1949. Ultranationalism in West Germany

Extremism in the Occupied West

Chancellor of West Germany Konrad Adenauer exiting the Hotel Petersberg in 1949 (Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz)

Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

March 2, 1949

During the past six months these things have happened in Western-occupied Germany:

• An unidentified man in Frankfurt said, "It would take only a few SS divisions to wipe out the occupation." 

• In Munich, a man who appeared to be Jewish was brushed off a streetcar. 

• In Bavaria, a youthful politician has earned the nickname "The White Hitler" in speeches defending concentration camps like Dachau and Buchenwald. 

• In Württemberg-Baden, German police made more than 10,000 home searches without benefit of the required search warrant.

In the final months of the fourth year of occupation of Germany there are old and familiar stirrings among the people.

Some alarmed Americans have labeled it nationalism—"German nationalism is on the march again." British officials with whom I have talked predict: "Yes, it will follow the same old pattern. Reconstruct Germany economically and her nationalism will follow, and after that you'll have a German army on your hands again."

From the French, the British, and the Americans, there is almost this fetish about German nationalism and fear of its reemergence. The world has good reason to be concerned.

The strange thing about this situation is that there is very little definition or agreement of just what exactly is meant by "German nationalism." About the best definition of the term was given recently by General Clay, American military commandant for Germany. "There are two kinds of German nationalism," Clay said. "The kind sponsored by Hitler, which placed every German above every other national on earth. Then there is a kind of German nationalism in which the German as a person finds pride in his history and culture and contributions to society. This second kind of nationalism is a form of patriotism inherent in every country and acceptable to a free world."

There is still confusion here among the occupation authorities and among the Germans themselves about just what is the "despised" German nationalism and what is the brand of German patriotism acceptable to the conquering powers.

There can be no doubt that the German people are beginning to find themselves and regain some of the courage and strength that was so beaten out of them in the war. There is a definite trend of independence in every phase of German public life, whether it be in the press, the radio, public meetings, or ordinary conversation.

Whether this resurgent initiative now expressing itself in Western Germany is to become the old-time "Deutschland über alles" nationalism, or whether it will develop into a decent free and democratic patriotism, is the number one question of internal German affairs right now.

To have a closer look at one phase of this so-called German nationalism I went into Bavaria. For the past year the reports from this southern province have sounded the most ominously nationalistic of any section of occupied Germany.

It was Bavaria that gave Hitler and his Nazis their initial support in forming the movement that brought war to the world. The Bavarians, incidentally, don't like to be reminded.

Bavaria, which is overwhelmingly Catholic, is not typical of all Germany. In fact, many Bavarians claim that they are not really Germans at all—that independent Bavaria preceded and has outlasted Germany. Perhaps it is true that the Bavarians are an insular, "distilled" type of German. At any rate, the stresses of Bavaria's internal politics certainly reach their peak in a narrow brand of nationalism that reeks of the kind of National Socialism that got its start there under Hitler.

In Bavaria there is a small but vocal separatist movement which finds strong support among the aristocrats and monarchists who would make Bavaria an independent European country—some say under a limited monarchy. Bavarians still retain their titles inherited from the old royal families, however the slogans of the separatists have a much less ancient ring.

"Bavaria for the Bavarians" is this group's slogan. Something like 15,000 refugees a month are coming into Bavaria. The Bavarians want nothing to do with them. In fact, some extremists advocate that the province have a law restricting marriage there to proven Bavarians.

The Bavarians do not only restrict their dislike to the Poles and Czechs who seek refuge in their country. They also have a great dislike for the Prussians, who they manage to blame for their involvement in a losing war. To them, all who are not Bavarian are foreigners.

Another expression of German nationalism is in antisemitism, which is becoming more and more bold not only in Bavaria but all over Germany.

There is the example of two advertisements in scattered newspapers. One ad for a Neustadt clothing store pointed out that the company was a "pure German enterprise." Another want-ad asked for women workers and specified that only "Rhein Germans need apply." Occupation officials jump on these incidents when they discover them.

But antisemitism is becoming flagrant, intelligence officials tell me, in its more disreputable forms. The scrawling on latrine walls, the jostlings on streetcars, and the wild, vicious, ritual rumors that fed the propaganda of Julius Streicher and his pogroms.

This peculiar kind of German nationalism is most certainly on the increase here. German antisemitism seems to be the result of a national inferiority complex. And embedded as it is in generations of Germans—fanned to flames by Hitler—one of the biggest jobs of establishing democracy in Germany is to put down this kind of inhumanity. There are critics of our military and civilian occupation authorities who say that too many Americans, and British and French for that matter, pay too little attention to German antisemitism. Some may even agree with it.

The most overt political expression of nationalism in postwar Germany came, surprisingly enough, in public announcements of the formation of new political parties. The one that got the most publicity was the abortive "League of German Revival" which was to be headed by the notorious Otto Strasser. Several similar super-nationalist organizations have been trying to get started. They bear such names as "Union of the Middle" and the "National Democratic Party." These movements base their appeal first on anticommunism. All demand the restoration of the prewar German borders, particularly the return of Silesia from Poland. All complain of the hardship which the occupation is inflicting on the German people, and in this sense they are not only anti-Russia but also anti-Western Powers.

