Burn After Reading

by Ladislas Farago

  When we seized a disabled U-boat, we salvaged a copy of the German Naval Register and were appalled by the extraordinarily large number of flag officers in the German Navy. We added them up, and found that in a single month more captains were made admirals in Germany than U-boats were launched. We proceeded to point this out to the men, who habitually dislike admirals.

  We realized that the fighting spirit of the U-boat men was high, and that any direct appeal to surrender would fall on deaf ears. Yet we wanted to plant the idea of this eventuality in their minds, so we decided to talk to them, not about surrendering, but about the best means of surrendering. We described an actual action during which a U-boat had been disabled. The men had nothing white on board with which to signal to the attacking U.S. destroyer to cease fire, since all the curtains and towels on the boat were green. We suggested that the men bring along something white for such an emergency. Sure enough, when the next boat signaled to an American warship that her crew was abandoning ship, it was done with a white cloth. Upon closer scrutiny it turned out to be the dress shirt of the executive officer, the only white object they dared to smuggle aboard in accordance with Norden’s suggestion.

  Captured documents had references to Norden and his “devastating influence on the morale of the men.” If positive proof were needed, it was supplied by a U-boat skipper named Heinz-Eberhard Mueller, whose boat was sunk off the Virginia coast. Badly wounded, Captain Mueller was taken to the hospital at Fort Meade, Maryland, where his first request was to be introduced to Commander Norden. This request, flattering though it was, created a minor crisis, if only because “Norden” was a full commander while his voice was only a lieutenant commander. For the trip to Mueller’s bedside Albrecht was given another stripe. Mueller received him with tears in his eyes and thanked him for his compassionate broadcasts, which, he claimed, made many a U-boat man more dependent on information from Norden than from the German radio.

  The most dramatic Norden broadcast concerned a U-boat skipper named Werner Hanke, a fanatical Nazi and a strict taskmaster, respected but disliked by his men. When a British ship, the Ceramic, carrying dependents of soldiers to South Africa, was sunk in the South Atlantic, we established from secret intelligence reports that the U-boat that sank the ship was commanded by Hanke. We further knew that Hanke refused to give aid to survivors struggling in the water or to call for aid before he himself had escaped from the scene of the disaster.

  Norden went on the air with a stern warning that Hanke would be made to account for his act, as a war criminal, after Allied victory. By a strange quirk of fate, a week after this broadcast, Hanke’s U-boat was sunk by American planes and Hanke was found among the survivors. By a further coincidence, the admiral commanding the rescuing carrier happened to have read the English translation of the Norden script in which Hanke had been singled out. He ordered the prisoner of war to report to him at his quarters.

  “You know,” the admiral told him, “that the British are looking for you. I am now making for the Azores, where I am going to hand you over to them.”

  The U-boat commander crumbled under this threat. He admitted that he had heard the Norden broadcast and did his utmost to assure the admiral that Norden was wrong in his statements. The admiral was adamant. “You’ll be handed over to the British,” he said, “unless you co-operate with us.”

  “But how?” Hanke asked.

  “You’ll sign a paper signifying your agreement that you will co-operate with us wholeheartedly.”

  Hanke signed. He was then dismissed and was excluded from interrogation, but his men were shown the paper he had signed as an inducement for their co-operation. Hanke could never live down the shame. In the prison camp he committed suicide.

  This was grim business, and it was working perfectly. According to Wallace Carroll, the distinguished New York Times correspondent who was an executive of the Office of War Information, the Norden broadcasts were “the single most effective propaganda weapon we had in the war.”

  In 16-W we also prepared leaflets, concocted rumors for distribution by agents among the U-boat men, and put together, among other things, a song book for German sailors in which every song prescribed another simple form of malingering.

