(a) The fundamentally decent American mind has been blinded to the fact that any group of men can be so evil, and so completely devoid of all conscience, as the Communists and the Insiders above them. The only remedy for this mental blindness is sufficient study of the conspiratorial activities and massive cruelties which have brought the world to its present state.

(b) Many Americans feel that the whole battle is an ideological one. This is exactly what the Communists want us to believe. They will go to any lengths, and even subsidize their opposition, to maintain the appearance that this is a war of ideas. For the Communists wish above all else to distract your attention from the workings of the conspiracy. And there are Conservatives who will still be ridiculing "the conspiratorial theory of history," and feeling that we simply have to win a vast debate with the "Liberals," if a few years from now the armed police of a central tyranny knock on the door at two o'clock in the morning and haul them away to some unknown destination. Today they are like a man accepting the invitation of a thug who says to him: "Let's you and me argue heatedly over our disagreements, while my partner is slipping up behind your back to cut your throat."

(c) There are now another huge number of Americans who, aware of the menace of the Communist conspiracy, believe that the major danger lies in a surprise attack from Communist military forces. The Communists have been working steadily for many years to make this threat appear realistic. For it not only draws attention away from the takeover by internal subversion, which is going on steadily all of the time, but it actually serves as an excuse for the seizure of more reins of power and the establishment of more controls by the very agents of the conspiracy who are carrying out this conquest by subversion.

What our frightened fellow citizens in this category fail to realize -- what some of our most patriotic military leaders, because of the very nature of their training, simply refuse to recognize -- is that today Moscow and Washington are, and for many years have been, but two hands of one body controlled by one brain. You do not have your left hand fight your right hand, or go through the motions of doing so, unless it is to amuse or deceive children, or to distract their attention from other matters while you are putting them to sleep. And these observations clearly apply to the show that is now being staged in Vietnam.

(d) There are also millions of Americans who now have a vested interest -- intellectual, social, or even financial -- in the falsehoods which they have gradually absorbed from insidious and carefully disguised Communist propaganda. To stand up now and admit "I was wrong" would hurt not only their pride, but perhaps their reputations as knowledgeable sophisticates among their country-club friends or their business associates. So they become daily more willful and more adamant in refusing to recognize the Communist poisons in the mental fare they have been accepting and spreading all around them. Let's hope that they do not have to find insight, wisdom, and repentance easier to come by in a concentration camp.

(e) Finally, we have the problem of a very considerable number of spineless jellyfish going around among us wearing human clothes. They are aware of what is happening. They do not know whether it can be stopped or not. "But if so," they murmur quietly to themselves, "let George do it. I do not want to become involved." These people feel that, by not opposing Communism, they will be safer from recrimination, if and when the actual takeover arrives and the police-state terror begins. In this attitude they are not only cowards, but fools. For Lenin himself gave them the answer to that false hope in his order to the secret police, which appeared in Pravda on December 26, 1918. It reads as follows:

"We are not waging war against separate individuals; we are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class .... Do not ask for incriminating evidence to prove that the prisoner opposed the Soviet Government either by arms or word. Your first duty is to ask him what class he belongs to, what were his origin, education, and occupation. These questions should decide the fate of the prisoners. This is the meaning and essence of Red Terror."

And the only change in Communists since Lenin's day is that they have become infinitely more powerful.

Finally, ladies and gentlemen of our listening or reading audience, our whole story can best be summarized in one vernacular and very earthy expression. In the Twentieth Century modern man is simply being played for a sucker, by an amoral gang of sophisticated criminals. These cunning megalomaniacs seek to make themselves the absolute rulers of a human race of enslaved robots, in which every civilized trait has been destroyed.

The Insiders at the top and all their Communist minions constitute only a tiny percentage of the race they plan to rule. Although they now occupy most of the positions of great prestige and influence in Washington and London and Paris, as well as in the financial, educational, and publishing circles of the whole world, their power rests entirely on bluff, pretense, and deception. Both their success and their purposes are contrary to the whole current of human history. They are sitting precariously on the gigantic powder keg of all honest human emotions. Despite their arrogant assurance on the contemporary scene, they themselves are well aware that sooner or later the whole framework of their cruel power will be blown to pieces, by a mighty uprising of the incalculable forces of man's moral principles, love for freedom, and common sense. How soon that day of delivery may come will depend on you.