As you know, Strasser is not permitted to leave Canada. His projected party has not been licensed by the occupation powers, but I have it on reliable authority that there is already the start of an underground political party in Germany. It is small now and officials are not too concerned, but it is being watched with vigilance.

The most overt expression of political nationalism of the most flagrant kind again I found in Bavaria. A young man, 27-years-old, named Karl Meissner tried to found what he called "the Deutsche Bloc" in Munich. His good-looking blond features and his eloquence on the platform earned him the unofficial name of "The White Hitler." Before he was stopped by the military government, Meissner went on record in speeches that said the people Hitler put in concentration camps were criminals anyway, and that the Jews were responsible for Germany's troubles and other such stuff out of Mein Kampf. Perhaps Meissner's most fantastic statement was his defense of Britain's Lord Haw-Haw who he somehow regarded as a martyr. The Deutsche Bloc was a small movement.

I have given you many examples here of German nationalism as it is being expressed in scattered places throughout the western part of the country.

I do not want to leave the impression that this occupied nation is a seething mass of resurgent Nazis waiting for the moment to rise up and strike down those few Jewish folk left here by Hitler and then start another campaign of world conquest.

There are many honorable and decent Germans trying to work out their problems with the nations of the West, and many are making a sincere effort to pull Germany up to the status of a respected government in the community of nations.

However, the Germans of good will would appear to be in the minority, just as the fanatical Germans such as Bavaria's Karl Meissner and others are also in the minority. There is a great mass of Germans in the middle of these two political positions who don't know what they will do in the future or who are too busy trying to eke out a living to care what happens.

Unfortunately, it is this mass of ordinary Germans who have been led into every Teutonic adventure in Germany's history, whether the leader was a Kaiser or a Hitler. They are ready, or nearly ready, to be led again. The question in Germany is what kind of leadership.

The communists are attempting to use German nationalism in the current struggle between the East and the West. They advocate a quick peace treaty, what they call unification of Germany, and oppose such Western security measures as the Ruhr statue and the Occupation Statute.

Only the most blatant German opportunists, other than the confirmed communists, are following this appeal from the Soviet zone. Suspicion of the German communists and their Russian masters is too great even for the most cynical nationalist to follow. Nationalism in Germany manufactures its own brand of cynicism.

Military government officials in the small towns and counties of Western Germany say that in the past year there is a stiffening and negative attitude gradually developing among Germans against the occupation.

Although the German people are living and eating better than any time since the war, the complaints are more frequent and the whining more prevalent. There is also a widespread campaign underway to discredit the occupation powers. So far the campaign expresses itself in attitudes and ridicule. And of course there is virtually no credit or gratitude given for the tremendous amount of effort and money spent by America in reconstructing the country.

The recent shakeup in the American sponsored newspaper, Neue Zeitung in Munich, was among other things a protest against this hard to define negative attitude of the Germans finding its way into print.

For example, the nationalism inherent in a current newspaper campaign attacking an American-sponsored beauty contest for Miss Bavaria is one method of discrediting American efforts to help the country. We sponsored the contest to encourage tourist trade. "Beauty contests are not Bavarian," one paper sobs. This is the sort of thing that makes it difficult to put one's finger on German nationalism. It in itself is not important, but the attitude is there.

The difficulties of adapting Germany's past to a Western democratic future are tremendous. There is another example. In Munich not many weeks ago the Baron Wolfgang von Beck, chief of the Bavarian state hunting department, resigned his job. The reason: the introduction of a new hunting law that would allow every German to apply for a hunting license and shoot Bavaria's game in season. This was a revolutionary step for this part of Germany because hunting on the great estates—the only suitable lands for shooting—was a privilege of the rich and politically favored and, of course, the aristocracy. The last Marshal of the Hunt under the last German Reich was Hermann Göring.

Baron von Beck resigned, and I quote, "because the new law would make a cheap business of what used to be a sport and recreation."

Von Beck has a good reputation among the American military government of Bavaria as a sincere and cooperative German. His insistence of preserving the old game laws for the privilege of the few might be called a form of nationalism. Perhaps it is true.

There is another example of this kind of thing that occurred last year in the province Württemberg-Baden.

A recent study of police procedures revealed just how deadly and overwhelming is the German heritage of fear of the police handed down from the Gestapo.

This study revealed that, in 10,651 home searches recently conducted, only 81 were supported by warrants. In other words, 10,570 violations of the law were committed by the police in the province of Württemberg-Baden, and it wasn't discovered until the American military government made a survey.

Shortly afterward the military government issued a directive for public education of Germans recommending that they be informed of their privileges under a democracy.

It is true that in many cases resurgence of German nationalism, as so labeled, is a lack of acceptance or understanding of democracy. But in this spring's political stirrings in the German people there is something more to this. It can be assumed that every German desires the reconstruction of his country. It can also be assumed that no German likes occupation—at least in history there is no record of such a thing.

There are enough German soldiers and mothers and wives and sisters in this country to assume that there still remains a great pride in the temporary achievements of the German army in the last war, and pride in the spirit and resilience of the German people.

It must also be assumed that a desire for revenge still exists, not so much in the younger generations as in the older. For the elders, it is still "Deutschland über alles."

It is a fact that the ghost of German nationalism is stirring in its grave this spring, but the threat of resurgence of this political monstrosity is not at this moment as widespread or as serious as it might sound.

