Jerry Jay Carroll's Blog: The Man Himself, page 3
August 21, 2014
Why I think what I do
Well, Patrick, don't say you didn't ask for it.
In 1941 time was running out for everybody. The Germans had to finish off the Russians before it was too late. The Japanese had to go to war before they ran out of oil. The English had to get us into the war before pressures beginning to build for a negotiated peace forced Churchill out of office. There was a lot of sympathy for Hitler in the House of Lords and the Prince of Wales was showing signs of a willingness to return home and lead a campaign to make peace with Germany even if it meant forcing his brother Bertie to vacate the throne he had assumed when Edward abdicated for Wallis Simpson. The Germans won her favor by calling her Royal Highness, which the English refused to do, and she evidently had had an affair with the German ambassador von Ribbontrop. Time was running out for FDR, too. With England on the sidelines, Germany all-conquering – nobody believed the Russians could withstand the fury of the Panzers – and Japan on the march in Asia, things looked very dark.
Early in the year, Admiral Yamamoto was asked how the navy would fare in a war against the United States. He replied that it would do well for the first six months, but he couldn’t say how things would go after that. If war did come, he said, it must be with suddenness to catch America napping. Hawaii must be invaded and all the naval officers there killed or taken captive. The admiral knew it would take three or four years to replace that loss. He also wanted an invasion force landed in California between Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo. But the Imperial Japanese Army – often at loggerhead with the navy – refused to cooperate, so only the surprise attack survived of his original idea. Within days or weeks of the decision to attack Pearl Harbor, Tokyo churned with rumors about it. Ambassador Grew passed these on to Washington, where supposedly they were ignored as fantasy. FDR knew from his college days at Harvard where he had a Japanese roommate who told him so that Tokyo (as did American naval planners) assumed a war between the two countries was inevitable.
Yamamoto, by the way, was opposed to war with America. He had been a naval attaché in Washington and had crossed the country and was aware of its wealth and latent strength. But the army believed that the United States was corrupt and effeminate, like Rome in its period of decadent corruption and love of luxury, and lacked the spirit for war. Hirohito, who kept close watch over military operations and insisted both services keep a headquarters on the palace grounds, had misgivings but eventually gave the green light for the attack. Every major and many minor decisions about war, even down to the division level, went before him.
What was the Pacific Fleet doing in Hawaii? The dry docking and other facilities were far inferior to the West Coast and everything had to be imported at great cost. The official explanation is the State Department wanted it there to act as a brake on Japanese ambitions in the Far East. This is nonsense, of course. The fleet would have to return to the West Coast for provisioning and refitting before it could sally forth to the Far East – and the Japanese knew that. A more nefarious theory, one that I think fits the facts, is that it was there as bait.
When Admiral Richardson, commander of the Pacific Fleet, pointed out the danger (and, incidentally, told FDR in his blunt way that the navy didn’t trust him), he was sacked. The Germans and Japanese had a mutual defense treaty that obliged each to come to the aid of the other if attacked. The Germans being the Germans and the Japanese the Japanese, they each could have ignored the treaty if it suited their purpose. But FDR was gambling each would honor it. The Germans were going out of their way to avoid the many provocations we gave them in the Atlantic, so it was up to the Japanese to get us into the war.
One of history’s great victims is Richardson’s successor, Admiral Husband Kimmel. A lot of people in London and Washington knew Yamamoto’s fleet was heading for Pearl Harbor but Kimmel was kept totally in the dark as was his army counterpart General Short. London knew because an 18-year-old RAF mechanic stationed in Malaya had a curious encounter with a drunken Japanese civilian engineer in Cambodia. He met him in a restroom as he was running water over a painful mosquito bite on his thumb. The engineer evidently assumed he was Vichy French and they fell to talking. It became clear he was bursting about his insider knowledge of a great event that was going to occur soon. He had been installing wooden bomb racks on torpedo planes on aircraft carriers in Hittocappu, a remote bay in northern Japan. All around were warships of every description and enough oilers to tell him a long voyage was planned. The engineer showed the young Englishman sketches of the ships and made 40 strokes of a pencil to indicate how many there were. Then he showed him on a map that the fleet was bound for Pearl Harbor.
The mechanic, Peter Shepherd – who had this little noticed book published five years ago – managed to slip away with the map and some of the notes and reported this the following day to intelligence agents back in Malaya. He had even done the math and said the attack on Pearl Harbor would come three days later. So Churchill knew.
So did FDR. The case was made at the time that Roosevelt knew something was coming but thought it would be the Philippines, Guam or some other target in the Far East; the story was the Japanese attack force maintained radio secrecy, allowing the surprise: not true. Commercial and navy radio direction finders located Japanese warships between Hawaii and the Aleutians a week before the attack. The carrier Akagi was exchanging messages with Japanese civilian vessels.
The liner Lurline on November 29 bound from San Francisco to Hawaii heard what its radio operator described in the ship’s log as “The Japs blasting away on the lower marine frequencies.” After November 1, by the way, Kimell in Pearl Harbor was no longer given radio direction finder reports. The radio transmissions continued for the next two nights, December 1 and 2, and were intercepted by Navy listening posts in Seattle, San Diego, Corrigidor and Honolulu. What they were hearing were large ships repeating general orders from Tokyo to ships in the fleet whose antenna couldn’t pick them up. Between November 15 and December 6, there were 129 interceptions of Japanese naval communications, one of which was captured in Hawaii but kept from Kimmell, from the commander of the Fourth Fleet telling his forces that a declaration of war was imminent. A Dutch intelligence officer said after the war that he saw a map in Washington at the time that was tracking the advance of the attack force.
When the Lurline reached Honolulu, copies of the transmission were given to naval intelligence. The original radio log was confiscated by the Twelfth Naval District intelligence officer when the Lurline returned to San Francisco and hasn’t been seen since. The best guess is it was removed from the archives sometime in the 1970s. Ninety-eight per cent of these radio intercepts continue to be hidden from the public. And, of course, at the time none were given to poor Admiral Kimmel. But this capable officer knew something was up. He sent Admiral Halsey to sea with 46 warships and 127 aircraft to look for an enemy fleet two weeks before the attack. So certain was he that something would be found that he said enemy warships might be sighted at any moment and flag signals should be used at first sighting so the Japanese were not alerted by picking up radio signals.
Halsey was in the exact place from which the Japanese carriers a short time later launched their attack 200 miles from Oahu. A dozen PBYs were searching in the direction from which the attack force was coming – a 65 degree arc out 600 miles -- when Washington learned about this exercise. At that point Kimmel was ordered to avoid any action that might provoke the Japanese, and he told Halsey’s force to return to Pearl. Much has been written about our cracking of the Purple Code, used by the Japanese for diplomatic communications. We often knew what Tokyo was saying before the recipients of the messages did.
The instructions for the timing of the delivery of the fourteenth and last part of the message breaking off the diplomatic talks – there were four long messages sent over a 24-hour period -- clearly pointed to the timing of the attack. So did the instruction to destroy all the code machines at the Japan embassy. “This means war,” FDR told Harry Hopkins when he read it on the night of December 6. Even before that – on Saturday morning 23 hours before the attack -- our listening station in Hawaii had intercepted and transcribed seven copies of a message from Yamamoto to the attack force saying the emperor had ordered them to “annihilate the enemy.”
The message giving the 1 p.m. deadline Washington time for delivering the message – 7:30 a.m. Honolulu time – announcing that diplomatic talks were at an end arrived at 9 that morning on the Seventh. Military aides frantically tried to get this information to General George C. Marshall, the chief of staff. But he couldn’t be reached because he was out riding his horse in a park; strange behavior when everyone knew war was about to break out. Finally at 10 a.m. he was notified the message had been received. It then took him until 11:15 to reach his desk at the War Department, fifteen hours after Roosevelt and Hopkins agreed that the message from Tokyo to the Japanese ambassadors in Washington meant war. As an aide continually urged Marshall to take note of the 1 o’clock deadline, he slowly read the message, taking thirty minutes to do so.
