The Test of Courage: (A Biography of) Michel Thomas

by Christopher Robbins

  As a conclusion to his ‘respectfully submitted’ letter, Knittel hoped ‘that a just solution can be found to restore my personal honour’. There is no record of any official reply, but the letter was added to the mountain of petitions and complaints the army had received. It is an indication of the anxiety of the army at the time that it was not thrown contemptuously in the bin, but preserved in the National Archives.

  The stature of the incarcerated Malmédy murderers continued to grow in Germany until they were transformed from war criminals into folk heroes. The mass-circulation press continued to print stories reporting the most extreme of the discredited accounts against the American investigators. Colonel Willis Everett, the American attorney defending the war criminals, had become a white knight in the eyes of ordinary Germans, who saw him as a good man bent on justice rather than vengeance.

  The authorities in America now handled the lawyer with great care and civility, and assured him in writing that eighty per cent of the sentences of war criminals under review were being recommended for remission or drastic reduction. In an extraordinary decision, the US Army said that the killings at Malmédy had been committed in a fluid combat situation when Germany was desperate. The army was arguing military necessity as a mitigating factor in a case involving the murder of its own troops.

  On the surface, it seems to be a baffling position for the army to have taken, even after continued criticism. The numerous investigations found it to be essentially guilt-free and honest, yet it became strangely defensive, almost as if it had something to hide. And it did.

  The army was keeping a dark secret that would have blown the Malmédy case apart, and it had nothing to do with questionable interrogation techniques or sloppy legal procedure. It was hiding a full-scale massacre of its own, perpetrated by American troops from none other than Michel’s Thunderbird regiment, the 180th.

  Four days after the Thunderbirds landed in Sicily in 1943, newly blooded in bitter combat, a dozen men from a company of the 180th were wounded in a firefight as they approached the airfield at Biscari. The battle raged from dawn to late afternoon, but at mid-morning two Italian soldiers emerged from a dug-out carrying a white flag. They were soon followed by a group of thirty-two more Italian troops accompanied by two Germans, all of whom were captured by a single GI, who took them to his sergeant. Word of the capture was sent to the officer in charge of the company, a young captain, who promptly gave an unequivocal order: the prisoners were to be shot. The order was carried out by a firing party of some two dozen men, a number of whom had volunteered for the task. Altogether thirty-four unarmed POWs were shot in the head or chest.

  Nearby, a sergeant also belonging to a company of the 180th was given the job of escorting another group of more than forty prisoners to the rear for interrogation. The unarmed men were put into columns of two and marched several hundred yards along a road, accompanied by the sergeant and nine GIs. The prisoners were then ordered to move off the road into an olive grove. The sergeant borrowed a Thompson sub-machine gun from one of his soldiers and suggested those who did not want to witness what was about to happen should avert their eyes. He then opened fire and mowed thirty-seven prisoners down.

  Both sergeant and captain subsequently faced court-martial. Although other soldiers had been actively involved, or were passively complicit in the killings, the 45th Division’s inspector-general recommended in the first case that charges be brought only against the captain, as the firing squad believed it was carrying out a lawful order. Similar circumstances surrounded the sergeant, who acted alone and had also announced to his men he was following orders, although none of the accompanying troops did anything to stop him or oppose the action. Both defendants claimed at their separate court-martial that they believed they had been ordered not to take prisoners.

  The captain quoted a pep talk given by General George S. Patton to the Thunderbird company commanders, while the division was still in North Africa, about to invade Sicily. ‘When we land against the enemy, don’t forget to hit him and hit him hard. We will bring the fight home to him. When we meet the enemy, we will kill him. We will show him no mercy. He has killed thousands of your comrades, and he must die. If you company officers in leading your men against the enemy find him shooting at you, and when you get within two hundred yards of him and he wishes to surrender, oh no! That bastard will die! You will kill him. Stick him between the third and fourth ribs. You will tell your men that. They must have the killer instinct. Tell them to stick him. He can do no good then. Stick them in the liver. We will get the name of killers, and killers are immortal. When word reaches him that he is being faced by a killer battalion, a killer outfit, he will fight less. Particularly, we must build up that name as killers and you will get that down to your troops in time for the invasion.’