The democracies of the West still have time and opportunity to lead and direct the formation of a decent and cooperative Germany into the council of governments. There is no set formula or pattern of operation.

One thing is certain. The job cannot be done simply by condemning German nationalism and letting it go at that.

The West has the job of instructing and at the same time directing Germans to use their political privileges granted under the West German government now in the making. It has been so long since these privileges have been valid here that the Germans forget they are available.

The fault of democracy everywhere, including the United States of America, is that too few people make use of it.

The problem of Germany is to get the great mass of people interested in working in their free government. The alternative is totalitarianism, either of the right or the left, and probably war.

1945. The Uprising in French Indochina

The Buildup to War

"Free French 6th Commando C.L.I. in Saigon are saluted by surrendered Japanese in November 1945" (source)

In this excerpt from the book One Last Look Around (1947, pp. 200-211), foreign correspondent Clark Lee recounts his experience in French-occupied Vietnam in late September 1945. At that time, Lee, Bill Downs, and James McGlincy were part of an airborne correspondent corps touring East and Southeast Asia toward the end of World War II.

ONE LAST LOOK AROUND

They told us what was happening. "The Annamites are revolting. They are willing to die rather than be colonists of France again. British Gurkha troops are opposing the Annamites and the Japs, who were supposed to be disarmed, are helping the British. It's a stinking mess."

The picture in Indo-China was this: Some 23,000,000 of Indo-China's 28,000,000 native inhabitants are Annamites and nearly all of them wanted to end France's eighty-year rule over their homeland, a territory as big as France itself and rich in coal and rice and other agricultural products. They had risen in arms once before in 1929, but the French machine-gunned and bombed them into submission. Now, the Japs had apparently given them their big chance for freedom from a regime whose colonial record was shameful. For instance, after eighty years in the colony, the French had permitted only five per cent of the people to learn to read and write.

Trouble came into Indo-China in 1940 when the Japs shot and bullied their way into the north, ostensibly for the purpose of closing off one of China's last supply routes through the Indo-Chinese port of Haiphong, from which a railroad heads into Chinese Hunnan. A year later, Vichy opened the door to Saigon and the south for the Japs, ignoring the obvious fact that they wanted Saigon as a springboard for their attacks on Singapore and the Dutch East Indies, and for their occupation of Siam. Economic agreements were reached between Tokyo and Vichy for the exchange of Indo-China's rice and metals for Japanese manufactured products. Instead of the 5,000 tons of rice they were getting, the French supplied Tokyo 1,000,000 tons annually to feed the Japanese troops who were shortly to besiege our starving forces in Bataan.

The Vichyites, headed by colonial governor Admiral Jean de Coux, threw in their lot wholeheartedly with Japan and its Axis partners. That their own homeland was in Nazi chains meant nothing to these French Colonials. Their first concern was the preservation of their own interests and for three years—all during Pearl Harbor, Tarawa, Saipan, even the liberation of France—the Japanese occupation forces and the colonial French lived in perfect harmony, collaborating enthusiastically and doing business to their mutual profit.

With the collapse of Vichy, Admiral De Coux took over complete control in Indo-China with the support of the French Fascist, Pétainists, businessmen, and government officials, and the Banque de l'Indo-Chine clique—plus, of course, the Japs. Some Frenchmen and Annamites wanted to resist the Japs and made a brief stab at organizing the underground. They were ruthlessly suppressed by De Coux. Some were exiled to the penal colony of Poulo Condore, where conditions were so bad that they even horrified the Japs. Two Tokyo newspapermen who visited the island described finding 1,500 political prisoners who "were subjected by the French to all conceivable atrocities . . . who stood mute and expressionless like dumb animals."

"Occupation of the Tonkin Palace, Hanoi, on 19 August 1945" (source)

A few French escaped to Allied territory, but not many of them could make the long trek to India or China through the Japanese lines. Not trusting the French Colonials, the United States made no serious effort to get arms to the few resistance leaders.

Major Verger told me, "There was no underground worthy of the name. A very few of the French assisted American aviators to escape after they were shot down, escorting them to the coast where they were picked up by submarines. There was one captain who had a secret radio set and supplied important intelligence information for our planes. Outside of that, I regret to say that my fellow countrymen did nothing to resist the Japanese or assist our forces. There was an army revolt in 1941 against admitting the Japanese to the colony without a struggle, but it was suppressed and the survivors either fled to China, were imprisoned, or abandoned their activities.

The French-Japanese honeymoon ended on March 9, 1945, when the Japanese suddenly surrounded the homes of De Coux and of the French officers and quickly disarmed the 6,000 French troops in southern Indo-China. Simultaneously the French in the north surrendered, and the French men and women were interned.

Then the Japs played their trump card. Knowing that Tokyo would surrender shortly and that the end for them was not far off, they permitted the Annamites to form their own government to replace the French regime. A coalition government of Communists and Nationalists was set up with branches in Hanoi and Saigon, and was promised complete independence by the Japanese. When Tokyo surrendered, the Japanese gave the Annamites some arms and told them to carry on with their government and defend their independence. Meantime, all during the war, the United States and the provisional government of France had been sparring about the future of Indo-China. Roosevelt fought the churlish De Gaulle and the stubborn Churchill for a new status for all Asiatic colonies. For Indo-China he wanted an international trusteeship to pave the way for total freedom. But as soon as he was dead, Truman and Byrnes forgot his desires and concentrated on the "get tough with Russia" game to the oblivion of such trifling matter as freedom for a hundred million Asiatic peoples. During their wartime discussions, the French indicated their willingness to grant freedom "within the Indo-Chinese federation and French union, plus recognition of democratic liberties for all and education in native and French culture." But De Gaulle and other officials made it clear that France renounced none of her Far Eastern possessions.