Then, although a scrambler phone was available that would have put him in direct contact with Honolulu, Marshall chose to send it via teletype and scratched out a message that said “just what significance the hour set may have we do not know but be on alert accordingly.” There had been earlier warnings sent to the army and navy in Pearl Harbor, but they were so vague that the army commander, General Short, interpreted them as meaning to beware of enemy sabotage, not air attack, and he parked his plans in tidy rows for the Japanese to blast to smithereens.
Because of atmospheric interference, the navy’s radio channels couldn’t be used, so Marshall’s message was sent via Western Union and RCA. They were delivered as the bomb were falling on Pearl Harbor. But they didn’t fall on the two aircraft carriers that would ordinarily be there or on nineteen of the fleet’s most modern warships because Washington had ordered them to sea on what amounted to minor errands, the delivery of aircraft to Wake and Midway islands. Admiral Kimmel did not believe Washington would deprive him of the protection of those carrier aircraft if it thought war was imminent.
After he and General Short were made scapegoats, Admiral Kimmel wanted a formal court-martial to clear his name. But this would have allowed him to call witness to testify under oath, so the White House finessed this by appointing a commission headed by a Supreme Court justice to investigate the fiasco. Several other investigations were undertaken over the years. Only decades later did Kimmel’s reputation come out from under a cloud. The Senate voted in 1998 to exonerate him and General Short and to restore them to rank. This was ignored by the Department of Defense, but Kimmel’s grandson continues the fight.
But FDR got the war he wanted – and the war the United States had to enter if the world was to be saved from Hitler’s murderers and Hirohito’s barbarians.
In 1941 time was running out for everybody. The Germans had to finish off the Russians before it was too late. The Japanese had to go to war before they ran out of oil. The English had to get us into the war before pressures beginning to build for a negotiated peace forced Churchill out of office. There was a lot of sympathy for Hitler in the House of Lords and the Prince of Wales was showing signs of a willingness to return home and lead a campaign to make peace with Germany even if it meant forcing his brother Bertie to vacate the throne he had assumed when Edward abdicated for Wallis Simpson. The Germans won her favor by calling her Royal Highness, which the English refused to do, and she evidently had had an affair with the German ambassador von Ribbontrop. Time was running out for FDR, too. With England on the sidelines, Germany all-conquering – nobody believed the Russians could withstand the fury of the Panzers – and Japan on the march in Asia, things looked very dark.
Early in the year, Admiral Yamamoto was asked how the navy would fare in a war against the United States. He replied that it would do well for the first six months, but he couldn’t say how things would go after that. If war did come, he said, it must be with suddenness to catch America napping. Hawaii must be invaded and all the naval officers there killed or taken captive. The admiral knew it would take three or four years to replace that loss. He also wanted an invasion force landed in California between Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo. But the Imperial Japanese Army – often at loggerhead with the navy – refused to cooperate, so only the surprise attack survived of his original idea. Within days or weeks of the decision to attack Pearl Harbor, Tokyo churned with rumors about it. Ambassador Grew passed these on to Washington, where supposedly they were ignored as fantasy. FDR knew from his college days at Harvard where he had a Japanese roommate who told him so that Tokyo (as did American naval planners) assumed a war between the two countries was inevitable.
Yamamoto, by the way, was opposed to war with America. He had been a naval attaché in Washington and had crossed the country and was aware of its wealth and latent strength. But the army believed that the United States was corrupt and effeminate, like Rome in its period of decadent corruption and love of luxury, and lacked the spirit for war. Hirohito, who kept close watch over military operations and insisted both services keep a headquarters on the palace grounds, had misgivings but eventually gave the green light for the attack. Every major and many minor decisions about war, even down to the division level, went before him.
What was the Pacific Fleet doing in Hawaii? The dry docking and other facilities were far inferior to the West Coast and everything had to be imported at great cost. The official explanation is the State Department wanted it there to act as a brake on Japanese ambitions in the Far East. This is nonsense, of course. The fleet would have to return to the West Coast for provisioning and refitting before it could sally forth to the Far East – and the Japanese knew that. A more nefarious theory, one that I think fits the facts, is that it was there as bait.
When Admiral Richardson, commander of the Pacific Fleet, pointed out the danger (and, incidentally, told FDR in his blunt way that the navy didn’t trust him), he was sacked. The Germans and Japanese had a mutual defense treaty that obliged each to come to the aid of the other if attacked. The Germans being the Germans and the Japanese the Japanese, they each could have ignored the treaty if it suited their purpose. But FDR was gambling each would honor it. The Germans were going out of their way to avoid the many provocations we gave them in the Atlantic, so it was up to the Japanese to get us into the war.
One of history’s great victims is Richardson’s successor, Admiral Husband Kimmel. A lot of people in London and Washington knew Yamamoto’s fleet was heading for Pearl Harbor but Kimmel was kept totally in the dark as was his army counterpart General Short. London knew because an 18-year-old RAF mechanic stationed in Malaya had a curious encounter with a drunken Japanese civilian engineer in Cambodia. He met him in a restroom as he was running water over a painful mosquito bite on his thumb. The engineer evidently assumed he was Vichy French and they fell to talking. It became clear he was bursting about his insider knowledge of a great event that was going to occur soon. He had been installing wooden bomb racks on torpedo planes on aircraft carriers in Hittocappu, a remote bay in northern Japan. All around were warships of every description and enough oilers to tell him a long voyage was planned. The engineer showed the young Englishman sketches of the ships and made 40 strokes of a pencil to indicate how many there were. Then he showed him on a map that the fleet was bound for Pearl Harbor.
The mechanic, Peter Shepherd – who had this little noticed book published five years ago – managed to slip away with the map and some of the notes and reported this the following day to intelligence agents back in Malaya. He had even done the math and said the attack on Pearl Harbor would come three days later. So Churchill knew.
So did FDR. The case was made at the time that Roosevelt knew something was coming but thought it would be the Philippines, Guam or some other target in the Far East; the story was the Japanese attack force maintained radio secrecy, allowing the surprise: not true. Commercial and navy radio direction finders located Japanese warships between Hawaii and the Aleutians a week before the attack. The carrier Akagi was exchanging messages with Japanese civilian vessels.
The liner Lurline on November 29 bound from San Francisco to Hawaii heard what its radio operator described in the ship’s log as “The Japs blasting away on the lower marine frequencies.” After November 1, by the way, Kimell in Pearl Harbor was no longer given radio direction finder reports. The radio transmissions continued for the next two nights, December 1 and 2, and were intercepted by Navy listening posts in Seattle, San Diego, Corrigidor and Honolulu. What they were hearing were large ships repeating general orders from Tokyo to ships in the fleet whose antenna couldn’t pick them up. Between November 15 and December 6, there were 129 interceptions of Japanese naval communications, one of which was captured in Hawaii but kept from Kimmell, from the commander of the Fourth Fleet telling his forces that a declaration of war was imminent. A Dutch intelligence officer said after the war that he saw a map in Washington at the time that was tracking the advance of the attack force.
When the Lurline reached Honolulu, copies of the transmission were given to naval intelligence. The original radio log was confiscated by the Twelfth Naval District intelligence officer when the Lurline returned to San Francisco and hasn’t been seen since. The best guess is it was removed from the archives sometime in the 1970s. Ninety-eight per cent of these radio intercepts continue to be hidden from the public. And, of course, at the time none were given to poor Admiral Kimmel. But this capable officer knew something was up. He sent Admiral Halsey to sea with 46 warships and 127 aircraft to look for an enemy fleet two weeks before the attack. So certain was he that something would be found that he said enemy warships might be sighted at any moment and flag signals should be used at first sighting so the Japanese were not alerted by picking up radio signals.
