![Rally Point, 29
account, the blast was so powerful that it ripped both masts from the deck and
“filled [the air] with fragments of the vessel.”22 Of the 143 officers and men
attached to the Fulton, roughly sixty were estimated to be on board when she
exploded. Thirty of them died.
Lieutenant Brackenridge was among them. A few officers were hosting
a party on the Fulton that afternoon, and Brackenridge was eating in the officer’s
wardroom with his wife when the magazine exploded. The wardroom was some
distance from the magazine, but the force of the explosion threw Brackenridge
against the bulkhead and knocked others to their knees. Brackenridge survived
the explosion, but he was badly injured and was rushed to the hospital at the
Navy Yard. By the next morning, he had died from his wounds. His wife, who
he had married only two months before, escaped with a few minor burns.
Emmons was understandably upset at Brackenridge’s death, and he confessed
his grief in a letter to his brother. “I regret his death very much. He was a very
fine young officer, and his death is regretted by all that knew him.”23
In the aftermath of the accident, Emmons was flooded with letters, one
of which was from his cousin H.B. Sawyer. Newspapers detailed the officers and
men who were wounded or killed, but Sawyer had heard conflicting accounts of
the carnage, and he wanted to know if his cousin was “in the land of the living
or not.”24 To Sawyers’ relief, Emmons was unharmed. While belongings on the
ship – and two dollars of savings – were destroyed, he was fortunate to not have
been hurt. In many ways, Emmons’ safety was entirely due to chance; without
asking for the morning off, Emmons would have been on board during the
explosion. The officers’ party included Midshipmen, and if he had not been on
shore, Emmons would have been in the wardroom with Brackenridge when the
magazine exploded. This fact was not lost on Emmons. who later noted, “I feel
very thankful to get off as I have, without losing my life.”25
The explosion of the Fulton was the first time Emmons experienced
death during his naval career. Battle, disease, and accidents at sea killed sailors
and officers almost every year, and Emmons knew this. He must have believed
that he would see some of his fellow sailors die during his service; to think
otherwise would have been naïve. Despite acknowledging these dangers, the
explosion troubled Emmons. He would not have expected a catastrophe so early
in his career, or in a place as peaceful and safe as New York Harbor. Mass
casualty events were only supposed to happen in war, and Emmons struggled to
comprehend how thirty sailors were killed because of carelessness. And whether
he recognized it or not, Emmons probably felt guilty that he had been spared by
nothing more than luck.
As is the case with any tragedy, Emmons eventually moved on from the
explosion. Yet the image of a burning ship – his first ship – was etched in
Emmons’ mind for the rest of his life, a reminder of the ever-present risks of
naval service.
Part III: The Mediterranean Station
22
Ibid.
23
Emmons Papers, Box 1, folder 6
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-29-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 30
In the year after the Fulton explosion, Emmons’ life was uneventful. He was still
in Brooklyn at the Naval School, but having completed the curriculum, there was
little to do. In order to continue his training, Emmons needed to find a Captain
that had space for a Midshipman on his next cruise. The Naval School
introduced Emmons to the technical skills he would need as an officer, but the
Midshipman cruise was where these skills were honed. The cruise was the first
time Emmons would sail on the open ocean, making it the first true test of his
seamanship. In the stressful environment of a warship, Midshipmen would
demonstrate their competency, or they would falter as their weaknesses were
exposed. The worst would be given the title of “Jonah.” Named after the biblical
character who was swallowed by a whale, a Jonah was a sailor who did not belong
at sea, someone who brought bad luck to himself and his entire ship. Sailors are
a superstitious bunch, and a Midshipman who was cursed with this title would
quickly find that he had no place in the Navy. Emmons and his peers feared
becoming a Jonah, and although they may have believed they were competent
Midshipmen, each knew that they could only consider themselves sailors after
their cruise.
The cruise, then, was a trial, but it was also a turning point. After
completing the cruise and six years of service, Midshipmen could sit for the
Lieutenant’s Exam, a daunting oral examination administered by a board of
senior officers. Passing the exam would increase Emmons’ pay, but more
importantly, it would make him eligible for promotion to Lieutenant. If there
were no billets for Lieutenant (a near-certainty considering the glut of officers in
the fleet), Emmons would bear the unofficial title of Passed-Midshipman until a
billet was available. As a Passed-Midshipman, Emmons would be regarded as a
competent officer prepared for the responsibilities that accompanied naval
leadership. However, failing the exam was equally consequential; if a
Midshipman was “rejected by a board of examiners, they [were] obliged to
relinquish their adopted profession.”26
With these milestones on the horizon, Emmons began to search for a
cruise. Captains were expected to take as many Midshipmen as their ship could
accommodate, but finding a cruise was still difficult. For one, a Captain had the
final say on who was included in his crew, and many would have turned
Midshipmen down even if they had space. Midshipmen were a significant burden
on a crowded warship, requiring a berthing, food, and water. Training was time
and labor intensive, requiring senior officers or experienced sailors to forego
their existing responsibilities to instruct Midshipmen. And for what benefit?
Midshipmen were like interns, helpful for small, inconsequential tasks, but
useless when it came to operating a warship.
Even if every skipper took a full contingent of Midshipmen, Emmons
still would have struggled to find space. The frequent cuts to the Navy’s budget
decreased the number of deployable ships, and with no building projects, the
fleet was shrinking. Emmons would have to be patient, and while he was on the
Fulton, this was not a problem. He was, after all, still training. However, without
26
“Examination of Midshipmen,” Army and Navy Chronicle, Volume 2, Issue 18
(May 5, 1836), 284, accessed on ProQuest Historical Newspapers,
https://search.proquest.com/docview/124474581/30CA5507F95422BPQ/5?accounti
d=15172](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-30-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 56
was only one of many mishaps, shortcomings, and outright strategic blunders in
the Middle East that plagued Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the
spring of 1941. The same memorandum that informed Germany’s diplomatic
staff of Blomberg’s death related how, when the British began to bomb the
Baghdad airfield, some “Iraqi military [personnel] fell into a panicked terror” and
“fled into the desert,” not to be seen “for the next several days.”92 The Iraqi air
force, meanwhile, had no fuel for its planes, despite the fact that Iraq was one of
the world’s major oil-producing countries.93 Less than two months after he had
taken power, al-Gaylani, recognizing the hopelessness of his position in Baghdad,
fled Iraq during the night of May 29 and the Iraqi army surrendered soon
thereafter.94 Al-Gaylani’s defeat was not as fatal to Hitler’s Germany as it was to
the nascent Iraqi state, but the Iraqi revolt was “such a disaster […] that it
triggered an internal quarrel about who was to blame,” historians Wolfgang
Schwanitz and Barry Rubin observe.95 The failed revolt also imperiled some of
Iraq’s most vulnerable people. On May 31, after al-Gaylani’s rule had evaporated
but before British forces entered Iraq’s capital, a mob stormed Baghdad,
attacking Jews and destroying their property in an eruption of violence that
became known as the “Farhud.”96 From the Germans and their Axis allies to al-
Gaylani’s supporters and the Jews of Baghdad, the Iraqi revolt of 1941 turned
out poorly for almost everyone involved.97
Germany’s failure to secure al-Gaylani’s rule was rendered all the more
damaging for the Axis by the territory’s strategic importance. As German agent
Rudolf Rahn noted in his memoir, Iraq occupied a crucial “oil intersection,”
flanking the Persian and Russian oil regions and housing many oil wells itself.
Control of Iraq could have supplied Germany with access to Iraq’s vast oil
reserves and placed the Reich in a better position to threaten its enemies’ reserves
in the Caucasus and Iran, which produced more crude petroleum than all of non-
Soviet Europe combined in 1939.98 An al-Gaylani triumph in Iraq might also
East, 131.
92
Memorandum on the State of Military Support for Iraq, May 16, 1941. NARA RG
242, T-120, Roll 80/61770-61774.
93
Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle
East, 131. Robert Lyman, Iraq 1941 — The Battles for Basra, Habbaniya, Fallujah
and Baghdad (New York, Osprey, 2005), 7-8.
94
Grobba, Männer und Mächte im Orient, 245-247. Simons, Iraq, 222.
95
Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle
East, 131.
96
Peter Wien, Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarianism, Totalitarianism and Pro-
fascist Inclinations, 1932-1941 (New York: Routledge, 2006), 108.
97
Even the British, who technically “won” their brief struggle against al-Gaylani’s
Iraq, probably would have preferred that the revolt had never happened in the first
place. Lyman, Iraq, 132.
98
Rudolf Rahn, Ruheloses Leben: Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen (Duesseldorf:
Diedrichs Verlag, 1949), 170. Mohamed-Kamal El-Dessouki, “Hitler und der Nahe
Osten” (PhD diss., Freie Universität Berlin, 1963), 35. El-Dessouki writes that
access to oil from Iran and Saudi Arabia would have eliminated Germany’s lack of
oil. Iran produced 10,367,000 metric tons of petroleum in 1939, compared to
7,969,000 for Europe (excluding the USSR). League of Nations, Statistical
Yearbook of the League of Nations 1940-1941 (Geneva: League of Nations](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-56-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 61
his infamous proclamation that “the Sultan and his 300 million Muslim subjects
scattered across the earth” could “be assured that the German Kaiser will be their
friend for all time.”111 Wilhelm also hoped to use pan-Islamism against
Germany’s enemies in the event of a war, declaring on July 30, 1914, that he
intended to “inflame the whole Mohammedan world” against Great Britain if it
came into conflict with Germany.112 Other Germans were also fascinated by the
military potential of a pan-Islamic movement. Martin Hartmann, a scholar of
Islam, penned a tract on “The Ultimatum of Pan-Islam” during the Italo-
Ottoman War of 1911-1912 arguing that “the [Ottoman] Caliphate must […]
make use of its right to call upon all Muslims, wherever they may be, for help in
the form of fighting men and money” to fend off the Italians, while scholars
Heinrich Becker and Helmuth von Glasenapp were also excited about the
prospect of exploiting Islamic revolts to Germany’s advantage.113
As the Great War engulfed Europe in the fall of 1914 and the German
Empire formed an alliance with the Ottoman Empire, Germany found itself
presented with an opportunity to leverage pan-Islamic sentiment to its advantage
in a way that German orientalist scholars had dreamed about for decades. At the
war’s outset, Hans von Wangenheim, the German ambassador to
Constantinople, elucidated his country’s broader ambitions in the Middle East to
the American ambassador Henry Morgenthau. “Turkey is not the really
important matter,” Wangenheim told Morgenthau, “her army is a small one, and
we do not expect it to do very much.” The “big thing,” instead, was “the Moslem
world,” in Wangenheim’s eyes. “If we can stir the Mohammedans up against the
English and Russians, we can force them to make peace,” he expounded to
Morgenthau.114 To this end, the Reich began to send what historian Sean
McKeekin terms “German jihad-preparation teams” throughout the Muslim
world in order to incite the “Mohammedans” against their Christian colonial
overlords. A small group of Armenians armed with German money ventured
into Baluchistan in July 1914, while Otto Mannesmann went to Tripoli in August
to stir a revolt against the French, planning to drop jihad propaganda across the
region from balloons. Bernhard Moritz, a German based in Cairo, gave the
Ottomans intelligence about British military positions at the Suez Canal and
Robert Mors, another German, went to Alexandria armed with “dynamite,
detonators, propaganda leaflets and several Egyptian cohorts” to cause trouble
for the British there. Countless other Germans ventured into other parts of the
Muslim world to undermine the rule of Germany’s enemies — Oskar von
Niedermayer led a mission of 30 Germans to Afghanistan, Fritz Klein tackled
111
McKeekin, Berlin-Baghdad, 7, 11-15.
112
McKeekin, Berlin-Baghdad, 86.
113
Martin Hartmann, “Das Ultimatum des Panislamismus,” Das freie Wort.
Frankfurter Monatschrift für Fortschritt auf allen Gebieten des geistigen Lebens,
vol. 11 (April 1911-April 1912), 605–10, in Gossman, Max von Oppenheim, 64-65.
Timothy W. Childs, Italo-Turkish Diplomacy and the War Over Libya: 1911-1912
(London: Brill, 1990), xi-xiii. Wolfgang Schwanitz, “Max von Oppenheim und der
Heilige Krieg. Zwei Denkschriften zur Revolutionierung islamischer Gebiete 1914
and 1940,” Sozial Geschichte, vol. 19, no. 3 (2004), 32-33.
114
Henry Morgenthau Sr., Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (New York: Doubleday,
1918), 161.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-61-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 62
the Shiite regions, Alois Musil went to Central Arabia, Kress von Kressenstein
joined the Ottoman Army in Damascus, and Max Roloff-Breslau was supposed
to win the support of Muslims in the Dutch East Indies. By the end of October,
McKeekin writes, “every day trains were arriving at Constantinople’s Sirkeci
station full of suspicious-looking characters from Central Europe, along with
German gold, guns and ammunition.”115
In the end, though, these “suspicious-looking characters from Central
Europe” failed to foment the mass revolts Wangenheim envisioned. “From the
first,” Morgenthau later recalled, “the Holy War proved a failure.” The Kaiser’s
plan to “let loose 300,000,000 Mohammedans in a gigantic St. Bartholomew
massacre of Christians,” as Morgenthau described it, did not deprive Britain of
Egypt or India, and the war instead cost the Ottoman Empire control of the holy
cities of Jerusalem and Mecca.116 While the Germans and their Ottoman allies
did manage to marshal the Sanusis against the Italians in Cyrenaica, the grand
pan-Islamic revolt envisioned by Hartmann, Kaiser Wilhelm, and their colleagues
failed to materialize.117
The shortcomings of the first “jihad” mission during the Great War and
the subsequent defeats of both the German and Ottoman Empires did not stop
some German diplomats from continuing to advocate for closer German ties to
the Middle East. The eccentric German explorer and sometime diplomat Max
Von Oppenheim kept up his contacts in the Middle East during the 1920s and
30s, maintaining correspondences with Amin al-Husseini, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani,
and Shakib Arslan, a Lebanese Druze prince.118 In the summer of 1940,
Oppenheim traveled to Syria and made trips to Baghdad to meet with al-Gaylani
and al-Husseini.119 The latter had visited the German consulate in Jerusalem in
1933 upon Hitler’s ascension to power, seeing opportunities for collaboration,
and received financial support from the Italian and German governments for his
efforts to resist the British in Palestine in the late 1930s.120 Al-Husseini, united
with Hitler in his virulent anti-semitism, advocated for Muslims to kill all of the
Jews in the Middle East and asked the Nazis for assistance to this end.121
Through Amt official Fritz Grobba and other agents, German
intelligence services “began building up contacts [in Iraq] in the early 1930s,” as
the Central Intelligence Agency noted in a post-war report.122 Grobba — who
115
McKeekin, Berlin-Baghdad, 87-88, 92-97.
116
Morgenthau, Story, 168-169. Eugene Rogan, Fall of the Ottomans (New York:
Basic Books, 2015), 115, 283. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/yale-
ebooks/reader.action?docID=1866936&ppg=76.
117
Jonathan Wyrtzen (Forthcoming), Reimagining the Middle East in the Long
Great War (New York: Columbia University Press). Unfortunately, I do not have
room here to provide details about the many reasons why the plan did not work.
118
Gossman, Oppenheim, 232-235, 148. Central Intelligence Agency, Study, 114-
115.
119
Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis and Islamists, 124.
120
Ahmad A. R. Shikara, Iraqi Politics 1921 — 1941: The Interaction between
Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy (London: LAAM, 1987), 166. Schwanitz and
Rubin, Nazis and Islamists, 4.
121
Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis and Islamists, 4.
122
Central Intelligence Agency, Study, 106.
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81-01043R003500080004-](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-62-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 64
upon and torturing my nation… ” al-Sabbagh conceived of a broader pan-Arab
nation that was not confined to the borders of mandatory Iraq, but instead
extended to “the Meditteranean, Oman, the Persian Gulf, [the] heart of the
Arabian Peninsula and […] the tomb of the Prophet.”129 Britain’s role in the
Middle East was particularly pernicious, as al-Din al-Sabbagh saw it. “There is
no more murderous wolf for the Arabs and no deadlier foe of Islam than
Britain… three hundred and fifty million Muslims are still groaning under the
yoke of British imperialism,” he declared.130 Nationalists like al-Sabbagh found
inspiration in Nazi Germany as an example of a country that had ostensibly
escaped the oppression of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and risen to
prominence despite the humiliation of its defeat in the Great War. “Many Arabs
hoped to copy Nazi Germany” and its “seemingly magic formula for quickly
becoming strong and victorious […] ” Schwanitz and Rubin contend.131 By
strengthening their state in a fascistic manner as Germany had done, some Iraqi
nationalists thought they could resist British imperialism and carve out a role for
Iraq as an independent power in the Middle East.132 The fact that Hitler’s
Germany and its Axis co-conspirators were challenging the traditional Western
allies whose influence Arab nationalists detested gave Arab nationalists even
more reason to turn to Germany for inspiration and support.133 While admiration
of Nazi Germany may not have been “almost instinctive” for the Arabs, as Fritz
Grobba claimed it was in 1937, a confluence of domestic and geopolitical factors
certainly made the sentiment prevalent in the Arab world in the 1930s.134
The Arab nationalists’ interest in the German model served to
strengthen political and financial ties between Germany and the Middle East.
Abdullahad Daoud, a Baghdad politician and Arab nationalist who would assist
Germany during the Second World War, went to school in Germany, and Tahsin
el-Askari, another Iraqi notable, joined Iraq’s secret National Socialist
organization in 1939.135 The al-‘Alam al-‘arabi newspaper in Iraq, whose editors
“openly supported the idea of dictatorship,” according to Peter Wien, allegedly
received financial support from German diplomats in Baghdad, and another
paper expressed admiration for “the sense of strength all over Germany.”136 The
German government also supported a pan-Islamic weekly based in Switzerland,
funded pan-Islamic intellectuals through the Central Islamic Institute in Berlin
and the Mullah School in Dresden, and even paid for a number of Iraqi students
to attend university in Germany.137 Germany’s Radio Berlin and the Italian-
sponsored Radio Bari ran Arabic-language broadcasts in the Middle East that
129
Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 123.
130
Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 123.
131
Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis and Islamists, 4.
132
Wien, Arab Nationalism, 13.
133
Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 118, 184. “The emergence of the axis powers as a
challenge to the traditional allies, therefore, offered the pan-Arabist elements a
favourable opportunity to exploit Great Power rivalry to their best advantage.”
134
Dieterich, “Germany's Relations with Iraq and Transjordan,” 463.
135
Central Intelligence Agency, Study, 112-113.
136
Wien, Arab Nationalism, 57, 75.
137
Schwanitz, “Jinnee and the Magic Bottle,” 100. Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis and
Islamists, 116.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-64-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 67
World War.152 Germany’s early successes in the conflict, which seemed to
indicate an imminent German victory, together with al-Gaylani’s deep-seated
animosity towards the English, convinced al-Gaylani that an alliance with the
Axis was the means through which Iraq could finally achieve its independence
from Britain.153 Iraq had broken off its diplomatic relations with Germany in
accordance with its treaties with Great Britain shortly after the outbreak of war
in Europe in September 1939 — “against the wish of the overwhelming majority
of the [Iraqi] people,” Fritz Grobba asserted — but al-Gaylani was determined
to realign Iraq’s diplomacy. He resisted British attempts to force Iraq to cut ties
with fascist Italy and set about working to re-establish Iraqi contacts with
Germany, despite the lack of official relations between the two countries.154 It
seemed as if al-Gaylani and his allies, united with Italy and Germany in their
contempt for Great Britain, were well poised to join the Axis against Great
Britain.
Al-Gaylani would not be able to expel the British from the Middle East
on his own, however. By al-Gaylani’s own count, only four divisions of the Iraqi
military could be depended upon to stand behind him. Al-Gaylani estimated that
without outside assistance, “Iraq could at most only put up one to two months
of resistance” before it succumbed to the British.155 Consequently,
representatives of the Iraqi government began to reach out to German and Italian
diplomats early in al-Gaylani’s premiership in order to gauge the Axis’ willingness
to support Iraq against Great Britain. These efforts bore their first fruits in
October 1940, when Germany issued a statement proclaiming that Germany had
“always been filled with feelings of friendship for the Arabs.” Though the
statement offered no specific promises of aid, it made Germany’s stance on the
issue of Arab independence clear. “The Arab lands can continue to count on
Germany’s complete sympathy in their efforts to reach this goal [of
independence],” the statement concluded.156 Later that year, communication
between al-Gaylani’s government and the Axis became more explicitly anti-
British. In December, al-Gaylani asked Axis emissaries if Germany could use
Radio Berlin to create Arabic-language broadcasts about Britain’s mistreatment
of Iraq.157 Over the coming weeks, al-Gaylani’s requests became more urgent,
contending that Britain was pursuing “impermissible policy of interference in
Iraq’s domestic politics” and that Iraq would need outside assistance to resist
152
Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 168.
153
Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 168. Al-Gaylani’s motives for siding with Germany are
obviously a subject of debate, and for a more thorough discussion of this question
(and the historical discussion surrounding), the reader should turn to the books by
Nicosia, Herf, Wien, and Schwanitz listed in the bibliography.
154
Fritz Grobba, Irak (Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1943), 17. Shikara, Iraqi
Politics, 169.
155
Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, December 9, 1940. NARA RG 242, T-120,
Roll 80/61508-61510.
156
Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, 150-151. Grobba, Männer und
Mächte, 199.
157
Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, December 9, 1940. NARA RG 242, T-120,
Roll 80/61508-61510.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-67-320.jpg)
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of matériel could be transported in this manner. “It is completely out of the
question [...] to procure the entire amount of supplies envisioned for Iraq in this
way,” Ripken wrote.164 Luftwaffe aircraft could not just fly to Iraq, either, because
the country was out of range of the Luftwaffe’s nearest bases.165
While the German authorities were trying to determine a means of
shipping weapons to Iraq, the British continued to put pressure on al-Gaylani’s
government. In December 1940, Iraq’s pro-British regent Abdul Ilah demanded
that al-Gaylani resign as prime minister, but al-Gaylani refused.166 At the end of
January, al-Gaylani reported to the Axis that England was “exerting a great
pressure on Iraq” and even preparing a “military occupation” of the country. The
Axis’s dilatory responses to his requests for aid were making his political position
untenable, al-Gaylani argued, and his colleagues in government were accusing
him of compromising Iraq’s integrity without getting anything from the Axis in
return. Al-Gaylani claimed that his rule would “not last long under these
circumstances” and begged the Axis powers to send military aid as soon as
possible.167 Torn by divisions between its pro-British and pro-Axis members, the
Iraqi cabinet reached a crisis by the end of January and al-Gaylani was forced to
resign, replaced by Taha al-Hashimi. Al-Hashimi initially steered a middle course
between the opposing factions in his government, but gradually adopted a stance
more accommodative of the British and even prevented al-Gaylani and his allies
from establishing a new political party.168 This antagonized the members of the
Golden Square, an anti-British group of powerful military officers who had
initially supported al-Hashimi’s rise to power but did not think it prudent to cut
ties with Italy as al-Hashimi was now considering.169 Meanwhile, the British
military moved to shore up its position in and around Iraq. In February and
March, British ships unloaded over 20,000 crates of arms and munitions and
nearly 40,000 crates of provisions in Basra, a maneuver that suggested Britain
had plans for a military operation in the region.170 In mid-March, the British
foreign secretary Anthony Eden told an Iraqi minister in a meeting in Cairo that
he wanted to send two more Indian-English divisions of soldiers to Iraq to
strengthen Britain’s presence there.171 It seemed as if Britain was increasingly
willing to use force — not just verbal demands — to assert its will in Iraq.
164
Memorandum by Georg Ripken, March 7, 1941. NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61550-61552.
165
Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, 193.
166
Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 171.
167
Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, February 7, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120,
Roll 80/61542-61544. The Woermann memorandum is dated February 7, but as
Woermann states, the missive from al-Gaylani dated from his last days as prime
minister.
168
Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 172-174. For a more thorough account of this episode, see
these pages in the Shikara book.
169
Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 173-174. Grobba, Männer und Mächte, 205. Al-Gaylani
resigned January 30. Grobba gives the date as January 31 but I am using the date
from Shikara’s historical account.
170
Memorandum by Ettel, April 22, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61598.
171
Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, March 24, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61553.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-69-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 70
Coup d’etat and War
By the end of March, the Axis had yet to settle on a plan for supporting
Iraq, or even commit to a specific program of aid for the country. Yet the
simmering conflict within the Iraqi government, together with the British
government’s aggressive stance towards Iraq, forced Iraq’s pro-Axis leaders to
act sooner than they had expected and much earlier than the Germans had hoped
they would. The crisis came to a head on April 1, 1941, when a military division
in Baghdad under the command of the anti-English officer Halil Schabib
received orders from al-Hashimi’s government to relocate to Dilanieh southeast
of Baghdad.172 When the troops refused to obey, some officers were arrested and
others shot, but the soldiers fought back against the government’s discipline and
initiated a coup d’etat against the al-Hashimi regime. Schabib’s division occupied
public buildings in Baghdad and worked with the Iraqi Chief of Staff Amin Saki
to depose al-Hashimi and his cabinet. The military leaders who seized power then
“commissioned former Minister President Gaylani with taking over the
Government” while al-Hashimi and his allies fled Baghdad, according to an Amt
memorandum written on April 7.173 In the days following the coup, Amt officials
reported that al-Hashimi’s imminent decision to comply with some of Britain’s
demands had motivated the coup. “The army had to act swiftly, as the Taha
government had already decided to accept the conditions, including the breaking
off of diplomatic relations with Italy, which were contained in the agreements
initialed between [Iraqi foreign minister Tawfiq al-Suwaidi] and [Anthony] Eden
in Cairo,” Amt official Max Mueller reported to his colleagues on April 8.174 On
April 19, Ernst Woermann noted that the situation had been even graver, passing
on Italian intelligence which suggested that “delay in the conduct of the coup d'état
would have put Iraq before the fact of military occupation by England.”175 Al-
Hashimi’s move to send Schabib’s troops away from Baghdad, therefore, may
have been seen by Iraq’s military leaders as an attempt to facilitate the arrival of
British forces.176
172
Lyman, Iraq 1941, 12. Unsigned Amt Staff Memorandum, April 7, 1941, NARA
RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61558.
173
Unsigned Amt Staff Memorandum, April 7, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61558. The military appointed a new regent to replace the pro-British regent who
had fled to Basra and the new regent confirmed al-Gaylani as Prime Minister of
Iraq. Memorandum by Ettel, April 13, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61574.
Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, April 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61579-61584.
174
Memorandum by Max Mueller, April 8, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61559-61560. In German al-Suwaidi’s name is written as “Suedi.” Barrie G.
James, Hitler’s Gulf War: The Fight for Iraq 1941 (Barnsley, Yorkshire: Pen and
Sword Books, 2009). Viewed online, no page numbers.
175
Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, April 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61579-61584.
176
Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, April 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61579-61584. The Iraqi people’s reaction to the coup appeared to be positive, at
least according to the undoubtedly highly filtered reports that reached the Amt in
Berlin. “[The new government] is receiving excited declarations of support from all
parts of the country,” Woermann related, adding that “the Iraqi press consistently
praises the army and Gaylani himself.”](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-70-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 71
Al-Gaylani and his allies had successfully expelled their country’s pro-
British government, but they still had to eliminate the British military presence
in Iraq. The military assistance from the Axis that al-Gaylani thought “would be
instantly forthcoming in the event of war,” moreover, had yet to materialize, and
there still existed no concrete plan for shipping such aid to Iraq.177 German
officials expressed doubt about al-Gaylani’s ability to withstand an armed
confrontation with Britain. A memorandum dated April 9 warned that “a speedy
armed conflict between British forces and those of Iraq is possible” and that “the
[Iraqis] can not withstand the British in the long run without receiving help from
the Axis powers.” The report’s author suggested that the Axis advise the Iraqis
“to delay the armed conflict” until military support could be procured.178 Kroll
echoed this sentiment on April 21, reporting that "the Iraqi government is firmly
committed to its anti-English stance, but is too weak […] to risk an open fight
with Britain.” The Iraqi government “could last only 1 month under current
conditions,” he remarked.179 The Germans had intelligence suggesting that the
regular Iraqi army was around 43,000 men in strength, but it was unlikely that
this force would be able to withstand the might of the British Empire.180 Indeed,
the British forces in Palestine alone stood at around 36,000 men.181 Recognizing
the peril of Iraq’s situation, Amt officials busied themselves trying to find a route
for transporting arms to Baghdad. On April 10, Germany’s foreign minister
Joachim von Ribbentrop ordered Woermann to “immediately make a report
about the transport possibilities” for sending aid to Iraq.182 As these documents
make clear, German officials were fully aware of the vulnerability of al-Gaylani’s
position by mid-April, but had yet to determine whether transporting weapons
and troops to Iraq would even be possible.
Outgunned by Great Britain and lacking decisive support from the Axis,
al-Gaylani’s position unravelled rapidly in the weeks following the April 1 coup.
On April 5, Woermann reported that the British were trying to unload three
divisions in Basra and send them to Mosul and also planned to move two
divisions from Palestine to the Iraqi border.183 Britain’s diplomats, meanwhile,
made it clear to Iraq that they would continue to assert their military dominance
over the region despite al-Gaylani’s rise to power. Amt official Prince Otto von
Bismarck relayed on April 19 that Britain had told the Iraqi government that it
177
Lyman, Iraq 1941, 12.
178
Unsigned Amt Staff Memorandum, April 9, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61563. This sentiment differs from Franz von Papen’s analysis of April 7, in
which he reported that “In Iraq it is not believed that the English will decide on
military occupation,” but this comfort seems to have quickly evaporated, as the
documents described here from the following days illustrate. Memorandum by Franz
von Papen, April 7, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61557.
179
Memorandum by Kroll, April 21, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61594.
180
Memorandum by Kramarz, May 7, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61687-
61688.
181
Unsigned Amt Memorandum, May 3, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61641-61644.
182
Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, April 10, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61566.