The situation was further complicated int the north by Chinese claims to the Tonkin area, which blocks Yunnan province's only convenient doorway to the outside world. Some 400,000 lived there and most of them looked to Chungking for guidance. With the end of the war, Chinese troops moved down from Yunnan into Tonkin and by Allied agreement occupied all of Indo-China north of the 16th parallel. But when the French tried to move their own armed forces into the area in March 1946, again by Chinese-French agreement, Chinese forces around the port of Haiphong fired on their landing craft and warships. After finally getting ashore, the French found that the Chinese had not ousted the Annamite officials but had strengthened their position.

When we reached Saigon in October, 1945, the Annamites were still occupying the government buildings from which they had officially functioned since August 17th, when the Japanese installed them in complete power. They called their government the Viet Nam Republic, substituting that pre-colonial name for Indo-China, a French importation.

"Now," said Colonel [A. Peter] Dewey on our first night in Saigon, "the British troops are driving them out. The Annamites are determined people and it is taking a lot of shooting."

The British commander, General D. D. Gracey, a self-proclaimed Tory and believer in Empire, was willing to use whatever means necessary to restore white supremacy and try to rebuild the shattered self-confidence of the French. In negotiations with the Viet Nam prior to the landing of British troops, the British assured the Annamites that Gracey's mission was to disarm the Japanese and restore order. The Annamites were foolish enough to believe that story. Instead of carrying out the promise, Gracey returned the Japanese troops to their posts, allowed them to keep their arms, and used them to attack the Annamites who were likewise using Japanese arms when they had any at all beyond sticks, clubs, and spears. Thus, as was to be the case in the Dutch East Indies, the British used their former enemies, the Japanese, to shoot down other Asiatics. If the Japanese were planning a comeback in later years in their "Asia for Asiatics" campaign, they could not have asked for better propaganda ammunition.

Gracey's defense was: "What do you want? Do you think we will surrender European supremacy to the first group of outlaws that point guns at us?" In other words, the words not only of Gracey, but of his superior officers and the London Labour government, defend the Imperial system and the hell with these outlaws who believe in the Four Freedoms.

"British General Douglas Gracey (right) relinquishes command in Vietnam to French General Jacques Leclerc" (source)

The French who saw us at first in Saigon cheered enthusiastically for the arrival of "les soldats Américains." They said openly, "Now we can put these Annamite beggars back in their places." They were crestfallen when we told them we weren't troops, but correspondents, and that no American forces were coming to the colony.

Actually, the American "forces" consisted of Colonel Dewey and his mission, plus a group of eight Air Transport Command personnel headed by Major Frank Rhoades. Dewey jumped from a transport plane into Saigon right after V-J Day and quickly got the 136 American war prisoners out of their camps and headed home. Then, instead of leaving, he got mixed up in a game that was too fast for him. "I am remaining to protect American property," he explained. What property? He had hung out the American flag from the offices of Standard Oil, Texaco, and Singer Sewing Machine. Also, he had intervened dramatically a few days before when Annamites had prepared to storm the Continental Hotel and threatened to kill the French people sheltered there. Dewey had bluffed the Annamites into believing the hotel was American property, exhibiting a "bill of sale" made over to him by the Corsican manager, and had waved the American flag to turn back the would-be attackers. Tragically enough, it was the lack of an American flag on his jeep that caused his death.

The British were more concerned in talking to us about the A.T.C. mission than about Dewey's. The A.T.C. men were under orders to set up a base on a line from Shanghai to Singapore, a "temporary line to operate for a limited time." The British found that hard to swallow. "I understand," General Gracey told us, "that the A.T.C. is establishing a line to carry letters. Who the letters are from or what necessity there is for carrying them, I do not know." It was the suspicion of the British and French that far from being temporary the American base was to be used by future American globe-girdling airlines. Since then, the Civil Aeronautics Bureau in Washington has licensed American routes to Indo-China and Siam.

If our arrival was a disappointment to the French, it was even more so to the Annamites. Like all of the people of Asia they looked to Americans in the first weeks after the surrender as true liberators and believed in democracy for everybody, everywhere. They hoped the United States would guarantee their freedom. They knew the French would not give an inch more than they had to, despite the "liberal" promises of De Gaulle and his henchmen. If there had been any doubt in the minds of the Annamites about the French, it disappeared when the colonial overlords were released from internment after the Japanese surrender.

Feeling their oats once more, the French resumed their old habit of kicking around—literally—the despised natives. This was a grave mistake, because the French were not strong enough to get away with it pending the arrival of reinforcements of guns, tanks, rifles and hand grenades. Then the Annamites turned back on them and suddenly the French realized that they were dealing with people who were willing to give their lives to demonstrate to the world their desire for freedom. The Annamites were still fighting when the vanguard of British troops came in, and it was at this stage of the struggle that we reached Indo-China.