Halsey was in the exact place from which the Japanese carriers a short time later launched their attack 200 miles from Oahu. A dozen PBYs were searching in the direction from which the attack force was coming – a 65 degree arc out 600 miles -- when Washington learned about this exercise. At that point Kimmel was ordered to avoid any action that might provoke the Japanese, and he told Halsey’s force to return to Pearl. Much has been written about our cracking of the Purple Code, used by the Japanese for diplomatic communications. We often knew what Tokyo was saying before the recipients of the messages did.
The instructions for the timing of the delivery of the fourteenth and last part of the message breaking off the diplomatic talks – there were four long messages sent over a 24-hour period -- clearly pointed to the timing of the attack. So did the instruction to destroy all the code machines at the Japan embassy. “This means war,” FDR told Harry Hopkins when he read it on the night of December 6. Even before that – on Saturday morning 23 hours before the attack -- our listening station in Hawaii had intercepted and transcribed seven copies of a message from Yamamoto to the attack force saying the emperor had ordered them to “annihilate the enemy.”
The message giving the 1 p.m. deadline Washington time for delivering the message – 7:30 a.m. Honolulu time – announcing that diplomatic talks were at an end arrived at 9 that morning on the Seventh. Military aides frantically tried to get this information to General George C. Marshall, the chief of staff. But he couldn’t be reached because he was out riding his horse in a park; strange behavior when everyone knew war was about to break out. Finally at 10 a.m. he was notified the message had been received. It then took him until 11:15 to reach his desk at the War Department, fifteen hours after Roosevelt and Hopkins agreed that the message from Tokyo to the Japanese ambassadors in Washington meant war. As an aide continually urged Marshall to take note of the 1 o’clock deadline, he slowly read the message, taking thirty minutes to do so.
Then, although a scrambler phone was available that would have put him in direct contact with Honolulu, Marshall chose to send it via teletype and scratched out a message that said “just what significance the hour set may have we do not know but be on alert accordingly.” There had been earlier warnings sent to the army and navy in Pearl Harbor, but they were so vague that the army commander, General Short, interpreted them as meaning to beware of enemy sabotage, not air attack, and he parked his plans in tidy rows for the Japanese to blast to smithereens.
Because of atmospheric interference, the navy’s radio channels couldn’t be used, so Marshall’s message was sent via Western Union and RCA. They were delivered as the bomb were falling on Pearl Harbor. But they didn’t fall on the two aircraft carriers that would ordinarily be there or on nineteen of the fleet’s most modern warships because Washington had ordered them to sea on what amounted to minor errands, the delivery of aircraft to Wake and Midway islands. Admiral Kimmel did not believe Washington would deprive him of the protection of those carrier aircraft if it thought war was imminent.
After he and General Short were made scapegoats, Admiral Kimmel wanted a formal court-martial to clear his name. But this would have allowed him to call witness to testify under oath, so the White House finessed this by appointing a commission headed by a Supreme Court justice to investigate the fiasco. Several other investigations were undertaken over the years. Only decades later did Kimmel’s reputation come out from under a cloud. The Senate voted in 1998 to exonerate him and General Short and to restore them to rank. This was ignored by the Department of Defense, but Kimmel’s grandson continues the fight.
But FDR got the war he wanted – and the war the United States had to enter if the world was to be saved from Hitler’s murderers and Hirohito’s barbarians.
July 27, 2014
Were we lucky to win?
Their win in the World Cup and their growing political and economic power in Europe may not lead the Germans into the fatal error again of thinking themselves the Master Race, but who could blame them for thinking themselves the masterful race. I have been reading a number of books lately about the ETO and come away impressed anew with their prowess in warfare, which can be traced back to before their overthrow of the Roman Empire after corruption and luxury had sapped its strength. It took the British, the Russians (who inflicted nine of ten of the German battlefield deaths) and us in concert with a collection of lesser powers to defeat them in World War II.
I was also struck by the low opinion of British military ability privately held by their leadership. Max Boot writes in Winston’s War, “Again and again Churchill pressed General Wavell, and indeed all his generals, to overcome their fears of the enemy, to display the fighting spirit which he prized above all things, and which alone, he believed, would enable Britain to survive.” Left to their own, Boot adds, the generals would have accepted battle only on their own favorable terms, which is Montgomery’s career in a nutshell. Wavell told a friend, “My trouble is I am not really interested in war.” Adds Boot: “This was a surprisingly common limitation among Britain’s senior soldiers.” At another point, he laments that “they were agreeable men who lacked the killer instinct indispensable to victory.”
After Wavell was replaced in Egypt by General Alexander Auchinleck, the dismal story continued. Despite a three-to-one advantage in tanks and a greater mechanized mobility, the British were defeated again. B.H. Liddell Hart in his History of the Second World War quotes Rommel’s scornful comment about British tank tactics: “What difference does it make if you have two tanks to my one, when you spread them out and let me smash them in detail? You presented me with three brigades in succession.” Alexander Cadogan, second in command of the Foreign Office, wrote in his diary, “Our soldiers are the most pathetic amateurs, pitted against professionals . . . The Germans are magnificent fighters and their Staff are veritable Masters of Warfare.” He added, “Our army is the mockery of the world.”
The irony is the British after WWI, whose carnage obliterated God knows how much talent and genius, no doubt contributed to the caution of IGS. There was an understanding among many junior officers that future wars would be ones of maneuver, and the inter-war exercises to develop tactics were closely studied by the German general staff and by another far-sighted warrior, Charles de Gaulle. Churchill, who had himself played an early role in experimenting with tanks, admitted in his memoirs that he forgotten all that, and the senior military leadership never learned it.
The British had a saying to explain their bungling and bumbling. “We lose every battle but the last one.”
http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Liars...
I was also struck by the low opinion of British military ability privately held by their leadership. Max Boot writes in Winston’s War, “Again and again Churchill pressed General Wavell, and indeed all his generals, to overcome their fears of the enemy, to display the fighting spirit which he prized above all things, and which alone, he believed, would enable Britain to survive.” Left to their own, Boot adds, the generals would have accepted battle only on their own favorable terms, which is Montgomery’s career in a nutshell. Wavell told a friend, “My trouble is I am not really interested in war.” Adds Boot: “This was a surprisingly common limitation among Britain’s senior soldiers.” At another point, he laments that “they were agreeable men who lacked the killer instinct indispensable to victory.”
After Wavell was replaced in Egypt by General Alexander Auchinleck, the dismal story continued. Despite a three-to-one advantage in tanks and a greater mechanized mobility, the British were defeated again. B.H. Liddell Hart in his History of the Second World War quotes Rommel’s scornful comment about British tank tactics: “What difference does it make if you have two tanks to my one, when you spread them out and let me smash them in detail? You presented me with three brigades in succession.” Alexander Cadogan, second in command of the Foreign Office, wrote in his diary, “Our soldiers are the most pathetic amateurs, pitted against professionals . . . The Germans are magnificent fighters and their Staff are veritable Masters of Warfare.” He added, “Our army is the mockery of the world.”
The irony is the British after WWI, whose carnage obliterated God knows how much talent and genius, no doubt contributed to the caution of IGS. There was an understanding among many junior officers that future wars would be ones of maneuver, and the inter-war exercises to develop tactics were closely studied by the German general staff and by another far-sighted warrior, Charles de Gaulle. Churchill, who had himself played an early role in experimenting with tanks, admitted in his memoirs that he forgotten all that, and the senior military leadership never learned it.
The British had a saying to explain their bungling and bumbling. “We lose every battle but the last one.”
http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Liars...
June 1, 2014
Ace of Spades review
I'm liking this review on the hugely-popular Ace of Spades website:
What I'm Reading
"I may have mentioned The Great Liars by Jerry Carroll a few weeks ago, but if not, I'll do so now. I'm about a third of the way through it, and it's a real hoot. A Smithsonian researcher has discovered, in a nursing home for retired soldiers, a former naval officer (and a bit of a rogue) who knows where all the bodies are buried, and who has somehow managed to keep himself out of the history books. In the days leading up to World WWII, Commander Lowell Brady acted as a liaison between FDR and Churchill, carrying secret communications between them, meeting all the politicians and famous people of the era, and seducing (as well as sometimes seduced by) many of their women. So he knows what went on, and why they want to shut him up.