183
Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, April 5, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61556.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-71-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 72
planned to send “strong English contingents through Iraq to the War Theater in
the Middle East” and hoped “that the Iraqi government would not make any
difficulties” — a clear sign that England would not tolerate any abrogation of its
access to Iraqi territory.184 Al-Gaylani responded to Britain’s message by
declaring that he would allow the troop movements so long as “no more than
3,000 [British] men at one time will stay on Iraqi territory.” This answer angered
English emissaries, who retorted that “the British troops would have to march
through Iraq without much further ado.”185 The British navy also appeared to be
bolstering its presence in the Persian Gulf. “Numerous warships and an aircraft
carrier are cruising in the Persian gulf and are at the entrance of the Schab-el-
Arab,” Bismarck related on April 19.186 Al-Gaylani, meanwhile, continued to
make appeals to the Axis for help, still unsure of whether he could count on air
support from the Luftwaffe or the receipt of weapons from the Axis. The Italians
conveyed that Il Duce was “basically ready to send the Iraqi government the
requested aid” but that “the feasibility seemed to him to be extraordinarily
limited.”187 Astonishingly, the Axis had yet to formulate a concrete plan for
aiding al-Gaylani a full two weeks after his coup.
Over the following days the Amt received increasingly grave reports
from Iraq. On April 21, German diplomats learned that the British air bases in
Iraq which the Iraqi military hoped to capture at Sheiba and Habbaniya were
garrisoned with 2,000 and 3,000 soldiers, respectively, and that 6,000 more
British troops had landed in Kuwait.188 On the nights of the 18th and 19th, three
more British ships dropped anchor outside of Basra and ten more transport
vessels arrived, “probably loaded with Indian troops.” Al-Gaylani asserted to the
Germans that “under no circumstances would he allow a breach of the limits
established by the Iraqi government,” a stance that put him on course for conflict
with the British who, although they had nominally accepted al-Gaylani’s
conditions on April 18, seemed intent on sending increasing numbers of soldiers
to Iraq and its neighbors.189 Bismarck lamented the evasiveness of the Amt’s
responses to al-Gaylani’s pleas, writing in a telegram dated April 21 that “it is
imperative that we take a decisive position in giving the expected assurances to
this government.”190
Bismarck’s foreboding turned out to be well-warranted, as two days
later, the Amt learned that despite England’s initial acceptance of Iraq’s
184
Memorandum by Bismarck, April 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61577-61578. This Otto Chrstian Archibald Bismarck was a grandson of the
famed Chancellor Bismarck.
185
Memorandum by Bismarck, April 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61577-61578.
186
Memorandum by Bismarck, April 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61577-61578.
187
Memorandum by Bismarck, April 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61577-61578.
188
Memorandum by Bismarck, April 21, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61592-61593.
189
Memorandum by Bismarck, April 21, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61592-61593.
190
Memorandum by Bismarck, April 21, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61592-61593.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-72-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 74
“demoralizing effects” on the Iraqi army.198 Fritz Grobba, based in Baghdad and
working under the pseudonym of “Franz Gehrcke,” sent increasingly desperate
messages to his superiors in Berlin. “Incessant British air bombardment shatters
the morale of Iraqi troops who are without any shelter, flak or their own air
defense […] area of the capital is endangered [...] Iraqi government and army
desperately request strengthened German air protection,” he telegrammed on
May 20.199 Around May 22, Iraqi troops evacuated Fallujah and retreated to a
position just 40 kilometers outside of Baghdad.200 The next day, the Iraqi army
flooded the land south of Fallujah to impede the advance of the British, but to
no avail.201 By May 24, Iraq’s fate appeared to be sealed. Rudolf Rahn reported
from Syria that “morale in Bagdad is bad, the government is preparing to depart
[…] the families of the Minister-president [Gaylani] and the defense minister are
already in Turkey.” Iraq’s finance minister and foreign minister, meanwhile, had
fled to Tehran.202 The Iraqi army surrendered on May 31, 1941 and al-Gaylani’s
rule was over.203
Al-Gaylani’s ill-fated resistance to the British Empire was not entirely
without aid from the Axis, however. For all of the ink that German and Italian
diplomats spilled fretting over the lack of a viable transport route for shipping
arms to Iraq, they eventually found a perfectly sound means of conveying
weaponry and Luftwaffe aircraft from Europe to al-Gaylani’s forces in Iraq — one
that they probably could have identified and exploited much earlier than they
actually did. In mid-May 1941, Germany sent a Luftwaffe expeditionary force
under Axel von Blomberg to Baghdad by way of Athens, Rhodes, and Vichy
France-controlled Syria. While Blomberg suffered an unfortunate demise upon
his arrival in Baghdad, the route by which he had come to Baghdad was in fact a
convenient path along which the Axis managed to supply Iraq with arms and
other military support.204 The Axis assembled a force of 12 aircraft in Rhodes on
May 13, for instance, and moved them from there to Baghdad via Syria in the
following days.205 Italy also began shipping munitions to Iraq by transporting
them by train to Thessaloniki, shipping them from there to Rhodes, and then
flying them to Syria and Baghdad.206 On May 13, fighter planes carrying 100
198
Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 17, 1941, NARA RG
242, T-120, Roll 80/61791. Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke),
May 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61799.
199
Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 20, 1941, NARA RG
242, T-120, Roll 80/61801.
200
Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 23, 1941, NARA RG
242, T-120, Roll 80/61838.
201
Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 24, 1941, NARA RG
242, T-120, Roll 80/61845.
202
Memorandum by Rudolf Rahn, May 24, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61846.
203
Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, 177.
204
Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 16, 1941, NARA RG
242, T-120, Roll 80/61770-61774.
205
Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 16, 1941, NARA RG
242, T-120, Roll 80/61770-61774.
206
Memorandum by Kramarz, May 21, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61812.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-74-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 75
machine guns left Italy for Rhodes and the Middle East.207 Germany’s diplomatic
services used these same transport routes to convey their agents to the Middle
East in early May 1941. Grobba left Berlin on May 7 and arrived in Baghdad on
May 11, his staff and bags of gold designated for al-Gaylani’s cause in tow, after
making intermediate stops in Munich, Foggia, and Rhodes.208 The Abwehr,
Germany’s military intelligence branch, sent Rudolf Rahn to Syria by way of
Rhodes in early May. Rahn, operating out of Damascus under the name
“Kaufmann Renouard,” arrived on May 10 and was tasked with working with
Grobba to transport weapons from Syria “through the steppes and desert roads
to the East.”209 Rahn quickly amassed weapons and other matériel gathered from
French stores in Syria and transported 27 train cars full of these supplies to the
Iraqi border near Mosul on May 13, where Grobba met the convoy. English
aviators bombed the Mosul train station as the supply-laden train was nearing the
city, but with little effect. Grobba’s agents, unscathed, took control of the train
carrying 15,700 guns and 5 million rounds of ammunition, and Grobba and Rahn
returned to their respective bases safely.210
Unfortunately for al-Gaylani, though, the German support arrived too
late to make much of a difference. The planes that did arrive in Iraq were quickly
expended in battle. Grobba reported on May 18 that the German air commander
in Iraq estimated that the aircraft at his disposal would “be depleted by enemy
action in the air and on land in one week if ongoing losses are sustained.”211 The
following day Grobba received news that “Iraq’s plane fuel situation [was]
catastrophic” and that the country’s remaining reserves would sustain the
German and Italian planes already in Iraq for only a week. “New supplies from
Iran or Romania are absolutely necessary,” Grobba telegrammed, “production
of aviation fuel in the country probably not possible with present facilities.”212
Ironically, given that Iraq was a major oil producer, it had almost none of the
type of fuel required by airplanes once Luftwaffe support arrived, despite the fact
that al-Gaylani had been begging for this very air support for months.213 Nazi
207
Unsigned Amt Memorandum, May 13, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61747.
208
Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, 168. Kohlhaas, Hitler Abenteuer,
33-34. The stops are important because it shows that the Germans could reach Syria
without use of Greece — meaning that they could have conducted a similar
operation even before Germany conquered Greece in April 1941 (Rhodes was
controlled by Italy).
209
Rahn, Ruheloses Leben, 151-153. Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World,
173. For Rahn being based in Damascus: Memorandum by Rudolf Rahn, May 15,
1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61757-61758.
210
Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 13, 1941, NARA RG
242, T-120, Roll 80/61752. Memorandum by Rahn, May 11, 1941, NARA RG 242,
T-120, Roll 80/61725.
211
Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 18, 1941, NARA RG
242, T-120, Roll 80/61793.
212
Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 19, 1941, NARA RG
242, T-120, Roll 80/61795.
213
Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle
East, 131. Robert Lyman, Iraq 1941 — The Battles for Basra, Habbaniya, Fallujah
and Baghdad (New York, Osprey, 2005), 7-8. “The continuation of our military](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-75-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 77
The problems created by the incongruity between the pro-nationalist
and pro-imperial facets of Nazi Germany’s Near East policy were evident in the
halting manner in which Germany and its allies cooperated in the Middle East.
To start, it took Germany until May 1941 to reach an agreement with Vichy
permitting Axis use of Syria for military purposes, even though France had been
conquered by Germany almost a year earlier. Ribbentrop on May 3 asked the
German ambassador to France, Otto Abetz, “to focus on the issue of arms
shipments from Syria to Iraq” with his French counterparts, and on May 5, 1941,
François Darlan, the admiral of the French navy, conveyed that Petain and his
cabinet members had agreed to “support […] the shipment of arms to Iraq
through Syria.”218 In negotiations over the following few days, Vichy’s leaders
agreed to make their stocks of weapons in Syria “available for arms transports to
Iraq” and to assist shipments to Iraq by allowing German planes to “make
intermediate landings and take on gasoline in Syria” and by giving French planes
and bombs in Syria to Iraq. In return though, Germany had to enter negotiations
for reducing French occupation payments to Germany and allow France to rearm
seven of its torpedo boats.219 Germany was also forced to reassert its
commitment to protecting the French Empire. On May 11, Darlan asked Hitler
for “support for the French propaganda among the natives of Syria to the effect
that France would in all circumstances retain the mandate over this area,” and
Hitler reassured Darlan that he had “no intention of destroying the French
colonial empire.”220 In order to arm Arab nationalists in Iraq, Germany would
have to agree to help subdue their ideological compatriots in Syria.
In the messages they sent back to the Amt, German agents stationed in
Syria and Iraq in May 1941 expressed concerns about the commitment of their
French allies to the Axis’s plans for the Middle East. On May 8, Ernst Woermann
reported that Abetz “[did] not consider sending Minister [Werner Otto von]
Hentig to Syria advisable at this time” because “Hentig was so well known in
Syria, particularly among Syrian nationalists, that the French government had
objected to him being sent there.” As a result, the Amt was forced to send the
less-experienced Rahn to Syria in place of Hentig.221 During a stopover in Rhodes
en route to Syria, Rahn painted his plane with French colors because he was
“uncertain whether German machines could get across Syrian territory
unhindered” due to anti-German animosity222 When Rahn arrived at his
destination, he was met with a cold reception from local French leaders. During
218
Memorandum by Woermann, May 3, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61649. “The Embassy in Paris to the Foreign Ministry,” May 5, 1941, No. 459,
DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 718-720. For Darlan background: Robert L. Melka,
“Darlan between Britain and Germany 1940-41,” Journal of Contemporary History,
Vol. 8, No. 2 (Apr., 1973), 57-80. https://www.jstor.org/stable/259994.
219
“Memorandum by the Director of the Political Department,” May 8, 1941, No.
475, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 740-742.
220
“Record of the conversation between the Führer and admiral darlan in the
presence of the reich foreign minister,” May 11, 1941, No. 491, DGFP, Series D,
Vol XII, 763-774.
221
“Memorandum by the Director of the Political Department,” May 8, 1941, No.
476, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 742-743.
222
Rahn, Ruheloses Leben, 153.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-77-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 78
his first meeting with Rahn, Henri Dentz, Vichy’s Commissioner in Syria, coldly
informed his German interlocutor that his “father [had] emigrated from Alsace
in 1871 so that his sons would not become Germans.” On top of his ingrained
anti-German animosity, the Frenchman was concerned about the “Arab unrest
that flares up again and again” — a form of agitation that the Germans had
historically specialized in inflaming.223 The French, Rahn found, instead of
viewing Germany as an ally, associated the Germans with “bloody Arab riots”
incited by past German missions to the Middle East.224 Faced with a reluctant
French counterpart, Rahn had to tread carefully in his dealings with his Vichy
allies. “Under all circumstances prevent the Wehrmacht from interfering here,”
Rahn told the Amt on May 15. “Every time German officers arrive, [Dentz] asks
questions that clearly reveal his mood,” Rahn continued, noting that, while Dentz
had been “exceptionally accommodating so far,” the Frenchman’s “main
concern” was “the connection between German Wehrmacht agencies and Arab
agitation.” The “delicate Arab question,” Rahn advised, required that Amt
representatives be fully informed on French-Arab matters.225 The Germans
would have to respect the interests and concerns of the French if the Reich wanted
to win any cooperation from Vichy, Rahn quickly realized. “Every clumsy gesture
leads to dissent and at least passive resistance,” Rahn warned on May 28.226
Abetz shared Rahn’s fears, expressing concern on May 24 about the
“reliability” of the French in Syria and noting a recent “attempted Gaullist revolt”
in Damascus.227 Grobba seemed to agree with his colleagues, arguing on May 15
that, “in order to avoid friction between possibly politically untrained German
military members and French authorities” Germany should “grant political
power of attorney over all Germans in Syria to Rahn.”228 Joseph Goebbels’ diary
entries from the time of the Iraq operation also suggest that France’s
collaboration was not taken as a given by Germany’s upper leadership.
“Hopefully Pétain will stay in line,” Goebbels penned on May 18 as the conflict
in Iraq was heating up, noting on May 19 “in Syria, German aircraft make
stopovers on the flight to Iraq […] Vichy has remained true to the set course so
far” and the following day writing “Fighting continues in Iraq and Syria. Vichy
holds the position so far..”229 Goebbels’s recurring comments on Vichy’s
commitment to the “course” set by Germany illustrates that Vichy’s loyalty was
still an open question at this point in its collaboration with the Reich.
Germany’s fragile relationship with the French in Syria meant that the
223
Rahn, Ruheloses Leben, 154-155, 159.
224
Memorandum by Rahn, May 28, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256910-
256911.
225
Memorandum by Rudolf Rahn, May 15, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61757-61758.
226
Memorandum by Rahn, May 28, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256910-
256911.
227
Memorandum by Otto Abetz, May 24, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
80/61844.
228
Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 15, 1941, NARA RG
242, T-120, Roll 80/61759-61760.
229
Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels Online, Entries May 18, May 19 and May
20. https://www.degruyter.com/databasecontent?dbid=tjgo&dbsource=/db/tjgo.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-78-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 80
cooperation of the French in Syria, much to Rahn’s dismay. “On May 25, Bari
broadcaster spoke of the exploitation of Arabs by the French. Please stop for
further anti-French tone, as this makes the task here unnecessarily difficult,”
Rahn implored his colleagues at the Amt.236 The Abwehr, meanwhile, aimed to
arm “rebellious Arabs” in Palestine and Transjordan with weapons shipped from
Europe, an initiative that did not sit well with Vichy leaders who saw such a
maneuver as a “danger to the Mandate government.”237
Some Germans, even if they did not have a particular commitment to
Arab nationalism, seemed unwilling to make accommodations to French soldiers
and diplomats whose country had just been conquered by Germany. Luftwaffe
directives asking pilots to avoid flying above Syria in “full German war point”
frustrated German aviators. “Why not? We are the victors!” they retorted.238
Grobba seemed especially tone deaf when it came to French sensitivities in the
Middle East, proclaiming at a dinner with French officers shortly after his arrival
in Syria in May 1941 that “it smells of revolution!” — the last thing a Vichy
soldier would have wanted to hear at a time of already increasing precarity for
the French mandate.239 The German propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels,
meanwhile, was gleeful about the prospect of inflaming Arab nationalism in the
Middle East and paid little mind to its implications for Germany’s relations with
Vichy. “The tension is increasing in Iraq. All of Arabia has started to move. We
are stoking the fire through Arabic broadcasts. Tension in Iraq is spilling over to
Syria and Palestine. It's like wildfire,” Goebbels noted cheerfully in his diary on
May 4, 1941. Goebbels echoed these sentiments the next day, writing “Unrest
broke out in Transjordan and Palestine. We stoke diligently.”240 Goebbels was
proud of the “wild propaganda” that his agency was spreading in the Middle East
and seemed thrilled by the opportunity to irritate the English, regardless of the
broader consequences. “We're turning up our broadcasts in Arabic… It is a
pleasure for us to cause England trouble,” he confided to his journal on May 6,
adding on May 16 that “a fight between England and France would be just right
for us.”241 Goebbels seemed to view the Iraq situation as an opportunity to incite
chaos in the Middle East, rather than a delicate geopolitical situation to be
handled with the utmost care.
On the ground in Syria, German troops had to wear French uniforms to
mask their identities.242 The “extremely fragile mood in the [French] army” in
Syria meant that Rahn had to launch a “systematic propaganda campaign” within
236
Memorandum by Rahn, May 26, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256923-
256924.
237
Memorandum by Rahn, May 26, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256923-
256924.
238
Kohlhaas, Hitler Abenteuer, 40-41.
239
Kohlhaas, Hitler Abenteuer, 42.
240
Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels Online, edited by Elke Fröhlich
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), May 4 and May 5.
https://www.degruyter.com/databasecontent?dbid=tjgo&dbsource=/db/tjgo.
241
Goebbels, Tagebücher, May 6 and May 16.
242
Memorandum by Ritter, May 9, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61712-
61713. Memorandum by Ribbentrop, May 31, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
345/256892.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-80-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 81
its ranks in order to win the Vichy forces over to the German cause.243 Getting
the French to agree on strategy consumed time and energy that German agents
simply could not spare. On one occasion it took a “4-hours-long debate” with
one of Dentz’s confidantes for Rahn to convince the French of the wisdom of
“arming insurgent Arabs” for battle against the English.244 Rahn also appears to
have had to spend a great deal of time trying to obtain airplane fuel from the
French, asking his superiors at the Amt on May 12 to “send a skillful French
speaking officer here as I cannot always be at the airfield.”245
The French, meanwhile, did not really seem to be following through on
their commitments to their German conquerors. Dentz did not give his
subordinates orders to shoot at Gaullist troops until almost the end of May and
Vichy had apparently refused to expel the British Consul in Syria when asked to
do so three months earlier.246 When the Italians asked France to allow Italian
aircraft bound for Iraq to use Syrian airfields the French initially refused because
they found “the appearance of the Italian Air Force in Syria undesirable.”247
Moreover, the French maintained, because France had not been defeated by
Italy, they “had no intention of making concessions” to Mussolini, as Darlan
explained to Hitler.248 France’s protests forced the Axis to reconsider Italy’s role
in the Middle East because an Italian presence in Syria “would only complicate
negotiations with the French.”249 This was despite the fact that Italy already had
400 machine guns, 20 anti-tank guns and 12 fighter planes “ready for action” in
Iraq — equipment that could have played a significant role in the fighting
there.250 When German planes landed in Syria, the French complained about it,
telling Rahn that there were too many German aircraft in Damascus and asking
that they be sent to Palmyra instead. “[Dentz] protests against a long stay and
too high a petrol requirement [for the German planes in Syria],” Rahn reported
to his colleagues at the Amt. “Gasoline issue needs to be resolved with Vichy, as
the High Commissioner is likely to refuse further contribution after the 30,000
liters [allotted by earlier agreements] have been used up.”251 When the mission in
Iraq failed and England invaded Syria on June 8, Dentz blamed the Germans for
French Syria’s demise. “Now the Orient is really on fire, and you have lit the
243
Memorandum by Rahn, May 28, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256910-
256911. Memorandum by Rahn, May 24, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll
345/256942.
244
Memorandum by Rahn, May 28, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256910-
256911.
245
Memorandum by Rahn, May 12, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61728.
246
Memorandum by Rahn, May 31, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256910-
256911. Asked by Dentz.
247
“Memorandum by the Director of the Political Department,” May 9, 1941, No.
479, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 744-745.
248
“Record of the conversation between the Führer and admiral darlan in the
presence of the reich foreign minister,” May 11, 1941, No. 491, DGFP, Series D,
Vol XII, 763-774.
249
Memorandum by Welck, May 9, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 681/209599-
600.
250
“Memorandum by an Official of the Foreign Minister’s Secretariat,” May 14,
1941, No. 511, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 797-806.
251
Memorandum by Rahn, May 12, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61730.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-81-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 83
as an ideology has never been very well suited to export — as historian Gilbert
Allardyce points out, fascism is almost always “defined in national terms.”259 A
German fascism grounded in an understanding of the German nation’s particular
superiority and politico-historical destiny, for instance, cannot simply be adopted
by rightists in France or Poland. As many have observed, the rallying cry
“workers of the world unite” is logical in a way that “nationalists of the world
unite” is not.260 In his groundbreaking work Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche,
German historian Ernst Nolte convincingly argues that fascist ideology is
characterized by a “resistance to transcendence,” or, as Allardyce helpfully
rephrases Nolte’s term, the “fear of modernism’s power to disintegrate nations,
races and cultures.”261 At the heart of fascist thought is a metaphysics that is
explicitly anti-universal. Nolte’s characterization of fascism as an anti-universal
ideology is consistent with how fascist leaders described their own ideologies.
Mussolini, who had a famously difficult relationship with Hitler, described
fascism as “our [Italy’s] thing” and said that the ideology was “not for export.”262
An attempt at a pan-fascist congress held at Montreux in 1934 was boycotted by
the leader of the Spanish Falange and only managed to agree on a few general
“common articles of faith” and the principle that “each nation must solve its
problems in its own way,” as Allardyce describes its outcomes.263 The problem
with the inter-fascist diplomacy orchestrated by Nazi Germany in the Middle
East, then, was that it constituted an attempt at the very sort of “transcendence”
rejected by the metaphysics of fascism. The inconsistencies between imperial and
nationalist ambitions in Nazi Germany’s plans for the Middle East were the same
inconsistencies that lay at the core of inter-fascist foreign policy itself.
What made the Iraq situation unique, though, when compared to Nazi
Germany’s other attempts at inter-fascist collaboration, was that it brought into
close proximity, and forced a confrontation between, the interests of German,
Italian, French and Iraqi fascists in a way that pulled the issues inherent in inter-
fascist collusion to the fore. The Reich’s other inter-fascist efforts, meanwhile,
while they harbored the same inconsistencies, never advanced to a stage where
these contradictions could fully manifest themselves. In some cases this was
because Germany’s overwhelming military might have eliminated the possibility
of conflict between it and its fascist allies. Negotiation between opposing fascist
interests could not take place in theaters where the Wehrmacht held all the cards.
When Mussolini watched in April 1941 as Germany’s swift takeover of Greece
rendered the 150,000 casualties Italian armies had suffered while attempting to
conquer the country the previous fall obsolete, Il Duce had no choice but to stand
back and concede the territory to Hitler. At this point in the war, Beevor writes,
259
Gilbert Allardyce, “What Fascism is Not: Thoughts on the Deflation of a
Concept,” American Historical Review, Vol. 84, No. 2 (April 1979), 381.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1855138.
260
Allardyce, “What Fascism is Not,” 370.
261
Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, trans. Leila Vennewitz (New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 429-434. Gilbert Allardyce, “What Fascism is Not:
Thoughts on the Deflation of a Concept,” American Historical Review, Vol. 84, No.
2 (April 1979), 383. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1855138.
262
Allardyce, “What Fascism is Not,” 370, 381.
263
Allardyce, “What Fascism is Not,” 382.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-83-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 85
to revive an empire that would span many peoples and cultures but that would
be headed by the Italian nation. In other words, there was no fascism as
conceived by the Italians without Italy.
The incompatibility of Nazi Germany’s imperial vision with the fascism
of Vichy France, meanwhile, was evident in the fears that Vichy’s leaders shared
with Hitler, Abetz, and Ribbentrop. In the midst of the Iraq operation, Darlan
told Hitler that Petain wanted “to be able to tell the French […] whom he was
asking to defend their territory against the English […] that they were actually
defending territory that would remain French.” Some French “groups were
constantly asking him why they should defend a territory which will after all be
taken away from them later on.” It would “greatly facilitate the work of the
Marshal and his own work with the French people if the French Government
could somehow make it understandable to these overseas Frenchmen that they
do not work for the “Roi de Prusse,” Darlan explained to Hitler.269 “Among the
French at home,” Vichy’s leaders explained, “the question was raised time and
again how one could cooperate with a Germany which had divided France into
two parts, had imposed high occupation costs, and prevented the French
Government from governing the two parts uniformly.”270 Vichy France may
have been a vassal of Germany and its leaders might have come around to the
idea of a Nazi-led rightist domination of Europe, but they still believed in
preserving what remained of the French Empire. Even fascist France would not
bow to the wishes of fascists in Germany who did not respect the integrity and
rights of the French nation. Working for the Roi de Prusse was antithetical to
French fascism, even if that Roi de Prusse was also a fascist. French rightists, like
their counterparts in Italy and Iraq, chafed at the idea of putting the interests of
an international fascist alliance above those of the French nation. While France’s
military impotence did force it to concede to Germany’s requests in Syria, the
reluctance of Vichy’s leaders to fall into line with the Reich’s German imperial
vision still reveals a striking resistance to the idea of a transcendent fascism.271
On April 7, 1941, the New York Times reported on a curious mission
undertaken by German agents to stir up trouble in the Middle East. According
to the Times, three “Reich plotters” — Werner Otto von Hentig, Fritz von
Contemporary History Vol. 7, No. 3/4 (1972): 126. www.jstor.org/stable/259908. In
the world Mussolini envisioned, Italy would serve as the “director of world culture”
and command a significant empire outside of Europe. Alan Cassels, “Was There a
Fascist Foreign Policy? Tradition and Novelty,” The International History Review,
Vol. 5, No. 2 (May 1983), 260-261, 266. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40105294.
Mussolini sought Italian expansion in the direction of its “historical objectives” in
“Asia and Africa,” proclaiming that “South and East are the cardinal directions
which must excite the interest and will of Italians.”
269
“Record of the conversation between the Führer and Admiral Darlan in the
presence of the Reich Foreign Minister,” May 11, 1941, No. 491, DGFP, Series D,
Vol XII, 763-774.
270
“Record of the conversation between the Führer and Admiral Darlan in the
presence of the Reich Foreign Minister,” May 11, 1941, No. 491, DGFP, Series D,
Vol XII, 763-774.
271
“Memorandum by the Director of the Political Department,” May 8, 1941, No.
475, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 740-742. France did end up facilitating German
efforts in the Middle East, as a I discussed earlier.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-85-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 86
Grobba, and Max von Oppenheim — were busy fomenting “Nazi agitation in
Syria” and laying the groundwork for the recent “coup d’etat in Iraq.” Von
Hentig, posing as “the head of a commercial mission” to French Syria, “devoted
himself exclusively to stirring up unrest,” allegedly telling Syrians that once
Germany conquered the country, those who had not supported the Nazis would
“go to a concentration camp.” He organized showings “day after day in the Hotel
Metropol in Beirut” of the German propaganda film “Victory in the West” about
the conquest of France in order to impress the locals with the strength of the
Third Reich. “To poor Arabs [Hentig] pictured Adolf Hitler as the protector of
Islam, sent by Allah to aid the devout,” recounted the Times correspondent. Some
of “the simpler Arabs” were “dazzled by promises of a vast German-protected
Arab kingdom” made by Hentig and his companions.272
While some aspects of the Times story were inaccurate — Grobba was
in Germany at the time, not the Middle East, and von Hentig left Syria over a
month before the al-Gaylani coup took place — on the whole it captured
truthfully the subversive nature of German activities in Syria. Hentig did, in fact,
show “Sieg im Westen” all across Mandate Syria, and launched what historian Isaac
Lipschits describes as “a campaign of anti-French propaganda” throughout the
territory.273 According to some reports, Hentig “envisaged the convocation of an
Islamic congress in Damascus” in his conversations with Arab leaders and
“advised them to get together with the Iraqi Futuwwah movement” to form a
broader Arab movement. By the end of Hentig’s time in Syria, some Syrian Arabs
had even begun to recite the pro-German and anti-English, anti-French refrain
“No more Monsieur, no more Mister: all of you, get out, scram. In Heaven Allah, here on
earth Hitler!274”
The von Hentig episode seems to be emblematic of the contradictions
in Germany’s efforts to turn the Middle East into an Axis stronghold in 1941.
Discussion of an Arab Kingdom in the Middle East, an Aryan-supremacist sent
by Allah to aid the Arab people, a pan-Islamic Congress in Syria, a commercial
mission to a French colony, Arab concentration camps and an Iraqi-Syrian
alliance, all in one trip? It is easy to see why the French and Italians were reluctant
to work with Nazi Germany in May 1941 when those same Nazis seemed willing
to deploy almost any argument imaginable in order to win the support of Arabs
in the Middle East. How could anyone, let alone ultra-nationalist fascists
preoccupied with their own national interests, trust a power that showed little
respect for the imperial ambitions of its allies? In this light, historians should see
the failure of Axis efforts to aid Iraq in 1941 as not just failures of tactics, but as
the product of inconsistencies embedded in the Axis’s foray into Middle Eastern
politics more broadly. While the “tactical” level of warfare is typically the least
272
“3 Reich Plotters Try to Win Syria,” New York Times, April 7, 1941, pg. 8.
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1941/04/07/85476853.pdf?pdf_red
irect=true&ip=0.
273
Isaac Lipschits, La Politique de la France au Levant 1939–1941, pp. 83–84,
quoted in Gossman, Oppenheim, 267-268. Gossman, Oppenheim, 263-270.
274
Les Allemands en Syrie sous le gouvernement de Vichy (London: Publications
de la France
combattante, brochure no. 201, 1942), pp. 5–6, quoted in Gossman, Oppenheim,
266-267.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-86-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 95
that focused on the acquisition of cultural familiarity on the ground, the
utilization of local agents friendly to American interests, and rapid, small-scale
forward operations with limited strategic objectives. They took risks, made
mistakes, and rapidly learned from them. In the latter half of the twentieth
century, this approach would prevail in times of war. This set of structures and
guidelines endured into CIA special operations in subsequent conflicts. Until
operation TORCH, the approach used in North Africa, in Morocco and
Algeria, placed its emphasis instead on diplomatic postings with limited
operational scope, emphasis on the acquisition of intelligence, and infiltration
into circles of economic prominence. In part this approach was a legacy of the
vice-consul system during peacetime. America’s most obvious assets in the
region were businesspeople and travelers familiar with its cultures and norms. As
such, North African special operations did not evolve or achieve objective
success in the way that the OSS’s Detachment 101 did in Burma. While the
decision to intervene in 1942 in Operation TORCH — culminating in the
severance of relations between France and the US — cut short the time frame in
which North African special operations could have evolved, the OSS’s activities
in the region were not even on a trajectory towards the development and scale
that it had achieved in Burma. Burma provided a blank slate that prompted
greater institutional innovation. In the face of unfamiliar terrain and a challenging
task, the Office of Strategic Services was drawn to expand its capabilities in
special operations. This contrasts against the North African case, where the OSS
embraced a more traditional conception of a spy agency’s role.