The Japanese just stood by and chuckled while the Annamites turned their arms on the French, kidnapped and killed many of the most hated of their tormentors, and drove the terrified Colonials out of their suburban homes and into a narrow section of Saigon paralleling the Rue Catinat. Inside the city the Annamites quit their jobs. Most of them faded away into the countryside, hiding in villages which the British troops attacked and burned in reprisal for attacks on their supply lines. The city, stripped of ninety per cent of its populace, was paralyzed. We found the water supply off, the lights working only fitfully. To the disgust of the French, who for years had been accustomed to regard their servants as pieces of furniture, the servants disappeared. There were no rickshaws in the streets, no public transportation of any kind.

Along the Rue Catinat and the small "safe" area surrounding it, the French gathered in little worried knots. They were ashamed of their war record, their cooperation with the Japs, their inability to do anything now about the Annamite uprising. The men huddled in the cafes, unwilling even to take rifles and go out and protect the city. They shouted for more help—Japs, Gurkhas, Americans, it didn't matter—and they plotted how they would avenge themselves on the Annamites when their turn came.

View of Đồng Khởi Street (formerly Rue Catinat) in Saigon, October 1945. Photo by John Florea (source)

Starting at seven in the morning, the French came out to parade up and down the Rue Catinat, stopping at the sidewalk cafes for an apéritif of anisette, ice, and water. At eleven they went into the few restaurants still open, but soon to close, and ate heartily for two hours and then disappeared for a siesta. About four in the afternoon, people started to emerge again and an hour before dusk everyone had gathered either in the candle-lit lobby of the Continental Hotel or on the sidewalk outside. We learned a new line there. All around the world, in Sicily, Italy, France, Germany, Egypt, the Philippines, Japan, young kids had approached us with outstretched hands and pronounced the local equivalent of "cigarette pour papa." In Saigon, Frenchmen stopped us on the street and, too ashamed to ask for themselves, begged, "A cigarette for my wife."

It was pitiful to watch the French when the sound of shooting was heard. One night a platoon of Japanese ran up on the double to take sentry positions outside the hotel, and there was a panicked rush for inside. Another night Annamites set fire to the market place four blocks from Continental. The French, silent and terrified, refused to go near the fire—even though the supply of food was growing scantier every day—but the Chinese stall owners made frantic and futile efforts to drench the flame with small splashes of water from leaking buckets. Most of the time there weren't any lights, and in the confusion of that pushing mass around the hotel, more than one Frenchwoman wound up in the room of an English officer or correspondent. Despite this amateur competition, the bright-looking half-caste girls roaming the Rue Catinat did a big business.

During one outbreak of shooting, the owner of the Continental called us into his office for an apéritif with him and some friends.

"Why," they demanded in an aggrieved tone, "do you not protect us from those devil Annamites?"

We baited them, "This is not the quarrel of Americans. For all we know, justice is on the side of the rebels. We hear that the French have been inexcusably cruel to them. In fact, we would just as soon shoot French as Annamites." This last remark was accompanied by an ostentatious fingering of carbine triggers.

"Ah, monsieurs," the hotel owned gushed, "it is quite right that you are. All of us in this room are not French. You are surprised, no? The fact that we do not come from Metropolitan France. We are Corsicans. This local political squabble is not of our making, but the fault of the French who have treated the Annamites inconsiderately."

Meantime, Frenchman and Corsican alike continued to plan for vengeance. They got it after the French troops under irascible General Jacques LeClerq finally arrived to take over behind Gurkha and Japanese guns. Witnesses later described the long lines of Annamite prisoners, manacled or trussed up, being marched down the Rue Catinat to the filthy jail, where they were fed miserably, given drumhead trials lasting a few minutes and then sentenced to many years at hard labor on Poulo Condore Island—or even condemned to die for distributing leaflets asking for independence. In this and other ways, the French finally got retribution for the humiliation that we watched them undergo.

At night, Annamites would slip into the city, set fire to the power plant and other buildings, and shoot off their rifles. The harassed Gracey was unable to stop them with his small force, whose forays into the countryside and across the river to the Chinese quarter proved fruitless. He blamed the Japs for his troubles, accusing them of instigating the Annamites to fight, and at the same time he called on the Japs to assist him in putting down the fighting. In desperation, the British commander visited the home of the aged and ailing Japanese field marshal, Count Terauchi, and warned him that unless the Japs behaved themselves they "would not be sent back home to Japan." Gracey pointed out that the Allied plan was to repatriate the Japs in Nipponese shipping. Very few bottoms were available, Gracey said, and he threatened that unless Terauchi saw to it that his troops were good boys, no ships would come to Indo-China for them. This provided another big laugh for the Japs, who didn't care very much either way whether they stayed or went—after all, it was France that wanted the colony back.

Meantime, the fighting was getting sharper every night and more and more factories and homes were being burned by the Annamites. On the third night of our stay, Captain Joe Coolidge, a distant relative of the late Calvin and Colonel Dewey's No. 2 in the O.S.S., was shot through the throat and arm while escorting a group of French women and children through an Annamite barricade.

We got word of it through Colonel Dewey, who sent for us to come to his room at the Continental. Perhaps it was premonition that made Dewey talk at length about something that was on his mind. He had been doing a great deal of running around in the midst of the fighting, and had found the Annamites friendly when they discovered him to be American. "It's the French they're after. Not us, nor even the British. They won't shoot at the Japanese at all." Dewey's difficulty was to identify himself as an American. "I had an American flag on my jeep, he said, "but General Gracey forbade me to fly it. When I go up to one of the barricades, there is always a chance that the Annamites will kill me before I can identify myself."