"Carroll, a former reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, is also the author of Inhuman Beings (which has been described as a cross between Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick) and Top Dog, which is about a Wall Street shark who awakes one day and finds himself in the body of a dog and caught up in the cosmic battle of Good vs. Evil. Kind of a Kafka/Tolkien mash-up.
"'The Great Liars' is structured around an alternate, but not totally implausible, version of history, but, from what I can tell, that would make it the most "normal" of Carroll's books.
"They all sound pretty interesting, though."
http://ace.mu.nu/#349523
What I'm Reading
"I may have mentioned The Great Liars by Jerry Carroll a few weeks ago, but if not, I'll do so now. I'm about a third of the way through it, and it's a real hoot. A Smithsonian researcher has discovered, in a nursing home for retired soldiers, a former naval officer (and a bit of a rogue) who knows where all the bodies are buried, and who has somehow managed to keep himself out of the history books. In the days leading up to World WWII, Commander Lowell Brady acted as a liaison between FDR and Churchill, carrying secret communications between them, meeting all the politicians and famous people of the era, and seducing (as well as sometimes seduced by) many of their women. So he knows what went on, and why they want to shut him up.
"Carroll, a former reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, is also the author of Inhuman Beings (which has been described as a cross between Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick) and Top Dog, which is about a Wall Street shark who awakes one day and finds himself in the body of a dog and caught up in the cosmic battle of Good vs. Evil. Kind of a Kafka/Tolkien mash-up.
"'The Great Liars' is structured around an alternate, but not totally implausible, version of history, but, from what I can tell, that would make it the most "normal" of Carroll's books.
"They all sound pretty interesting, though."
http://ace.mu.nu/#349523
April 29, 2014
Kurkus Reviews
I'm very happy with what Kirkus Reviews wrote about The Great Liars:
“. . . a heady brew of military history and conspiracy theory that will appeal to aficionados of both.”
“The Pulitzer-Prize nominated journalist smartly centers this historical novel, an amalgam of facts and suppositions, on a charming rogue.”
“Carroll believably brings both historical and fictional figures to life while slowly and skillfully unreeling Brady’s story, which shifts back and forth between World War II and the early 1950s.”
“. . . a detailed portrait of an unlucky man caught up in events far beyond his control.”
“A riveting adventure that effectively explores the idea that history is written by the winners.”
“. . . a heady brew of military history and conspiracy theory that will appeal to aficionados of both.”
“The Pulitzer-Prize nominated journalist smartly centers this historical novel, an amalgam of facts and suppositions, on a charming rogue.”
“Carroll believably brings both historical and fictional figures to life while slowly and skillfully unreeling Brady’s story, which shifts back and forth between World War II and the early 1950s.”
“. . . a detailed portrait of an unlucky man caught up in events far beyond his control.”
“A riveting adventure that effectively explores the idea that history is written by the winners.”
March 24, 2014
The Great Liars
A fantastic interview in the Village Voice.
Best-selling author and former Voice writer Jerry Jay Carroll will be the featured author Thursday at 4 p.m. in Coronado Community Center.
He opened up recently about his exciting career as a journalist and author, and gave the inside story on his latest book, “The Great Liars.”
When asked about his time with the San Francisco Chronicle, where he worked as a feature writer and columnist, Carroll described some of the events and people he and the paper covered in that world-changing city and era: the hippie and gay movements, Haight Ashbury, LSD and Timothy Leary (whom he interviewed), student riots in Berkeley and San Francisco State (“I carry a scar on my chin to this day”), Jim Jones, the murders of Harvey Milk and George Moscone, Charles Manson, the attempted assassination of Gerald Ford (which Carroll wrote about after the reporter covering the story went into a state of shock), the Zodiac and Zebra serial killers, and the Patty Hearst kidnapping.
Carroll and another journalist were sued for $10 million when they said the Black Muslims were extorting money from the Hearsts, and “a jury in the libel trial said we were right.”
Carroll and his wife, Judy, attended a party where the Native American takeover of Alcatraz was planned, and at which Huey Newton, founder of the Black Panthers, was also a guest.
The Chronicle wanted to send Carroll to Jonestown, but he was in Big Sur with Judy celebrating their 10th anniversary and couldn’t be reached. It was a good thing – the reporter that got the assignment “took a bullet in the rear and spent the night in the jungle in water up to his neck.”
Carroll also wrote a story on the pardon of Tokyo Rose, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize (one of two Pulitzer nominations he received for feature writing).
On retirement from the Chronicle, the Carrolls moved to Judy’s home state of Montana. Carroll said that his work as a journalist had been “like a bee skimming the surface,” darting from subject to subject, with no time for in-depth research on subjects that interested him. He had always been interested in World War II; he remembered times in his childhood when his family would gather to listen to the radio and discuss the war, and he would lie on the floor and draw airplanes, etc. on a big sheet of butcher paper.
Once he started delving into materials on the war – including many studies and commissions into Pearl Harbor, some of which were only declassified in the 1990s (some information on the attack is still classified) – he found the research so fascinating that it almost became an end in itself.
The premise of “The Great Liars” is that Roosevelt knew that Pearl Harbor would be attacked and did nothing, in order to bring the United States into the war.
Carroll believes this to be true, and gives a very convincing argument. He said that the United States was very efficient at listening to coded messages from Japan, and cited several sources that knew and warned of the attack. On Dec. 3, a known spy in Honolulu gave the Japanese the “all clear” signal, and even reported which ships were in harbor and what their locations were.
Carroll said that Roosevelt was “deeply Machiavellian,” and with 89 percent of the U.S. population opposed to U.S. entry into the war in a January 1941 poll, drastic measures had to be taken to draw us into the conflict.
Carroll spent more than 12 years researching the subject, and said, “World War II is now as remote as the Crusades” and that the contrast between “the forces of good and evil was never more stark.”
In addition to the thrilling plot and historical events and characters, “The Great Liars” is also deeply, laugh-out-loud funny. The “hero” (using the term loosely), Lowell Brady, is a Navy man who lives in an old soldier’s home and is discovered by a Smithsonian researcher, Harriet Gallatin, while compiling oral histories of WWII veterans. He shamelessly drags out his tale (while insisting on dining at the best restaurants in the area), until the FBI gets wind of the story and tries to put a stop to it (and them).
Some of Brady’s exploits – as well as the people he meets in his “colorful” career – make for hilarious reading. Brady’s stepfather is a blind senator, and some of the funniest scenes in the book involve their interactions. There is also a very funny encounter with the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas at a hip London club, and humorous one-off lines throughout the book. Just one example: when Brady is told by FDR’s man Harry Hopkins that J. Edgar Hoover has the dirt on just about everyone – including naked photos of Eleanor Roosevelt – Brady says, “Who’d want to see them?”
When asked if the details about FDR, etc., were factual, Carroll responded that most were, but he did “take a few liberties.” In several scenes, Roosevelt mixes drinks for his guests. Carroll said that Roosevelt did like to mix drinks, but not in exactly the same way as described in the book (and you’ll have to read the book to get the details).
“The Great Liars” is Carroll’s fourth novel. His first book, “Top Dog” (which made the New York Times best-seller list) was followed by a sequel, “Dog Eat Dog.” Carroll is in the process of reworking “Top Dog,” to “bring the topical references up to date.” He also published “Inhuman Beings,” a “noir-ish science fiction” book.
Carroll has also finished a sci-fi/fantasy novel about a “crappy but best-selling novelist who is invited by mistake to a stellar conference of high-profile thinkers and doers where strange things begin happening.”
The public is invited to hear Carroll read from “The Great Liars” at the monthly author talk sponsored by Friends of the Coronado Center Library on Thursday at 4 p.m. at the Coronado Community Center.
http://hsvvoice.com/news/jerry-jay-ca...
Best-selling author and former Voice writer Jerry Jay Carroll will be the featured author Thursday at 4 p.m. in Coronado Community Center.