  Our most effective leaflet, for which Commander Coggins gave the branch a golden star, was initially as amusing as it was later effective. Officers from 16-Z found a peculiar little brochure on sailors captured from a German blockade runner. It was a guide to the brothels of Bordeaux, home base of the ship, with a map of the city indicating the houses of ill fame and identifying them by the names of their star inmates, such as Maison Fifi, Maison Mimi and so forth. The brochure also listed first aid stations in the city where the sailors could turn for prophylactic measures or treatment. There was a ration card attached to the brochure, indicating that each sailor was entitled to one daily visit to the ladies’ establishments.

  We reproduced five million copies of the brochure just as it was, even duplicating the bad paper on which it was printed, and dropped them over Germany. We added (in red) to only the last page. The addition read: “German women! Be grateful to the Fuehrer for taking such good care of your men !”

  The Norden operation was of enormous tactical significance. In due course, Op-16-W was also given major strategic assignments, two in particular: to draft a critique of the meaning and morale implications of President Roosevelt’s unconditional surrender formula; and to prepare a co-ordinated campaign directed to the Japanese High Command, providing arguments to be used inside Japan by advocates of surrender.

  The unconditional surrender formula, proclaimed at the Casablanca Conference in January, 1943, became a thorn in our side. It became evident that it was stiffening enemy morale, preventing our adversaries from even considering the idea of surrender and prolonging the war. Eisenhower asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to do something about the formula, and in February, 1944, the Joint Chiefs commissioned Op-16-W to prepare a brief on the subject with recommendations. “The questions,” Zacharias wrote in Secret Missions, “which the experts of 16-W were supposed to answer were, first, whether the unconditional surrender formula was conducive to increasing or stiffening resistance of the enemy; and, second, how we could alter the formula without losing face or doing damage to our political prestige.”

  When the formula was originally proclaimed, we in 16-W regarded it as an outstanding psychological scoop because, as Zacharias put it, “It revealed both our determination and confidence to carry the war to a victorious conclusion at a time when the military situation did not seem to warrant such optimism and confidence.” However, by 1944, we had our doubts about the wisdom and efficacy of the formula. Even before the assignment reached us from the Joint Chiefs, I undertook research about the historical origin and legal validity of the formula.

  I established that it was based on a historical misapprehension, a distortion of the term Grant had used in the Civil War. Moreover, I found that it was legally invalid and, as a matter of fact, illegal under the Articles of War. In view of the provisions of the Hague Convention, which clearly distinguishes between the responsibilities of combatants and noncombatants in warfare, the term could refer only to the manner in which hostilities are terminated, and not to the future fate of a whole nation.

  We nevertheless recommended to the Joint Chiefs that the form of the formula be sustained for the sake of prestige with the proviso that it “does not refer to conditions to prevail after the war, which have to be made on the basis of explicit peace terms, and not under the blanket dictation implied in unconditional surrender.” This preoccupation of 16-W with the unconditional surrender formula became of great importance later in connection with our assignment concerning Japan.

  The Special Warfare Branch consisted of only a handful of people and its budget was less than the price of two torpedoes. We had an Italian desk, consisting of a single pretty WAVE lieutenant, Dorothy Sandler. We had a German desk manned by Professor Stefan T. Possony, now of George
town University, and Yeoman Ernst Erich Noth, now a professor at the University of Oklahoma. We had a Japanese desk, on which worked Professor John Paul Reed of the University of Miami; Dennis McEvoy, writer and linguist who could speak Japanese with amazing fluency; Professor Joseph Yoshioka, a noted Japanese psychologist; Francis Royal Eastlake and Clara Eastlake, children of the great American lexicographer who was author of a famed Japanese-American dictionary. Eastlake was an outstanding linguist, his sister a sociologist. Our naval adviser was Professor Bernard Brodie of Dartmouth College, author of Seapower in the Machine Age, a Mahanesque scholar and, to my mind, the outstanding and most lucid American expert on strategy in political scientific terms. I, in my lonely splendor, attended to research and special investigations, co-operating with each desk on the themes and composition of all their output, suggesting topics and themes for the Norden scripts, concocting rumors, writing leaflets and supplying arguments to our Officer-in-Charge to defend our own Branch in the face of snipings by diehard Naval fogies.