Several of us stormed up to see Gracey and protest against his refusal to allow the American flag to be flown from automobiles. "I cannot permit it," he said. "That is a privilege of general officers only." If you chose to be strict about it—and Gracey did, for obvious reasons of European and Imperial prestige—the British general was correct in his position, according to military regulations. He went on to say that he had no objections to flags being painted on jeeps and cars, which was a meaningless concession in view of the total absence of paint in Saigon. Likewise, he agreed to flags being tied to the side of vehicles, but that was no assistance whatever since the important thing was to be recognized well before you drove up to a barricade, and a flag on the side was not visible from a distance.

Ho Chi Minh (center) and Vo Nguyen Giap (far left) with American OSS agents

The following day Colonel Dewey invited two of our party, Bill Downs and Jim McGlincy, to lunch at the O.S.S. house on the northern edge of Saigon. They drove out with Major Verger and with Captain Frank White, a member of the nine-man O.S.S. mission, and sat in the patio to have a drink and wait for Dewey to return from the airport.

Five minutes later there was heavy firing up the road, and an American officer came running toward the O.S.S. villa which was also, in effect, American Army headquarters in Saigon. The officer halted every few yards to crouch and fire his .45 back down the road at some invisible pursuers.

Hurriedly, Captain White issued carbines to the correspondents and to the other four men in the house, and they got behind the garden wall and fired at a crowd of Annamites who suddenly came into sight pursuing the American. The Annamites took cover—there were about a hundred of them—and the officer staggered into the yard behind the protective wall. He was Major Herbert Bluechel. His neck, shoulders, and most of his body was covered with blood and he appeared to be seriously wounded.

"They got the colonel," he gasped hysterically. "They killed the colonel."

The blood on Bluechel was Dewey's blood. The two Americans had been passing a barricade in their jeep. Dewey gestured to the Annamites ahead to remove the crisscrossed trees forming the road block, but they suddenly opened fire with a machine gun. The colonel's head was blown off. Bluechel, unharmed, jumped out of the jeep and sprinted frantically up the road.

"What a pity," Bluechel exclaimed. "The Annamites liked Dewey and he liked them and he believed they should be free. If they had only recognized us as Americans, they would never have shot."

Meanwhile, the Annamites began pushing toward the house. The Americans ran inside and took positions at the windows. Like Dewey, they did not want to kill Annamites, but they were being fired upon and there was no choice except to shoot back. Yelling and shouting, the Annamites advanced down a drainage ditch parallel to the road, pausing from time to time to fire their guns. They were bad marksmen and although their bullets bounced off the house, none of the Americans was hit.

Spacing their shots, the Americans picked off the attacking men. Three fell as they tried to run across an open field. Several others were wounded. Bill Downs shot down at least one man, and he says that the sight of the little brown figure falling will haunt him for years. But blood was being shed, hysteria had taken command, and there was no chance to stop and argue things out.

Briefly, the Annamites retired, and then returned with a machine gun. They fired one burst into the front of the house and then ceased fire. In this interlude a jeep with three more O.S.S. men drove squarely down the road without drawing a single shot, and turned into the yard. Meanwhile, six Japanese sentries who were on duty guarding the villa had taken a casual part in the fighting, firing once or twice but mostly just crouching out of the way.

After more than two hours of skirmishing, the Annamites began to withdraw, and McGlincy and Downs volunteered to walk across the field and try to reach the airport in search of reinforcements. They took their sidearms for defense, a bottle of "Old Crow" for courage, and on the theory that nobody would shoot at a singing man they walked along caroling at the top of their voices, "For he's a jolly good fellow." They made it to the airfield without trouble and dispatched a message for help. Then the two correspondents, with Major Rhoades of the A.T.C., drove back in a jeep through the Annamite positions, where a group were picking up wounded under a Red Cross flag. The Americans waved their arms and shouted, "Chee-Wee, Chee-Wee," which means American in the Annamite tongue.

Back at the house, the Americans decided to go out after Dewey's body. Major Verger took the precaution of changing his French army shirt for an American jacket. He tied a white handkerchief to his carbine and waved as the jeep gingerly approached the Annamite positions. "Where is the commandant?" McGlincy demanded of the sentries.

Lieutenant Colonel A. Peter Dewey

An excited young man—in civilian shirt and shorts like the other fighters for freedom—stepped forward and delivered a fiery speech on liberty and the rights of man, intermingled with violent protests against the Americans, who loved liberty, killing Annamites who sought it. Another young Annamite, about sixteen or seventeen, assisted in translating the leader's discourse.

Downs explained, "We would like to get Colonel Dewey's body."

There were lengthy negotiations, and finally the commander agreed to return Dewey's body if the Americans would bring back the bodies of the Annamite casualties. These terms were accepted. The Americans drove back to the scene of the battle, picked up three bodies, and piled them on the hood of the jeep.

When they returned to the barricade, the Annamite leader became even more violently excited. "Three for one is not fair exchange," he protested through the interpreter.

"Where is Colonel Dewey's body?" Downs asked.