What were the strategic differences and similarities between the OSS’s
approach in the two theaters, and how successful was each? What did American
operatives in Burma learn from early failures, and why didn’t a similar process
occur in North Africa, two years earlier? This paper will address the development
of American special operations during the war through the comparative lens of
these two case studies. Both missions had similar imminent operational
objectives, and intelligence acquisition was successful in both places. However,
the outcomes of efforts to organize partisan resistance could not have been more
different. In the analysis, the paper will look at the methods which Detachment
101 utilized to establish rapport with local peoples and establish successful
forward groups behind enemy lines. These methods will then be contrasted
against the less effective ones employed in the North African case.
“Don’t let the bastards grind you down”: The shadow war in the Burmese
jungle278
When Japanese forces invaded Burma in 1942, they were popularly
received as liberators by the ethnic majority Bamar people.279 The Japanese, after
278
This quote, in dog Latin, was Stilwell’s personal motto: “Illegitimi non
carborundum.” It summarizes the philosophy behind the detachment’s operations,
and adequately describes the vibe of the theater.
279
See infra note [5], and Dorothy H. Guyot, “The Political Impact of the Japanese
Occupation of Burma” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1966). Also, in the A-group file
[infra note 18], we find references to the Japanese’s popularity. The new
government had reversed petty British policies: Lifted restrictions on timber
harvesting, removed land tax, limited drug traffic, led anti-corruption efforts, and so](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-95-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 103
encompassing hundreds of square miles.314 The philosophy behind the mission
elevated incremental success and deferment of short-term gains, rather than
seeking instant gratification and overextension.315 It was an approach that
reflected the teachings of Sun Tzu and Confucius, rather than Clausewitz —
though the ends-oriented leaders of the detachment may not have thought about
it this way. Instead of fighting head-on and making an unequivocal commitment
to large territorial advance — as Clausewitz would have advised — they decided
to prioritize self-preservation, while keeping the end goal in mind.316 Instead,
Detachment 101 patiently collected small victories, bleeding the enemy to death,
while committing minimal men and resources.317
Geographically, the strategy was much wiser. The operation’s target, as
the name suggests, was to establish a reliable forward base in Burma. With
cultural knowledge having been acquired, they selected a Kachin stronghold
whose position was well situated with respect to the Chinese border, the Japanese
base of Myitkyina, and the Allied Fort Hertz. The new strategy was easier to
supply and manage given its location, and had safer fallback options in the event
of a mission-critical failure. A declassified military report on FORWARD in the
archives describes it as a “one of [the detachment’s] most successful
operations.”318 While there was not much preventing a Japanese advance and
capture of Fort Hertz — which would have emasculated the forward group —
the fact that they did not, permitted the detachment to set up its foothold and
grow. The successful aspects of operational group A, including the use of Kachin
recruits — together with the failures of the other bold missions — seem to have
shaped Eifler's thinking in designing FORWARD. The same report goes on to
describe that, in its early phase, “although [FORWARD was] primarily an
intelligence gathering group, [it] did have a force of 80 armed Kachins.”319 The
Kachin force marked the start of coordinated armed resistance among the natives
against the Japanese. The report emphasizes the importance of the group in
organizing resistance, rescuing Allied airmen, and gaining on-the-ground
intelligence which would enable quick advances of conventional forces. The
intelligence gathering efforts were moving forward successfully as early as 1943.
The detachment’s guerrilla capabilities would grow dramatically over the course
of the war.
The importance of FORWARD is particularly clear from the fact that,
more than a year after its inception in 1944, the group, referred to as “Group 1,”
was still active and thriving in a SEAC report. “Recent reports of the activities of
314
Though one of the detachment’s early missions, it is the one which evolved the
most, and the strategy would shape their other activities behind enemy lines.
315
ibid. and supra 16.
316
Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Gutenberg, 2006): Book IV, Ch. 11
317
Sun Tzu, The Art of War (MIT Classics, 2009): Book II, “Waging War,” tr.
Lionel Giles
318
Report on operations entitled “‘FORWARD’ group,” Detachment 101, RG 226
OSS E190, Box 41, Folder 68, Textual Records Unit, National Archives at College
Park, Maryland. (undated)
319
ibid.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-103-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 116
push for decolonization against the British, as a tactical way to destabilize the
empire. This strategy appears to have only been utilized in British-controlled
territory, and in support of anti-Semitic Islamic rulers, such as the Mufti of
Palestine.366 There was no such cooperation nor guarantees of independence in
the Vichy colonial possessions, where the Germans had already established a
strong foothold. In these departments, the Axis powers assumed the mantle of
the status quo. Even if the Germans had been uniformly supporting Arab
nationalism, the lessons of Burma — where a very similar dynamic existed —
belie the intractability of the situation. The Burmese innovation was to seize upon
internal and native political dissent. Identifying pockets of dissatisfaction with
Axis rule — of which there were cases — would have been a constructive
development. North Africa was a much more integral territorial component to
the French than Burma was to the British. However, in the quest to win the war
and turn back the tide of Nazism, these diplomatic considerations could not, and
should not, have been material to the United States. The main issue at hand, then,
was a matter of strategy and commitment in North Africa to a special operations
program.
Over its tenure, the consul system evolved from a covert intelligence
network to one that would attempt to organize guerrilla resistance, gather
information about roads and infrastructure, and prepare for the full-scale
landings. Agents included as diverse figures as diplomats, regional authorities,
and industrialists — many of whom had hardly any prior experience in
operations. Carleton S. Coon, the Harvard anthropologist, fell into this category.
Coon operated in Morocco both before TORCH and during the subsequent
occupation in 1942.367 Coon, together with Gordon Browne — who had
originally proposed COI intelligence gathering in North Africa — was tasked
before the landing day to organize subversive groups in Spanish Morocco. Coon
noted in his memoirs, “Like almost all North Africans, [the nationalist party]
despise the French for taking away their lands and privileges and treating them
as inferiors … what they want is political equality, relief from economic
exploitation, and above all the opportunity for education.”368 The question of
why this sentiment was not adequately mobilized against the Vichy, by the Allies,
remains unanswered. The extent of native involvement is one prominent
difference between these two cases: In North Africa, agents guiding OSS
operations were largely French, and secondarily — if at all — Maghrebi.369 This
made natural sense, since the French— unlike the English in Burma — could
366
Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven: Yale Univ.
Press, 2010): 57-158
367
Carleton S. Coon, A North Africa Story: The Anthropologist as OSS Agent, 1941-
1943 (Ipswich: Gambit Publications, 1980)
368
ibid. 17-24. Coon spends his conclusion discussing the various “covers” that
agents could adopt. “So in general and except for very special jobs of brief duration,
it is my feeling that OSS agents in Old World theaters can best use a military …
cover, on some kind of detached service or special mission” (135-136). In cases,
where this is not possible — behind enemy lines, for instance — diplomatic cover
may be the only option. Unless, such as in Burma, agents stay away from the enemy
altogether, in guerrilla positions.
369
Walker, 668](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-116-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 118
aid of military operations.373 Arab nationalism was a nascent yet tangible force at
this point in history, with decolonization on the horizon. The hesitant approach
the OSS took in North Africa, by not approaching everyday, lower-class Arab
populations directly, prevented them from seizing on such ambitions. Kachins
— and not necessarily the distinguished or warrior-class among them —
demonstrated remarkable abilities in the field, at minimal Allied cost. These
fighters had skin in the game. The use of British agents was not as effective as
the use of Kachins in FORWARD. Given the parallels, one must wonder how
the choice and organization of personnel in North Africa failed to capitalize on
prevailing popular sentiments. To develop guerrilla warfare on a serious scale in
Vichy North Africa would have required broader involvement. The limited and
narrow-minded philosophy of the OSS in North Africa stands in contrast to a
more innovative one in Burma. On a global scale, we see the contrast in irregular
warfare strategies that the OSS employed, and the resultant difference in the
potential strategic effect within each theater.
The environmental differences and challenges of the battlefield in North
Africa are not persuasive. Instead, the OSS in North Africa — facing the
skepticism of a military intent on conventional invasion — made the decision to
focus on intelligence gathering. Bound by tradition, operatives placed an
emphasis on reading the enemy’s mail, rather than training effective guerrilla
forces at a paramilitary scale. When the time came to put down the pen, and pick
up the sword, the OSS was unable to deliver. They lacked experience and
command versatility on the battlefield, since they had stayed in the coulisses until
the day of the operation. The OSS was limited in North Africa by its inflexible
and conservative approach in revising its methodology. Rather than proactively
address the factors that held back special operations in enemy territory — the
Burma route — such options were neglected at the JCS and cabinet level, in favor
of quicker conventional intervention.
Not until Detachment 101’s experiments in Burma would the full form
of American special operations materialize. The novelty of the development in
Burma — both its impact and the larger forces it reflected — cannot be
overstated. With Gen. Stilwell’s uncounted blessings, there was a bolder — if at
times reckless — pursuit of high-stakes operations. In the Burmese case, this
ambition is what allowed Eifler to adapt his missions to the more effective,
smaller scale attacks that eventually won the war there. The Burmese lesson —
adaptability, short-scale attacks, rapid experimentation and strategic adjustment
— was not learned in the Mediterranean. And this is precisely what the North
African front was missing, both before and after TORCH. Developing Allied
intelligence networks and special capabilities further could have expedited
military operations in the desert and allowed for an earlier advance to Messina.
While the TORCH and the North African operations as a whole provided
invaluable training for later landings in Normandy, this was one theater in which
373
Though, its allies including the Free French, were much more ambivalent about
the concept. See: Tony Smith, “A Comparative Study of French and British
Decolonization,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 20, no. 1 (January
1978): 70-102. “What the [French] Union assured, in essence, was that the peoples
of the Empire would be neither French nor free.” Likewise, the war in Burma shaped
and was shaped by pressures on the British to decolonize in that region.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-118-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 122
Laurie, Clayton D., “General MacArthur and the OSS, 1942-1945,” Studies in
Intelligence, released September 5, 2014.
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df
Lee, Carrie, “Operation Torch at 75: FDR and the Domestic Politics of the
North African Invasion,” War on the Rocks Commentary, November 8,
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Lohse, Alexandra, Operation TORCH: the American amphibious assault on French
Morocco, 1942 (Washington: Navy, 2018). Online at
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Marcoux, Carl H., “Yankee Guerrillas in Burma: The Story of OSS Detachment
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McLynn, Frank, The Burma campaign: disaster into triumph, 1942-45 (London:
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pacific-and-the-far-east.htm
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5
Peers, William R. and Brelis, Dean, Behind the Burma Road (New York: Little,
Brown & Co., 1963)
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Historical Review Program (September 1993), accessed March 8, 2019.
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csi/vol4no3/html/v04i3a11p_0001.htm
Pennell, C.R., A country with a government and a flag: the Rif War in Morocco, 1921-
1926 (Boulder: MENA Studies Press, 1986)
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Information,” July 11, 1941, declassified and approved for release](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-122-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 130
leader; the Prussian chapter prospered and put Pagan tribes to the sword. Balk
relied on a constant stream of crusading visitors from Germany for the bi-annual
reisen; in 1233 alone, 10,000 men campaigned with Balk.391 Their militant fervor
was no doubt riled by priests who characterized the Pagan enemy as “slow and
simple” savages, who worshipped demons and sacrificed Catholic missionaries
to their heathen gods.392 These campaigns were not just raids; they were
conquests. Pagans on captured land were converted and forced to relocate
further West, to prevent escape to yet unconquered tribes. Pagan nobles who
accepted baptism were awarded land and titles by the Order, their estates were
farmed by converted Pagans and a seemingly infinite supply of German
immigrants.
This Teutonic system of conquest and land reorganization was perfected
in Prussia. Prussian tribes failed to unite, so they fell one by one to the ‘German
God’. Converted Prussians were by no means passive subjects. By the end of the
1270s, the Knights had put down four major rebellions, each larger than the
last.393 Rebellion ended in reprisals and forced relocations to the West. Ironically,
after rebellious Prussian armies were defeated, the Prussians became reliant on
Teutonic protection from Lithuanian raiders. By 1283, the Knights had
established their own successful state in Eastern Prussia, swelling with German
immigrants. From 1283 to 1340, the Teutonic Knights issued over 500 land
grants for towns in Prussia.394 Much to the dismay of slighted Polish nobles,
Eastern Prussia was a German crusader state.
As the Order consolidated power and organized during the 13th century,
so too did the Lithuanian Pagan tribes of the Baltics. Medieval Lithuania sat
between the Nemunas (Memel) River and the forests of modern-day Latvia. It
was divided into two major regions, the lowlands of Samogitia and the highlands
of Aukstaitija. These two regions were comprised of war-like tribes that, unlike
the Prussians, shared a common language, common economy, and a common
religion. Lithuanian social hierarchies appeared primitive to Christian powers.
They were organized into chiefdoms. There were various chiefs and princes, each
paid in labor and grain by those under his protection. These local leaders were
primarily war chiefs. They owned horses, weapons, and armor which they would
divvy out to their subjects when called to war.395 This nobility-centered military
organization facilitated the rise of strong families that claimed royal titles,
securing order through civil war.
Though mostly agricultural, Lithuania opened to trade by expansion as
nobles consolidated power and formed a kingdom. Lithuanian raids had two
material goals: to capture plunder and to take slaves. Plunder was a reward for
loyal warriors and successful chiefs, but slaves from neighboring Prussia, Rus’ia,
and Poland were trade goods. In the 1230s, Mindaugas, an Aukstaitijan chief,
391
Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 56.
392
Jeroschin, The Chronicle of Prussia, (translated by Fischer), 70.
393
Jeroschin, The Chronicle of Prussia, (translated by Fischer), 88.
394
S. C. Rowell, Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire Within East-Central
Europe, 1295-1345, (Cambridge [England]; Cambridge University Press, 1994),
201.
395
Eric Christiansen. The Northern Crusades, (2nd, new ed. London, England;
Penguin, 1997), 38.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-130-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 146
K. Accessed April 30, 2020.
http://www.lituanus.org/1969/69_4_02.htm.
Pukuveraitis, Gediminas. “Letter of Gediminas to the Monks of the Fransiscan
Order, May 26, 1323”. Letter. From Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts
and Sciences, Volume 15, Number 4 - Winter 1969. Ed. Klimas, Antanas
and Skrupskelis, Ignas K. Accessed April 30, 2020.
http://www.lituanus.org/1969/69_4_02.htm.
Von Jeroschin, Nicolaus and Mary Fischer. The Chronicle of Prussia: A History of
the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, 1190-1331 Farnham, Surrey, England;
Ashgate, 2010. (translated by Mary Fischer).
Secondary Sources
Christiansen, Eric. The Northern Crusades 2nd, new ed. London, England;
Penguin, 1997.
Guard, Timothy. "The Baltic." In Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade: The English
Experience in the Fourteenth Century, 72-97. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK;
Rochester, NY, USA: Boydell & Brewer, 2013. Accessed March 19,
2020. doi: 10.7722/j.ctt2jbkzz.11.
Kļaviņš, Kaspars. "The Ideology of Christianity and Pagan Practice among the
Teutonic Knights: The Case of the Baltic Region." Journal of Baltic
Studies 37, no. 3 (2006): 260-76. Accessed May 5, 2020.
www.jstor.org/stable/43212723.
Morillo, Stephen. “A General Typology of Transcultural Wars: The Early Middle
Ages and Beyond” in Hans-Henning Kortüm, ed., Transcultural Wars from the
Middle Ages to the 21st Century. Akademie Verlag, 2006), 29-42.
Rowell, S. C. Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire Within East-Central Europe,
1295-1345. Cambridge [England]; Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Sterns, Indrikis. "Crime and Punishment among the Teutonic Knights."
Speculum 57, no. 1 (1982): 84-111. Accessed March 19, 2020.
doi:10.2307/2847563.
Urban, William L. The Teutonic Knights: A Military History London: Greenhill,
2003.
Théry, Julien. "A Heresy of State: Philip the Fair, the Trial of the “Perfidious
Templars,” and the Pontificalization of the French Monarchy." Journal
of Medieval Religious Cultures 39, no. 2 (2013): 117-48. Accessed April 30,
2020. doi:10.5325/jmedirelicult.39.2.0117.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-146-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 149
Cadet and subsequent Junior Officer in the U.S. Army at the start of the war,
demonstrates just how divided the American officer corps was. Furthermore, his
story shows how the desire to serve one’s country could cause someone to
choose nation over familial obligations, a common theme amongst Southern
Unionists. George Henry Thomas represents a different, yet surprisingly
common case study for the time. He was a senior officer with over a decade of
federal service, who nonetheless continued his soldiering in the name of the
United States. The third section offers a broader view explaining how, despite
the varying backgrounds and motivations which guided Southern Unionists,
many arrived at the same conclusion: that they would continue to serve the
United States. All of these stories depict just how difficult the decisions were for
patriotic Southerners who were forced to make heart-wrenching choices, often
putting even their loved ones and homes behind their commitment to national
duty.479
Southern Historiography and Civil War History
In 1861, loyalty and duty became a forefront debate in the lives of
thousands of prospective soldiers, both officer and enlisted, regular army and
volunteer. Contrary to popular memory, this was not a one-sided debate in the
South. Over one-hundred thousand Southerners joined state militias and fought
in the United States Army against the Confederacy.480 Thousands participated in
‘Peace Societies,’ which refused to recognize the law of the Confederate
government and lived as free states despite harsh reprisals from others.481 Large
anti-secessionist movements existed in every state except South Carolina, and
numerous works have established the ever-present Unionist passions which
continued throughout the war.482483 All of these topics are under-researched, and
479
The number of case studies in this essay was dictated by time and resources
available at the U.S. Military Academy during writing, and further construed by the
global issues of the time. With further research and time this argument could be
broadened and extended to look at more case studies outside of the West Point,
regular Army mold. The officers of U.S. state militias in both border and southern
states, would be a worthy addition to this thesis, further complicating the southern
narrative, but subsequently confirming my assertion that the typical mold of the
south during the war is incorrect.
480
Richard Nelson Current, Lincoln's Loyalists: Union Soldiers from the
Confederacy, (Northeastern University Press, 1992), 197.
481
Georgia Lee Tatum, Disloyalty in the Confederacy, (Chapel Hill, The University
of North Carolina press, 1934), 7.
482
Carleton Beals, War Within a War; the Confederacy Against Itself, [1st ed.],
(Philadelphia, Chilton Books, 1965), 4.
483
This topic is covered by Beals, but other examples of these works include but are
not limited to Lincoln’s Loyalists by Richard Current, The Scalawags by James
Baggett, or even by earlier works such as Disloyalty in the Confederacy by George
Lee Tatum.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-149-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 151
goes on to explain, were the accusations, chastising, and even violence against
white Republicans in the South which eventually led to their ostracization in the
Southern history of the war. Though Baggett does justice to the Scalawags, he
largely focuses on civil leaders and private individuals to an extent during the war,
but mostly during Reconstruction. His book fails to complete the circle. He does
not address born Southerners that fought against the Confederacy in battle. That
is how this paper intends to extend the narrative.
Thanks to the work of historians over the last century, white Southern
republicans are finally being recognized for their contributions. Attention is
being drawn to the real lost cause: Reconstruction. The fight against
Reconstruction provided the catalyst for many Southern historians to create the
monolithic South. The Lost Cause narrative is easier to accept if those who
fought for the Confederacy were not radical members of a violent rebellion, but
a united front across the entire South, all devoted to the mutually accepted
decision to secede. Southern officers in the U.S. Army highlighted this
incongruency by demonstrating that the South was divided, detracting from the
arguments of those who resisted Reconstruction on the basis of northern
aggression. From the perspective of those patriots who fought as U.S. Army
soldiers in the Civil War, their states were being dominated by traitors leaving
them no choice but to fight for their homes’ liberation, an unkind view of the
Confederacy.487 Thus, the contributions of Southern Unionists throughout the
war were heavily downplayed in the Lost Cause narrative.
Much of this story has been underdeveloped in Civil War histography.
However, Carl Degler’s groundbreaking 1974 analysis The Other South: Southern
Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century broke from this trend. In this work, Degler
became one of the first historians to seriously attempt to degrade the myth of
the monolithic South. He argues his book “is about losers… white Southerners
who stood out against the prevailing views and values of their region.”488 Degler’s
argument was that there were in fact white people in the South who did not
support the Confederacy. It was still a new and unique argument for the 1970s.
History is traditionally written by the victors, and though the United States won
the war, ex-Confederates eventually won autonomy over the South during
Reconstruction. Therefore, though over a hundred thousand Southern white
men fought against the Confederacy, their contributions were never recognized
nor appreciated. When their story is finally acknowledged by historians, a large
growth in the historiography of the South during the war can occur, greatly
expanding the region’s complexity. The South is no longer the uniform
Confederate state that the Lost Cause narrative so often portrays. Instead the
region becomes a population of individuals, individuals who thought, considered,
and often disagreed with the ebb and flow of historical events.
If the concept of the South as a non-monolithic region is new, then the
story of Southerners’ contributions to the war effort has barely been addressed.
In 1992, author Richard Current did just that with his work, Lincoln’s Loyalists
which strictly looked at the enormous enrollment and service of Southern white
men in the U.S. Army within the geographic South. His book was pioneering in
487
Current, Lincoln’s Loyalists, 147.
488
Carl N. Degler, The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century,
[1st ed.], (New York, Harper & Row, 1974), 1.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-151-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 154
staunchly supported the U.S., most other cadets were apprehensive to make their
ideologies known publicly. Unlike many of his classmates though, McCrea was
outspoken about his support for the Union, making him even more fit to
illustrate the mindset of Southern Unionist cadets. Morris Schaff, McCrea’s
classmate, eloquently describes the events, emotions, and mindsets at West Point
during this tumultuous era in his book The Spirit of Old West Point, including
anecdotes involving Tully McCrea. For example, Cadet McCrea was involved in
a challenging situation that revolved around a mock presidential election held by
members of the Corps of Cadets at West Point in 1860:
While performing his [the Southern Cadet searching for Lincolnites]
despicable mission he came to the room occupied by Tully McCrea and
his roommate George Gillespie. With a loud and impertinent voice, he
wanted to know how they had voted. When McCrea announced his vote
for Lincoln, the tallyman made a disparaging remark, whereupon
McCrea told him in significant tones to get out of the room, and after
one glance from Tully’s chestnut eyes he promptly complied. How often
I have seen those warm chestnut eyes swimming as they responded to
the tender and high emotions of his heart! Two or three years later,
McCrea was called on once more to show his courage. It was the
afternoon of Pickett’s charge, and all through those terrible hours he
stood with his battery on the ridge at Gettysburg; over him were the
scattering oaks of Ziegler’s grove and with his commanding officer,
Little Dad woodruff, who there met his death, he faced the awful music.
In one way I really think it took more courage to vote for Lincoln than
to face Pickett; but however that may be, he met both ordeals well.496
This anecdote says a tremendous amount about the experiences of Southern
Unionists during the antebellum. Particularly, it draws light to two aspects of that
experience. First, long before the first shots of the war were fired, Southerners
were forced to decide where they stood on the issues of the day. Being neutral
towards both sides as a Southern white man was not an option. Second, there
was no kinship amongst disagreeing parties as that pollster, and a later story about
McCrea’s family, would demonstrate.
McCrea’s story during the Civil War is a complicated one, because
despite his patriotic inclination, his roots still very much remained in the South,
particularly his extended family. Upon learning of his decision to remain loyal to
the United States, McCrea was subjected to egregious assaults from even his most
beloved family members. He recalled that “They all regarded my conduct in
remaining in the North as highly improper…that I am a traitor in taking sides
against my native state.” The irony of ‘treason’ in this case draws light to the
messiness of the conversation. If McCrea had stayed loyal to his state and family,
he would have thus been a traitor to his country. He instead chose to stay loyal
to his country, making him a traitor to his home and loved ones. This highlights
the complexity of the loyalty of Southerners during this time period. ‘Loyalty’
provided no binary for these individuals. Conflicting ties called on their
obligations to several ideals, compelling them to rank their personal priorities.
Whichever one of those loyalties ranked supreme then dictated to whom they
496
Morris Schaff, The Spirit of Old West Point, 1858-1862, (Boston, Houghton,
Mifflin and Co., 1907), 167.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-154-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 159
dismissals for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the United States. This
meant that, validating Cullum, roughly 20 percent of those Southern cadets opted
for the service in the U.S. Army, “An impressive figure considering the heart-
wrenching costs.”512 All of this evidence points to the same idea: a statistically
significant number of Southern Cadets and West Point graduates refuted this
stereotypically viewed Southern identity and fought for the U.S. Army. They
deserve credit, praise, and acknowledgement in the mainstream conversation of
Civil War memory. McCrea is the standard for this group.
George H. Thomas and the Fight to Prove Loyalty
The story of General George H. Thomas is another excellent example
of a Southern U.S. Officer, which both complicates the Southern officer
experience and accentuates Southern contributions to the war effort. Rather than
entering the war as a young Cadet or newly minted Officer, like McCrea, Thomas
had over 20 years of Army service at the time of secession. He represents an
entirely different class of officer, and thus his story broadens the understanding
of these patriotic Southerners.
Little is known for certain about Thomas’ upbringing. When one
postbellum biographer attempted to retrieve information from siblings, he
received a curt reply and dismissal. Born in 1816 in Southampton, Virginia,
Thomas was raised on a small rural farm with eight other siblings and numerous
slaves. None of these family members, nor any blood relatives attended his
funeral in 1870. They never forgave him for betraying his blood and state.
Thomas’ contribution to the war effort drove that spike home. From the little
historians do know, it seems clear that the man was always driven by a
tremendous desire to do right even as a boy, as one childhood friend stated “[he]
never did what the other boys wanted unless he absolutely thought it was
right.”513
One notable way in which Thomas demonstrated his strong moral
compass was through his interactions with slaves his father owned. As stated, the
biographer’s attempt to learn something of Thomas from his family members
was ineffective. The biographer was far more successful when he interviewed an
eighty-one-year-old African American man who had lived on the Thomas
property. The man remarked that young George Thomas was, “As playful as a
kitten” and “seemed to love the negro quarters more than he did the great
house.”514 Furthermore, Thomas not only developed friends to play with from
the Slave quarters, but would often bring things from the house to share with the
‘Negro boys.’ After starting school, Thomas frequently taught the young slaves
how to read and gave other useful lessons which he acquired from class, against
his father’s will. As with McCrea, Thomas never directly stated that any sense of
512
Appendix 8: Participation in the Civil War, Graduates Classes of 1833-1861.
Read in James L., Morrison, “The Best School”: West Point, 1833-1866, (Kent,
Ohio, Kent State University Press, 1998), 127.
513
Francis. McKinney, Education in Violence; the Life of George H. Thomas and
the History of the Army of the Cumberland, (Detroit, Wayne State University Press,
1961), 47. And, Brian Steel Wills, George Henry Thomas: as True as Steel,
(Lawrence, University Press of Kansas), 10-12.
514
Wills, George Henry Thomas: as True as Steel, 12.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-159-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 161
ready to comply.”518 His resolve was certain, and he never questioned a decision
so monumental in the face of the treasonous precedence being established by so
many of his Virginian peers. On his death bed in 1870, he told his aide, Colonel
Hough, that he “never entertained such an idea [of defection], his duty was clear
to him from the beginning.”519 Thomas embodied his alma mater’s motto “duty,
honor, country” in the fullest sense. This was not only because he fought as part
of the U.S. Army in the Civil War, but because he stood behind that decision,
and the values the Army stood for, the rest of his life.
George Thomas’ struggle differs from that of Tully McCrea. Whereas
McCrea’s initial declaration of loyalty seemingly settled all questions of his
commitment to the cause of the Union, Thomas’ declaration only began his
questioning. Thomas’ struggle to prove his loyalty was two-pronged. The first,
and most egregious of the assaults against him, sprung largely from his fellow
U.S. Officers. Flaws or occurrences which normally might have surmounted to
brief criticism of his performance evolved because of his roots into accusations
against Thomas’ character and loyalty. For example, upon travelling to Carlisle
to re-swear his oath, Thomas misplaced his foot and fell off a rail cart, a grave
accident which almost took his life and seriously wounded him in the process.
He was confined to his bed for six weeks, which to his critics, seemed like a
convenient excuse to avoid service right at the critical point of secession. Fellow
officers and several northern papers labeled him as a “lukewarm Unionist” as a
result.520 Two other issues seemed to plague Thomas’ reputation both during and
following the war’s cessation. Always known to be a methodical planner and avid
in his preparations, Thomas was critiqued several times by officers such as
Ulysses S. Grant or even his old friend William T. Sherman for his slowness.
Many saw this not necessarily as an effective battle tactic, but as a further
expression of his affinity for the South. There is no evidence to support this
claim. The second issue which further tarnished his reputation, was his success
post-war in being promoted seemingly ahead of his peers by unpopular fellow
Southerner, President Andrew Johnson. When Grant was eventually elected
President in a massive Republican push against the despised Johnson, Thomas
was subsequently snubbed in support of Generals Sherman and Sheridan who
Grant had been exceedingly close with during the war. Those feelings of distaste
for Thomas, though largely baseless, were built upon the foundation of the
original suspicion of his loyalty. 521
George H. Thomas was a soldier of tremendous skill, and steadfast
values. He never faltered in his support for the United States and drew upon his
expertise to enormously contribute to the Union’s cause. His case study both
validates that Southern-born officers contributed to the success of the United
518
Thomas, General George H. Thomas, the Indomitable Warrior, Supreme in
Defense and in Counterattack; a Biography, 143.
519
Thomas, General George H. Thomas, the Indomitable Warrior, Supreme in
Defense and in Counterattack; a Biography, 136.