  Coggins had left to serve as a guerrilla surgeon with Chinese partisans behind the Japanese lines in China. His place was taken by Commander William H. Cullinan, a radio news commentator from Boston, whose diplomatic tact was badly needed for our very survival.

  Yet the most important member of the Branch was conspicuous by his absence. He was Zacharias. Nine months after the establishment of the Branch, he was removed from O.N.I. and sent to sea in command of the battleship New Mexico. This was a heavy blow to us, as it was to the entire Naval Intelligence establishment, for Zack was the most dynamic executive in O.N.I. While he was still in O.N.I., Naval Intelligence virtually steamed with activities. It was during his tenure that O.N.I. participated in a secret mission that spirited an anti-Fascist admiral out of Italy. He also co-operated closely with O.S.S. on several top secret espionage projects and with the various branches of the British Secret Service on ventures far beyond the narrow competence of Naval Intelligence. He left behind him an excellent organization in every one of its branches, but especially in its Japanese branch, headed by a Marine colonel named Boon and a Navy captain named Egbert Watts.

  The day before his departure, “Captain Zack” invited me to his house and gave me a parting assignment. “Look,” he told me, “I am going to sea and will do what I can to contribute to the military defeat of the Japs, but I am absolutely convinced that we could better defeat them, and sooner at that, by non-military means.

  “I want you to make a comprehensive study of every Japanese defeat situation in history and draw your conclusions. Then think of arguments we could provide for those Japanese in high places who dream of peace and need such ammunition.” This was in the late summer of 1943 !

  He was gone for two years, covering himself with glory. During his absence, I partially retired to a cubbyhole in the Library of Congress and, with the help of the Eastlakes and Professor Yoshioka, carried out Zack’s assignment.

  My researches produced a fantastic conclusion. Although in all their history the Japanese had engaged only in a few foreign wars, they fought among themselves, clan versus clan, all the time. We examined hundreds of such fratricidal battles and found that rarely, if ever, was such a battle fought to the bitter end. Contrary to popular legend, surrender was quite common among the Samurai. The Japanese of the past rarely, if ever, committed suicide when defeated.

  The findings of this research—an important part of the intelligence activity—answered the question, “Can it be hoped or expected that the Japanese will ever surrender?” in the affirmative. We had our data ready pending Zack’s return, but he was transferred from his command at sea to shore duty as chief of staff of a Naval District on the West Coast. It was there, early in 1945, that Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal found him, nurturing a historic plan.

  Zacharias was obsessed with the idea that he could persuade the Japanese high command to surrender, even unconditionally, provided certain assurances could be given, such as the assurance that the Emperor, symbol of the “Japanese spirit,” would be permitted to remain on his throne. Zacharias outlined his idea to Forrestal and the Secretary decided to bring him back to Washington to carry it out. But even the civilian chief of the Navy proved powerless to overcome certain objections to Zack’s second coming.

  Forrestal was determined to give Zack his big chance, so he hit upon a compromise. He had Zacharias assigned to the Office of War Information, over which Zack’s Naval enemies had no control, and then gave him a desk in his, Forrestal’s, own office, reporting directly to the Secretary.

  Zacharias arrived in Washington in February, 1944, and walked into 16-W out of the blue. He spent his first week in Washington going over all the intelligence reports, and his second week composing an estimate of the situation for the Secretary’s eyes only.

  I received him with a special “gift” that made him almost jump for joy. It was a single intelligence report, but of such monumental importance that he regarded it as the conclusive confirmation of his theory. This was how it came into our possession.