"It is not here," the young man said. "I cannot go through with this agreement when you ask three for one." The Americans insisted that they had kept their part of the bargain.

The negotiations were broken up suddenly by the sound of firing. A group of Gurkhas were coming down the road, shooting off their rifles and driving before them a terrified group of native refugees, mostly women and children. The Annamites at the barricade glared at the Americans, as if they suspected that the negotiations had been a trap to hold them until the Gurkhas arrived. Then they faded away into the woods and behind nearby houses.

Dewey's body was never recovered. For months afterward the French used the missing American's body—the body of a man who believed they should be free—as a bargaining point against the natives. They refused to enter discussions until the body was produced and the Viet Nam government even offered a reward for the corpse.

Reports of Dewey's death in his flagless jeep—there had been a flag but it was wrapped around a pole and thus unidentifiable—quickly reached Lord Louis Mountbatten in Singapore as our stories went out. He sent an urgent message to General Gracey to fly down to Singapore and report on the incident, and the general asked for a lift in our B-25, which had returned after making a trip to Calcutta to pick up equipment for our crippled B-17. As we drove to the airport, we passed through a deathly quiet mile of no-man's land, with torn trees and the bodies of animals on the road—souvenirs of the Gurkhas drive the day before. Native villages along the road were aflame, and here and there Frenchmen crouched behind the stone walls of fine villas. Every few hundred yards there was a Japanese soldier with a rifle and a bayonet—unconcernedly guarding our route. Our own carbines and pistols were cocked as we peered over the sides of the truck.

Throughout the night there had been the sound of drums and shouting from the perimeter around the city and sporadically the noise of shots smashing into buildings. Circling over the city in the B-17 we counted a half dozen large fires, several of them quite close to the besieged Rue Catinat. These fires were symbolic funeral pyres of many natives, for the French came back in with American arms and with the help of the British engaged in bloodletting and slaughter. But eventually they would be the signal fires of freedom.

1945. Bill Downs from Germany on VE Day

Bill Downs Reporting from Lüneburg on VE Day

Bill Downs

CBS News

May 8, 1945

This is Bill Downs speaking from Lüneburg. This VE Day has started out very quietly here in Lüneburg on the British sector. The convoys continue to roll through the narrow streets, and the long, long lines of surrendering Germans and liberated Allied war prisoners and slave laborers stream back to the rear areas. The people of Lüneburg are going about their business as if it was just another day. It may be VE Day for the Allies, but it's Surrender Day for the Germans.

The people I saw this morning looked like they're trying to ignore the whole thing. The shops are opening up, and already the long lines at the food stores are collecting. Ex-Nazi hausfrauen with their baskets and string bags beginning a life of queueing that has plagued all of Europe since the Nazis went on the warpath.

It's a beautiful day here; the weatherman could not have planned more perfect weather for a surrender celebration. But right now there's very little celebrating. The British are a reserved people, and out of propriety for the French and American and Russian forces still fighting, they did no dancing in the streets when Montgomery signed the surrender terms that put the British Second and the Canadian First Armies out of the war last Thursday.

But no doubt tonight the bottles of French champagne that we find in every rich German's wine cellar will make their appearance. But meanwhile the army is too busy to celebrate Victory in Europe Day. The millions of German soldiers must be kept moving to the concentration areas, the liberated Allied prisoners must be evacuated, and somehow the slave laborers who look to us for help must be housed and fed. But I have an idea that tonight there'll be a hot time in Lüneburg.

This is Bill Downs with the British returning you to CBS in New York.

1968. The Tet Offensive Weakens Morale

Pessimism and War Weariness in Washington

"U.S. Marines advance past an M48 Patton tank during the battle for Huế," February 2, 1968 (source)

Bill Downs

ABC Washington

February 11, 1968

No war in modern history has had so many armchair generals, cocktail party strategists, and amateur field marshals who second-guess everything than does the conflict in Southeast Asia.

Politicians, whose military experience was probably limited to World War II gasoline rationing, suddenly became experts on jungle tactics and psychological warfare. Editorial writers, some of whom have boarded nothing larger than a swan boat, turn up as critics of Navy intelligence procedures which led to the capture of the USS Pueblo.

Perhaps this is as it should be. Since the first Colonial farmers shouldered flintlocks to take on the British Redcoats, Americans have fought their wars as much with their mouths as with their muskets. As General Omar Bradley once pointed out, "If the troops aren't griping about something, then there's something wrong with morale."

By this standard, morale here in Washington and across the country was exceptionally high this past week as people followed with dismay the second week of the hydra-headed Viet Cong offensive against the cities and key towns of South Vietnam. It was an offensive that burst on the world the week before, and it had been described by US military men in Saigon as a "last gasp" desperation attack, a "diversionary move" which failed in its design to force the American command to weaken its defense of the northern province, and finally, as told by General William Westmoreland: in repulsing the guerrilla uprising, the Allied forces in South Vietnam had won a significant victory. At the same time, Westmoreland alerted his troops to the possibility that the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies could reorganize themselves and launch a similar new offensive at any time—an admission that the General's so-called "victory" was not quite as complete or decisive as his words implied.