He opened up recently about his exciting career as a journalist and author, and gave the inside story on his latest book, “The Great Liars.”
When asked about his time with the San Francisco Chronicle, where he worked as a feature writer and columnist, Carroll described some of the events and people he and the paper covered in that world-changing city and era: the hippie and gay movements, Haight Ashbury, LSD and Timothy Leary (whom he interviewed), student riots in Berkeley and San Francisco State (“I carry a scar on my chin to this day”), Jim Jones, the murders of Harvey Milk and George Moscone, Charles Manson, the attempted assassination of Gerald Ford (which Carroll wrote about after the reporter covering the story went into a state of shock), the Zodiac and Zebra serial killers, and the Patty Hearst kidnapping.
Carroll and another journalist were sued for $10 million when they said the Black Muslims were extorting money from the Hearsts, and “a jury in the libel trial said we were right.”
Carroll and his wife, Judy, attended a party where the Native American takeover of Alcatraz was planned, and at which Huey Newton, founder of the Black Panthers, was also a guest.
The Chronicle wanted to send Carroll to Jonestown, but he was in Big Sur with Judy celebrating their 10th anniversary and couldn’t be reached. It was a good thing – the reporter that got the assignment “took a bullet in the rear and spent the night in the jungle in water up to his neck.”
Carroll also wrote a story on the pardon of Tokyo Rose, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize (one of two Pulitzer nominations he received for feature writing).
On retirement from the Chronicle, the Carrolls moved to Judy’s home state of Montana. Carroll said that his work as a journalist had been “like a bee skimming the surface,” darting from subject to subject, with no time for in-depth research on subjects that interested him. He had always been interested in World War II; he remembered times in his childhood when his family would gather to listen to the radio and discuss the war, and he would lie on the floor and draw airplanes, etc. on a big sheet of butcher paper.
Once he started delving into materials on the war – including many studies and commissions into Pearl Harbor, some of which were only declassified in the 1990s (some information on the attack is still classified) – he found the research so fascinating that it almost became an end in itself.
The premise of “The Great Liars” is that Roosevelt knew that Pearl Harbor would be attacked and did nothing, in order to bring the United States into the war.
Carroll believes this to be true, and gives a very convincing argument. He said that the United States was very efficient at listening to coded messages from Japan, and cited several sources that knew and warned of the attack. On Dec. 3, a known spy in Honolulu gave the Japanese the “all clear” signal, and even reported which ships were in harbor and what their locations were.
Carroll said that Roosevelt was “deeply Machiavellian,” and with 89 percent of the U.S. population opposed to U.S. entry into the war in a January 1941 poll, drastic measures had to be taken to draw us into the conflict.
Carroll spent more than 12 years researching the subject, and said, “World War II is now as remote as the Crusades” and that the contrast between “the forces of good and evil was never more stark.”
In addition to the thrilling plot and historical events and characters, “The Great Liars” is also deeply, laugh-out-loud funny. The “hero” (using the term loosely), Lowell Brady, is a Navy man who lives in an old soldier’s home and is discovered by a Smithsonian researcher, Harriet Gallatin, while compiling oral histories of WWII veterans. He shamelessly drags out his tale (while insisting on dining at the best restaurants in the area), until the FBI gets wind of the story and tries to put a stop to it (and them).
Some of Brady’s exploits – as well as the people he meets in his “colorful” career – make for hilarious reading. Brady’s stepfather is a blind senator, and some of the funniest scenes in the book involve their interactions. There is also a very funny encounter with the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas at a hip London club, and humorous one-off lines throughout the book. Just one example: when Brady is told by FDR’s man Harry Hopkins that J. Edgar Hoover has the dirt on just about everyone – including naked photos of Eleanor Roosevelt – Brady says, “Who’d want to see them?”
When asked if the details about FDR, etc., were factual, Carroll responded that most were, but he did “take a few liberties.” In several scenes, Roosevelt mixes drinks for his guests. Carroll said that Roosevelt did like to mix drinks, but not in exactly the same way as described in the book (and you’ll have to read the book to get the details).
“The Great Liars” is Carroll’s fourth novel. His first book, “Top Dog” (which made the New York Times best-seller list) was followed by a sequel, “Dog Eat Dog.” Carroll is in the process of reworking “Top Dog,” to “bring the topical references up to date.” He also published “Inhuman Beings,” a “noir-ish science fiction” book.
Carroll has also finished a sci-fi/fantasy novel about a “crappy but best-selling novelist who is invited by mistake to a stellar conference of high-profile thinkers and doers where strange things begin happening.”
The public is invited to hear Carroll read from “The Great Liars” at the monthly author talk sponsored by Friends of the Coronado Center Library on Thursday at 4 p.m. at the Coronado Community Center.
http://hsvvoice.com/news/jerry-jay-ca...
February 15, 2014
The problem with research
One of the regrets of historical research is now and then you come across a fascinating story that you cannot shoehorn into the narrative you are constructing, which in this case was my novel The Great Liars, which went up this week on Amazon and Kindle. Peter Shepherd, who was an 18-year-old Royal Air Force mechanic stationed in Malaya in 1941 as the war clouds darkened. He waited nearly sixty years to tell his story because, as he wrote in Three Days to Pearl (Naval Institute Press, 2000), to do so earlier “may have stirred up enduring ill will between Great Britain and the United States.”
I came across Shepherd’s account in the course of years of research into the period leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, an event that saw the U.S. enter the war against Germany before it was too late. Hitler’s legions had conquered most of Europe with its new Blitzkrieg style of war, and Britain was beginning to starve from the noose U-boats were tightening around shipping. Some in the ruling class believed the country could only be saved by a new government willing to negotiate a dishonorable peace after Winston Churchill was removed from power and King George forced to abdicate in favor of his older brother, the former king now the Duke of Windsor, whose pro-German sympathies were known to intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic.
Shepherd, who had joined the RAF when only fifteen, arrived in Singapore in August of 1941 in a convoy of troop ships. “I at last experienced a sense of having left the war behind, its perils, and its many depressing restrictions, far behind.”
A callow youth still, ignorant and unformed, he regarded the Japanese as “polite, humble, chivalrous, and honorable people who revered their ancestors, worshipped the emperor, and loved simple, exquisite things such as cherry blossoms and chrysanthemums.” Then he picked up a magazine one day and read about Japan’s brutal war in China and its aggressive intentions toward the Far East. “I didn’t get it.”
The British badly underestimated the Japanese; a corporal summed it up for Shepherd when ominous troop movements were reported. “Well, I can tell you this much—they won’t get very bloody far. They wouldn’t dare start anything against the British out here; we’d slam them back to Tokyo in five minutes. Who the hell are they anyway? Just a tribe of vacant faced bastards. Plus they all wear glasses. Cheeky sods!”
Shepherd was ordered to accompany a civilian pilot with a Dutch accent on a secret night mission to French Indo-China, nominally controlled by the Vichy government but already under the thumb of the Japanese army. While the pilot left to take care of business he didn’t explain, Shepherd loitered in a restaurant until time to fly back to Malaya. He met a Japanese engineer without a word of English who rapidly got drunk on cognac and became expansive. He was bursting with a secret so large he could not contain it even if he had to resort to hand gestures and a hand-drawn map. Shepherd learned he had been part of a crew of civilians who adapted bomb racks for torpedoes rigged for shallow running. The torpedoes and the aircraft that would deliver them were aboard six carriers that would attack “Purhabba,” Singapore and Malaya would be struck at the same time.
“I smiled, frowned, and shook my head as in disbelief,” Shepherd wrote, “though inwardly I had felt the sickening clutch of fear.”
As the Japanese engineer got sick over the veranda rail, Shepherd stole the hand-drawn map and departed. Back in Malaya, he was told to report the conversation to a squadron commander he had never met before, and they were immediately flown to Kuala Lumpur to brief two civilians; he assumed all three were in intelligence. Doing the calculations in his head, Shepherd told them he thought the attack on Pearl Harbor would be three days hence, on Sunday, December 7. The meeting ended, Shepherd having been ordered not to repeat his story to anyone.