  As an incitement to brutality, it outstripped Adolf Hitler’s speech to the SS Panzer divisions at the opening of the Battle of the Bulge. It carried the clear instruction not to take prisoners and encouraged young officers to pass the message along to green, inexperienced troops. Numerous witnesses remembered Patton’s bloodthirsty remarks, and many said they took it to mean that no prisoners were to be taken.

  The captain, who maintained he was following orders, was cleared of the charges against him. The sergeant offered a more muddled and unconvincing defence and was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. The disparity in the verdicts was extreme and caused concern to the division’s judge advocate and many senior officers, who feared political repercussions. The War Department recommended that the sergeant be granted clemency with the proviso ‘that no publicity be given to this case because to do so would give aid and comfort to the enemy and would arouse a segment of our own citizens who are so distant from combat that they do not understand the savagery that is war’. The sergeant was released after serving a year of his sentence and returned to duty, reduced to the rank of private. The captain died in action in Italy later in the year.

  General Patton was not called as a witness in either court-martial. By the time the verdicts were reached his explosive temperament and erratic behaviour had already created an international scandal when he slapped two shell-shocked soldiers in an Italian field hospital. This later became the declared reason for denying Patton command of US ground forces on D-Day, but as both his senior officers, General Omar Bradley and General Dwight Eisenhower, knew of Biscari it is likely that the massacre was a significant factor in that decision.

  Biscari caused great concern to the US Army and the War Department, and conditions of the utmost secrecy were imposed on the court-martial proceedings. It was felt that any publicity was bound to present limitless propaganda possibilities to the enemy, trigger harsh reprisals against American troops in the field and have a detrimental effect on public opinion in the United States. The massacre was covered up so effectively that few soldiers in the division ever heard about it. ‘I never heard anyone in the Thunder-birds talk of this,’ Michel says. ‘It was inconceivable to me when I was with them that they could act like that. It just did not happen in France or Germany. Prisoners were treated well. I am sure that very few of the men ever knew anything about it.’

  But the guilty secret of Biscari haunted the army throughout the Malmédy trial and the investigations that followed. The fear was that either McCarthy, the press, or the accused SS men themselves might come to hear of it. The results would be calamitous. Biscari offers an explanation of the army’s tolerant view concerning the murder of its own men at Malmédy, and the leniency later shown towards its perpetrators.[205]

  The American Commander-in-Chief of European Command commuted the six remaining Malmédy death sentences on 31 January 1951. The mood at Landsberg was understandably ecstatic when the news arrived. Joachim Peiper, leader of the Malmédy prisoners, was moved to write a fulsome letter of praise to his defender. ‘We have received a great victory, and next to God it is you from whom our blessings flow. In all the long and dark years you have been the
beacon flame for the forlorn souls of the Malmédy Boys, the voice and the conscience of the good America, and yours is the present success against all the well-known overwhelming odds. May I, therefore, Colonel, express the everlasting gratitude of the red-jacket team (retired) as well as all of the families concerned.’[206]

  For Michel, and the slaughtered Malmédy Americans long in their graves, natural justice had been grotesquely mocked. Peiper was correct in saying that the Nazi SS had won a great victory. The men who had captured, interrogated and successfully prosecuted the perpetrators of the massacre had been maligned and denigrated, while SS murderers and unrepentant Nazis had been turned into national heroes by their politically motivated American champions.

  Veteran groups in America were outraged. There was also a degree of concern expressed in Congress, and the occasional critical editorial in the serious press, but the pendulum had swung in the murderers’ favour. An inexorable process had begun that would eventually set all the Landsberg ‘Malmédy Boys’ free. Knittel was released in 1954.[207] By the summer of 1956 only three of the accused were left in jail, and they were released within the following six months. Peiper himself, the last of the Malmédy Boys, became a free man at Christmas. He was promptly hired by Porsche, the company that had made the Panzer tanks he had commanded, and duly became the first non-family member to be selected as company secretary.[208]

  IX - Success

  The Polyglot Institute began to attract increasing interest. At first people walked in off the street, then, as word spread, actors and celebrities started to take the course. The press wrote articles about Michel and his method, describing him as a language wizard, and the institute became fashionable among the rich and famous.