520
Thomas, General George H. Thomas, the Indomitable Warrior, Supreme in
Defense and in Counterattack; a Biography,128-129.
521
Thomas, General George H. Thomas, the Indomitable Warrior, Supreme in
Defense and in Counterattack; a Biography,606-617.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-161-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 165
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Belle; Letters from a Cadet & Officer to His Sweetheart, 1858-1865. [1st ed.].
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History of the Army of the Cumberland. Detroit: Wayne State University
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1866 Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1998.
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![Rally Point, 171
that I am he/ For whom a world has died?”549 The apparent guilt with which
Kipling confronts the war’s destruction is quickly tempered: “How shall I live
with myself through the years/ Which they have bought for me? […] If it be
proven that I am he/ Who being questioned denied?”550 Kipling’s guilt is not the
result of living with the scale of destruction he has implicitly advocated for
through his propaganda, but rather in the fear of not supporting those whose
lives were ostensibly sacrificed for his. “The Question” deliberately likens the
sacrifice of soldiers like his son to that of Christ. Mirroring the biblical story of
the disciple Peter denying his support for Jesus, Kipling passes judgment on any
who does not support the British soldiers who “purchased” freedom for
everyone else through their deaths.551
“A Nativity,” also written in 1916, makes use of another biblical story to
indicate the personal grief that stemmed from knowing his son’s fate. Mary
worries about her newborn son, although she knows he is “laid in the Manger”
and “safe from cold and danger.” The poem’s narrator also initially worries about
her son:
“‘My child died in the dark.
Is it well with the child, is it well?
There was none to tend him or mark,
And I know not how he fell.’”552
The poem’s resolution finds both Mary and the unnamed mother after
their son’s sacrifice, content with the understanding of his task and the
knowledge of his metaphysical resting place. Says the unnamed mother: “But I
know for Whom he fell’ […] ‘It is well—it is well with the child!”553 Thus relief
from mourning comes in the form of a religious certainty of the just cause for
which the child sacrificed his life.
Like Kipling, much of the British middle class turned to religion in their
time of grief. Although the general pattern for the 20th century overall was one
of decline, approximately 29% of the adult civilian population of Britain were
members of a church, up from 27% of the whole population in prewar 1914.554
This data is more significant than it seems at first glance considering that religious
males disproportionately volunteered for war and that the 1918 statistic only
takes civilians into consideration, which took a million men out of the data
pool.555 Both the Roman Catholic and Jewish populations in Britain increased
549
Ibid.
550
Ibid.
551
“Then [Peter] began to curse, and he swore an oath, “I do not know the man!”
[…] Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said: “Before the cock crows, you will
deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.” Matthew 57:74-75,
NSRV; Kipling, “The Years Between,” Gutenberg Free Press, (accessed February
27, 2020).
552
Ibid.
553
Ibid.
554
Clive D. Field, “Some Historical Religious Statistics,” British Religion in
Numbers (October 12, 2012).
555
Clive D. Field, “Some Historical Religious Statistics,” British Religion in
Numbers (October 12, 2012).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-171-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 172
throughout the war and into the 1920s, and Anglican, Methodist, and Baptist
numbers, after declining during the war, rose in the twenties, bucking the trend
of the prewar years.556
The eventual design of British war cemeteries also speaks to the comfort
sought in religious symbolism and narratives. A cross of sacrifice stands at the
center of larger cemeteries, linking the concept of Christian sacrifice with the
war’s destruction. Serving as a member of the Imperial War Graves Commission
(IWCG) after the war, Kipling had an intimate part in the design. Lacking a body
and associated grave to give focus to his own grief, Kipling dedicated his time
and creative energies to establishing such a comfort for other grieving families,
stamping his interpretations of the war into the visual representations of the
British empire in mourning.557 It was Kipling who suggested the epitaph “Known
unto God” for graves of unidentified soldiers, and with his aid that the IWCG
developed a plan for British cemeteries abroad that resembled peaceful English
gardens.558
Kipling’s time working as literary advisor for the IWCG inspired his
1925 short-story “The Gardener,” the story of a mother who raises her out-of-
wedlock son as her nephew. When her son dies in the war, she sinks into a period
of grief in which “all sensations […] came to an end in blessed passivity.”559 The
words Kipling uses to describe the grieving mother’s behavior bare a strong
resemblance to his own biographical details:
“She had no interest in any aftermath, national or personal, of
the war, but, moving at an immense distance, she sat on various
relief committees and held strong views—she heard herself
delivering them—about the site of the proposed village War
Memorial.”560
Kipling’s pattern of writing about wartime grief through the eyes of
mothers suggests he intended to convey some perspective that would have been
lacking had he cast a father in these mourning roles. Even though the role of
father was more true to his lived experience than that of mother, Kipling’s
repeated use of the mother as the subject of grief may signify a level of guilt—
556
Ibid.
557
The Imperial War Graves Commission became the Commonwealth War Graves
Commission in 1960, reflecting the changing nature of the British empire. Hannah
Smyth, “What was the Imperial War Graves Commission?” for UK National Trust,
University of Oxford (accessed February 28, 2020).
558
“6 Poetic Stories from the CWGC Archives,” Commonwealth War Graves
Commission, September 28, 2017, https://www.cwgc.org/learn/news-and-
events/news/2017/09/28/09/38/6-poetic-stories-from-the-cwgc-archives, (accessed
May 1, 2020).
559
“Michael had died and her world had stood still and she had been one with the
full shock of that arrest. Now she was standing still and the world was going
forward, but it did not concern her – in no war or relation did it touch her. She knew
this by the ease with which she could slip Michael’s name into talk and incline her
head to the proper angle, at the proper murmur of sympathy.” Rudyard Kipling,
“The Gardener,” The Heritage of the Great War online database (accessed February
28 2020).
560
Ibid.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-172-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 174
would pursue for the duration of his life.565 The members of the TCBS dispersed
to different colleges, but maintained close contact and continued to have society
meetings. As the group matured, their inherent differences became more
apparent, and the TCBS underwent a rift. Tolkien, along with his friends, G. B.
Smith, Christopher Wiseman, and Rob Gilson, convened a meeting to discuss
their mutual disregard for the way other TCBS members never “seem to have
any mortal thing about which they can get angry [and] merely make light and
clever remarks […] about nothing at all.”566 The meeting, which its members
called the Council of London, decided that from thenceforth, “TCBS is four and
four only.”567 The meeting also solidified the purpose of the society: none of its
four members doubted they were destined to academic and literary greatness,
and they conceived as the TCBS as a means by which they could encourage each
other towards this goal.568 Until the organization’s tragic and premature end, its
members would support Tolkien’s fledgling poetry and attempts at fantasy
world-building, reading what he had written, asking him for more, and
encouraging him to send his work to publishers.
The TCBS also served to channel its members desire to accomplish
some good on behalf of the greater public, a lofty ideal for men in their twenties
but one they believed in nonetheless. This sense of duty became embroiled in
patriotic war fervor. Even as its members feared the price they might pay for
entering into the conflict, they regarded it as their duty as promising young
intellectuals to embark on this path for the people’s good.569 This theme of
reluctant service is important to Tolkien’s later writing. Frodo Baggins can
withstand the evil of the Ring and be its Bearer because he doesn’t want to,
Aragorn is a good leader because he is more comfortable in a humble identity
than as the heir to the throne of Gondor.570 Likewise, Tolkien did not want to
go to war, and therefore his decision to do so anyway is significant. Just as his
most noble characters sublimated their desires for domestic comforts and peace
in order to accomplish their mission or fulfil their destiny, Tolkien the academic
grudgingly joined the war effort as a signal officer in 1916.
Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, war brought tragedy to the group
of young scholars. Tolkien was the last of the four friends to enlist, waiting to
finish at Oxford with a first before following Smith, Wiseman, and Gilson to
war, and seeing his first of it at the Battle of the Somme.571 Although the
565
Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, 18.
566
As stated by Wiseman. Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, 55.
567
As quoted by Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, 56.
568
Ibid., 105.
569
Ibid., 106. In Frodo’s words: “I am weary, and full of grief, and afraid. But I have
a deed to do, or attempt, before I too am slain.” Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 653.
570
Aragorn says: “Little do I resemble the figures of Elendil and Isildur as they
stand carven in their majesty in the halls of Denethor. […] I have had a hard life and
[…] have crossed many mountains and many rivers.” J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of
the Rings (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987), 241-242. “I wish it
need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so
do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to
decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” – Tolkien, The Lord of the
Rings, 50.
571
Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, 42-43 and 165.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-174-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 176
poverty, pain, sorrow, injustice, death.”576 Tolkien definitely encountered these
in excess on the Somme, and clearly used his poetry and world-building as an
escape and consolation.
Although he was opposed to the idea of his writing as an allegory for his
WWI experiences, writing adamantly and often that “there is no ‘allegory,’ moral,
political, or contemporary in the work at all,” Tolkien’s writing was both
decidedly developed by the war and indebted to the experiences seared into his
imagination.577 He wrote to his son Christopher during WWII: “I sense amongst
all your pains (some merely physical) the desire to express your feeling about
good, evil, fair, foul in some way: to rationalize it, and prevent it just festering.”578
The fellowship shared by the four members of the TCBS has clear echoes to the
fellowship of Middle-earth peoples who journey with Frodo to destroy the Ring,
as well as the bonds formed between characters through shared experience with
violence. Tolkien paid special attention to the link between Frodo and Sam,
admitting that Sam’s loyalty and bravery were based off of the soldiers he had
known at a lieutenant at the Somme.579
The idea of death as the end to a journey is also prominent in Tolkien’s
writings, and can be traced to the pre-Middle-earth poetry he wrote while
undergoing his officer’s training. In Middle-earth, noble elves, members of the
Valinor—a higher race, and special mortals such as Frodo Baggins, who have
served Middle-earth as Ring Bearers, depart into the west on ships to a new
country, a symbolic passing away. Frodo eventually choses this death for himself,
once, having returned home at the end of the War of the Ring, he realizes that
his wounds “will never really heal.”580 Sam, Frodo’s less traumatized counterpart,
is “meant to be solid and whole,” but Frodo cannot be. Before leaving, he tells
Sam:
“I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and
it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam,
when things are in danger: some one [sic] has to give them up,
lose them, so that others may keep them.”581
Tolkien had difficulty conceiving of WWI as a necessary war against evil,
which made the deaths of his friends even more difficult to bear. The wars
chronicled in his fiction, on the other hand, are tales of the forces of good in
battle against those of evil. Men could be good or bad but had agency in that
narrative. Hand-in-hand with the good vs. evil dichotomy are Tolkien’s views on
576
J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-stories,” Published by Heritage Podcast (accessed
February 11, 2020), 12.
577
In a letter to a Mr. Straight, as quoted by Rachel Kambury, “War Without
Allegory: WWI, Tolkien, and The Lord of the Rings,” The United States World War
One Centennial Commission (accessed November 2019).
578
As quoted by Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, 38.
579
“My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates
and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself.” –
in a 1956 letter to H. Cotton Minchin. Or, as Tolkien’s Frodo puts it: “Frodo
wouldn’t have got far without Sam.” Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 697.
580
Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 1002.
581
Ibid., 1006.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-176-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 177
nature. The good characters Tom Bombadil and Samwise Gamgee help grow
and nurture the forests and fields of Hobbiton.582 Evil orcs at the wizard
Saruman’s behest burn Fangorn Forest in order to spawn Uruk-hai, additional
agents of evil and war. Nature as a metaphor for good fits into Tolkien’s theme
of death as well. As Frodo sails into the West, “it seemed to him that […] the
grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld
white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”583
The final element linking Tolkien’s WWI experiences with The Lord of the
Rings is the imagery. Tolkien’s gift with descriptive prose stems not only from an
aggressive imagination and effective grasp of the power of language, but also
from the memory of lived experiences. It is hard to miss echoes of the Somme’s
battlefields in Tolkien’s description of the Dead Marshes, where the corpses of
fallen warriors an age old still fester, or of Tolkien’s restful British countryside in
the simple peace of the Shire.584
Of all the authors’ works discussed in this paper, Tolkien’s Rings saga
arguably has left the deepest and most lasting imprint on the hearts and
imaginations of the reading public. Although published in the 1950s, The Lord of
the Rings was the culmination of the world-building that began in the trenches of
WWI. Its time of publication, however, cast a focus on a different war, which
accordingly affected the public’s interpretation of Tolkien’s themes. In WWII,
the British believed they had found in Hitler’s Nazism the great evil they had
sought to defeat a generation earlier. Tolkien’s tale of good versus evil now read
as confirmation of historic events rather than the wish-fulfillment for a war that
was discouragingly morally ambiguous. In this reinterpretation, some of what
Tolkien intended was lost, along with The Lord of the Rings’ status as the rightful
product of WWI. The Second World War, which its participants conferred more
readily into a good vs. evil type battle than the First World War, misplaced
Tolkien’s reluctance for war and aversion for glory-seeking. Or, as Tolkien might
have put it, those whose war experiences had been gilded with the moral right
were susceptible to loving the bright sword just for its sharpness.585
Tolkien historians generally regard The Lord of the Rings and its associated
world-building as heavily predicated on Tolkien’s experiences during WWI. But
Tolkien’s most well-known literature, separated temporally from both the war
and the immediate years following in which the reading public could have turned
to Tolkien’s fairy tales for recovery, escape, and consolation, missed out on a
classification as war literature. Many of its readers associated it more with the
evils of Hitler’s Nazi regime than with the First World War.586 Nevertheless, the
novel’s great popularity expresses what Tolkien intuitively understood: trauma
582
Ibid., 118 and 1005.
583
Ibid., 1007.
584
Ibid., 614.
585
One of Tolkien’s characters describes his aversion to violence as follows: “War
must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I
do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the
warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” Tolkien, The Lord of the
Rings, 656.
586
Rachel Kambury, “War Without Allegory: WWI, Tolkien, and The Lord of the
Rings.”](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-177-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 178
can be sublimated into a story of ultimate hope. The power of the message far
outlives the war in which its author first conceived it.
E. M. Forster
For E. M. Forster, WWI meant a break from the restrictive rules of
British middle-class society, as well as his mother’s Victorian grip on his social
life. He spent most of the war, from 1915 to 1919, in Alexandria, where he
worked with the Red Cross as a ‘Searcher,’ interviewing convalescing soldiers for
details concerning their missing comrades. As he strove to stay in contact with
friends and relatives throughout the war, Forster left historians with a rich
collection of personal correspondence, from business overtures to soul-bearing
essays. His letters provide insight into the daily life of a Red Cross employee and
of a conscientious objector.
Class, a popular theme in Forster’s writings both before and after the
war, was also a prominent theme to his wartime observations and qualms. Forster
eschewed the perceived differences between officer and soldier and English or
Egyptian that led to unequal treatment. “Give a man power over the other men,
and he deteriorates at once,” Forster believed, a thought confirmed by his several
years observing officers interacting with enlisted men.587 In his mind, the lower
classes had a natural affinity to the earth and reality, an affinity which was
juxtaposed by the upper class’ materialism and frivolity. The war was largely
perpetuated by the class divide, with the gain-seeking upper classes sending good-
hearted working boys to their deaths.
Forster’s wartime experience was also associated with a fundamental life
change. While in Egypt, Forster developed a romantic relationship with
Mohammed el-Adl, a young train conductor. Societal rules as well as legal
restrictions mandated the secrecy of the relationship; aside from being blatantly
homosexual in nature, their relationship also crossed class and racial lines.
Moreover, the relationship was Forster’s first founded on mutual romantic and
sexual attraction. In many ways, his relationship with el-Adl assuaged both
Forster’s homesickness and lifelong loneliness for companionship, and
additionally worked as an antidote to his pre-affair attempt to “live without either
hopes or fears” even though “all that [he] cared for in civilization ha[d] gone
forever.”588 For Forster, this happiness was predicated on the breakdown of
civilization he believed to be a direct effect of the war. Not only did war break
down the barriers between upper- and middle-class officers and their lower-class
soldiers, creating a bond between them forged in battle, but also resulted in a
general loosening of societal expectations and rules. One societal barrier altered
during WWI was Britain’s relationship with its colonies. A world war necessitated
global resources, and the British empire called its subjects from around the world
587
Letter #188, “To Siegfried Sassoon,” dated May 2, 1918, in Selected Letters of E.
M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1983), 289.
588
Letter #152, “To S. R. Masood,” dated December 29, 1915, in Selected Letters of
E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1983), 233.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-178-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 179
to the European front, including over one million soldiers from India.589 British
soldiers who may have previously had no contact with soldiers from the colonies
could now see them as fellow soldiers fighting for a mutual cause. Forster was
also affected by this increased familiarity with different peoples. Following his
time in India, Forster evaluated Egyptians compared to Indians and found them
lacking.590 Time and exposure, however, changed his mind, and he had an
increasingly high opinion of and empathy for Egyptians as the war went on.
Despite years of difficult work in Alexandria, in a “war which saps away
one’s spirit even when one’s body’s whole still,” Forster wrote to a close friend
in 1917: “I have never had anything like this in my life—much friendliness and
tolerance, but never this—and not till now was I capable of having it” for lack
of “the complete contempt and indifference for civilisation” that the war
provided.591
But this happiness was not something Forster could share with the vast
majority of his wartime correspondents—indeed he only referenced his
homosexuality and relationships in a sort of code, crippled both by his Victorian
modesty and fear of the censors.592 To most people, his letters were full of book
suggestions, humorous anecdotes, and the proceedings of day-to-day life outside
of the hospital where he worked. Occasionally, however, we catch a glimpse of
the growing disconnect Forster feels with the war, particularly with the
newspaper propaganda urging young men on to glory for king and country,
juxtaposed with wounded young men who naively yearned to return to a fight
that had destroyed their friends. Although some of his work dealt with
interviewing convalescing soldiers as they enjoyed the relative freedoms and
sunshine of Alexandria, Forster’s time with the Red Cross also contained darker
duties that rarely found expression in his letters to friends back home. In a letter
to his Cambridge friend Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, Forster mused on the
reasons to fight and the nature of the war, some of his frustrations becoming
blatant:
“I […] expect that everyone and everything else will shatter into
dust. The Hospitals here are full of such dust—boys calling out
589
“What role did the British Empire play in the war?” Bitesize BBC News,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/ zqhyb9q/articles/z749xyc, (accessed May 1,
2020).
590
Letter #152, “To S. R. Masood,” dated December 29, 1915, in Selected Letters of
E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1983), 232.
591
Letter #167, “To Florence Barger,” dated May 29, 1917, in Selected Letters of E.
M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1983), 256.; Letter #174, “To Florence Barger,” dated August 25,
1917, in Selected Letters of E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), 269.
592
Forster wrote about his affair almost exclusively to his close friend Florence
Barger, using euphemisms such as “Yesterday, for the first time in my life I parted
with Respectability” in reference to sexual intercourse. (This letter was never sent).
He would later refer to his ‘Respectability’ with just a capital R. The frequency of
his letters to Barger, along with the fact that he always signed them ‘Morgan,’ rather
than his more distant alternatives ‘EM Forster’ or ‘EMF,’ hints at the intimacy
between the two.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-179-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 180
‘Oh Lord have mercy on me, Oh take this thing away’, or even
more terribly “I’m in a fix, I’m in a fix.’ […] It’s more a wave of
helpless indignation that still shakes me so that I look down the
ward at the suffering and […] wonder how long the waste must
go on. […] Damn justice, damn honour. They were good
enough trimmings for peace time, but the supreme need now is
the preservation of life. Let us look after bodies that there may
be a next generation which may have the right to look after the
soul.”593
Forster reserved such outbursts for close confidants, excluding both
casual and business acquaintances and his mother, whom he did not want to
worry. He was always careful to follow such outpourings of despair and grief
with assurances that he was not as unhappy as he seemed or with a distractingly
humous story. But despite the depressing nature of his work, Forster had a new
sense of fulfillment from his illicit relationship and a certain freedom from his
mother’s sometimes controlling love—both of which he was unable to enjoy in
England and would lose when the war concluded. He wrote in 1916: “In some
ways I have never been so free—it’s an odd backwater the war has scooped out
for me, and I don’t know whether I most dread or long for England.”594
Returning to London at the end of the war, Forster expressed difficulty
in shifting back to a postwar civilian lifestyle. He felt the war had been a colossal
waste of life and creative energies. He wrote plaintively to Florence Barger: “for
my own part I’ve learnt nothing and felt that most people have likewise learnt
nothing, despite the assurances of the newspapers to the contrary.”595 He, like
every other member of the British society, had lost people close to him. “I can’t
even feel that the dead have died in our defence. I didn’t want W. R. to leave No.
21. It seemed to me no good and it still seems no good, and the knowledge that
his end didn’t seem meaningless to him doesn’t fill it with meaning for me.”596
His struggles were societal-level struggles—how could the war’s survivors find
meaning for their experiences and the deaths of loved ones? Forster’s grief
translated readily into difficulty with his creative process, and his work stalled.597
He worked on A Passage to India but found he did not have the inspiration or
willpower to complete it. He did not consider his wartime experience to be
593
Letter #165, “To Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson,” dated May 5, 1917, in Selected
Letters of E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1983), 252-253.
594
Letter #157, “To Malcolm Darling,” dated August 6, 1916, in Selected Letters of
E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1983), 238.
595
Letter #193, “To Forrest Reid,” dated January 10, 1919, in Selected Letters of E.
M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1983), 298.
596
Ibid. W.R. refers to his friend, Willie Rutherford.
597
“Abysmal depression all today. […] While trying to write my novel, I wanted to
scream aloud like a maniac, and it is not in such a mood that one’s noblest work is
penned.” Letter #197, “To Siegfried Sassoon,” dated May or June 1919, in Selected
Letters of E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1983), 302.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-180-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 183
domesticity of the prewar years and through the characters of the Ramsay family
and their summer home boarders, articulates the day-to-day existence of the
prewar middle class. Mr. Ramsay, who wanders around the grounds repeating
the Tennyson line: “Some one [sic] has blundered!” again and again, and who
dreams of being a great man, represents a prewar naivete that glorifies violence
by reducing it to a heroic poem.603 The line’s repetition devalues it until Mr.
Ramsay seems silly instead of noble, simple-minded instead of the great academic
mind he believes himself to be.604 Mrs. Ramsay’s compassion and patience for
her emotionally unintelligent husband, brood of children, and diverse set of
boarders provides a maternal domesticity that is essential in balancing out the
chaos of the household’s competing personalities. When youngest child James is
horribly disappointed that his promised trip to the lighthouse the next day will
not, in fact, take place, Mrs. Ramsay distracts him with a craft project. In doing
so, she shields him from her tactless husband who, like the Tennyson line,
continues to state that the weather will prevent the trip.605 Mrs. Ramsay plays an
additional role as matchmaker between guests and acquaintances, indicating her
willingness to subscribe to a future that, before the war, seems certain.
The mood of “Time Passes” is starkly different from that of “The
Window.” Woolf no longer moves from character to character, delving deep into
their psyches, but weaves a narrative centered around the Ramsay’s summer
home, which has been left to the elements for the duration of the war. Woolf
centers the house’s narrative around three ideas. First, the house is a participant
in the war as much as the unseen characters. “Almost one might imagine […]
asking the red and yellow roses on the wall whether they would fade” and
questioning “the torn letters in the waste-paper basket, the flowers, the books,
all of which were now […] asking, Were they allies? Were they enemies? How
long would they endure?”606 Thus even the site of domestic safety from the “The
Window” becomes embroiled in the conflict of WWI—if the passage of time
fades and ruins the house, then it has also become an enemy.
Second, using nature as metaphor, Woolf writes about both the
destruction of war and the surprising way in which life continues despite trauma.
Nature, like the house, becomes militarized: strong winds become “advance
guards of great armies,” and, inexplicably except in metaphor, a “purple stain
[develops] upon the bland surface of the sea as if something had boiled and bled,
invisibly, beneath.”607 But nature could also seem indifferent to the colossal scale
of human-made conflict. Somehow, the beach retains “the usual tokens of divine
beauty—the sunset on the sea, the pallor of dawn, […] fishing boats against the
moon” and “children making mud pies and pelting each other with handfuls of
603
The line is from “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” a poem by Alfred, Lord
Tennyson which recounts the glorious sacrifice of British light cavalry at the Battle
of Balaclava in the Crimean War. Citation for The Delta
604
This point is not exactly the one made by Megan Mondi in her essay for The
Delta, but it was in reading her analysis on Woolf’s use of typical war poetry that I
formulated my own thoughts.
605
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishing Company, 1981), 15.
606
Woolf, To the Lighthouse, 126.
607
Ibid., 134 and 128-129.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-183-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 184
grass.” 608 In a mild confusion of metaphor, Woolf asks the reader to understand
the war through changes in nature but also to feel discontented that through the
destruction of war, nature remains cheerily the same and untraumatized—“But
the stillness and the brightness of the day were as strange as the chaos and tumult
of night, with the trees standing there, and the flowers standing there, looking
before them, looking up, yet beholding nothing, eyeless, and so terrible.”609
The third idea is the impersonal deaths of characters, bracketed and side-
noted as if they lacked importance. The seeming insignificance of these deaths
to the larger narrative reflects the ambivalence with which Woolf reports on the
death of Rupert Brooke, especially in the light of the detail from the novel’s
prewar section.610 The brief mention of Andrew, one of the Ramsay boys, is a
primary example of Woolf’s almost dismissive reporting of his demise in battle:
“Then again silence fell; and then, night after night, and
sometimes in plain mid-day when the roses were bright and light
turned on the wall its shape clearly there seemed to drop into
this silence, this indifference, this integrity, the thud of
something falling.
[A shell exploded. Twenty or thirty young men were
blown up in France, among them Andrew Ramsay, whose
death, mercifully, was instantaneous.]”611
When the Ramsay family returns in the novel’s final part, “The
Lighthouse,” both they and the house have changed, the family irreparably so.
As the Ramsays and their guests, fewer in number than before the war and feeling
the unshakeable loss of those who are missing, they turn again to the prospect of
traveling to the lighthouse. For daughter Cam, going to the lighthouse means
forgetting the past several years: “Cam could see nothing... the lives they had
lived [in the summer house] were gone; were rubbed out; were past; were unreal,
and now this was real.”612 As she watches the remaining Ramsays depart in their
boat for the lighthouse, house guest Lily finishes the painting she had begun years
ago in the events of “The Window” by drawing a line down the middle, marking
the difference between the prewar world and the postwar world.
The novel ends with Lily looking out into the mist to the “almost
invisible” lighthouse, waiting to see if the Ramsays’ boat would reach it. She does
not know but feels certain that the Ramsays have arrived.613 Thus the lighthouse
represents two different methods for coping with the trauma of WWI. Cam
ignores the past and actively pursues the future, whereas Lily understands that
everything has changed and can move forward in her world by accepting both
608
Ibid., 133.
609
Ibid., 135.
610
“[Mr. Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched his arms
out, but Mrs. Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before, his arms, though
stretched out, remained empty.]” page 128 and “[Prue Ramsay died that summer in
some illness connected with childbirth, which was indeed a tragedy, people said”]
Woolf, To the Lighthouse, 132.
611
Ibid., 133.
612
Ibid., 166-167.
613
Ibid., 208.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-184-320.jpg)
![Rally Point, 185
the past and the new future. Finally, by bookending the novel with the quest to
reach the lighthouse, Woolf speaks to a loss of childhood due to the war.
Although the original reasons for visiting the lighthouse no longer hold true after
war and the death of childhood, the Ramsays want to go as a means of finding
continuity with their prewar life. Because the fate of the Ramsays’ boat is
unknown, leaving the reader unable to ascertain if any of the remaining Ramsays
have finished their journey, To the Lighthouse casts doubt that the threads of one’s
life can be pieced together after the war. The novel is about nothing if not the
war; the war acts as the agent of all change, from death to the end of childhood.
To the Lighthouse is a novel intimately aware of the cost of the war on a family, and
the emphasis on the cost to the domestic front is an analysis, of the four authors
I examine, that is unique to Woolf’s war literature.
In Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, the story of the titular character preparing for
an evening party runs parallel to that of Septimus Warren Smith, a WWI veteran
haunted by the death of his friend Evans. Mrs. Dalloway is a sort of everyman
who stands in for many British middle-class women: she runs an errand, gossips,
reminisces about past loves, and wonders about different roads her life might
have taken. In the character of Septimus, Woolf confronts the mental health
stigma many veterans faced upon returning home. Septimus’ wife, an Italian
woman named Lucrezia, is more frightened that people will notice that her
husband is troubled than she is concerned by his behavior.614 She despairs at
what she sees as Septimus’ degeneration: “Septimus had fought; he was brave;
he was not Septimus now,” because “it was cowardly for a man to say he would
kill himself.”615
The separate narratives merge when the news of Septimus’ suicide
reaches Mrs. Dalloway’s evening party. In a daze, Mrs. Dalloway leaves the party
for an upstairs window, where she stands in parallel to Septimus’ death from a
similar location. Her life, “wreathed about with chatter,” disguises the similarities
she feels between her own feelings and those she imagines for Septimus.616 In
Mrs. Dalloway’s mind, “death was an attempt to communicate,” to explain a deep
loneliness, and a means by which to end that pain: “there was an embrace in
death.”617 Mrs. Dalloway’s rambling thoughts suggest that maybe she too had
personal experience with a gnawing loneliness that cast suicide as a viable
solution.618 There is even guilt for having not acted on these feelings: “It was her
punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this
profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress.”619 Finally,
as Mrs. Dalloway resolves herself to return to the party and the distraction of her
614
“For she could stand it no longer. [...] Far rather would she that he were dead!
She could not sit beside him when he stared so and did not see her and made
everything terrible.” Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, (San Diego, CA: Harcourt
Brace & Company, 1981), 23.
615
Ibid.
616
Ibid., 184.
617
Ibid.
618
“Even now, quite often if Richard had not been there reading the Times, so that
she could crouch like a bird and gradually revive, [...] she must have perished.”
Ibid., 185.