Back at the airstrip, he and the other mechanics were worked to the point of exhaustion getting Blenheim bombers ready for action; one collapsed from overwork and was carried off and another couldn’t rise from a chair when he sat down. Just before sinking into sleep when at last off duty, Shepherd wrote, he felt a premonition. “Earthshaking events, evil and unspeakable, were about to erupt.” He woke to falling bombs and then the building blew up around him. He was in hospitals for two years. After the war, he became a chartered engineer, retiring to West Sussex in 1988.
What Shepherd could not know was evidence has been unearthed in the past fifteen or so years was Washington, D.C., knew the Japanese Imperial Fleet was en route to attack the Pacific Fleet. But that’s another story you will find at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IEM9TKI#r...
I came across Shepherd’s account in the course of years of research into the period leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, an event that saw the U.S. enter the war against Germany before it was too late. Hitler’s legions had conquered most of Europe with its new Blitzkrieg style of war, and Britain was beginning to starve from the noose U-boats were tightening around shipping. Some in the ruling class believed the country could only be saved by a new government willing to negotiate a dishonorable peace after Winston Churchill was removed from power and King George forced to abdicate in favor of his older brother, the former king now the Duke of Windsor, whose pro-German sympathies were known to intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic.
Shepherd, who had joined the RAF when only fifteen, arrived in Singapore in August of 1941 in a convoy of troop ships. “I at last experienced a sense of having left the war behind, its perils, and its many depressing restrictions, far behind.”
A callow youth still, ignorant and unformed, he regarded the Japanese as “polite, humble, chivalrous, and honorable people who revered their ancestors, worshipped the emperor, and loved simple, exquisite things such as cherry blossoms and chrysanthemums.” Then he picked up a magazine one day and read about Japan’s brutal war in China and its aggressive intentions toward the Far East. “I didn’t get it.”
The British badly underestimated the Japanese; a corporal summed it up for Shepherd when ominous troop movements were reported. “Well, I can tell you this much—they won’t get very bloody far. They wouldn’t dare start anything against the British out here; we’d slam them back to Tokyo in five minutes. Who the hell are they anyway? Just a tribe of vacant faced bastards. Plus they all wear glasses. Cheeky sods!”
Shepherd was ordered to accompany a civilian pilot with a Dutch accent on a secret night mission to French Indo-China, nominally controlled by the Vichy government but already under the thumb of the Japanese army. While the pilot left to take care of business he didn’t explain, Shepherd loitered in a restaurant until time to fly back to Malaya. He met a Japanese engineer without a word of English who rapidly got drunk on cognac and became expansive. He was bursting with a secret so large he could not contain it even if he had to resort to hand gestures and a hand-drawn map. Shepherd learned he had been part of a crew of civilians who adapted bomb racks for torpedoes rigged for shallow running. The torpedoes and the aircraft that would deliver them were aboard six carriers that would attack “Purhabba,” Singapore and Malaya would be struck at the same time.
“I smiled, frowned, and shook my head as in disbelief,” Shepherd wrote, “though inwardly I had felt the sickening clutch of fear.”
As the Japanese engineer got sick over the veranda rail, Shepherd stole the hand-drawn map and departed. Back in Malaya, he was told to report the conversation to a squadron commander he had never met before, and they were immediately flown to Kuala Lumpur to brief two civilians; he assumed all three were in intelligence. Doing the calculations in his head, Shepherd told them he thought the attack on Pearl Harbor would be three days hence, on Sunday, December 7. The meeting ended, Shepherd having been ordered not to repeat his story to anyone.
Back at the airstrip, he and the other mechanics were worked to the point of exhaustion getting Blenheim bombers ready for action; one collapsed from overwork and was carried off and another couldn’t rise from a chair when he sat down. Just before sinking into sleep when at last off duty, Shepherd wrote, he felt a premonition. “Earthshaking events, evil and unspeakable, were about to erupt.” He woke to falling bombs and then the building blew up around him. He was in hospitals for two years. After the war, he became a chartered engineer, retiring to West Sussex in 1988.
What Shepherd could not know was evidence has been unearthed in the past fifteen or so years was Washington, D.C., knew the Japanese Imperial Fleet was en route to attack the Pacific Fleet. But that’s another story you will find at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IEM9TKI#r...
December 18, 2013
The Great Liars
As America moved closer to World War 2, below is the secret strategic plan drawn up for the White House by the Navy. I drew on it heavily in writing my novel:
"The United States today finds herself confronted by a hostile Germany and Italy in Europe and by an equally hostile Japan in the Orient. Russia, the great land link between these two groups of hostile powers, is at present neutral, but in all probability favorably inclined toward the Axis powers, and her favorable attitude towards these powers may be expected to increase in direct proportion to increasing success in their prosecution of the war in Europe. Germany and Italy have been successful in war on the continent of Europe and all of Europe is either under their military control or has been forced into subservience. Only the British Empire is actively opposing by war the growing world dominance of Germany and Italy and their satellites.
The United States at first remained coolly aloof from the conflict in Europe and there is considerable evidence to support the view that Germany and Italy attempted by every method within their power to foster a continuation of American indifference to the outcome of the struggle in Europe. Paradoxically, every success of German and Italian arms has led to further increases in United States sympathy and material support of the British Empire, until at the present time the United States government stands committed to a policy of rendering every support short of war with the chances rapidly increasing that the United States will become a full-fledged ally of the British Empire in the near future. The final failure of German and Italian diplomacy to keep the United States in the role of a disinterested spectator has forced them to adopt the policy of developing other threats to U.S. security spheres of the world, notably by the threat of revolutions in South and Central America by Axis-dominated groups and by the stimulation of Japan to further aggressions and threats in the Far East in the hope that by these means the United States would become so confused in thought and fearful of her own immediate security as to virtually preclude U.S. aid to become so preoccupied in purely defensive preparations as to virtually preclude U.S. aid to Great Britain in any form. As a result of this policy, Germany and Italy have lately concluded a military alliance with Japan directed against the United States. If the published terms of this treaty and the pointed utterances of Germany, Italian and Japanese leaders can be believed, and there seems no ground on which to doubt either, the three totalitarian powers agree to make war on the United States, should she come to the assistance of England, or should she attempt to forcibly interfere with Japan’s aims in the Orient and, furthermore, Germany and Italy expressly reserve the right to determine whether American aid to Britain, short of war, is a cause for war or not after they have succeeded in defeating England. In other words, after England has been disposed of her enemies will decide whether or not to immediately proceed with an attack on the United States. Due to geographical considerations, neither Germany nor Italy is in a position to offer any material aid to Japan. Japan, on the contrary, can be of much help to both Germany and Italy by threatening and even attacking British dominions and supply routes from Australia, India and the Dutch East Indies, thus materially weakening Britain’s position in opposition to the Axis. In exchange for this service, Japan receives a free hand to size all of Asia that she can find it possible to grab, with the added promise that Germany and Italy will do all in their power to keep U.S. so attracted as to prevent the United States from taking positive aggressive action against Japan. Here again, we have another example of the Axis-Japanese diplomacy which is aimed at keeping American power immobilized, and by threats and alarms to so confuse American thought as to preclude prompt decisive action by the United States in either sphere of action. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that last thing desired by either the Axis powers in Europe or by Japan in the Far East is prompt, warlike action by the United States in either theater of operations.
An examination of the situation in Europe leads to the conclusion that there is little that we can do now, immediately, to help Britain that is not already being done. We have no trained army to send to the assistance of England, nor will we have for at least a year. We are trying to increase the flow of materials to England and to bolster the defense of England in every practicable way and this will undoubtedly be increased. On the other hand, there is little that Germany or Italy can do against us as long as England continues in the war and her navy maintains control of the Atlantic. The one danger to our position lies in the possible early defeat of the British Empire with the British fleet falling intact into the hands of the Axis powers. The possibility of such an event occurring would be materially lessened were we actually taking measures to relieve the pressure on Britain in other spheres of action. To sum up: the threat to our security in the Atlantic remains small so long as the British fleet remains dominant in that ocean and friendly to the United States.