  ‘I considered my school as a laboratory. Early on I developed a system that promised a high level of achievement in six weeks. A very short time then.’ The system would continue to evolve through ceaseless innovation and experiment over the next twenty-five years until, with the occasional refinement and polish, it became what it is today. In three days students are now guaranteed a comprehensive knowledge of a western language’s grammar, together with a functional vocabulary, enabling them to write, read and converse in all tenses - without the need to memorise by rote, take notes or complete homework.

  In the early days, however, not all the citizens of Beverly Hills burned with the desire to learn. One man wandered into the school, took a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet and waved it under Michel’s nose. ‘That’s the only language I need in this world - US Green!’ Michel also found it expedient to change the name of his school to the Michel Thomas Language Centre after he discovered that nobody seemed to know what ‘polyglot’ meant.

  Some of the research conducted along the way led up the occasional blind alley. In 1958, for example, Michel was invited by Laura Huxley - the wife of Aldous Huxley - to take part in a controlled experiment with LSD at Rancho de la Puerta, in Tecate, Mexico. The drug was relatively unknown at the time and remained legal until 1968. ‘I heard of this new substance imported from Switzerland and the claim that it widened reciprocity in regard to learning, so I was interested. I thought I might be able to apply it - that it might be another tool to probe the learning process of the mind. I had no idea what I was in for.’

  The LSD was supplied direct by its creator, Dr Albert Hoffman of Sandoz, Switzerland, who had discovered it by chance in 1943 when working on a drug for migraine. Lysergic acid diethylamide was a by-product developed from a fungus that grows on rye, and the doctor accidentally ingested a dose in the laboratory. He realised he was on to something revolutionary when the short car journey home seemed to take centuries.

  Michel arrived at Tecate for the two-day experiment and joined a group of a dozen volunteers, including two doctors, and Michael Murphy, founder of Esalen, the original alternative spiritual retreat in California. Most members of the group were handed a single 100 mg tab of LSD, two were given placebos, and Michel requested a double dose, as befitted a man interested in accelerated learning. Laura Huxley was one of two guides who did not take the drug, but she explained to the group what they might experience. ‘It’s heaven and hell and everything in between. It can bring out an angel or a devil and you do not know which one is going to pop up. You must have no preconceived opinions. You must give up control and be prepared for ego loss. It’s like dying and trying not to die. Paranoia lurks, but remember the sensations are psychological not physical.’[209]

  The group then swallowed the tabs of pure LSD. ‘I was given a tape recorder to record my impression at all times. For a while I tried to analyse the sensations to know how the drug worked.’ This approach was soon abandoned as the drug took hold. I tried to control it in order to experience it more fully - I thought that was what I was supposed to do. For once in my life I was not in control - which goes against my nature. I had heard about bad trips, but didn’t accept I was there for a trip. I was there to experiment and research. After a few hours I was through with it, I’d had enough. I thought I would shake it off. And I couldn’t! I felt controlled. I had a cold shower and started doing exercises, but it didn’t work. So I gave in to it.’ He moved outside into the Mexican garden. ‘I was immensely impressed and overawed to step into nature and see everything differently. I saw nature through the eyes of Van Gogh.’

  It had been an interesting experience, but it did not contribute anything to Michel’s investigation into the learning process. ‘The sensations had been emotional and spiritual, not intellectual. It was not clear to me how it could be used in a concrete way in terms of learning.’ However, word spread in Hollywood that Michel’s method owed its success to hallucinogens, one of the many rumours that have attached themselves to the system over the years.