619
Ibid.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/new-201016193941/85/Rally-Point-A-Military-History-Journal-185-320.jpg)
Rally Point: A Military History Journal
- 1. Rally Point A Military History Journal By West Point and Yale 2020, Volume 1
- 2. Rally Point A military history journal Volume 1 2020
- 3. Rally Point, 3 Rally Point A military history journal Volume 1, 2020 Editors in Chief West Point Brandi Braggs (2021) Co-Editor-in-Chief of Report Collin Keogh (2021) Co-Editor-in-Chief of Report Yale Henry Jacob (2021) Editor in Chief of The Yale Historical Review
- 4. Rally Point, 4 Editorial Board Daniel Blatt (2021) Senior Editor of The Yale Historical Review Sharmaine Koh Mingli (2022) Senior Editor of The Yale Historical Review Matthew Sáenz Senior Editor of The Yale Historical Review Varun Sikand (2022) Senior Editor of The Yale Historical Review Jeremy Sontchi (2021) Senior Editor of The Yale Historical Review Isabella Yang (2021) Senior Editor of The Yale Historical Review Mathis Bitton (2023) Associate Editor of The Yale Historical Review Rachel Blatt (2023) Associate Editor of The Yale Historical Review Yuhan Kim (2023) Associate Editor of The Yale Historical Review Louie Lu (2023) Associate Editor of The Yale Historical Review Daniel Ma (2023) Associate Editor of The Yale Historical Review Endure McTier (2022) Associate Editor of The Yale Historical Review
- 5. Rally Point, 5 Esther Reichek (2023) Associate Editor of The Yale Historical Review Noah Robinson (2023) Associate Editor of The Yale Historical Review Natalie Simpson (2023) Associate Editor of The Yale Historical Review
- 6. Rally Point, 6 Copyright and photocopying © 2021 Department of History United States Military Academy West Point, New York 10996 Acknowledgments The Editorial Board would like to thank the faculty of the United States Military Academy’s History Department for their submission recommendations, all the students who submitted papers, and Captain Louisa Koebrich for her advice and guidance on historical scholarship. Without their help, Rally Point would not have been possible. About The Review Rally Point is a non-profit publication produced by undergraduate students at Yale University and cadets at the United States Military Academy. It accepts previously unpublished submissions from undergraduates at Yale University and the United States Military Academy. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Disclaimer The contents of Rally Point, including words, images, and opinions, are unofficial and are not to be considered as the official views of the United States Military Academy, the United States Army, or the Department of Defense. Readers accept and agree to this disclaimer in the use of any information obtained from Rally Point.
- 7. Rally Point, 7 Letter from The Editors Dear Reader, It is our distinct honor to present the first edition of Rally Point: A Military History Journal, a joint publication produced by student-editors at Yale University and the United States Military Academy. This edition features articles covering a wide array of topics ranging the 1941 Al- Gaylani coup d’etat in Iraq and the foundation of modern covert operations to the Crusades in the Baltics and the Civil War. While each of our authors cover a different time period and place, they all explore the idea of sacrifice or service and offer a unique take on military history. These articles reflect the power of interdisciplinary, collaborative scholarship. In October 2018, members from our journals first met in New Haven to share our common passion for undergraduate research. The publication of Rally Point represents the realization of our unified vision: to recognize excellence, contribute to the rich literature of military history, and give the world a short collection of outstanding undergraduate scholarship. The release of this journal also serves as a fitting anniversary to celebrate two years of our strong relationship and signals further success in the future. We could not have completed this venture done without the hard work of our committed authors, editors, and faculty advisors. Their dedication, enthusiasm, and professionalism amaze and inspire us. Enjoy Volume 1 of Rally Point. Lux et Veritas. Sapientia Per Historiam Regards, Brandi Braggs, Collin Keogh, and Henry Jacob
- 8. Rally Point, 8 Table of Contents INTERVIEW WITH RICK LEVIN: 22nd President of Yale University and Former CEO of Coursera Yale University 9 INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN MORILLO: 2020 Charles Boal Ewing Chair in Military History United States Military Academy 16 GEORGE FOSTER EMMONS: THE EARLY CAREER OF AN AMERICAN NAVAL OFFICER, 1828-1841 Mahlon Sorenson, Yale University 22 HITLER’S GERMANY AND THE 1941 AL-GAYLANI COUP D’ETAT IN IRAQ: FASCISM, NATIONALISM AND EMPIRE Peter Luff, Yale University 57 THE OSS AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN COVERT OPERATIONS: HOW WARTIME LESSONS IN BURMA AND NORTH AFRICA SET THE POSTWAR STAGE Keshav Raghavan, Yale University 97
- 9. Rally Point, 9 THE GREAT STARING CONTEST: 200 YEARS OF CRUSADING AND CULTURAL EXCHANGE IN THE BALTICS William Hogan, United States Military Academy 132 KILLING 'JOHNNY REB' AND THE MYTH OF THE MONOLITHIC SOUTH Michael Avallone, United States Military Academy 154 THE EXPANSION OF POST-WORLD WAR ONE LITERATURE: THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF FOUR BRITISH WRITERS Melissa Gammons, United States Military Academy 175
- 10. Rally Point, 10 INTERVIEW WITH RICK LEVIN 22nd President of Yale University and Former CEO of Coursera Interviewed by: Henry Jacob Transcribed by: Sharmaine Koh Mingli Questions are bolded.
- 11. Rally Point, 11 When you became the 22nd President of Yale, you emphasized the importance of making connections, both in New Haven and across the world. Since then, you have bridged gaps and facilitated communication among departments and countries. Could you perhaps talk a bit about how you developed your vision for Yale? You have used the phrase global citizen throughout your speeches and writings. How does the reintegration of ROTC help Yalies become global citizens and leaders? We should go back to the beginning when I first came in as President. From the start, I sought to improve Yale’s relations with our local environment and to contribute as a corporate citizen of New Haven. I encouraged students and faculty to engage with community, with civic organizations, with the city government, and to share Yale’s resources. By the time you came to Yale, this philosophy became so entrenched that it probably didn’t seem surprising. But things like opening up the Payne Whitney Gym to youth programs in the summer was shocking to the community. Yale, which was considered an ivory tower separate from the inner-city, became a friend. Many students became engaged. This engendered a thriving culture of community service, a culture consistent with Yale’s values. Yale has a tremendous tradition of local and national service. As you know, we have an astonishing array of distinguished graduates who have served the nation, both in the military and civilian roles over three centuries. So that was one area of emphasis: to contribute to New Haven beyond writing checks for downtown development! I also recognized that the world had changed a lot in the couple of decades since I started teaching at Yale. I emphasized in my addresses that we lived in a much more interconnected world than ever before. We needed to embrace this shift and educate people for service in an international context. But I could only do so much in the first few years of my presidency. First and foremost, I focused on the local environment and on campus reconstruction. But by the late 90’s we really started to address the international aspect as well. We vastly increased the number of international students at Yale College. When I started, less than two percent of Yale undergraduates were non-Canadian international students. It seems amazing now, right? Yes, quite amazing. We decided to change that statistic. In 1999 we extended need-blind admissions and need-based financial aid across the world, which boosted both the number and quality of international students we admitted. We launched many programs that increased the number of overseas opportunities for Yale students. Foreign students started coming to campus and bringing a global perspective to Yale in the dormitory and the classroom. To be fully educated in the 21st century, you need to develop the capacity for cross-cultural understanding, to be able to step outside of yourself and understand others. We did quite a remarkable job on this front. The curriculum got much more
- 12. Rally Point, 12 international. The undergraduate experience changed drastically; by the time I left, more than two-thirds of Yale students took advantage of one of the summer abroad programs that we offered. That’s how Yale came to emphasize service from a global perspective. This shift made it natural to bring programs to Yale that centered around national service. The founding of the Jackson Institute served this purpose. We envisioned that the Institute, soon to become a School, would focus not only on diplomatic service, but also educate future professionals in the area of global affairs. Incidentally, there were a whole slew of programs founded in the first decade of the 21st century — before the Jackson Institute —that had this global perspective. A number of them like the Institute for Security Studies and the Grand Strategy Program brought in active and retired military officers as visiting faculty and lecturers. Students interested in national and international affairs had the opportunity to engage in dialogue with the military. From the start of your presidency, you stressed the value of service to New Haven and to the world. In your writings, you also use the phrase “open- minded curiosity” — the ability to think both as a scholar and as a leader. How did you cultivate this “open-minded curiosity” and create Harkness table discussions in the president’s office? The primary mission of the university is advancing scholarship and educating students. But it is a distinctive tradition of Yale, and a number of our leading peer institutions, that we educate a disproportionate number of people that go on to leadership roles in society. So we seek to model leadership within the institution. Leadership is an important aspect of education. Our professors lead their fields. Our deans and most of the administration are scholar leaders as well. We serve as models to position our students for leadership. Similarly, ROTC educates people for service, and inculcates in them the perspective of responsibility that goes with leadership. I had ROTC on my mind for many years before it actually came back to Yale. After 9/11, I regretted that we weren't prepared to do our part. Plenty of seniors who graduated that year enlisted. The next year many more students enrolled in one of the neighboring ROTC programs at UConn or at Fairfield. Of course, it would have been even better if we offered ROTC programs on our own campus. But the barrier for us — and for Harvard and Columbia as well — to rejoin was the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” rule. In a community where we practiced the most thoroughgoing forms of non-discrimination, it would have been inappropriate and offensive to endorse an institution, as part of our training and education, that operated under those strictures. I waited. I waited for a long time. But I didn't waste any time. If you look at the history, even before President Obama signed the bill, the Senate voted on a Saturday. On Monday, I issued a statement that we were going to explore the return of ROTC on campus. On Tuesday I spoke with Secretary Gates about
- 13. Rally Point, 13 starting the process. We were ready to go, but we had to wait for that change in national policy. In 2004, George W. Bush appointed you, alongside five other Yalies, on a committee for US intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. How did you navigate this transition from the academic to the intelligence community? Perhaps the leadership of a university is not too dissimilar from that in the CIA...In the aftermath of the Iraq War, the experience of examining intelligence failures leading up to the war was very revealing and intellectually fascinating. Our commission’s report told a very interesting story about the internal dynamics in the intelligence community as it processed information. There was not really a firm consensus about the presence of weapons of mass destruction yet as reported to policy makers, it appeared that the community was making a judgment that the presence of such weapons was highly probable. I certainly gained a lot of respect for the people who were leaders in that community, including military intelligence, as well as CIA and NSA. They are very dedicated and very able. Smart people led those organizations and were articulate about national security in their roles. Here’s an interesting thing — it was sort of fun for me at the time. Robert Gates, or Bob Gates, who was the Secretary of Defense that I called when “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed, had been the director of the CIA before leaving public service to become the President of Texas A&M University. I worked closely with Bob during those years when he was in Texas A&M on an issue of national security. I represented the private universities and he represented the public universities. We presented the universities’ position on the impact and possible reform of some Export Control Regulations. These anecdotes about Secretary Gates reveal plenty about you as well. After all, you initiated and then maintained a relationship with Secretary Gates over years and across administrations. Yes, and then in the Obama Administration, I served on the President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology, and we dealt with a number of national security issues as well. We were assigned to look at cyber security, and it was also fascinating to see the scientific component of many dimensions of national strategy. Yes, it seems like these were politically important as well as intellectually fascinating engagements. Shifting gears a bit, I talked to Rob Berschinski earlier this week about the development of ROTC at Yale since his undergraduate years. You mentioned opening up Payne Whitney to the community years ago. With the reintegration of ROTC you also provided a new physical and symbolic space to certain students. I did not do this on my own. I had a supporting cast here that embraced this change. Among others, Linda Lorimer who was my right hand as the Vice-President, Dorothy Robinson who was our general counsel and led government relations, and Mary Miller who was the dean of Yale College at the time, played important roles.
- 14. Rally Point, 14 Linda is the daughter of a Naval Admiral, a very distinguished Naval Aviator, and she was very enthusiastic about this developed. Since the 1990s, she had organized the annual Veterans Day Celebration on the Beinecke Plaza. All of these people, particularly Linda and Mary, had very visible roles in the university, and they helped to engage and build a community of support around it. Paul Kennedy, John Gaddis, and the Grand Strategy team had been educating students in national security for many years. And like I said, they’d brought many military officers back to teach. They embraced this shift and encouraged the ROTC students who came in when we started the program in 2012. Many took John Gaddis’ magnificent Cold War course. Paul Kennedy even created a Naval History Course that he taught for a number of years, which was required of Naval ROTC students and open to everybody in Yale College for academic credit. Right, so this transition depended upon collaboration. Yes, with the leadership of the university, the dean of the college, and a number of key people interacting actively with the ROTC, the officers felt very welcome here. This harmony among faculty communicates itself to the students. I want to discuss integration in another form: online education. For years you have worked to democratize higher learning through technological innovation. How have you extended the Yale experience to those who cannot come to New Haven? We started working with online education back in 2000, with a little experiment we did with Stanford and Oxford. We founded a small non-profit joint venture that made very high-quality courses, but the streaming technology was not advanced. This was not a success but it was a good first step. In 2007, we started the Open Yale Initiative. This was primitive once more because it just put online video recordings of professors in the classroom. As I learned later at Coursera, this is quite suboptimal because the professor is not talking to the Internet audience. The professor lectures to the students in the class. And it’s also 50 or 75 minutes of uninterrupted talking, which is not the most digestible fare for an internet user. At Coursera we exploited the potential of creating things explicitly for the internet. Highly-interactive. Lots of breaks in the talking. Lots of animation and use of video. Gaming and quizzes, and all kinds of projects you can do online. It made a much richer online learning experience. At its base, Coursera seeks to make the world’s highest quality education available anywhere to anyone all over the world. If the reach of Yale has been impressive, the reach of Coursera is nothing short of astonishing. Over 70 million people are connected to Coursera, and they’re from all over the world. Only 22% are from the United States. Our audience comes from all backgrounds and all ages. This will be a very important component of the future of top universities like Yale — to make more of what we do more available. Our mission is the creation and dissemination and preservation of knowledge, but the dissemination so far has been pretty narrow. We bring 1000 professors together and have them teach 6000 students in the College. That’s great but insufficient. They can teach 60 million or 600 million — and that to me is what is truly transformative, creating
- 15. Rally Point, 15 amazing opportunities for people. It definitely does. And our current moment makes this necessity even more apparent. To circle back, this has been a desire for you for a long time, making a global education of Yale available to anyone, not just within the seminar room. That basic impetus and drive to disseminate as well as to educate extends not only to the New Haven community, but the nation and beyond that. And I think that is the reason why ROTC is now an important facet of Yale. Any final thoughts from you? Again, we’re living in a time when these relationships, though they have to be communicated and maintained on Zoom, are all the more important. Not just personal ones, but also, the civil service and military as well. This is a fraught moment for many reasons, politically and otherwise, especially as we look forward to November 2020. I think it’s important to emphasize that it’s always time for national service, but this is a particularly important time. And one in which I hope that young people won’t be discouraged by recent challenges to the legitimacy of the institutions that have made our country so free and successful over centuries. I hope that students won’t be discouraged by the kind of distrust that so many in our society seem to have towards those institutions, and that people will continue to aspire to careers in military and in civil service. I hope that tradition persists among Yale graduates. Yes, we definitely do miss your brilliant leadership now, and will keep that message in mind for the coming months. There’s a little-known fact about the return of ROTC because it never got publicized. But right at the end of the Obama Administration, and I mean after the election in late 2016, I got a call from the Secretary of the Navy. Just out of the blue. I had no idea that this was in the works. They said that the Navy was conferring upon me the Distinguished Public Service Award of the US Navy, which is a really fantastic honor. It was for this very reason — the bringing back of ROTC and the successful initiation and growth of those programs. It was very moving for me.
- 16. Rally Point, 16 INTERVIEW WITH STEPHEN MORILLO The United States Military Academy’s 2020 Charles Boal Ewing Chair in Military History Interviewed by: Collin Keogh Transcribed by: Collin Keogh and Brandi Braggs Questions are bolded.
- 17. Rally Point, 17 I appreciate you taking the time to speak to me, sir. Let’s get started. I see you graduated from Harvard, magna cum laude in 1980, then went on to be a Rhodes Scholar. Those are quite the accomplishments. Do you have any advice or tips you would offer to any undergraduates who may be reading this publication? My key piece of advice is love what you do. When you’re choosing your major or your classes, choose ones that really interest you. You’ll always do better when you study what you’re interested in. You don’t get tired of it. Thank you for that. I see that your dissertation was on English royal warfare, from 1066 to 1154. That covers the time from the Battle of Hastings to the coronation of King Henry II, right? As you researched, did you find that English royal warfare changed much during that time? If it did, what do you think drove that change? Great question. You’re thinking like a historian. Ironically, the answer is no, it didn’t change much. That’s one of the reasons why I chose that period. There are, broadly speaking, two approaches to history—diachronic and synchronic. Diachronic history is often narrative- driven You trace a narrative between changing times or interesting happenings and try to explain how they happened. That has never particularly been my style for some reason. What I like looking for is underlying continuities and structural constraints. English royal warfare between 1066 and 1154 exhibited a kind of continuity and structural continuity that I found interesting and revealing about other things. So, the answer is, no it didn’t change that much. That is one of the reasons I was able to write a book that is thematically organized. I am not narrating a series of changes. I’m saying: how did things in this period work? Throughout that period, recruitment worked the same way, logistics worked the same way, the dynamics of combat remained consistent…There was not much in the way of technological change. So, it fit my inclination to look at structural continuities and constraints that give you a sense of the deeper patterns rather than looking at a single event and saying, “Oh that changes everything”. Obviously, at the beginning of the period, the Battle of Hastings introduced a lot of changes. Some of them were deep and long-lasting and took several centuries to play out. I made an argument one time that the Battle of Hastings was necessary to the Industrial Revolution because of the way it brought together Norman and Saxon legal traditions which resulted in, by 1154, the emergence of the English common law tradition whose property rights conceptions formed the legal-intuitional foundation for the sorts of things that happened to make industry possible in England. Using the basic assumption that industrialization was an unlikely event, and that the tradition of the agrarian world was built to resist changes like that, I had to explain: how did industrialization happen? That’s interesting. I also see that you spent some time as a cartoonist.
- 18. Rally Point, 18 What inspired you to become a college professor and why do you think it’s important to study history? I’m still painting. I’m still drawing cartoons. I never really decided between art and history. I do both. What led me to the career in history rather than the career in graphic art was that I was feeling a little brain dead. Graphic art was fun, and I’m glad I did it because I learned some interesting skills, but intellectually it wasn’t a huge challenge. It wasn’t going to be that interesting. The real problem was in order to make a living in graphic art I realized that at some point I was going to have to join an ad agency. Joining an ad agency felt to me, frankly, like artistic prostitution. I didn’t want to touch that. I got lucky and jumped back over to academia with my Oxford degree in hand and got a teaching job that led to other teaching jobs and the career I’ve had. I’m glad I did because I think that’s been by far the more intellectually satisfying of the two. It would have been hard to do history as a hobby in any sort of meaningful way. Whereas it’s easy to paint and draw cartoons as a little part-time thing that allows me to feed that side of myself without having to make a living of it. As for your second question, I study history because I love it. In 3rd grade, we did a section in school on the Greek and Persian wars, you know Marathon and that stuff, and I thought “Oh my god, this is so cool.” It was so cool partly because it had a time travel quality to it. I thought to myself, ‘Wow, I can visit these different places and learn about really weird, interesting people and all the stuff they did.’ History always had that emotional pull to it. I get to travel not only all over the world, but all over time. It makes me feel like a timelord, except I can’t change anything. Why is it important to study history? I like to think of myself as driving through time—I can’t see into the future very far. It is like driving a car with no windshield and nothing but rear-view mirrors. History is your rear-view mirrors. It’s the only way you know where you’ve been and where you might be going. I don’t want to stress that where you might be going too much…It’s more like, it gives you some sense of what’s been happening and if you navigate certain kinds of things successfully, next time, you might know a little better what to expect. History is society’s collective memory and its foundation for identity. Thank you. My next question comes from the title of a book you wrote. What is Military History? And why should we study it? Catching me with my own words—that’s evil! Well, the answer I give in the book is that military history is the field of history that studies armed conflict in all its forms and all the different ways in which it’s supported and created. I go for a broad definition and a broad conceptualization of military history because I think that’s the most useful way to look at it. Some military history in the past used to be very narrow. It focused on operational and tactical concerns, generalship, things like that. Admittedly, some of that’s fun. Still, once you establish that military history is just another part of
- 19. Rally Point, 19 a larger historic view, then you understand it better and you understand the other history better. That said, studying military history isn’t a panacea. It is not much vocational training, particularly at the tactical level. Military history is like a lot of academic fields, specifically the liberal arts, in that it teaches you how to think and how to analyze a situation. Over time, you learn how to take in evidence, organize it, and think about it productively so that when you’re presented with a new situation, you will have some idea of what to do. This is true of history, philosophy, English, sociology, and a host of other disciplines. There are all sorts of things you learn as a student of the liberal arts. They teach you to learn how to learn, and that makes you better at your job no matter what that job is. When my students at Wabash talk about majoring in business because they think it’s more practical, I offer them a different perspective. I tell them that the things they learn specifically and vocationally about business in college will likely be obsolete by the time they graduate. What the boss wants when he or she hires you is for you to be able to walk in and learn quickly. Similarly, as cadets, you know what your job will be. After you graduate, you’ll be commissioned as an Army officer, and there is a lot more to the job than simply knowing military history. It might be important at certain points in your career to know a bit about military history and how the levels of warfare (tactical, operational, strategic, and grand strategic) fit into politics and policy. If you know more of that, you’ll be in a better position to make good decisions, so some of that history is going to be relevant. But at the more immediate, tactical level, studying decades- or centuries-old battles for practical knowledge is a fool’s errand. Take the Battle of Austerlitz, one of Napoleon’s tactical masterpieces. You’ll know how he did it, and next time you’re leading a French army from 1805 into Austria, you might know what to do better! Are you going to do that any time soon? I doubt it. The real value of studying military history is in developing a process of learning how to analyze things. Having more examples of how things have happened in military history over the years gives you a better database and will enable you to work your way through new situations. Again, I want to stress that military history is a part of larger history. Studying military history in its cultural context and how warfare between different cultures played out, given the global role of the US Army these days and the global reach of American power, you’re going to run into that issue. We conduct our wars overseas, so you must know how successful military organizations of the past have dealt with the challenge of conducting warfare across cultural boundaries. Again, the value in studying military history is not directly vocational. However,
- 20. Rally Point, 20 the ability to see the world through a military perspective will allow you to make better decisions in some aspects of your job in the same way that other aspects of your upbringing and education will make you a better officer in terms of personnel management and all other sorts of things officers have to do. Thank you for that. You’ve studied a lot of history, especially Medieval and early modern Europe. Assuming you’ve seen shows like The Tudors, what does Hollywood get wrong? That’s a fabulous question. I think one of the inherent problems with TV history is that it tends to focus too much on significant individuals. It’s easy to miss the greater social or economic context. I mean, how do you make a TV history about the spread of the heavy plow in medieval Europe? And the impact of the heavy plow on agricultural productivity and therefore the demographic growth and therefore the rising levels of trade and cultural connection? It’s hard to do! But that stuff is important. So, I think that’s one of the fundamental potential problems with history on TV. Another problem is that these shows have limited casts. Partly because you can’t afford to hire 60,000 actors and partly because if you did and you tried to do a story that included the 60,000 actors, people would lose track. “Who’s that again? Wait what are they doing here?” TV history tends to follow a limited number of characters whom you can grasp and comprehend and follow their stories. Depictions of royal courts, for instance, are often seriously underpopulated. There are not enough people there. Royal courts were small- to medium-size moving societies with people in all sorts of roles. That’s very insightful. Changing pace a bit, how did teaching at West Point differ from your other teaching experiences and what will you remember most? I’ll take the second question first, because it’s a little bit easier. What I will remember most about teaching at West Point is that the campus and the setting are just stunning. It’s amazingly beautiful. My wife and I both said, “Okay we’ll do West Point. What’s it going to be like?” We get there and we say “Oh my God, the Hudson Valley. No wonder there was a whole school of painters called the Hudson Valley School.” You’re presented with beauty all the time. Of course, you’re going to start painting it. My painting revived when I was there. I didn’t paint landscapes, but it was inspiring. And the campus is just gorgeous. The river is just amazing. There are a couple other sort of trivial things I will also remember. I have not been “Sir” so much in my entire life nor have I been so consistently cleanshaven. No one made me shave of course, but when in Rome, right? Otherwise, I appreciated the dedication and discipline of the cadets and their eagerness to learn. Not that that is hugely different from elsewhere, but I think there’s a slightly higher consistency to it. It was a pleasant experience. I like you all as students and the History Department was friendly and welcoming, a great group of people. I really enjoyed that aspect of it. I made lots of good friends. All in all, it was a fabulous year. I am incredibly glad I did it. I would happily do it again.
- 21. Rally Point, 21 Okay, last question. What do you for fun? An inside-source mentioned something about Dungeons and Dragons…Speaking of the friends I made in the History Department, I am still part of an ongoing online DND game with a number of the rotating officers. Yes, I like playing DND. I like playing games generally. My son who’s a graduate student at NC State is running a little DND- like roll playing game, and he’s the game master. My wife, my youngest son, and I are the three players in the game. We are having a great time about once a week. I’m a game player. What else do I do for fun? I read a bunch of fantasy detective fiction. I draw and paint, that’s sort of built into my life. I live my life for fun. I teach history because it’s fun. I play a bit of piano. I try to make everything I do fun at some level. I think that’s a healthy attitude to have. If you make life fun, it’s going to be more enjoyable to go through. A great deal of wisdom to end on. Thank you so much, sir.
- 22. Rally Point, 22 GEORGE FOSTER EMMONS: THE EARLY CAREER OF AN AMERICAN NAVAL OFFICER, 1828-1841 BY MAHLON SORENSON Preface The following is a biography of George Foster Emmons, a nineteenth century American naval officer. The narrative recounts Emmons’ life as a junior officer, opening in 1828 with his commissioning and closing in 1841 at the end of his first deployment as a Lieutenant. The quotations, dates, ships, and people in this paper are all real, coming from the Emmons Family Papers at the Beinecke Library and an array of secondary sources. Together, they create a timeline of Emmons’ life during this thirteen-year span, and give me a general sense of Emmons’ whereabouts and actions. However, a biography must be more than a timeline, and to write one for Emmons, I had to resurrect him. Unfortunately, the archival record is insufficient for this task. After all, Emmons did not think of his service as a collection of headings and bearings, so neither could I. To communicate his experience to the reader, then, I added emotion, perspective, and even a few minor events where I believed they were appropriate. This article is also a portrait of the U.S. Navy from 1828-1841. This piece does not convey the totality of American naval action during this period – nor does it intend to – but it is impossible to chronicle Emmons’ career without depicting the organization in which he served. American naval historians often gloss over the early nineteenth century, and it is understandable why. Compared to the grand history of the U.S. Navy, there was little notable naval action between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. Yet, it was in these slow and uneventful years that the Navy evolved from a struggling collection of outdated ships, to an established maritime force en route to projecting American power around the globe. Though Emmons was not an exceptional officer, his career reflects these changes, making his story a glimpse into this overlooked period of history.
- 23. Rally Point, 23 Part I: Becoming a Midshipman George Foster Emmons joined the U.S. Navy on April 1, 1828, at the age of seventeen. For the next thirteen years, Emmons served his country as a junior officer, completing a diplomatic cruise to the Mediterranean and an exploring expedition to the Antarctic. During this time, Emmons’ service was that of a typical nineteenth century naval officer, and his experience was accordingly two-sided. He knew the excitement of sailing and the terror of being trapped in a storm; the joys of completing a mission and the disappointment of failure; the hope of promotion and the frustration of delay; the pride at serving among a fine corps of officers and the grief of seeing his shipmates die. At the end of his second deployment, Emmons was a competent junior officer, prepared for decades of leadership and command that would end with his retirement in 1872. But while he did not know what lay ahead, in all likelihood, Emmons would have planned on becoming a career officer. There were a few reasons for this. For one, the culture of the nineteenth century officer corps overwhelmingly favored extended service. Military hierarchies incentivize long careers, and this was especially true of the Navy in the 1800s, where most officers served until they retired or were unable to be promoted.1 This structure encouraged conformity, and when he joined, Emmons would have known that he was expected to remain in the Navy until he was no longer able. Emmons also came from a family of career officers; he had at least two cousins in the Navy in 1828.2 These connections suggest that Emmons was destined to join the Navy, and it is not hard to imagine that he would have prepped for a naval career throughout his youth. What is more, becoming an officer was a secure career choice. The Navy would not only provide Emmons with economic stability, it would establish him as an “officer and gentleman.” For someone like Emmons, who came from an unimportant Vermont family of comfortable wealth, the permanent status of the officer corps was enticing. Remaining in Vermont or setting out on his own would not provide this stability. However, this security had its costs, as a career in the Navy was more unpredictable than staying at home. Junior officers had little control over the orders they received, and in many ways Emmons was surrendering his individual freedom by becoming an officer. The decision to volunteer, then, was a significant one, and it must have weighed on Emmons in the months before he joined. In 1828, commissioning was a game of connections. The process of becoming an officer was ill-defined, and afamily would ruthlessly exploit any leverage they had to get their son a commission. To be appointed a Midshipman, young men would first need to be recommended to Congress. There was no specific way to do this, but connections to the Navy would all but ensure that an application was considered. Emmons, therefore, started at an advantage, as endorsements from his relatives in the Navy would have given his application instant credibility. Emmons’ older cousin, Lieutenant H.B. Sawyer, provided one 1 Stars and Spars: The American Navy in the Age of Sail, ed. By W. Patrick Strauss (Blaisdell Publishing Company; Waltham, MA; 1969), 61-63. 2 Emmons Family Papers, Box 1, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
- 24. Rally Point, 24 of these endorsements, noting later, “I shall always take great pride and pleasure in furthering your advancement in the service.”3 In this age, nepotism was commonplace, and once accepted by Congress, Emmons’ application would be passed to the Executive Branch for approval. The exact details of the Congressional and Executive approval process are unclear but with citizenship, a good bill of health, and space in the training pipeline, well-recommended young men like Emmons would have had a reasonable expectation of being commissioned. Sometime in the spring of 1828, Emmons received official notice of his commission. Accompanying some papers from the Secretary of the Navy was an order from President John Quincy Adams that directed Emmons “carefully and diligently to discharge the duties of a Midshipman.”4 This certificate was ceremonial; it was nothing more than a mass-produced letter on which an executive aide had printed Emmons’ name. The title of Midshipman – Emmons’ first rank upon joining the Navy – was essentially meaningless. As far as the regulations were concerned, Midshipman Emmons was an officer from the day he swore his oath of service. He was entitled to the rights and privileges that accompanied his rank, including salutes from enlisted sailors and access to the officers’ mess. But when it came to wielding real authority, young Midshipmen like Emmons were no more capable than the newest enlisted sailors. Everyone, including his subordinates, recognized that Emmons was new to the Navy, and they treated him as such. Only experience and respect up and down the chain of command would enable Emmons to carry out the duties of an officer. And getting to that point was by no means given: if Emmons was deemed unfit for service by failing his training or demonstrating improper conduct, his career would be brought to an end. After commissioning, Emmons arrived at the Naval School in the Brooklyn Navy Yard for the first part of his Midshipman training. The Naval Academy had not yet been established (that would come in 1845), and instead, Midshipmen like Emmons were sent to the Naval School to learn the basics of seamanship. During the first months of his career, however, much of Emmons’ training would take place outside of the classroom. Life in the officer corps was an exercise in social navigation as much as it was about leadership or sailing, and to be a respected officer, Emmons would have to master the customs, courtesies, and traditions of the Navy. As a Lieutenant, Sawyer knew this, and he wanted to make sure his cousin did not destroy his career before it started. So, in August 1828, Sawyer wrote Emmons a letter on how to properly conduct himself as a Midshipman. Jumping the chain of command was the first cardinal sin Sawyer instructed his cousin to avoid: “you should not like to trouble Lieutenant Brackenridge for you must always recall that This Gentlemen is your superior officer.”5 Even though Brackenridge was Emmons’ supervisor, Sawyer made it clear that Emmons 3 Letter from H.B Sawyer, August 28 1828, Emmons Papers Box 1, Folder 6. 4 Commissioning Certificate of David B. Morgan, June 25 1828, The Department of the Navy Library, Naval History and Heritage Command, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/manuscripts/a/president-john-quincy- adams.html 5 Sawyer Letter, Box 1, Folder 6.