In the Pacific, Japan by virtue of her alliance with Germany and Italy is a definite threat to the security of the British Empire and once the British Empire is gone the force of Japan-Germany and Italy is to be directed against the United States. A powerful land attack by Germany and Italy through the Balkans and North Africa against the Suez Canal with a Japanese threat or attack on Singapore would have very serious results for the British Empire. Could Japan be diverted or neutralized, the fruits of a successful attack on the Suez Canal could not be as far reaching and beneficial to the Axis powers as if such a success was also accompanied by the elimination of British sea power from the Indian Ocean, thus opening up a European supply route for Japan and a sea route for Eastern raw materials to reach Germany and Italy.
While as pointed out paragraph (3) there is little that the United State can do to immediately retrieve the situation in Europe, the United States is able to effectively nullify Japanese aggressive action, and do it without lessening U.S. material assistance to Great Britain.
An examination of Japan’s present position as opposed to the United States reveals a situation as follows: Japan has a geographically strong position, but a million and half of her men are engaged in an exhausting war on the Asiatic continent. It has a highly centralized strong capable government, but its economy and food supply are severely straitened. She has rigid control of the economy on a war basis, but a serious lack of sources of raw materials for war. Notably oil, iron and cotton. It has a people inured to hardship and war, but it is totally cut off from supplies from Europe and dependent upon distant overseas routes for essential supplies. It has a skillful navy about two-thirds of the strength of the U.S. Navy, but is incapable of increasing manufacture and supply of war materials without free access to U.S. or European markets. It has some stocks of war materials, but major cities and industrial centers are extremely vulnerable to air attack.
In the Pacific the United States possess a very strong defensive position and a Navy and naval air force at present in that ocean capable of long distance offensive operation. There are certain other factors which at the present time are strongly in our favor, viz: A—Philippine Islands still held by the United States. B—Friendly and possibly allied government in control of the Dutch East Indies. C—British still hold Hong Kong and Singapore and are favorable to us. D—Important Chinese armies are still in the field in China against Japan. E—A small U.S. naval force capable of seriously threatening Japan’s southern supply routes already in the theater of operations. F—A considerable Dutch naval force is in the Orient that would be of value if allied to the U.S.
A consideration of the foregoing leads to the conclusion that prompt aggressive naval action against Japan by the United States would render Japan incapable of affording any help to Germany and Italy in their attack on England and that Japan itself would be faced with a situation in which her navy could be forced to fight on most unfavorable terms or accept or accept fairly early collapse of the country through the force of blockade. A prompt and early declaration of war after entering into suitable arrangements with England and Holland would be most effective in bringing about the early collapse of Japan and thus eliminating our enemy in the Pacific before Germany and Italy could strike at us effectively. Furthermore, elimination of Japan must surely strengthen Britain’s position against German and Italy and, in addition, such action would increase the confidence and support of all nations who tend to be friendly toward us.
It is not believed that in the present state of political opinion the United States government is capable of declaring war against Japan without more ado; and it is barely possible that vigorous action on our part might lead the Japanese to modify their attitude. Therefore, the following course of action is suggested:
Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore.
Make and arrangement with Holland for the use of base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies.
Give all possible aid to the Chinese government of Chiang-Kai-Shek.
Send a division of long range heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines or Singapore.
Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient.
Keep the main strength of the U.S. Fleet now in the Pacific in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands
Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil.
Completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.
If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better. At all events we must be fully prepared to accept the threat of war."
"The United States today finds herself confronted by a hostile Germany and Italy in Europe and by an equally hostile Japan in the Orient. Russia, the great land link between these two groups of hostile powers, is at present neutral, but in all probability favorably inclined toward the Axis powers, and her favorable attitude towards these powers may be expected to increase in direct proportion to increasing success in their prosecution of the war in Europe. Germany and Italy have been successful in war on the continent of Europe and all of Europe is either under their military control or has been forced into subservience. Only the British Empire is actively opposing by war the growing world dominance of Germany and Italy and their satellites.
The United States at first remained coolly aloof from the conflict in Europe and there is considerable evidence to support the view that Germany and Italy attempted by every method within their power to foster a continuation of American indifference to the outcome of the struggle in Europe. Paradoxically, every success of German and Italian arms has led to further increases in United States sympathy and material support of the British Empire, until at the present time the United States government stands committed to a policy of rendering every support short of war with the chances rapidly increasing that the United States will become a full-fledged ally of the British Empire in the near future. The final failure of German and Italian diplomacy to keep the United States in the role of a disinterested spectator has forced them to adopt the policy of developing other threats to U.S. security spheres of the world, notably by the threat of revolutions in South and Central America by Axis-dominated groups and by the stimulation of Japan to further aggressions and threats in the Far East in the hope that by these means the United States would become so confused in thought and fearful of her own immediate security as to virtually preclude U.S. aid to become so preoccupied in purely defensive preparations as to virtually preclude U.S. aid to Great Britain in any form. As a result of this policy, Germany and Italy have lately concluded a military alliance with Japan directed against the United States. If the published terms of this treaty and the pointed utterances of Germany, Italian and Japanese leaders can be believed, and there seems no ground on which to doubt either, the three totalitarian powers agree to make war on the United States, should she come to the assistance of England, or should she attempt to forcibly interfere with Japan’s aims in the Orient and, furthermore, Germany and Italy expressly reserve the right to determine whether American aid to Britain, short of war, is a cause for war or not after they have succeeded in defeating England. In other words, after England has been disposed of her enemies will decide whether or not to immediately proceed with an attack on the United States. Due to geographical considerations, neither Germany nor Italy is in a position to offer any material aid to Japan. Japan, on the contrary, can be of much help to both Germany and Italy by threatening and even attacking British dominions and supply routes from Australia, India and the Dutch East Indies, thus materially weakening Britain’s position in opposition to the Axis. In exchange for this service, Japan receives a free hand to size all of Asia that she can find it possible to grab, with the added promise that Germany and Italy will do all in their power to keep U.S. so attracted as to prevent the United States from taking positive aggressive action against Japan. Here again, we have another example of the Axis-Japanese diplomacy which is aimed at keeping American power immobilized, and by threats and alarms to so confuse American thought as to preclude prompt decisive action by the United States in either sphere of action. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that last thing desired by either the Axis powers in Europe or by Japan in the Far East is prompt, warlike action by the United States in either theater of operations.
An examination of the situation in Europe leads to the conclusion that there is little that we can do now, immediately, to help Britain that is not already being done. We have no trained army to send to the assistance of England, nor will we have for at least a year. We are trying to increase the flow of materials to England and to bolster the defense of England in every practicable way and this will undoubtedly be increased. On the other hand, there is little that Germany or Italy can do against us as long as England continues in the war and her navy maintains control of the Atlantic. The one danger to our position lies in the possible early defeat of the British Empire with the British fleet falling intact into the hands of the Axis powers. The possibility of such an event occurring would be materially lessened were we actually taking measures to relieve the pressure on Britain in other spheres of action. To sum up: the threat to our security in the Atlantic remains small so long as the British fleet remains dominant in that ocean and friendly to the United States.
In the Pacific, Japan by virtue of her alliance with Germany and Italy is a definite threat to the security of the British Empire and once the British Empire is gone the force of Japan-Germany and Italy is to be directed against the United States. A powerful land attack by Germany and Italy through the Balkans and North Africa against the Suez Canal with a Japanese threat or attack on Singapore would have very serious results for the British Empire. Could Japan be diverted or neutralized, the fruits of a successful attack on the Suez Canal could not be as far reaching and beneficial to the Axis powers as if such a success was also accompanied by the elimination of British sea power from the Indian Ocean, thus opening up a European supply route for Japan and a sea route for Eastern raw materials to reach Germany and Italy.