  President Roosevelt had rewarded a good friend of his, George Earle, former Governor of Pennsylvania, with an exciting appointment as assistant Naval Attaché to Sofia in Bulgaria, an excellent listening post. Earle had a lot of qualifications for the job, but discretion was not one of them. He was ingenious, imaginative, daring and intelligent, but he was also flamboyant and his temperamental boiling point was rather low. Earle performed so well that the Germans demanded the Bulgarian Government declare him persona non grata. Roosevelt had the Governor transferred to Turkey, where he made the friendship of a high official of the Foreign Ministry in Ankara and obtained through him copies of the reports of Turkish ambassadors in enemy capitals.

  There was little of any importance we could cull from reports sent to Ankara from Germany or Hungary, but the reports of the Turkish ambassador in Tokyo proved of enormous value. We gave him the code name “Shark.” Late on the afternoon before Christmas in 1944, I was alone in the office when an officer-messenger delivered a single five-page report. It was from Shark. It contained information of overwhelming importance.

  Shark outlined in explicit detail the future course of Japan. He reported without equivocation that Koiso would soon resign as Premier, to be replaced by the venerable Admiral Suzuki, a confidant of the Emperor. More important, he told us that there existed a “peace party” on high echelons in Tokyo and that the Emperor himself had recently joined it. The major objective of the “peace party” was to obtain a clarification of our unconditional surrender formula and to explore the most favorable peace terms they could get. According to Shark, the Emperor was still on the periphery of the “peace party,” chiefly because he was not sure whether he himself would be permitted to remain on the throne. If such an assurance could be given by the Allies, he would throw in his fate with the “peace party” and do everything he could to make it prevail.

  Shark even outlined the course of events which would lead up to Japan’s surrender. At the psychological moment, Suzuki, too, would resign to give way to an Imperial prince who reflected directly the Emperor’s will and authority, and who would then arrange Japan’s surrender, guaranteeing the “execution and observance of the surrender terms.” As early as December, 1944, Shark even identified this Imperial prince as Prince Higashi Kuni, a cousin of the Emperor.

  I was thrilled by this report and peddled it up and down in O.N.I., but found no takers. Even the experts of the Japanese Desk regarded it as a lot of moonshine. In O.N.I., within the Joint Chiefs and everywhere else in Washington, the possibility of Japan’s surrender was viewed with an overdose of skepticism. Remembering my findings in the Library of Congress, I refused to share this pessimism.

  Another one of my researches revealed that the much-vaunted Kwantung Army stationed in Manchuria was but a shell of its former self. Most of its elite regiments had been transferred to the fighting fronts in the Pacific and had been annihilated on Saipan and Palau. This was another
report I peddled assiduously and for which I also found no takers.

  When Zacharias walked into my office, I showed him the reports, and he took them to Forrestal, and then used them in his campaign to recruit supporters for his scheme in the White House and on Capitol Hill. Soon we had two enormously important sponsors, Admiral William L. Leahy, the President’s chief of staff, and Senator Elbert Thomas of Utah, a former missionary in Japan who had the expert’s appreciation of Zack’s plan.

  We did not know it then, and were not to find out until after it was too late, but a race was on between ourselves and scientists at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge who were working on the atomic bomb. It may seem lacking in a sense of proportion to mention these two projects in the same breath, and yet it is amply justified, because today we know that Op-16-W’s scheme had an excellent chance to succeed. Its success would have obviated not only the invasion of Japan, but also the use of the A-bomb. Both projects had the same aim, to accelerate Japan’s surrender without a bloody landing. Otherwise the two efforts were incomparably different. For one thing, Op-16-W had cost a grand total of ninety-seven thousand five hundred dollars to operate from the day of its inception to VJ-Day, while the Manhattan Project swallowed up two billion dollars to the time of the detonation of the first bomb. For another, the purpose of our project was to save lives, whereas the A-bomb was to claim thousands.

  If there was a reasonably promising alternative, as I believe there was, to the use of the bomb on Japan, then it was folly to use that bomb before that alternative was given all its chances for success.