- 25. Rally Point, 25 should make every effort to solve his problems at the lowest possible level, consulting older Midshipmen “whenever you should feel at a loss.”6 The Navy was not the first time Emmons was exposed to a rigid hierarchy, but Sawyer reiterated the importance of knowing one’s place. Badgering Brackenridge with petty concerns may not have been against the explicit rules for Midshipmen, but it violated the unspoken boundary between Midshipmen and senior officers. Sawyer then affirmed the value of a good reputation, warning Emmons “if you fail in conduct to gain the approbation of your teacher, and your superior officers, you will not obtain your Warrant.”7 If Emmons was not in good personal standing with his peers and superiors, he would be ostracized. The officer corps was a close-knit community, and rumors of an impolite Midshipman would spread quickly, giving Emmons all the more reason to protect his image. Sawyer was also tied to Emmons’ success; he had recommended him, and their familial connection would have been well known. To this point, Sawyer closed his letter with an double-edged vote of confidence: “I hope your diligence and good conduct at school will save you this disgrace, and your friends the mortification of knowing that they have recommended an idle, and unworthy person, to the honor of a ‘Midshipman Warrant’ in the Navy.”8 While Sawyer’s advice was patronizing and not particularly groundbreaking, Emmons took it seriously. He, too, knew what was at stake, and he wanted to start his career off well. Besides the personal reasons for wanting to be a successful officer, Emmons felt it was his duty to service his country to the best of his ability. This patriotism guided Emmons throughout his career. And so, for his first few months at the Navy Yard, Emmons was hyper-aware of the expectations that had been set for him; he rarely spoke unless he was addressed, his uniform was immaculate, and his salutes were crisp and timely. Emmons was never praised for flawlessly adhering to these standards, but he liked to believe that his efforts did not go unnoticed. Part II: Disaster in the Harbor While Emmons was busy training in Brooklyn, the Navy struggled with its own problems. Whether he knew it or not, Emmons had joined the service during one of the most uneventful periods in its history. The Navy had three key missions in the first half of the nineteenth century – protecting commerce from piracy, fighting the illegal slave trade, and supporting diplomacy. All of these lacked the sophisticated naval action that the officers and men longed for. As a result, low morale plagued the service, reflecting and magnifying the Navy’s existing institutional issues. To make matters worse, the lull in activity was juxtaposed with the grand expectations that had been set for the Navy earlier in the century. After the War of 1812, the United States was primed to become a maritime power. In 1816, Congress appropriated $8 million to build nine sloops-of-war, massive warships with three masts each and 74 guns arranged on two decks.9 In addition to these 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 M. Hill Goodspeed, U.S. Navy: A Complete History (Naval Historical Foundation;
- 26. Rally Point, 26 modern capital ships, the construction bill included funding for twelve frigates, moderately sized men of war with 44 guns each. When sponsoring this expansion, Congress envisioned a fleet that would solidify America’s claim to the Western Hemisphere under the Monroe Doctrine. Going a step further, some navalists believed that the fleet should be used to project power around the globe.10 These 21 ships would have accomplished both goals, and many hoped they would establish the U.S. Navy as one of the preeminent fleets of the nineteenth century. But only a few years later, the future of the Navy seemed less promising. In 1821, Congress slashed the Navy’s budget and cancelled the building projects. Only a few ships were completed before the cuts, and they were ineffective for the Navy’s limited missions in the 1820s. They were too large and slow to capture pirate ships, and with dozens of guns each, they were over-armed for even the most powerful slavers.11 Moreover, the United States was not interested in projecting power, and it found no need to maintain a fleet for its defense. European powers did not challenge the Monroe Doctrine (at least not yet), and the United States, with its historic isolationism, abandoned its plans to be a balancing force in Europe.12 As Congress scaled-back the size of the fleet, failed reforms and poor leaders left the Navy disorganized and directionless. In 1815, Congress established the Board of Navy Commissioners, a group of three captains who were tasked with “the procurement of naval stores and materials, and the construction, armament equipment and employment, of vessels of war, as well as all other matters connected with the naval establishment of the United States.”13 With this broad mandate, the Board attempted to seize power from the Secretary of the Navy. In response, the Secretary exercised direct control over low-level naval operations to limit the power of the Board. In the midst of these fights, long-term planning was disregarded, and bureaucratic micromanaging hampered officers’ autonomy and ability to lead. The system was reformed again in 1842, when five bureaus – Navy Yards and Docks; Construction, Equipment, and Repairs; Provisions and Clothing; Ordnance and Hydrography; Medicine and Surgery – replaced the Board.14 But for the 27 years that the Board existed, the Navy suffered from a lack of leadership. Before joining the Navy, Emmons was not aware of these problems. But at the Naval School it was impossible to escape them. Naval news, good and bad, was discussed across the base, and engaging with the current events of the fleet was an important part of wardroom etiquette. Senior officers took care not to slander the service – such conduct was improper – but they did seem concerned about the Navy and its leaders. In some cases, Emmons could see 2003), 98. 10 Craig L. Symonds, Navalists and Antinavalists: The Naval Policy Debate in the United States, 1785-1827 (University of Delaware Press; Newark; 1980). 11 Symonds, The U.S. Navy: A Concise History. 12 Symonds, Navalists and Antinavalists. 13 “The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations,” Naval History and Heritage Command, 2019, https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/people/chiefs-of- naval-operations/the-office1.html 14 Ibid.
- 27. Rally Point, 27 how the Navy was suffering. The Navy Yard was one of the service’s largest installations and one of its primary shipbuilding facilities. Yet, as Emmons walked around the base, he saw more ships being decommissioned than were being built or prepared for deployments. The sight of once-mighty men of war being pulled apart saddened Emmons, but with budget cuts and limited missions, there was no other option. For the time being, Emmons observed the Navy’s problems from afar. But as he finished the classroom instruction at the Naval School, Emmons found himself in the middle of one of the Navy’s most pressing problems – how it was going to incorporate steam power into the fleet. In 1807, Robert Fulton designed and built the first commercial steamship, the Clermont, for use on the Hudson River. Immediately, naval architects around the world weaponized the new technology, and in June 1815, the U.S. Navy launched its first steamship. Named after its designer, the USS Fulton was 156 feet long and had a displacement of 2,475 tons, making her the largest steam frigate in the world.15 Instead of a conventional mono-hull, the Fulton had two catamaran-style hulls – with bulkheads five feet thick – that surrounded her paddlewheel in an ingenious design. Besides her steam engine, the Fulton had two masts (in case the engine broke) and she could carry 30 cannons that could each fire 32-pound shot.16 The Fulton was not the most nimble or powerful vessel in the fleet, but her revolutionary technology and design made her the most important. Why, then, did the Navy relegate the Fulton to service as an unarmed receiving ship? The best answer: the Board of Naval Commissioners distrusted steam power, but for the wrong reasons. The Board believed that crews would lose discipline without constant sail drill, and it feared that steamships would get too dirty. And so, the Fulton spent her days ferrying people and supplies around New York Harbor, and training Midshipmen like Emmons, who reported for duty on the Navy’s first steamship in early 1829.17 While still attached to the Naval School, Emmons’ was no longer confined to a classroom. On the Fulton, Emmons applied the technical skills he had learned in the past year, like rigging sails and maneuvering a ship. Showing up to your first ship is a memorable step in any officer’s career, and Emmons must have been pleased to leave the classroom behind and begin to actually sail, even if it was only around the harbor. Emmons was also introduced to leadership on the Fulton. He now had command authority over subordinate sailors, and part of his training on the Fulton was navigating the tricky business of leading men. The training on the Fulton forced Emmons to combine his technical knowledge and leadership, a departure from the rote memorization of the classroom. For example, if he was tasked with changing a sail configuration, Emmons could not simply change the sail, rig the mast, and trim the sheets himself. He had to delegate tasks to his subordinate sailors and manage them as they followed his 15 “Fulton I (Catamaran Steam Frigate),” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Naval History and Heritage Command, 2015, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/f/fulton-i.html 16 U.S. Navy: A Complete History, 110-111, and A Global Chronology of Conflict: From the Ancient World to the Modern Middle East, edited by Spencer C. Tucker (ABC-CLIO; Santa Barbara, CA; 2010), 1317. 17 Ibid.
- 28. Rally Point, 28 orders. This was not as easy as it sounded, as experienced sailors followed directions incorrectly or failed to correct Emmons’ mistakes as they happened. Completing his training on the Fulton did not qualify Emmons for promotion (that would come after a longer cruise on the open ocean), but it did orient him to the dynamics of the operational Navy. Training can be stressful, but on Thursday, June 4, 1829, Emmons was relaxed. His supervisor, Lieutenant Brackenridge, had given him the day off “to go on shore on some business.”18 The details of Emmons’ “business” are absent from his papers, and it is reasonable to assume that his trip on shore included more than just errands and appointments. There was much to see in Brooklyn, and after settling his business Emmons spent some time exploring the port. Brackenridge probably knew this (he had been a Midshipman at one point, too), but he granted the request nonetheless. An allowance of this nature was fairly common, and if Midshipman were in good standing, they could reasonably expect to get a few days off each month if the ship’s schedule permitted. Emmons completed his tasks by midday, and after a few hours of walking around, he decided to head back to the Fulton, which was moored in the harbor about two hundred yards off shore. While Emmons was on a pier at the Navy Yard, waiting for a skiff to bring him back his ship, a thunderclap echoed across the harbor. Fear gripped Emmons as he turned towards the noise; the Fulton had just exploded and was burning violently. The explosion had ripped the Fulton “from stem to stern,” and she was sinking fast.19 Officers and sailors in the Navy Yard scrambled to help, rushing to rowboats and barges to rescue any survivors. While all this happened, Emmons remained on the pier, shocked by what he had just witnessed. Over the next few hours, Emmons watched as sailors pulled bodies from the harbor. He would later describe the dead and injured as so “burned and bloody in that situation I could hardly distinguish one from another.”20 An accident in the magazine caused the blast, not an issue with the steam engine. At 2:30pm, a gunner had gone below decks “to procure powder to fire the evening gun,” and the explosion occurred while he was in the powder hold.21 There was no evidence of a plot, and carelessness was likely the cause of the accident. The gunner had “just been appointed to that office,” and this was the first time he had gone to the magazine alone. Just before the gunner left, Lieutenant Brackenridge warned him to be careful, especially with his candle. Evidently, the gunner did not heed the warning. A single spark set the entire magazine alight, triggering the explosion that destroyed the Fulton. By one 18 Emmons Papers, Box 1, Folder 6. 19 “Dreadful Explosion of the Steam Frigate Fulton,” New York Daily Advertiser, June 5 1829, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, https://search.proquest.com/docview/481984083/29837208E62D4BE6PQ/1?account id=15172 20 Emmons Papers, Box 1, Folder 6. 21 “Dreadful Explosion: Names of the Killed Officers, Wounded Midshipmen, Privates Wounded, Connecticut Courant, June 9, 1829, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, https://search.proquest.com/docview/548525704/29837208E62D4BE6PQ/2?account id=15172
- 29. Rally Point, 29 account, the blast was so powerful that it ripped both masts from the deck and “filled [the air] with fragments of the vessel.”22 Of the 143 officers and men attached to the Fulton, roughly sixty were estimated to be on board when she exploded. Thirty of them died. Lieutenant Brackenridge was among them. A few officers were hosting a party on the Fulton that afternoon, and Brackenridge was eating in the officer’s wardroom with his wife when the magazine exploded. The wardroom was some distance from the magazine, but the force of the explosion threw Brackenridge against the bulkhead and knocked others to their knees. Brackenridge survived the explosion, but he was badly injured and was rushed to the hospital at the Navy Yard. By the next morning, he had died from his wounds. His wife, who he had married only two months before, escaped with a few minor burns. Emmons was understandably upset at Brackenridge’s death, and he confessed his grief in a letter to his brother. “I regret his death very much. He was a very fine young officer, and his death is regretted by all that knew him.”23 In the aftermath of the accident, Emmons was flooded with letters, one of which was from his cousin H.B. Sawyer. Newspapers detailed the officers and men who were wounded or killed, but Sawyer had heard conflicting accounts of the carnage, and he wanted to know if his cousin was “in the land of the living or not.”24 To Sawyers’ relief, Emmons was unharmed. While belongings on the ship – and two dollars of savings – were destroyed, he was fortunate to not have been hurt. In many ways, Emmons’ safety was entirely due to chance; without asking for the morning off, Emmons would have been on board during the explosion. The officers’ party included Midshipmen, and if he had not been on shore, Emmons would have been in the wardroom with Brackenridge when the magazine exploded. This fact was not lost on Emmons. who later noted, “I feel very thankful to get off as I have, without losing my life.”25 The explosion of the Fulton was the first time Emmons experienced death during his naval career. Battle, disease, and accidents at sea killed sailors and officers almost every year, and Emmons knew this. He must have believed that he would see some of his fellow sailors die during his service; to think otherwise would have been naïve. Despite acknowledging these dangers, the explosion troubled Emmons. He would not have expected a catastrophe so early in his career, or in a place as peaceful and safe as New York Harbor. Mass casualty events were only supposed to happen in war, and Emmons struggled to comprehend how thirty sailors were killed because of carelessness. And whether he recognized it or not, Emmons probably felt guilty that he had been spared by nothing more than luck. As is the case with any tragedy, Emmons eventually moved on from the explosion. Yet the image of a burning ship – his first ship – was etched in Emmons’ mind for the rest of his life, a reminder of the ever-present risks of naval service. Part III: The Mediterranean Station 22 Ibid. 23 Emmons Papers, Box 1, folder 6 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid.
- 30. Rally Point, 30 In the year after the Fulton explosion, Emmons’ life was uneventful. He was still in Brooklyn at the Naval School, but having completed the curriculum, there was little to do. In order to continue his training, Emmons needed to find a Captain that had space for a Midshipman on his next cruise. The Naval School introduced Emmons to the technical skills he would need as an officer, but the Midshipman cruise was where these skills were honed. The cruise was the first time Emmons would sail on the open ocean, making it the first true test of his seamanship. In the stressful environment of a warship, Midshipmen would demonstrate their competency, or they would falter as their weaknesses were exposed. The worst would be given the title of “Jonah.” Named after the biblical character who was swallowed by a whale, a Jonah was a sailor who did not belong at sea, someone who brought bad luck to himself and his entire ship. Sailors are a superstitious bunch, and a Midshipman who was cursed with this title would quickly find that he had no place in the Navy. Emmons and his peers feared becoming a Jonah, and although they may have believed they were competent Midshipmen, each knew that they could only consider themselves sailors after their cruise. The cruise, then, was a trial, but it was also a turning point. After completing the cruise and six years of service, Midshipmen could sit for the Lieutenant’s Exam, a daunting oral examination administered by a board of senior officers. Passing the exam would increase Emmons’ pay, but more importantly, it would make him eligible for promotion to Lieutenant. If there were no billets for Lieutenant (a near-certainty considering the glut of officers in the fleet), Emmons would bear the unofficial title of Passed-Midshipman until a billet was available. As a Passed-Midshipman, Emmons would be regarded as a competent officer prepared for the responsibilities that accompanied naval leadership. However, failing the exam was equally consequential; if a Midshipman was “rejected by a board of examiners, they [were] obliged to relinquish their adopted profession.”26 With these milestones on the horizon, Emmons began to search for a cruise. Captains were expected to take as many Midshipmen as their ship could accommodate, but finding a cruise was still difficult. For one, a Captain had the final say on who was included in his crew, and many would have turned Midshipmen down even if they had space. Midshipmen were a significant burden on a crowded warship, requiring a berthing, food, and water. Training was time and labor intensive, requiring senior officers or experienced sailors to forego their existing responsibilities to instruct Midshipmen. And for what benefit? Midshipmen were like interns, helpful for small, inconsequential tasks, but useless when it came to operating a warship. Even if every skipper took a full contingent of Midshipmen, Emmons still would have struggled to find space. The frequent cuts to the Navy’s budget decreased the number of deployable ships, and with no building projects, the fleet was shrinking. Emmons would have to be patient, and while he was on the Fulton, this was not a problem. He was, after all, still training. However, without 26 “Examination of Midshipmen,” Army and Navy Chronicle, Volume 2, Issue 18 (May 5, 1836), 284, accessed on ProQuest Historical Newspapers, https://search.proquest.com/docview/124474581/30CA5507F95422BPQ/5?accounti d=15172
- 31. Rally Point, 31 the Fulton, Emmons needed to find a cruise as quickly as possible. Waiting at the Navy Yard was boring, and after a year of training, Emmons was ready to go to sea. Worse, delaying his cruise would foster the impression that Emmons was avoiding his duty, a label almost as bad as a Jonah. Ever guided by Sawyer’s letter, Emmons’ knew the importance of protecting his reputation. He began writing Captains across the fleet as soon as the smoke from the Fulton cleared. In early 1830, Emmons received good news; Captain Edmund P. Kennedy had space for him on the USS Brandywine. Considering the high demand for Midshipman cruises, it is possible that Sawyer wrote to Kennedy asking him to take Emmons. Such a request would not have been out of the ordinary, and Sawyer could not be blamed for wanting his cousin’s career to progress as quickly as possible. However, there is no note of this transaction in the archives, so Emmons may have just gotten lucky. Either way, by mid- summer, Emmons had left Brooklyn to meet Kennedy and the Brandywine in Norfolk, Virginia. The Brandywine had just completed a short deployment to the Gulf of Mexico, returning to Norfolk on July 7. Brandywine amazed Emmons as she pulled into Hampton Roads, her sleek black and white hull cutting through the calm water, and her three towering masts outlined against Fort Monroe in the background. Standing on the shore, the differences between the Brandywine the Fulton were apparent. At 175 feet long and 45 feet wide, the Brandywine was longer and thinner than the stout two-hulled Fulton, and she actually looked like a warship. The Brandywine was also 700 tons lighter than the Fulton, but her draft was twice as deep, and as a result she sat lower in the water, making her both harder to destroy and more elegant. Most importantly, she was armed, and even from the shore, Emmons could count fifteen guns on her broadside. The Brandywine, a Potomac-class frigate launched in 1825, was one of the most modern and powerful ships in the fleet, and this fact was not lost on Emmons when he saw her for the first time. For the next few months, Emmons prepared the Brandywine for her next mission, a three-year diplomatic cruise around Europe as part of the Navy’s Mediterranean Squadron. For the nineteen-year-old Emmons, this was the best cruise he could have asked for. Not only would he sail on one of the Navy’s finest ships (a useful thing to have on a service record), he would visit the great ports of the Mediterranean. Long, lonely bouts at sea were rare for diplomatic missions, and during peacetime the Mediterranean – known for its calm seas and warm weather – was relatively safe. But before the Brandywine set sail, there was much to accomplish. The Brandywine required a complement of 480 officers and men, and finding enough gunners, boatswains, quartermasters, helmsmen, and carpenters was not an easy task. In the weeks that preceded the Brandywine’s departure, the crew gathered supplies, made repairs, and completed dozens of checks on board.27 Emmons 27 The Brandywine required a staggering amount of supplies for her deployment. For six-months at sea, the USS Constitution, a frigate the same size at the Brandywine, needed the following: 76,000 pounds of bread, 52,000 pounds of beef, 40,000 pounds of pork, 12,500 pounds of flour, 47,000 gallons of water, and enough canvas, line, and wood to repair the ship when things inevitably broke. For more on naval logistics see Matthew Brenckle, “Food and Drink in the U.S. Navy, 1794 to
- 32. Rally Point, 32 played a role in this process, but it was not an exciting one. He spent the summer as a middle manager, overseeing sailors as they inspected the sails and armed the magazine. Emmons’ role was not essential (senior enlisted sailors did not need a Midshipman to supervise them as they counted cannonballs), but it allowed him to get to know the ship and crew before they stood to sea. After weeks of preparation, the Brandywine departed Norfolk on September 13 on a course to Port Mahon, Minorca with a stop in Gibraltar. Every day on the cruise, while at sea or in port, Emmons recorded the weather, position, direction, wind, distance travelled, and sail configuration of the Brandywine.28 Keeping this logbook – a tedious thing to do on a cruise that lasted three years – was a significant part of Emmons’ training, requiring him to perform a series of calculations and observations that were routine to naval operations. Although this record is not as detailed as the Brandywine’s deck logs (the legal ledger of the ship’s movements and actions that recorded the all decisions made by the officer of the deck), it gives a broad picture of what Emmons life was like on the Brandywine. According to Emmons’ logbook, the journey across the Atlantic was mostly smooth. It was, however, longer than expected. Norfolk and Gibraltar have roughly similar latitudes, but instead of sailing straight across the Atlantic, Kennedy set a course south to Bermuda. The Brandywine did not stop at the tropical islands, but Kennedy used them to mark his turn eastward to Africa. On this course, the crossing was about two weeks longer than sailing due east, but there were several reasons for this choice. First, this route was more reliable; a direct crossing risked patchy wind, and, by sailing south, Kennedy could use the consistent trade winds that flowed across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands. Second, the southerly route was safer; using the Gulf Stream to slingshot the Brandywine through the North Atlantic risked running into an autumn storm, and with a novice crew Kennedy had reason to be conservative.29 Kennedy’s decision was proven correct. The Brandywine did not run into any major storms during the passage, and the wind was steady, allowing her to cover over 100 nautical miles a day. This may not sound like a lot, but averaging 5 knots for a ship the size of the Brandywine was a noteworthy achievement. And so, making good time and with little concern for the weather, Kennedy put his crew to work. A two-month Atlantic crossing was a perfect opportunity to train the crew before reaching the Mediterranean, and Kennedy did just that. This training included Midshipmen, too, and for Emmons, these weeks would have been hectic but exhilarating. Days started early on the Brandywine. As the dawn watches ended, the ship’s bell stirred the crew to life, 480 officers and men eating breakfast and preparing for the day. Each morning, Emmons reported to his supervisor, Lieutenant G.L. Pendergast, to receive his orders. Over the course of the cruise, Pendergast and Emmons became friends, and Emmons considered Pendergast 1820.” USS Constitution Museum, 2018, https://ussconstitutionmuseum.org/wp- content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2019/05/Food-and-Drink-in-the-US-Navy.pdf. 28 Emmons Papers, Brandywine Journal I, Box 18. 29 Andrew Simpson, “Sailing Across the Atlantic” Crew Seekers International, 2020, https://www.crewseekers.net/notices/sailing-across-atlantic-classic-blue- water-voyage/
- 33. Rally Point, 33 to be a mentor throughout his career. However, at this point in the deployment, the two had a strictly professional relationship. The morning sun made for consistent calculations, and Emmons began the day by working on his logbook entries. Ten days into the journey, while Emmons was halfway through his sextant observations, the ship’s drum beat to general quarters. Used to signal a coming engagement or the beginning of a drill, general quarters was the drop- everything-and-move command, sending sailors and officers scrambling to get to their duty stations. For the inexperienced Emmons, this meant reporting to the quarterdeck, a raised area near the stern of the ship. The quarterdeck was the heart of the ship, and from there, the skipper and his senior officers directed the crew’s every move, from cannon fire to sail trimming. For the next three hours, Kennedy put the Brandywine through a demanding session of sail drill and ship maneuvering. Each time, Kennedy gave a command – speed up, slow down, change sails – to the Sailing Master, the officer responsible for the ship’s navigation and handling. Following the command, the Sailing Master decided the best way to heed the skipper’s request and issued an order to his senior enlisted counterpart (the Sailing Master’s mate, or simply the Master’s mate). The Master’s mate then blew the matching call through a whistle for the crew to hear. For the next few minutes, the crew rushed to trim the sails to the desired specifications and awaited the next command. Sometimes, Kennedy’s order required a course correction, in which case the Sailing Master would give an order to the master’s mate and helmsman, who steered the ship. For instance, executing a tack – a maneuver used when sailing into the wind – required the ship to turn windward and the sails to be re-trimmed. This process, then, was complex, and perfecting it with a new crew required practice. A crew’s ability to handle its ship was a visible indication of its seamanship, and Kennedy wanted the Brandywine to embody American naval excellence before it reached the Mediterranean, where it would inevitably cross paths with its European counterparts. As a Midshipman, there was little for Emmons to do during sail drill except watch. Nevertheless, by observing the sequence of commands, actions, and movements, Emmons saw how the sailing principles he had learned at the Naval School were applied in the fleet. And ever mindful that sail drill would be on the Lieutenant’s Exam, Emmons took everything in. After the drills were finished around midday, Emmons began his instruction with the other Midshipman. At these meetings, which took place in a makeshift classroom on the gun deck, Pendergast taught the Midshipmen subjects like “plane trigonometry, spherics, nautical astronomy, and navigation.”30 Besides the classes and drills, Emmons stood watch. Emmons hated watch, which consisted of standing a post and being a lookout, but since the Captain was the only one on a ship who was not on the watch bill, he would have to get used to it. 30 Matthew Fontaine Murray Letter on “A New Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Navigation,” Febuary 13 1835, The Department of the Navy Library, Naval History and Heritage Command, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/manuscripts/m/matthew-fontaine- maury-letter-from-matthew-fontaine-maury-to-cary-lea-company-regarding- publication-of-his-manuscript-on-navigation.html
- 34. Rally Point, 34 After a while, Emmons became comfortable at sea. By the time the Brandywine passed Bermuda, Emmons was no longer getting lost, and soon thereafter he discovered that the constant rocking did not make him sick. The uneven schedule of drills, class, and watch was tiring and disorienting, but it kept him busy. Emmons grew closer to his fellow Midshipmen, even thinking of a couple as friends. Under a good Captain like Kennedy, Emmons was pleased with his first weeks at sea. As was the custom, every few nights Emmons would be invited to the wardroom to dine with Kennedy, Pendergast, and the other officers. He looked forward to these dinners, as they provided a welcome reprieve from the fast pace of life (the food was also better in the wardroom than it was on the rest of the ship). At these occasions, Emmons mostly sat in silence, laughing and nodding when appropriate, but he enjoyed embracing the role of officer and gentleman that Sawyer had spoken so much about. The crossing was almost completed without a hitch, but when the Brandywine was a few days away from Gibraltar, a disease broke out among the crew. By time the Brandywine approached Gibraltar on November 31, 23 sailors had fallen ill. Perhaps because of the disease, the stop at Gibraltar was quick; the Brandywine took on 560 gallons of water and departed the next day en route to Port Mahon. The sickness continued to spread, and when the Brandywine arrived at Port Mahon on December 9, 30 sailors were ill. Emmons’ logbook notes the number of ill men, which peaked at 36 on December 15, but he does not describe the symptoms of the disease. Because there were no recorded fatalities, it is safe to assume that the disease was not deadly.31 It is unclear if any officers were infected, but the epidemic was still a cause for concern. Sick sailors meant there were gaps in the watch schedule, and to compensate, Kennedy likely reduced the tempo of operations – no unnecessary sail drill or maneuvers – until the ship docked at Port Mahon. The disease was unsettling to Emmons, but it was not unexpected. In the tight spaces of a warship, men frequently fell ill, and Emmons recognized that sickness was another unsavory part of being at sea. Tracking the disease in his logbook, Emmons continued his entries as if everything was normal. The Brandywine’s arrival at Port Mahon coincided with its transfer to the Mediterranean Squadron. This change was bureaucratic and it had little effect on the daily operations of the ship. Kennedy was still in command, but he now received his orders from Commodore James Biddle, who controlled all U.S. Navy ships in the Mediterranean. To mark the change, and to announce the arrival of a powerful American warship, the Brandywine saluted Biddle with thirteen guns as she entered the harbor.32 As was custom, Biddle returned the greeting with a seven-gun salute from his flagship, the USS Constellation.33 As the cannons roared, Emmons stood on deck in his dress uniform, proudly facing outboard at the position of attention. The Brandywine continued down the long, narrow 31 Emmons Papers, Brandywine Journal I, Box 18. 32 Emmons Papers, Brandywine Journal I, Box 18. 33 “Constellation I (Frigate),” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Naval History and Heritage Command, 2004, https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/histories/ship- histories/danfs/c/constellation-i.html
- 35. Rally Point, 35 channel into Port Mahon for about an hour, and Emmons marveled at the terra cotta roofs that dotted the rocky shoreline – a stark difference from the drab colonial houses of Norfolk. This deployment was likely the first time Emmons had travelled outside the United States, and he was excited to spend some time exploring. The Brandywine must have looked immaculate as she glided into Port Mahon – newly painted, decks scrubbed clean, sails just so – and in that moment, Emmons struggled to keep a smile from creeping across his face. Such an overt display of emotion was improper for a naval officer, so Emmons tried his best to keep a straight face. Most of all, Emmons was relieved to be in port. After nearly three straight months at sea, Emmons looked forward to a slower pace of life, and Christmas, which was a few weeks away. The Brandywine left Port Mahon in mid-January, ordered by Biddle to visit Marseille. Over the next eighteen months, the Brandywine sailed around the Mediterranean, showing the flag and demonstrating the professionalism of the U.S. Navy. For Emmons, this diplomatic mission was hardly a change. Drills resumed (though only when the Brandywine was out of sight of watchful ships) and Midshipmen classes picked back up, all while Emmons continued to record the cruise in his dreaded logbook. After Marseille, the Brandywine visited Genoa and then Palermo on similar missions. The Brandywine stayed a few months at each port, long enough to project American power, but not too long to become imposing. Within a few days of arriving, local diplomats and politicians invited Kennedy and the senior officers to official receptions as a sign of goodwill. Midshipmen were not included in these formal occasions, but Emmons did not mind; there was plenty to do in each port. In July 1832, however, there was a sense of urgency on the Brandywine. While in Palermo, Biddle ordered the Brandywine to abandon its flag-waving missions and sail to Naples as quickly as possible. There, former Maryland Congressman John Nelson was negotiating with King Ferdinand II, who refused to pay reparations for the American merchant ships his predecessor had captured during the Napoleonic Wars. President Andrew Jackson was furious with the delay, and to pressure Ferdinand, he ordered the Mediterranean Squadron to Naples. Setting off a day after receiving the orders, the Brandywine was tense on the short journey to Naples. There was no indication that the ship would be met with hostile fire, and in many ways this gunboat diplomacy was another port visit. But Emmons could not be sure, and he was anxious as they sailed north. The Brandywine and Constellation rendezvoused off the coast of Italy, sailing into Naples together on July 23. In the next few weeks, the USS United States, USS John Adams, and USS Boston – all frigates larger than the Brandywine – arrived in support. With five warships in his harbor, Ferdinand quickly capitulated, paying the United States 2.1 million ducats for his predecessor’s actions.34 The Brandywine had successfully projected American power, and despite the lack of gunfire, Emmons viewed this as a victory. As the Brandywine left Naples, Emmons – ever the patriot – was proud to have accomplished something meaningful after four years of training. The Brandywine’s remaining months in the Mediterranean were less dramatic, and by spring 1833, she was preparing to sail back to the United States. She made one last stop in Gibraltar to resupply before the crossing, and on April 34 Mooney, “Brandywine,” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.