While as pointed out paragraph (3) there is little that the United State can do to immediately retrieve the situation in Europe, the United States is able to effectively nullify Japanese aggressive action, and do it without lessening U.S. material assistance to Great Britain.
An examination of Japan’s present position as opposed to the United States reveals a situation as follows: Japan has a geographically strong position, but a million and half of her men are engaged in an exhausting war on the Asiatic continent. It has a highly centralized strong capable government, but its economy and food supply are severely straitened. She has rigid control of the economy on a war basis, but a serious lack of sources of raw materials for war. Notably oil, iron and cotton. It has a people inured to hardship and war, but it is totally cut off from supplies from Europe and dependent upon distant overseas routes for essential supplies. It has a skillful navy about two-thirds of the strength of the U.S. Navy, but is incapable of increasing manufacture and supply of war materials without free access to U.S. or European markets. It has some stocks of war materials, but major cities and industrial centers are extremely vulnerable to air attack.
In the Pacific the United States possess a very strong defensive position and a Navy and naval air force at present in that ocean capable of long distance offensive operation. There are certain other factors which at the present time are strongly in our favor, viz: A—Philippine Islands still held by the United States. B—Friendly and possibly allied government in control of the Dutch East Indies. C—British still hold Hong Kong and Singapore and are favorable to us. D—Important Chinese armies are still in the field in China against Japan. E—A small U.S. naval force capable of seriously threatening Japan’s southern supply routes already in the theater of operations. F—A considerable Dutch naval force is in the Orient that would be of value if allied to the U.S.
A consideration of the foregoing leads to the conclusion that prompt aggressive naval action against Japan by the United States would render Japan incapable of affording any help to Germany and Italy in their attack on England and that Japan itself would be faced with a situation in which her navy could be forced to fight on most unfavorable terms or accept or accept fairly early collapse of the country through the force of blockade. A prompt and early declaration of war after entering into suitable arrangements with England and Holland would be most effective in bringing about the early collapse of Japan and thus eliminating our enemy in the Pacific before Germany and Italy could strike at us effectively. Furthermore, elimination of Japan must surely strengthen Britain’s position against German and Italy and, in addition, such action would increase the confidence and support of all nations who tend to be friendly toward us.
It is not believed that in the present state of political opinion the United States government is capable of declaring war against Japan without more ado; and it is barely possible that vigorous action on our part might lead the Japanese to modify their attitude. Therefore, the following course of action is suggested:
Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore.
Make and arrangement with Holland for the use of base facilities and acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies.
Give all possible aid to the Chinese government of Chiang-Kai-Shek.
Send a division of long range heavy cruisers to the Orient, Philippines or Singapore.
Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient.
Keep the main strength of the U.S. Fleet now in the Pacific in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands
Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demands for undue economic concessions, particularly oil.
Completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.
If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better. At all events we must be fully prepared to accept the threat of war."
December 10, 2013
The Great Liars
I have a friend deeply involved in politics -- he ran the campaign that put Nancy Pelosi in office -- who told me "the newspapers don't know a tenth of what's going on." I told him I was surprised he put it that high. No less than in private lives, government doesn't want the bad stuff getting out. It will tell the public the bare minimum, and prevaricate if necessary. Obamacare is just the latest example, but let's not get into that. Presidents conceal intentions as much as possible so that those who have an opposing interest don't learn before the time is right, ideally when it is too late. Woodrow Wilson said he wouldn't send the boys to war, but did. Franklin Roosevelt said the same thing, and did. LBJ wanted to send the boys to war, and the Tonkin Gulf incident was manufactured. Bush made himself believe in WMDs in Iraq to send the boys to war. Obama nearly sent the boys to war over Syria, and was only stopped at the last minute. I think you get the idea. With the exception of FDR, the presidents got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. More than 70 years later people who interest themselves in the matter still have some or a lot of doubt about whether Roosevelt knew the Imperial Japanese Navy was headed south to bomb the bejesus out of Pearl Harbor. Count me in the latter camp. It will never be proved conclusively at this late date, but the cover up has unraveled to the point the Roosevelt industry is reduced to blustering denials that their man could have been so wicked as to knowingly allow thousands of American fighting men to perish for reasons of state. But the president was a realist. He knew the U.S. was running out of time before the punch-drunk British sued for peace. That would free Hitler to concentrate all the Reich's formidable might on the Soviets in a one-front war and bring that to a successful conclusion. And then America would be in alone and in the cross-hairs. To FDR's surprise, the country brushed off two German attacks on American warships. So he knew it was going to take something major to jolt us out of our reluctance to get involved in another European war. The losses suffered at Pearl Harbor in ships and men were like a two-by-four alongside a mule's head. It got the country's attention.
December 8, 2013
The Great Liars
Wow, that last post was long-winded. I didn't mean to give the impression Top Dog didn't do well. It had very good reviews for the most part (An A from Entertainment Weekly, for example) and did enough business for a NYT Bestseller ranking. It was sci-fi/fantasy as was its sequel Dog Eat Dog. In between was Inhuman Beings, a sci-fi that has been optioned for a movie that I doubt will ever be made because I am a pessimist, born and bred. I recommend all three! They are available on Amazon.com, of course. I'm doing something interesting with Top Dog. I'm bringing it out as an ebook with all the topical references updated. Wait for that one if for no other reason than I don't earn one cent off the ones you find in the second-hand book stores. This is getting long again. More on The Great Liars tomorrow.
December 7, 2013
My new book The Great Liars
I certainly didn't plan it this way, but I'm launching my new novel about Pearl Harbor with this entry on the the 72nd anniversary of the attack. Call it coincidence, divine intervention, Fate -- something. Fitting, there's the word. The trade paperback won't be available until after the first of the year and there naturally will be an e-book version. Back in ancient times (which came to an end in the 90s) you wrote a book, hustled up an agent who found you a publishing house, and that was pretty much it. The publisher took care of all the back office stuff, the presses roared, and you were an author swanning about like a lord. With luck, readers liked you, and if they didn't they were swine. I kid, I kid, as the comedians say. Of course, a lot of things could go wrong. A friend wrote a novel about the death of his wife that was touching and really quite good. It was published by a small press with a respectable reputation. Unfortunately, the woman in charge of sending out copies to reviewers was suffering a mental breakdown. It was a quiet one, unknown to others in the office. One of the consequences of this was review copies didn't get sent out and no one saw his book. It fell onto the forest floor like those trees we all know about. He took it with philosophy, at least publicly. Who knew how he rent his clothes and pounded walls in private. My own luck in this regard was marginally better. The publicity agent assigned by a Penguin imprint to promote Top Dog, my first novel, was a transvestite. I learned this when I telephoned to find out how it was going. A large part of the message on his answering machine was devoted to the particulars of an upcoming drag queen event. Transgender people were enough of an oddity back then that . . . but there I am wandering. Back to my point, which is the old publishing world, the one I had a passing acquaintance with, is in the midst of a collapse rivaling the Ottoman Empire. Replacing it is the Brave New World of the Platform. Anybody can write a book, but you have to have a Platform. This means blogging, a Facebook presence, Tweeting, and any manner of other social media interactions. All of a writer's time is spent hammering nails into his or her platform, squeezing in writing here and there when time can be spared. You've heard this before.
I discovered it after a decade in Montana whence my family and I removed after I wearied of the ephemera of big city journalism. World War 2 had long had a hold over me that was like an enchantment. I read scores of histories, biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, reference books, even the three volumes of Churchill's war papers (1300 pages each!). At some point, I said to myself, "You know, there's a novel here somewhere."
I discovered it after a decade in Montana whence my family and I removed after I wearied of the ephemera of big city journalism. World War 2 had long had a hold over me that was like an enchantment. I read scores of histories, biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, reference books, even the three volumes of Churchill's war papers (1300 pages each!). At some point, I said to myself, "You know, there's a novel here somewhere."
The Man Himself
The mighty oak or the bamboo, which would you rather be in a high wind?
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