It was less than two months ago that General Westmoreland and the US Ambassador to Saigon, Ellsworth Bunker, were in Washington and broadcasting to the world such statements as: "The Viet Cong has suffered such losses in the South that the guerrilla army now is incapable of mounting a major attack." Ambassador Bunker stressed that last year's elections and the adoption of a democratic constitution by the new South Vietnamese legislature meant that the people of the South at long last were showing their showing their confidence and gratitude for the military shield the United States was providing them. Thus the US was not only winning the military struggle for the country, but also that important "other war" as well. The "other war," of course, is also called "pacification of the countryside," or sometimes "revolutionary development." And more and more rarely it's also called "the battle for men's minds."

Viewed in the retrospect of only six weeks, it would appear that the highly optimistic year-end assessments by Westmoreland and Bunker were not only wrong, but also that these two top US officials in Saigon perhaps made a dreadful mistake and somehow became victims of their own wishful thinking and, even worse, became victims of their own propaganda.

It is now obvious that Westmoreland badly underestimated the guerrilla capabilities of the Viet Cong. In fact, professional military men at the Pentagon privately give grudging admiration to the to the Communist guerrilla command for its skill in organizing simultaneous attacks by an estimated force of some sixty thousand irregulars on more than thirty-five population and military centers the length and breadth of South Vietnam.

The attacks ranged in size from small commando squads of fifteen to twenty men—as was the group which blasted its way into the US Embassy grounds in Saigon—to combat teams of two hundred or so men such as those that moved in on the ancient capital of Huế in the north.

Whether or not the Viet Cong attained all of their objectives, the fact remains that the guerrilla offensive paralyzed the country, embarrassed the US and its allies in Vietnam, demonstrated the laxity of the Saigon government leadership and, most of all, exposed the weakness of Allied intelligence about the enemy in Vietnam.

It is true that Westmoreland's headquarters had issued warnings at least two weeks prior that there might be a Viet Cong attack during the Tet New Year's celebrations. In fact, partly because of this advance knowledge, the US refused to observe the Tet truce in the northern part of the country where the North Vietnamese army had massed four and possibly five divisions for an attack across the Demilitarized Zone.

But neither the US Military Assistance Command nor the South Vietnamese counterintelligence net had information that the guerrilla offensive would be so widespread or ambitious, or as deadly. Apparently the end is not yet in sight.

The most melancholy and discouraging aspect of the whole dreary business is the knowledge that the Viet Cong could not have mounted its countryside uprising without either the cooperation or at least the acquiescence of great numbers of the Vietnamese people who live and still seek refuge in every major town and city in South Vietnam.

The explanations that are still coming in say that this demonstrates the basic ignorance and neutrality of the mass of the peasantry, now weary of more than twenty years of war. Others say that it demonstrates the ruthlessness of the Viet Cong terrorists and their hold over the people.

But the past two weeks have proved that all of the bright predictions about "political neutrality" and progress in winning the "other war," as well as the increasing signs of confidence in the new Saigon regime—that all of this optimism was badly out of joint with the facts. In fact, some of the pessimists reporting from Saigon say that the guerrilla offensive—with all the civilian bloodshed and unprecedented devastation in cities and towns which up to now had escaped the ravages of battle—that this injury to the civilian population in South Vietnam means that the United States and its allies have left the "other war." They say that the real meaning of the past two weeks of fighting is that the Communist commandos have inflicted a most tragic and irretrievable defeat on the United States. Maybe so. We must wait and see.

Meanwhile there is much soul-searching going on here in Washington as well as in Saigon, and of course there will be the demand for investigations. For in the aftermath of the Viet Cong offensive, the American people are grousing, and their grumbling is being heard on the national sounding-board which is the Congress. The Hawks and the Doves will be at it again, hot and heavy.

It is to the credit of the political leaders here in Washington that there has been no crisis in confidence in the US military leadership in Vietnam. As of now there has been no hue and cry for a scapegoat, although at least one Washington columnist, Marquis Childs, speculated the other day that President Johnson may want to re-juggle his generals before long and get a fresh approach to the Southeast Asian conflict.

There has also been speculation that the Vietnam crisis may require another 200-250 thousand American GIs to bring the situation under control. It's a suggestion which gets short shrift at the White House with the presidential campaigns now only months away.

Standing in the wings and waiting to be heard is another group of critics who say that the US military command has never understood the basic nature of the entire Vietnam struggle, and who maintain that American actions and strategy are in fact pushing the country into the Communist orbit rather than the other way around. These critics maintain that the Southeast Asian struggle is basically political rather than military. They contend that General Westmoreland's "forward strategy" pits American power against the Communist main-force units and ignores the basic elements wherein US influence should be most effective: against the guerrillas and the Communist regional forces.

This "forward strategy" left it to the South Vietnamese army to secure the rear areas, and this has been a failure. Instead of securing these population centers, the Saigon troops have succeeded mostly in antagonizing the people while the South Vietnamese officers impose bribery, embezzlement, and shakedowns on the urban centers.

The reassessment of US tactics and strategy—which eventually will come—must also consider the one political and military fact to emerge paramount from the Viet Cong guerrilla offensive. That is, the guerrillas were ready to fight and die for their own cause.

There was no such motivation among the great bulk of the Vietnamese people who became victims of that attack, nor apparently from a large section of the South Vietnamese army. In any case, the Southern army wasn't in great evidence, because the Saigon generals and their military colleagues in the field had given many of their men official leave in order to celebrate the Buddhist New Year.

It was a most expensive holiday.