- 36. Rally Point, 36 1, she left the Rock on her way home. Instead of sailing to Hampton Roads, however, the Brandywine was bound for New York, where she would be decommissioned once again.35 To Emmons, the three-month transatlantic journey seemed longer than it had a few years before. The allure of the sea had worn off, and in light of the decommissioning, there was no need to drill the crew. The logbook entries – bloody agony at this point – continued, and when Emmons was not standing watch, he and the other Midshipmen studied for the Lieutenant’s Exam. Emmons was back on deck in his dress uniform when the Brandywine sailed into New York Harbor on July 9. To his surprise, the Brandywine did not continue up the East River to Brooklyn. Instead, she moored off Staten Island. There had been rumors of a yellow-fever outbreak, and for the next two days, the crew was quarantined on the ship.36 Emmons left the Brandywine on July 11, three years and four days after he watched her sail past Fort Monroe in wonder. Since then, Emmons had sailed close to 8,000 miles, and he was now a proven seaman who no longer feared the title of Jonah. He was also accustomed to life in the Navy. Emmons now thought of himself as an officer, and he was confident in his ability to lead sailors. As a memory of his Midshipman cruise, and to mark the end of the daily entries, Emmons included a newspaper clipping of the Brandywine’s return in his logbook.37 Unfortunately for Emmons, he had to wait almost a year until he was eligible for the Lieutenant’s Exam. He had completed his Midshipman cruise, but having joined the Navy in April 1828, Emmons was nine months short of the six-year service requirement for the exam. Even letters from Sawyer, Pendergast, and Kennedy would not have been able to get Emmons an examination. During this time, Emmons studied, and he probably returned to Vermont to see his family, as there was no reason to stay in New York. Spring 1834 eventually came, and Emmons returned to Brooklyn for the test. As he entered the examination room, Emmons had every reason to be confident. He had spent almost six years studying – at the Naval School, on the Fulton, at sea with the Brandywine, and on his own. Yet, as Emmons greeted the Commodore who chaired the Board of Examiners, he could not help but feel nervous. Over the next two hours, the examiners asked Emmons a series of questions about sailing, gunnery, navigation, naval law, and discipline. The exam flew by, and it seemed to Emmons that it was over before it began. The Commodore dismissed Emmons, and Emmons thanked the officers for their time. He would be notified of their decision within a few days.38 To his relief, Emmons passed. Emmons looked forward to his raise and promotion, which he figured would happen within a year. To Emmons’ 35 Mooney, “Brandywine,” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. 36 Emmons Papers, Brandywine Journal II, Box 18. 37 Ibid. 38 For on the debates on the Lieutenant’s Exam, see the “Examination of Midshipman” Series in Army and Navy Chronicle, Volume 2, Issue 14 (April 7, 1836), 200 and Volume 2, Issue 18 (May 5, 1836), 284 both accessed on ProQuest Historical Newspapers, https://search.proquest.com/docview/124476301/7825D6B0F4C04772PQ/1?account id=15172
- 37. Rally Point, 37 frustration, he was not promoted until almost four years later. Passing the Lieutenant’s Exam should have encouraged Emmons’ career, but instead it introduced him to the disorganized and inefficient naval bureaucracy, a foe he would fight for the rest of his career as a junior officer. Part IV: Taking the Initiative Problems with Emmons’ pay began as soon as he became a Passed- Midshipman. For two months after the exam, Emmons was paid $25 a month, but as a Passed-Midshipman on shore duty he was entitled to twice as much.39 Initially, Emmons did nothing, hoping that the issue would resolve itself. Making a fuss over $50 of pay was not prohibited, but it was not encouraged either. Officers were meant to trust the Navy to solve such problems, and filing a complaint was against the unwritten gentleman’s code that governed the actions of an officer. After three months, Emmons’ patience ran out. In early July 1834, Emmons wrote to John Acosta, a civilian employee at the Department of the Navy, about the issue with his pay. This was the first time that Emmons pushed back against the Navy, and it was a significant moment in his career. Emmons was now taking initiative, speaking out to correct a mistake. As a Midshipman, Emmons would not have been so bold, but after his cruise and the Lieutenant’s Exam, he was confident enough to fix the issue himself. Acosta claimed he could not help, directing Emmons to the Purser of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he was still stationed.40 However, the Purser – who Emmons’ likely visited before writing his letter – would not have been able to fix the problem. Due to disorganization and inefficiency, the Navy had not notified Brooklyn of Emmons’ promotion, forcing the Purser to pay Emmons as if he was a regular Midshipman. Frustrated by the issue and Acosta’s unwillingness to help, Emmons waited for the bureaucracy to catch up. It is unclear when this problem was fixed, or if Emmons received back pay, but the letter to Acosta is the last mention of Emmons’ pay issues. During this process, which exposed the Navy’s personnel and budget problems, Emmons realized that getting promoted to Lieutenant would be more difficult than he had thought. After six years in the Navy, Emmons was plugged into the gossip about the service, and the news he was hearing was not encouraging. The Navy was struggling, and, according to Pendergast and other senior officers, promotions were hard to come by.41 As Lieutenant’s billets opened up, promotions were given to Passed-Midshipman highest on the Navy List – a ledger that ordered the officer corps by rank and experience. Emmons, who had completed one deployment and recently passed the exam, was near the bottom of the Navy List for his rank. At this position, promotion would take at least two years. Wanting his career to progress as quickly as possible, Emmons needed to improve his service record to work his way up the Navy List. Emmons concluded that his best option was to return to sea. The Navy valued time spent underway, and deploying a second time was the best way to 39 “Navy Pay Chart for 1835” Navy CyberSpace, 2020, https://www.navycs.com/charts/1835-navy-pay-chart.html 40 Letter from John Acosta, July 8 1838, Emmons Papers, Box 1, Folder 7. 41 Letter from Francis Lowry, 1834, Emmons Papers, Box 1, Folder 7.
- 38. Rally Point, 38 gain this experience. Emmons also had financial reasons to search for another deployment; pay for a Passed-Midshipman increased 25% – to $62.50 a month – while at sea.42 Besides these personal incentives, Emmons may have felt compelled to return to the fleet. The pay issue had been frustrating, but there is no indication that it affected Emmons’ patriotism and dedication to the Navy. He still planned on a long career, and his sense of duty was unwavering. And so, in autumn 1836, Emmons’ volunteered for the United States Exploring Expedition, a five-year cruise commanded by Commodore Thomas ap Catsby Jones.43 Although Emmons would gain much-needed sailing experience by volunteering, he viewed the expedition as more than an opportunity to accelerate his career. Exploring had always interested Emmons; in 1828 he had witnessed the launch of the USS Peacock, the only ship in the Navy designed and built for exploring (Emmons also applied for a cruise on the Peacock but was denied). In many ways, Emmons was an outlier by joining the expedition. Few Passed-Midshipman looked to the exploring expedition as a fast track for promotion. Serving on ships of the line was the conventional career path for a junior officer, and many looked down on the expedition’s small size and unorthodox mission. Moreover, the five-year deployment to the Antarctic and South Pacific was one of the toughest assignments in the Navy, and Emmons acknowledged this noting, “it is very difficult to obtain officers to embark on it.”44 Despite these challenges, Emmons’ commitment was absolute: “In regards to this Expedition, which is so purely national, so highly creditable to our Nation, I am happy to say I am a volunteer.”45 Unlike his peers, Emmons saw the expedition as a demonstration of American naval power, not a distraction from the Navy’s standard missions. After all, the United States was expanding westward, and Emmons believed that the expedition contributed to that growth. After eight years of service with little action, Emmons longed to embark on a meaningful mission, and he believed that the expedition would give him the opportunity to serve his country with distinction. However, Emmons optimism was not universal. In the ten years before he had volunteered, Congress and the Navy had argued over the expedition, plaguing the operation with infighting that would later lead to disorganization and delays. Beginning in the 1820s, with American nationalism high during the Era of Good Feelings, many viewed an exploring expedition as the naval corollary to Manifest Destiny.46 President John Quincy Adams asked Congress to fund an expedition to the Southern Ocean in 1828, but the Senate voted down the appropriation, arguing that the Navy had no business exploring. However, the 1828 vote was not the end of the debate. In 1836, the Jacksonians picked up where Adams left off, asserting that the United States had economic and scientific interests in the Southern and Pacific Oceans. They had more luck, and 42 “Navy Pay Chart for 1835” Navy CyberSpace, 2020, https://www.navycs.com/charts/1835-navy-pay-chart.html 43 The “ap” is a Welsh patronymic, not a typo. 44 Brandywine Journal II. 45 Emmons Papers, Brandywine Journal II, Box 18. Emphasis in original. 46 Symonds, The U.S. Navy: A Concise History, 41-44.
- 39. Rally Point, 39 on May 9, Congress funded an exploring expedition.47 But as planning for the expedition began, the debating continued. Jones, who had been given operational control of the exploring fleet, fought with the Secretary of the Navy, Mahlon Dickerson, over the details of the expedition. Dickerson believed in small government, and an even smaller Navy, and he limited the size of the expedition while also insisting that he select the commanders of its ships. Jones, one of the Navy’s finest officers and a seasoned commander, did not appreciate the micromanagement and pushed back against Dickerson’s suggestions. As the two argued, preparations for the expedition stalled, and the questions about the Navy’s role in exploring rose again.48 As the delays continued, the press became increasingly hostile towards the expedition: “The expense of so large an expedition, and in case of a disastrous result, the loss in men and officers to the naval service are considerations which – where the risk is not necessary nor conducive to success – should have great weight… In our judgment the whole plan of the expedition should be reconsidered.”49 As a staunch supporter of the expedition, Emmons did not agree with the newspaper, but he included the article in his logbook. Emmons does not explain his decision to include the piece: perhaps he viewed it as a joke, or maybe he used it to stiffen his support for the expedition. Regardless, Emmons was pleased that the expedition was proceeding as planned; all ships were ordered to Norfolk before beginning their journey south. Emmons’ ship, the USS Consort, arrived in Hampton Roads on January 20, 1837. The Consort had been built in the Boston Navy Yard the previous year, and though she was new, Emmons was not impressed. At 230 tons, the Consort and her sister ship, the USS Pioneer, were by far the smallest vessels in Jones’ fleet. The Consort’s size made her nimble and fast, but she was tossed around by large waves – an unsettling characteristic for a ship that was supposed to brave the rough Southern Ocean and round Cape Horn. There were, however, some advantages to being on such a small ship. There were few officers on the Consort, and because of this, Emmons was appointed acting Fourth Lieutenant and Sailing Master. This meant that Emmons had four superior officers (the skipper and the First through Third Lieutenants), and it was likely that he was the senior, if not only, Passed- Midshipman on board. As the Sailing Master, Emmons was charged with the navigation and handling of the Consort, as well as the maintenance of her sails, rigging, and anchor. He reported directly to the captain, Lieutenant Josiah Tattnall, and during operations or sail drill, he issued orders from the quarterdeck. It was rare that a Passed-Midshipman was appointed a Sailing Master, and Emmons would have been surprised at the announcement. Emmons knew that the expedition was short on officers, but he did not expect to be given this considerable responsibility so early on in his career. Nevertheless, Emmons embraced the role, knowing that the prestige that accompanied it would make a compelling case for early promotion. On February 2, 1837, the Consort left Hampton Roads for a two-month 47 Ibid, 23-33. 48 William Stanton, The Great United States Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842 (University of California Press; 1975), 34-38. 49 Brandywine Journal II.
- 40. Rally Point, 40 trial in the Gulf of Mexico, similar to what the Brandywine had done seven years earlier. The Consort sailed to Veracruz and then Havana, returning to Norfolk on March 3. Shortly after arriving, Emmons wrote the following in his logbook: “9 years in the US service and a Passed-Midshipman Yet!!! – not my fault.”50 At that point (April 1, 1837), Emmons had been eligible for a Lieutenant’s billet for three years, and in another rare personal entry, he expressed his frustration at the slow progression of his career. Emmons was no worse off than his peers (promotions were stalled across the Navy), but he was frustrated at his inability to control his career. Up to that point, Emmons had done everything in his power to become a Lieutenant, but it still was not enough. To make matters worse, the cruise on the Consort had not been promising. Upon returning to Hampton Roads, the Consort and Pioneer – which Emmons described as “clump, misshapen things” – were sent to the shipyard for repairs.51 With the Consort on blocks, Emmons was transferred to Jones’ flagship, the USS Macedonian, where he was one of many Midshipmen and no longer a Sailing Master. It was now June, and the expedition was supposed to be underway. However, while the Consort was at sea, the bureaucratic bickering took on a new level of ferocity. The warring parties now argued over the civilian scientists and naturalists that Congress had included on the expedition. Dickerson initially refused them pay, and when President Martin Van Buren forced Dickerson to include them on the payroll, he did not give them an advance as they requested. By time these issues were sorted out, it was October, and the expedition was significantly behind schedule. The constant arguing and delays infuriated Jones, and he resigned as the commanding officer of the United States Exploring Expedition – citing personal health – in November.52 Dickerson continued to gut the expedition, reassigning the Macedonian and cutting the number of scientists on the expedition. Emmons, more frustrated than ever, was ordered to Washington on staff duty while the problems with the expedition were being resolved.53 During this time, Emmons must have done some serious personal reckoning. Since becoming a Passed-Midshipman, he had dealt with pay issues, was passed over for promotion, volunteered for a five-year exploring expedition (which he had longed to be a part of), and was appointed a Sailing Master, only to see the expedition stalled and his ship sent to the yards. This disheartening turn of events took its toll, and Emmons must have considered cutting his losses and searching for another assignment during the winter of 1837. However, Emmons persisted, and his patience was rewarded. On April 24, 1838, Congress appointed Lieutenant Charles Wilkes the commanding officer of the United States Exploring Expedition. Wilkes, a surveyor with scientific experience, was one of the most inexperienced Lieutenants in the Navy (ranked thirty-eighth of forty on the Naval List).54 Naturally, senior Lieutenants and Captains were furious with this decision, but Emmons saw it as an opportunity. Emmons wrote to Wilkes – who had also been a member of the expedition since 50 Brandywine Journal II (exclamation points in original). 51 Emmons quoted in Stanton, The Great United States Exploring Expedition, 53. 52 Stanton, The Great United States Exploring Expedition, 50-56. 53 Brandywine Journal II. 54 Stanton, The Great United States Exploring Expedition, 61.
- 41. Rally Point, 41 the beginning – volunteering again to “embark on such a duty.”55 Wilkes accepted Emmons request; he needed officers, and a volunteer with Emmons’ interest in exploration was close to a perfect fit. But Wilkes also did Emmons another favor: he promoted him to Lieutenant. After ten years of being a Midshipman, and at the age of 27, Emmons deserved a promotion, and he must have been relieved when he finally got it. Since writing to Acosta, Emmons had taken initiative with his own career, and these efforts were finally rewarded. To add to the joy, Emmons was going back to sea. Wasting no time, he helped Wilkes prepare the fleet, and on August 18, 1838, the United States Exploring Expedition unfurled its sails and stood to sea. Part V: Exploring the South Six ships sailed with the United States Exploring Expedition; the sloops- of-war Vincennes and Peacock, the brig Porpoise, the supply ship Relief, and the schooners Sea Gull and Flying Fish. Emmons was stationed on the Peacock; the same ship he had seen launched ten years earlier in New York and the second largest vessel in the fleet after Wilkes’ flagship, the Vincennes. The poetry of returning to the Peacock was not lost on Emmons: “So here I am at last aboard the first man of war that I was ever launched in, and the first vessel that was ever built by our government for Exploring Service.”56 At 680 tons and 118 feet, the Peacock was larger than the Consort, and Emmons was pleased to sail on a vessel that appeared more seaworthy than his last ship. The Peacock had been stripped of 14 of her 18 thirty-two pound guns, and though Emmons had protested their removal in Norfolk, the lost weight made her faster and more agile. Outfitted with a crew of 130 officers and men, the Peacock was led by Lieutenant William Leverreth Hudson, a trusted and popular officer; Emmons was third in command. The expedition first sailed to Madeira, a Portuguese island off the coast of Morocco, and as the fleet crossed the Atlantic, spirits were high. Like Emmons, most of the crew believed in the expedition, and they were excited to get underway. The men understood that there were additional risks associated with the expedition – especially storms in the Southern Ocean and encounters with indigenous peoples in the Pacific Islands – but as was the fashion, the coming danger was not spoken of. As he always had, Emmons chose to focus on his duty, noting that the expedition “may prove perilous, must be interesting and which we trust will prove by its results, that the confidence of the Government was not misplaced.”57 Yet, the expedition began like any other transatlantic voyage. To preserve morale and sharpen his crew, Hudson drilled the Peacock as they sailed to the Madeira. As he led the evolutions from the quarterdeck, Emmons must have thought back to his cruise on the Brandywine, which now seemed like an age away. Some things, however, had not changed. Wilkes, dedicated to the scientific nature of the expedition, ordered all officers on the expedition to keep detailed logbooks of “all occurrences or objects of interest, which may, at the 55 Emmons quoted in Stanton, The Great United States Exploring Expedition, 69. 56 Emmons quoted in Stanton, The Great United States Exploring Expedition, 73. 57 Stanton, The Great United States Exploring Expedition, 74.
- 42. Rally Point, 42 time, be considered even of the least importance.”58 Along with the usual measurements of position and direction, Wilkes instructed his officers to gather meteorological data on the temperature, weather, and sea state. Emmons was not a Midshipman anymore, but to his disbelief he still began each day gazing through a sextant. Leaving Madeira on September 26, the fleet resupplied at the Cape Verde Islands before sailing south-south-west to Rio de Janeiro (or southwest by south as it was known in 1838). The initial excitement of the deployment had worn off, and some serious problems were arising on the Peacock. Emmons had worshipped the Peacock since he saw her in New York and had been confident in her abilities a few months before, but he now doubted if she could complete the journey. Her gear was old and her lines were frayed, but the leaky hull and rusted pumps of the Peacock were the most concerning issues.59 Since her last visit to the yards in 1828, the Peacock’s bottom had begun to rot and she needed to be re- caulked. To remedy the constant flooding, the crew de-watered the holds with buckets. Luckily for Emmons, this work was considered too menial for officers, but the enlisted sailors were understandably upset at having to haul water out of the Peacock’s lower compartments to keep her afloat. While the sailors grumbled, the Peacock’s officers worried that their ship would not be able to handle the fierce seas of the Southern Ocean. Ships were never in perfect condition, but Emmons believed this damage was too significant to ignore. In a storm, sailing ships always took on water, and Emmons feared that the Peacock would be quickly swamped if her hull continued to leak. The crew would be able to make some repairs in Rio, but it was unclear if they would be sufficient for the taxing journey around Cape Horn and into the Antarctic Circle. Besides the flooding, the voyage to Rio went smoothly. The Peacock was making good time, and as she approached the Equator, the crew looked forward to one of the Navy’s most revered traditions: the Crossing the Line ceremony. For this ritual, rank and experience were cast aside, and the crew was divided into two classes: shellbacks who had crossed the Equator and pollywogs who had not. However, becoming a shellback was not as easy as sailing over an invisible line. First, pollywogs had to prove their worth to King Neptune by enduring a series of trials. If accepted by the sea god – who was usually played by the captain – a pollywog would be inducted into “the Solemn Mysteries of the Ancient Order of the Deep” and could thereafter bear the title of shellback.60 On the day of the ceremony, the crew was given a double ration of rum, and Emmons and the other pollywogs gathered on deck to begin their initiation. For most of the morning, the shellbacks hazed the pollywogs, throwing them overboard, beating them with wet lines as they crawled around the deck, 58 Ibid, 81. 59 Ibid, 80-88. 60 “Crossing the Line: Pollywogs to Shellbacks” Naval History and Heritage Command, 2019, https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/heritage/customs- and-traditions0/crossing-line.html and Andrew B. Church, “From ‘Wog to Shellback,” Navy News Service, July 4, 2013, https://www.public.navy.mil/surfor/lhd6/Pages/FromWogtoShellback.aspx#.VAikt mPp-So.
- 43. Rally Point, 43 and showering them with dead fish and spoiled food. Emmons rank did not protect him, and while most of the rituals were conducted in good fun, he noticed that a few sailors singled out the officers with particularly forceful strikes of a rope or low blows of an oar. The debauchery soon ended, and Hudson initiated the new shellbacks into King Neptune’s court, knighting them with his sabre on the quarterdeck. The next day, the ship returned to its normal operations, and Emmons – who was nursing a few cuts and bruises – looked forward to arriving in Rio. Split off from the rest of the expedition, the Peacock was the first to arrive in Rio on November 21, 1838. As soon as the Peacock dropped anchor, the crew got to work, painting her and patching any leaks they could find. Since they did not have the time to raise the Peacock out of the water, the crew was unable to re- caulk the hull or repair her as thoroughly as they wanted. Three days later, Wilkes arrived on the Vincennes with the brig and two schooners a few hours behind. The Relief arrived three days after that, and Wilkes, displeased with the delays and embarrassed by his subordinate’s inability to find the trade winds, scolded the Relief’s captain for setting a record for the slowest journey from Norfolk to Rio.61 The expedition remained in Rio as the Peacock was repaired. Confident that his crew could manage the repairs without his supervision, Emmons and a friend, Lieutenant Joseph A. Underwood, decided to scale Sugarloaf Mountain, the iconic granite peak that overlooked the mouth of the harbor. The Lieutenants hoped that they would be the first to reach the summit, and they looked forward to presenting their discovery to Wilkes, who they believed would be impressed with their achievement and desire to explore. They were wrong on both accounts. The joy of reaching the summit – a daring feat that required them to climb over rock faces and on narrow ledges – faded once they noticed a message in a bottle proclaiming that two junior officers from the Royal Navy had claimed the peak for Queen Victoria a few months before. Wilkes, ever the scientist, did not congratulate the young Lieutenants on their achievement when they returned to the fleet that evening. Instead, he wrote to Hudson saying, “I learn with surprise and regret that an officer of your ship made an excursion to an important height in this vicinity without obtaining the necessary instruments for its correct admeasurement.”62 And so, the next day Emmons and Underwood found themselves humping up Sugarloaf again with enough scientific equipment to satisfy Wilkes’ demands. Reaching the peak a second time, Emmons cursed the logbooks for seemingly controlling his life. On January 6, 1839, the expedition weighed anchor and left Rio, plotting a course to its next rendezvous point, an inlet on the east side of Tierra del Fuego called Orange Harbor. The Relief sailed directly to the port to prepare a camp, while the other five ships made a brief excursion into Rio Negro to pick up cold weather supplies – cloaks, blankets, and gloves – for their coming journey into the Antarctic Circle. By February 19, the six ships of the United States Exploring 61 Though the expedition believed that the Relief set the record for the slowest voyage from Norfolk to Rio, the accusation proved to be false. After the expedition, Wilkes went to great lengths to prove that another ship in the Navy had made a slower passage. For more see Stanton, The Great United States Exploring Expedition, 88. 62 Stanton, 90.
- 44. Rally Point, 44 Expedition had all made it safely to Orange Harbor. Up to that point, the expedition had stayed together, only separated by a few days when they crossed the Atlantic. Now, Wilkes spilt his fleet into three elements and announced his strategy for exploring the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. The Peacock and the Flying Fish were to sail southwest in an attempt to cross Cook’s “Ne Plus Ultra” line of 71º 10’ S., the farthest south a ship had sailed to that point.63 Wilkes was going to sail southeast with the Porpoise and the Sea Gull to explore the Shetland Islands. And the Relief would survey Tierra del Fuego and the Magellan Straits using Orange Harbor and the Vincennes as her base.64 After completing their missions, the ships would rendezvous at Orange Harbor and proceed to Valparaiso, a Chilean port on the west coast of South America. The Peacock and the Flying Fish left Orange Harbor on February 25, keeping each other in sight as the wind filled their sails. Standing on the quarterdeck, a conflicted Emmons watched Tierra del Fuego disappear as the Peacock turned south. On one hand, Emmons was excited; the Peacock was sailing where no American had gone before. Passing Cook’s line would be a significant nautical achievement, and Emmons wanted to demonstrate the capabilities of U.S. Navy by stealing the record from the British. Yet, sailing in the Southern Ocean was not something to take lightly. Every sailor knew of ships that had been swallowed up in the Southern Ocean, and Emmons could not help but remember these stories, and the Peacock’s leaky and rotten hull, as he continued southwest around Cape Horn and into the Antarctic Circle. Emmons anxiety was not misplaced. Two days after leaving Orange Harbor, the Peacock and the Flying Fish were separated in a storm. Snow squalls continued to batter the Peacock for a few days, causing a layer of ice to form on her decks, masts, and bulkheads. With only a small furnace and no way to de-ice the ship, conditions aboard the Peacock must have been miserable. Everything was frozen – food, fresh water, guns, and lines – transforming simple tasks like changing sails and cooking dinner into hours-long struggles. To make matters worse, the cold-weather gear that the crew had purchased in Rio de Negro was useless – the cloaks and blankets were ineffective, absorbing moisture like sponges and freezing solid. Perhaps ironically, the hull was finally watertight, as a thick layer of ice (which Hudson called the “Antarctic Caulker”) had gathered in the holds.65 This hardship was expected, but enduring it was exhausting. On March 9, disaster struck. By this point, the Peacock was well west of Cape Horn and the Antarctic Peninsula, surrounded by icebergs and slowly navigating its way south. In order to get a better idea of what lay ahead, Hudson stationed a sailor on the crow’s nest at the top of the main mast. This was a dangerous place to be under normal circumstances – the pitching of the ship was 63 Cook set the record on January 30, 1774, famously shouting “Ne Plus Ultra” (let there be no more) from the bow of his ship as he ordered the vessel north. For more see William W. Lace, Captain James Cook (Chelsea House; 2013). 64 “Orange Harbor, Tierra del Fuego, and Cape Horn,” The Alfred Agate Collection: The United States Exploring Expedition 1838-1842, Naval History and Heritage Command, https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/art/exhibits/exploration- and-technology/alfred-agate-collection/18390/orange-harbor--tierra-del-fuego-and- cape-horn.html 65 Stanton, 103.
- 45. Rally Point, 45 amplified at top of the mast – and with the crow’s nest covered in a sheet of ice, it was almost impossible for the sailor to keep his footing. In the early morning of March 9, the sailor in the crow’s nest slipped and fell, breaking his back when he landed on the main deck. The Peacock’s surgeon attended to him as best as he could, but there was little that could be done. The sailor died two days later. As was custom, Hudson led a memorial service. Burial at sea was a long naval tradition, but in the Antarctic, the ceremony was a short, miserable affair. First, Hudson prayed for the sailor and the crew, asking God to accept their comrade into Heaven. After a brief sermon, the crew gathered around the body, which has been placed on the starboard side of the Peacock. Before the funeral, the surgeon and his mate had wrapped the sailor in his hammock with some grapeshot to weigh the body down. They now sewed the final stitches of the sailor’s canvas coffin, covering the body with a flag when they were done. Hudson motioned, the coffin was raised onto the bulkhead and deposited into the sea. Throughout the ceremony, Emmons stood in silence, regretting the loss. Still, the Peacock continued, and she soon found herself surrounded by icebergs. As they ventured further south, the icebergs became larger and larger until they dwarfed the Peacock. In this minefield, Emmons was on edge; navigating the ship through the ice with little wind was more difficult than he had imagined. Every day, Emmons searched for the sun with his sextant in hopes of finding that the Peacock had passed Cook’s Ne Plus Ultra Line. However, the Peacock was to have no such glory; the ice forced her north on March 25. When Hudson ordered the turn-around, the Peacock was at 68º 08’ S., 97º 58’ W., some 250 miles northeast of Cook’s mark.66 On her way north, the Peacock met up with the Flying Fish. Cheering as their ships came alongside each other, the crews exchanged stories while the officers discussed their discoveries. Hudson told of the Peacock’s casualty and Lieutenant William Walker, the captain of the Flying Fish, announced that he had travelled as far as the 70th parallel. This news stung Emmons; not only had the Peacock been bested by a smaller ship, Cook’s record still stood.67 With enough supplies to remain at sea for a few more months, Hudson declared that he would take the Peacock to Valparaiso and wait there for the rest of the expedition. The Flying Fish would have to return to Orange Harbor before she could sail to Chile, and on April 1, the two ships parted ways. The Peacock was solemn as it made its way to Valparaiso. In the final days of the trip south, Emmons had felt helpless, but now he was laden with disappointment. The crew had done all that it could to break Cook’s record, but they had been stopped by the ice – something they could not control. Emmons knew that Hudson had made the right decision on March 25, but that did not lessen his grief. Yet, some optimism was in order. With every passing day, the seas became calmer and the weather warmer, and as the leaks returned in Peacock’s hull, Emmons mood began to improve as he realized that the worst appeared to be over. 66 Stanton, 102-104 and “Orange Harbor,” The Alfred Agate Collection. 67 As recognition for the achievements of 1839, the United States Antarctic Service named the Peacock Sound, Cape Flying Fish, and the Walker Mountains of Thurston Island after the 1838 expedition. Just like its namesake, Peacock Sound is perpetually frozen. Stanton, 103.