  Michel became involved with a beautiful actress during this time, abandoned his womanising, and sincerely believed he had met a partner for life. The couple moved in together - an almost unheard-of arrangement at the time - and began a long monogamous relationship. ‘It was different to all the others and I was in love. I was thinking seriously about having a life with her. Meaning marriage.’

  It came as a shock when he was challenged by the actress, who accused him of not truly loving her. Stung, he said he could not understand how she could say such a thing.

  ‘When we make love, I feel you make love to somebody else,’ she insisted. ‘That I remind you of somebody you love. But it’s not me.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Michel protested.

  Directly after the conversation he had to fly to New York on business, and thought deeply about his lover’s statement during the flight. ‘And I realised she was right. It was very perceptive of her. I saw that she reminded me in many ways of Suzanne and that for all these years I had still been in love with Suzanne. And all the relationships I had considered good and exciting, as close as some may have been, were marginal compared to my deep emotional involvement with Suzanne.’

  The insight broke up the relationship, but also liberated Michel from the power of a past love. ‘After that I felt I would finally be able to love again.’

  Among the powerful and influential men Michel taught during this period was Jules Stein, founder of MCA, one of the great entertainment empires of the twentieth century. The men became friends, and Michel sometimes drove out to Palm Springs to spend the weekend. The mogul immediately understood the originality of the language system and its unlimited potential.

  Julius Caesar Stein, the son of immigrant Lithuanian Jews, stumbled into the entertainment business as a medical student at Chicago University when he booked jazz bands into the gangster Al Capone’s speakeasies and nightclubs. The business spread to Hollywood, where it represented movie stars and developed into the major movie studio that eventually became Universal Pictures.

  Stein encouraged Michel to consider opening a network of schools nationwide and suggested a partnership. ‘He was so excited that he wanted “us” to open schools across the country. He wanted ten, fiftee
n, twenty schools - the number increased as he spoke - to open simultaneously. It would be promoted by famous actors and be an immediate success.’ Michel said he would think about it. In a town where people fought and begged to be in business with Jules Stein, this came as a surprise, almost an affront. ‘I did think about it. I saw myself in the future as a financially successful owner of a chain of schools, with Jules Stein as my partner, but it would have destroyed my whole purpose. At that time I was far from completing my exploration of the learning process, defining educational goals and perfecting the system. I knew it would take many years, possibly decades.’

  He went back to Stein, thanked him for his interest and explained why he could not accept. There was a moment of stunned silence. Stein seemed confounded, and said that nobody ever turned him down. Michel shrugged. Stein later wrote a letter saying he respected the decision, and enclosed share certificates for a generous allocation of his personal, preferred stock in MCA. ‘In this way we will always be partners,’ Stein wrote.

  Whenever the men met at parties afterwards, Stein would enquire after the progress of the school. ‘How are we doing?’

  ‘Fine,’ Michel answered.

  ‘And the stock?’

  ‘Fantastic!’[210]

  But Michel certainly had ambitious plans. As he continued to probe the learning process, he began to dream of an international university. ‘All great universities are national institutions. Oxford is English, Yale is American, the Sorbonne is French, and so on. I wanted to create a supra-national university with the best professors from all over the world teaching an international student body.’ As he worked to turn the dream into reality, he talked to Robert Hutchins, one-time president of the University of Chicago and the Fund for the Republic, who became fascinated by the idea. Hutchins wrote in a letter to Michel: ‘Long reflection on the state of the intellectual world has led me to the conclusion that the trouble with it is that there is no leadership in it. There is no concentration of intellectuals dedicated to the task of leadership anywhere in the world. There is no intellectual beacon or lighthouse to be seen. It would not take much to create one, and one should be created before it is too late. A group often or a dozen of the most intelligent men in the world who come together in a single place, strategically located, to work together on the identification and solution of the great problems of the second half of the twentieth century could have an overwhelming influence on the thought and the events of our time. The reason for this, of course, is that the world is waiting for the leadership that such men could supply... The members of the group should have together and be continuously engaged in discussion of the program.’