- 46. Rally Point, 46 Back in Orange Harbor, the rest of the expedition could not say the same. Wilkes returned to Orange Harbor with the Porpoise and the Sea Gull in early April, and around the same time, Walker arrived with the Flying Fish. The Vincennes had remained in Orange Harbor for the last six weeks, but the Relief could not be found. Anxious to get to Valparaiso on schedule, Wilkes got underway with the Vincennes and Porpoise on April 13, ordering the two schooners to wait for the Relief. When she did not appear for ten days, they too left Orange Harbor. At first the two schooners sailed together, but they were separated in a gale on April 29 as they rounded Cape Horn. Fleeing the storm, the Flying Fish took shelter in Orange Harbor for a few days but the Sea Gull pressed on. As soon as the weather cleared, Walker hurried north without thinking about the Sea Gull.68 The Flying Fish arrived in Valparaiso on May 19, and to Walker’s surprise, the whole fleet was there except for the Sea Gull. The Relief had lost its anchor in the Straits of Magellan, and instead of returning to Orange Harbor she fled to Valparaiso. The expedition had been wondering where the schooners were, but when they heard Walker’s account, it was clear that the Sea Gull had sunk. A ship her size – 110 tons and a crew of 15 – could be easily overwhelmed by big surf, and during a large storm, it would not take much to flood her.69 Hitting one or two waves the wrong way would cause the Sea Gull to take on water, and in a vicious gale like that of April 29, it was only a matter of time before she went under.70 Still, the expedition waited. With each passing day, the chances of seeing the Sea Gull decreased and so did morale. Stuck in Valparaiso – a terrible port by all accounts – the crew of the Peacock repaired their battered ship as best as they could and prepared for Wilkes’ next order. On June 6, after nearly a month of waiting, the expedition dropped its sails and left Valparaiso on a course for the Peruvian port of Callao. As they left, Emmons’ thoughts drifted to the sixteen officers and men that had been lost in the last four months. It had been ten years since the Fulton exploded, and this was the second time in Emmons’ career that he had seen sailors die. Unlike the casualties on the Fulton, these sailors died while on deployment, serving their country on a challenging mission. Their sacrifice had not been for nothing, but their loss still seemed unnecessary. As an officer and gentleman, Emmons suppressed his grief, and prepared himself for winter in the South Pacific. Part VI: Discovery and Conflict Morale was low when the United States Exploring Expedition left Callao in June 1839. During the previous season, the expedition had surveyed a large area of the Southern Ocean near Tierra del Fuego, but their achievement felt incomplete; they had not broken Cook’s record or discovered any new islands or landmasses. Wilkes wanted to return to the Antarctic Circle, this time venturing 68 “Orange Harbor,” The Alfred Agate Collection. 69 “Sea Gull II (Schooner)” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Naval History and Heritage Command, 2015, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/s/sea-gull- ii.html 70 Stanton, 108-110.
- 47. Rally Point, 47 farther west where whaling fleets and commercial explorers had not travelled. However, sailing south in June and July – the height of the Antarctic winter – would have been suicide. And so, for the next few months, the expedition explored the South Pacific, surveying any islands they stumbled upon, and counting the days until it would be warm enough to return south. From July until November, the fleet visited Tahiti, Samoa, and New Zealand. Compared to their voyage into the Antarctic, these months were easier and safer, but the expedition remained discontent. Emmons appreciated the break from the cold, but he was frustrated with the continuous island hopping. In the South Pacific, the scientists (surveyors, geologists, naturalists, and anthropologists) dictated the movements of the fleet, and Emmons believed they spent too much time at each island taking notes and drawing sketches. Emmons did not care about surveying tiny atolls or discovering a new species of insect, he wanted to sail around the ports of the South Pacific showing the power of the U.S. Navy. The other naval officers agreed, but there was little they could do to hurry the expedition along. To make matters worse, desertions increased on the islands, and recovering the wayward sailors or finding replacements – the duty of a junior officer like Emmons – was tedious and exhausting. But these challenges paled in comparison to those posed by the native islanders. At every stop, indigenous people approached the expedition to trade with, or just observe, the sailors and their large ships. Most of the encounters were awkward but peaceful. Wilkes had ordered the expedition to display “peace, good-will, and proper decorum to every class,” only using force in self-defense.71 Often, firing a blank from one of the Peacock’s heavy guns was enough to dispel a band of armed islanders. When smoke and noise was insufficient, the guns were loaded with grapeshot and fired until the islanders withdrew.72 Over the winter, the sailors’ patience with the islanders began to wear thin. No Americans were killed in 1839, and there were no major engagements, but when the expedition returned in 1840, conflict between the explorers and islanders erupted. On November 29, 1839, the expedition arrived in Sydney, Australia, its final stop before venturing into the Antarctic Circle for a second time. Learning from his mistakes, Wilkes ordered the fleet to stay together, and before it left, the expedition resupplied its cold-weather gear. Before weighing anchor, Hudson did a final inspection of the Peacock, discovering that her hull and decks had decayed further while in the warm waters of the South Pacific. Hudson reported his discoveries to Wilkes, who ordered the Peacock to sail despite her condition – she was too important to be left behind. Emmons was relieved that the Peacock would not be kept in Sydney, but the gravity of the situation was not lost on him. Knowing that the expedition would not get a third chance to explore the Antarctic, Emmons wrote the following prayer in his journal as the Peacock left Sydney: “May it please the Almighty to grant us success.”73 Leaving Sydney in late December, morale was high on the Peacock. Hudson hosted a large celebration for the crew on New Years, and within two weeks of departing they were already among the icebergs. On January 19, a thick 71 Stanton, 117. 72 Ibid, 116-140. 73 Stanton, 151.
- 48. Rally Point, 48 fog covered the fleet, and when it cleared around noon, the Peacock made a notable discovery. Twin peaks were sighted on the horizon – the “Southern Continent” had been found.74 At the time, Emmons was the officer of the deck, and when he heard of the sighting, he climbed to the crow’s nest to see for himself. Joining the Midshipmen at the top of the mast, Emmons could hardly contain himself. The disappointment of the previous season evaporated, and the many frigid nights over the last two years suddenly seemed worth it. The Peacock was on the precipice of one of the most significant discoveries of the era, and Emmons was piloting her towards success. To make the discovery official, however, they needed to make landfall and confirm that the peaks were not just massive icebergs. A few days later, the Peacock’s crew measured the depth of the ocean to be 340 and 320 fathoms on consecutive days, confirmation that the ship was on a continental shelf and proof that land was near. The news of the discovery spread among the crew, and each sailor reacted in a similar fashion to Emmons; all 130 sailors were determined to reach the Southern Continent. But the Peacock still had a long way to go. Just like the previous season, the farther south they sailed, the more difficult it was to continue. After two weeks of inching south, the Peacock was in exactly the same position that she had been a year before: trapped near a massive sheet of ice with no clear path forward. However, the Peacock was not going to turn north with victory at her fingertips. Hudson decided to drop anchor – to prevent the Peacock from drifting into the island of ice – and wait it out. For the first two days this plan appeared to be working. The ice shifted slowly around them, and Emmons hoped a hole would open soon. But on the third day the breeze stiffened, blowing the Peacock towards the ice-sheet; she was now dragging her anchor. With no way to stop or turn the ship, the Peacock slammed stern-first into the ice island, shattering part of her rudder, splintering the beams on her rear-most bulkheads, and destroying the boom on one of her masts. The blow was so forceful that it threw Emmons to the deck, but for the time being the Peacock was still afloat. Despite their luck, the situation on the Peacock was desperate. With a storm gathering, Hudson needed to find open water, as repeated blows against the ice island, or increased pressure from the surrounding ice, would break the ship apart.75 Quick on his feet, Hudson ordered the jibs to be raised and the sheets on the mainsails to be let out in an attempt to pivot the ship away from the ice island. The move worked, and for the next few hours, Hudson sailed the Peacock using only the jibs, threading her through the icebergs. Echoing the calls to the deck crew, Emmons was amazed at his skipper’s ingenuity. Almost twelve years into his career, Emmons figured himself an expert seaman. But Hudson’s sailing was masterful, and Emmons reminded himself that he still had much to learn. Hudson’s leadership saved the Peacock, and after a few days of delicate sailing, they escaped the worst of the ice. However, the Peacock was in no condition to continue south. As his ship limped away from Antarctica, Emmons mood was high. He had not set foot on the new continent as he had hoped, but he had played a role in its discovery. And most importantly, the Peacock delivered a victory for the U.S. Navy and the exploring expedition. For the next few days, Emmons focused on navigating the 74 U.S. Navy: A Complete History, 160-161. 75 Stanton, 160-168
- 49. Rally Point, 49 Peacock back to Sydney, where she would be repaired until she met up with the expedition in Fiji. Unknown to Emmons, Wilkes had made landfall in Antarctica on January 26 with the Vincennes, confirming the Peacock’s sightings and bringing the expedition its first major discovery. A portion of Antarctica was named Wilkes Land in honor of the expedition’s commander, but the Navy attributed the discovery of the new continent to the Peacock. In the official history of the service, January 19, 1840 – when the Peacock’s lookouts saw the twin peaks – was the day the Southern Continent was found.76 After the much-needed repairs and rest, the Peacock left Sydney in early May to assist the expedition as it explored Fiji (or “Feejee” to the explorers). Unified by their discovery and confident in the abilities of their skipper, the crew of the Peacock was content on its journey to Fiji. But as they met up with Wilkes and began surveying, the sailors were reminded why they hated the South Pacific. The heat was oppressive, and after a few tense encounters with the islanders – some of whom were cannibals – the Peacock was on edge.77 On July 15, the inevitable happened. The Peacock was surveying Malolo, a small island a few miles from Fiji, and Hudson dispatched two skiffs to get a closer look at its bays and beaches. Emmons commanded one skiff and Lieutenant Underwood (Emmons’ close friend) led the other. Near the end of the day, Emmons’ skiff was sailing back to the Peacock when he saw that an armed band of Fijians had surrounded Underwood and his crew on the beach. Turning to help, Emmons was too late. The Fijians attacked, killing Underwood and Midshipman Wilkes Henry (Wilkes’ nephew) as the rest of the crew scrambled back to their skiff. Emmons rushed to aid the survivors and to recover the bodies of his fallen comrades as the Fijians retreated into the jungle.78 Cursing himself for not arriving in time, Emmons resolved to serve justice for the death of his friend, and when he returned to the Peacock, he briefed Hudson on what had occurred and prepared for a retaliatory strike. That evening, Wilkes gathered the officers of the expedition on the Vincennes to plan their response. Abandoning his stringent rules of engagement, Wilkes began the meeting by announcing his intention to strike back hard. Underwood and Henry were well liked by the officers and men, and the others agreed that the Fijians must be punished for killing two American officers. Accordingly, the strike would target the two Fijian villages on Malolo, Sualib and Arro. Their plan was as follows. First, a party of seventy officers and men, led by Marine Lieutenant-Commandant Cadwalader Ringgold was to land at Sualib at dawn. After engaging the islanders there, he would march to Arro and attack again. In order to prevent the Fijians from escaping on canoes, Emmons would command a group of skiffs that would engage any fleeing Fijians at Sualib, and then again at Arro. Mercy would only be shown to women and children who presented no threat.79 Unlike Ringgold and the other Marines, Emmons had never been trained in close-quarters combat. But sitting the raid out was not an option. As an 76 U.S. Navy: A Complete History, 120. 77 Stanton, 203. 78 Ibid, 206. 79 Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, quoted in Stars and Spars, 108-109.
- 50. Rally Point, 50 officer, Emmons believed it was his duty to strike back against those who had killed Americans, and as a gentleman he knew he had to seek justice for the death of his friend. This was the third time in Emmons’ career that he had seen someone die, and it was by far the worst. Underwood and Henry had effectively been murdered, and this disturbed Emmons more than the sailors who had died in an accident or a storm. These losses had also been more visible to Emmons. Only a few hundred yards away, Emmons had seen Underwood sink to his knees in the surf after being struck by a spear. And he had dragged his friend’s body onto the skiff, staring at it again and again as he returned to the Peacock. That night, haunted by the image of Underwood’s dead body, Emmons could not sleep. Helmuth von Moltke once noted that “no plan survives first contact with the enemy,” but in the Battle of Malolo, he would have been wrong. Ringgold’s ground force quickly captured Sualib, and as expected, the Fijians rushed to their canoes to flee the island. Taking the initiative, Emmons intercepted five canoes, one of which carried the village chief. Firing at close range, the sailors in Emmons’ skiff killed every Fijian they saw. Women and children were not spared; those that tried to swim away were hunted down and shot. As flames enveloped Sualib, Emmons sailed to Arro for the second attack. There, Ringgold faced even lighter resistance than he had in Sualib. Striking from three directions, the Americans overran the few Fijian defenders with ease. Any remaining men were rounded up and put in irons to be kept as hostages on the Vincennes. Seeing that his village had been defeated, the chief of Arro surrendered to Wilkes. The village was burned nonetheless. After the battle, the sailors gathered on the beach to celebrate their victory. Two Americans had been shot, and only one was in serious condition. Fifty-seven Fijians had been killed on Malolo, and Emmons estimated that he had slaughtered close to 25 in the waters near Sualib.80 Emmons had wanted justice, but instead he got a massacre. Wilkes did not want the strike to be proportional, and Emmons and Ringgold delivered the victory their commander desired. By killing over eighty islanders and burning two villages, the combatants made it clear that there was a large price to pay for killing Americans. However, this disparity – a blatant violation of the laws of war – would not have worried Emmons; like Wilkes, he believed that the Fijians deserved a harsh punishment. Slaying the fleeing islanders would not have been a point of pride for Emmons, but he would not have regretted it. Emmons believed it was his duty to contribute to this mission however he could, even if it meant gunning down unarmed Fijians as they swam to safety. Writing later about the Battle of Malolo, Wilkes would say, “the punishment inflicted on the natives was no doubt severe; but I cannot view it as unmerited, and the extent to which it was carried was neither dictated by cruelty nor revenge.”81 Emmons would have agreed; justice had been served for Underwood and Henry. Similar massacres occurred two more times on the expedition, bringing the total number of indigenous casualties to around 150. Unfazed by the encounters, the fleet continued to sail around the South 80 Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, quoted in Stars and Spars, 108-122. 81 Ibid, 123.
- 51. Rally Point, 51 Pacific. By April 1841, the men were weary after three years at sea, and Wilkes decided it was time to sail home. The expedition had accomplished all it had intended; the Southern Continent had been discovered, and great areas of the Pacific had been surveyed for the first time. For the final leg of the expedition, Wilkes split his fleet. The Peacock and the Flying Fish were to head east, survey the Oregon Territory and the Pacific Northwest before sailing back around Cape Horn to Norfolk. Meanwhile, Wilkes would circumnavigate the globe with the Vincennes and the Porpoise. All hoped to return to the United States by the summer of 1842. After a four-month passage, the Peacock reached Oregon. As a final order, Wilkes directed Hudson to begin surveying the Columbia River and the Puget Sound, complex waterways with dozens of islands and inlets. This was a tall order, as the mouth of the Columbia was a difficult body of water to navigate due to the five-knot current and seven-foot tidal range. The Peacock arrived at the Columbia on July 17 during a rainstorm. Hudson had purchased a 1792 chart of the river's mouth while the expedition had stopped in Honolulu, but rain made it nearly impossible to determine the Peacock’s exact position. As they approached the entrance to the Columbia, Hudson placed Emmons in the crow’s nest (usually manned by a Midshipman or enlisted sailor) to ensure that he was receiving accurate information. From his perch, Emmons saw that a wall of breaking waves blocked the four-mile mouth of the Columbia. Every so often, a gap would appear in the surf, and Emmons directed the Hudson to that point. As the Peacock neared the opening, Emmons became nervous; the water around the ship was white from the surf or brown with sediment, indicating that they were in shallow and unpredictable waters.82 At the mouth of the river, the water was no more than twenty feet deep, and with a draft of sixteen feet, the Peacock did not have much room to spare. So fortunate throughout the expedition, the Peacock’s luck finally ran out: as she crossed the whitewater, a wave lifted her stern, causing her bow to plunge into the river bed. The blow was strong enough to bury the keel, and as the waves continued to pound the stern, the Peacock was driven deeper and deeper into the sandy bottom. It was one o’clock when the Peacock ran aground, and by four, she was buried six feet into the riverbed. To make her lighter, shot was thrown overboard and the anchor was cast off in an attempt to drag the Peacock free. This move was unsuccessful. The anchor caught the bottom, but instead of pulling the ship free, it caused her to pivot; the Peacock was now sitting parallel to the waves. While this prevented the Peacock from being buried deeper, it increased her likelihood of flooding as water began to flow over the gunwales and through the gun ports. Meanwhile, Emmons was lowered in a skiff, rapidly taking soundings to see how dire the problem was. Emmons had weathered his fair share of storms, but being stuck in a skiff in the middle of the surf zone was another matter. Waves broke over the bow and tossed the skiff to the side, and after a while Emmons gave up and returned to the Peacock, waterlogged and seasick for the first time in a decade. Spotting the Flying Fish on her way to help, Emmons rushed to call her off, raising two flags on the mainmast: “Danger” and “Stand to Sea.”83 82 Stanton, 248-249. 83 Stanton, 247-250.
- 52. Rally Point, 52 For the rest of the day and through the night the crew fought the storm and waves. Sailors pumped water from the hull as fast as they could, and any spare hand was ordered to bail out the lower compartments with buckets. Yet the crew’s efforts were in vain; the Peacock had rolled over and her rotten hull had finally broken up. Hudson gave the abandon ship order at first light, and Emmons supervised the lowering of the Peacock’s six skiffs. As he rowed away from the Peacock, Emmons watched as Hudson ordered her masts to be cut, the final sign of the proud ship’s defeat. Only a hundred people fit on the first sortie, and once Emmons landed them safely on the rocky shore, he turned back to rescue Hudson and the remaining thirty sailors on board. With all hands safely accounted for on the rocky coast, the crew of the Peacock watched the battering waves tear their ship apart. Each man dealt with the destruction in his own way; some prayed, others sobbed, most just observed in silence. To a sailor, a ship is more than just a sailing vessel, and the same was true for Emmons and the Peacock. He had idolized her for his entire career as a junior officer, and over the last three years she had proven her worth time and time again. Ever stoic, Emmons stood tall as the Peacock slipped below the waves, an eerie reminder of the Fulton’s fate. Epilogue Being a junior officer is a difficult and formative experience. The same was true of George F. Emmons, a typical nineteenth century naval officer. Despite these early challenges, Emmons served with distinction. At the end of his first cruise as a Lieutenant, Emmons was a dedicated officer and a competent sailor, and the Navy now recognized this achievement. Sawyer affirmed his cousin’s record in a letter to the Secretary of the Navy, saying, “for the last seven or eight years he has been constantly on duty, without a day leave of absence I believe – both Captains Wilkes and Hudson have spoken to me in the highest terms of his events as an officer and a gentleman.”84 A proven officer, Emmons returned to the conventional Navy in 1843. For the next twenty years, he continued to lead sailors and project American naval power on cruises to South America. Alternating between deployments and staff tours at the Naval Bureau of Construction and Equipment, the rest of Emmons’ career proceeded without a hitch. In 1853, the Navy awarded Emmons his first command, the USS Savannah. During the Civil War, Emmons proudly sailed with the Union under David Glasgow Farragut, guarding the Texas coast with the West Gulf Blockade Squadron. The war was the last time Emmons saw action, and in 1872, he retired as a Rear Admiral. Emmons was not a noteworthy leader nor did he distinguish himself in battle, but his service is nonetheless significant. Beside every great commander there is a dedicated corps of officers, individuals who translate orders into action without hesitation. Throughout his career – whether it was with Kennedy, Wilkes, or Farragut – Emmons was one of those officers, and he had every reason to be as proud as they were about his contribution to the Navy. 84 Letter from H.B Sawyer, November 9 1843, Emmons Papers, Box 1, Folder 9.
- 53. Rally Point, 53 Bibliography A Global Chronology of Conflict: From the Ancient World to the Modern Middle East, edited by Spencer C. Tucker (ABC-CLIO; Santa Barbara, CA; 2010), 1317. Brenckle, Matthew, “Food and Drink in the U.S. Navy, 1794 to 1820.” USS Constitution Museum, 2018, https://ussconstitutionmuseum.org/wp- content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2019/05/Food-and-Drink-in-the-US- Navy.pdf. Church, Andrew B.“From ‘Wog to Shellback,” Navy News Service, July 4, 2013, https://www.public.navy.mil/surfor/lhd6/Pages/FromWogtoShellbac k.aspx#.VAiktmPp-So. Commissioning Certificate of David B. Morgan, June 25 1828, The Department of the Navy Library, Naval History and Heritage Command, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/manuscripts/a/preside nt-john-quincy-adams.html “Constellation I (Frigate),” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Naval History and Heritage Command, 2004, https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/histori es/ship-histories/danfs/c/constellation-i.html “Crossing the Line: Pollywogs to Shellbacks” Naval History and Heritage Command, 2019, https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by- topic/heritage/customs-and-traditions0/crossing-line.html “Dreadful Explosion of the Steam Frigate Fulton,” New York Daily Advertiser, June 5 1829, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, https://search.proquest.com/docview/481984083/29837208E62D4B E6PQ/1?accountid=15172 “Dreadful Explosion: Names of the Killed Officers, Wounded Midshipmen, Privates Wounded, Connecticut Courant, June 9, 1829, ProQuest Historical Newspapers, https://search.proquest.com/docview/548525704/29837208E62D4B E6PQ/2?accountid=15172 Emmons Family Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. “Examination of Midshipmen,” Army and Navy Chronicle, Volume 2, Issue 18 (May 5, 1836), 284, accessed on ProQuest Historical Newspapers, https://search.proquest.com/docview/124474581/30CA5507F95422 BPQ/5?accountid=15172 “Fulton I (Catamaran Steam Frigate),” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Naval History and Heritage Command, 2015, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship- histories/danfs/f/fulton-i.html Goodspeed, M. Hill, U.S. Navy: A Complete History (Naval Historical Foundation; 2003), 98. Lace, William, W., Captain James Cook (Chelsea House; 2013) Mann, Raymond A., “Boston IV (Sloop-of-War),” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Naval History and Heritage Command, 2005, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-
- 54. Rally Point, 54 histories/danfs/b/boston-iv.html Matthew Fontaine Murray Letter on “A New Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Navigation,” February 13 1835, The Department of the Navy Library, Naval History and Heritage Command, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/manuscripts/m/matth ew-fontaine-maury-letter-from-matthew-fontaine-maury-to-cary-lea- company-regarding-publication-of-his-manuscript-on-navigation.html Mooney, James L, “Brandywine” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Naval History and Heritage Command, 2005, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship- histories/danfs/b/brandywine-i.html “Navy Pay Chart for 1835” Navy CyberSpace, 2020, https://www.navycs.com/charts/1835-navy-pay-chart.html “Office of the Chief of Naval Operations,” Naval History and Heritage Command, 2019, https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by- topic/people/chiefs-of-naval-operations/the-office1.html “Orange Harbor, Tierra del Fuego, and Cape Horn,” The Alfred Agate Collection: The United States Exploring Expedition 1838-1842, Naval History and Heritage Command, https://www.history.navy.mil/our- collections/art/exhibits/exploration-and-technology/alfred-agate- collection/18390/orange-harbor--tierra-del-fuego-and-cape-horn.html “Sea Gull II (Schooner)” Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Naval History and Heritage Command, 2015, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship- histories/danfs/s/sea-gull-ii.html Simpson, Andrew, “Sailing Across the Atlantic” Crew Seekers International, 2020, https://www.crewseekers.net/notices/sailing-across-atlantic-classic- blue-water-voyage/ Stanton, William, The Great United States Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842 (University of California Press; 1975), 34-38. Strauss, W. Patrick ed., Stars and Spars: The American Navy in the Age of Sail (Blaisdell Publishing Company; Waltham, MA; 1969), 61-63. Symonds, Craig L., Navalists and Antinavalists: The Naval Policy Debate in the United States, 1785-1827 (University of Delaware Press; Newark; 1980). Symonds, Craig L., The U.S. Navy: A Concise History (Oxford University Press; 2016), 33-43. HITLER’S GERMANY AND THE 1941 AL-GAYLANI COUP D’ETAT IN IRAQ: FASCISM, NATIONALISM AND EMPIRE BY PETER LUFF Introduction
- 55. Rally Point, 55 On the morning of May 12, 1941, the German diplomat Fritz von Grobba, Iraq’s Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, and other representatives of the Iraqi government lined up at an airfield on the outskirts of Baghdad, prepared to receive the German military assistance that Iraq had been anticipating for months.85 Much to the satisfaction of al-Gaylani and his allies, the German Luftwaffe had finally dispatched an expeditionary force of three aircraft under the leadership of Major Axel von Blomberg, son of the famed Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg, to Baghdad to support the Iraqi cause.86 Al-Gaylani, Grobba, and their companions could see Blomberg’s plane, which had taken off from Syria earlier that morning, as it soared over Baghdad toward the airfield. Baghdad was a city under siege, harried by British aircraft since the outbreak of war between Britain and Iraq on May 2. Blomberg’s plane signaled the arrival of long-awaited relief, and perhaps, the opportunity to break free from the grasp of the Royal Air Force.87 Unfortunately for al-Gaylani and his allies, von Blomberg would never get to assist the Iraqi government in the defense of Baghdad. When Grobba opened the cabin door of Blomberg’s plane, he found Blomberg dead, shot through the head.88 As Germany’s Auswärtiges Amt (foreign office) would report four days later, Major von Blomberg had been killed by flak from Iraqi anti- aircraft guns as his plane was landing.89 Mistaking the Major’s plane for a British RAF aircraft, Iraqi anti-aircraft gunners had shot at and killed the very man who was supposed to deliver Baghdad from the RAF.90 Axel von Blomberg’s death by friendly fire made for an inauspicious beginning to what turned out to be an ill-fated attempt to save al-Gaylani’s Iraq and establish an Axis foothold in the Middle East.91 Blomberg’s unlucky demise 85 Geoff Simons, Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam (New York: Springer, 2016), 222. Fritz Grobba, Männer und Mächte im Orient: 25 Jahre diplomatischer Tätigkeit im Orient (Frankfurt am Main: Masterschmidt, 1967), 237. 86 Wolfgang Schwanitz and Barry Rubin, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 131. 87 Memorandum by Kroll, May 2, 1941. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park (NARA). Record Group 242, T-120, “Interfilmed records of the Foreign Office and the Reich Chancellery,” 80/61632. 88 Grobba, Männer und Mächte im Orient, 237. Memorandum by Kroll, May 2, 1941. 89 Memorandum on the State of Military Support for Iraq, May 16, 1941. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park (NARA). Record Group 242, T- 120, “Interfilmed records of the Foreign Office and the Reich Chancellery,” 80/61770-61774. 90 Perhaps the only thing more awkward than Blomberg’s unfortunate death at the hands of his Iraqi allies was the message of sympathy that al-Gaylani sent to the German government shortly after the tragedy, which suggested that Blomberg’s death would strengthen German-Iraqi solidarity. “This first German soldier’s blood spilled on Iraqi’s soil in a joint defensive battle against England,” al-Gaylani proclaimed, “will make the new brotherhood of arms between the Iraqi and German armies steel-hard, and be a shining beacon for the Iraqi army in its struggle for life and death.” Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Franz Gehrcke), May 12, 1941. NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61733. 91 Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle
- 56. Rally Point, 56 was only one of many mishaps, shortcomings, and outright strategic blunders in the Middle East that plagued Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the spring of 1941. The same memorandum that informed Germany’s diplomatic staff of Blomberg’s death related how, when the British began to bomb the Baghdad airfield, some “Iraqi military [personnel] fell into a panicked terror” and “fled into the desert,” not to be seen “for the next several days.”92 The Iraqi air force, meanwhile, had no fuel for its planes, despite the fact that Iraq was one of the world’s major oil-producing countries.93 Less than two months after he had taken power, al-Gaylani, recognizing the hopelessness of his position in Baghdad, fled Iraq during the night of May 29 and the Iraqi army surrendered soon thereafter.94 Al-Gaylani’s defeat was not as fatal to Hitler’s Germany as it was to the nascent Iraqi state, but the Iraqi revolt was “such a disaster […] that it triggered an internal quarrel about who was to blame,” historians Wolfgang Schwanitz and Barry Rubin observe.95 The failed revolt also imperiled some of Iraq’s most vulnerable people. On May 31, after al-Gaylani’s rule had evaporated but before British forces entered Iraq’s capital, a mob stormed Baghdad, attacking Jews and destroying their property in an eruption of violence that became known as the “Farhud.”96 From the Germans and their Axis allies to al- Gaylani’s supporters and the Jews of Baghdad, the Iraqi revolt of 1941 turned out poorly for almost everyone involved.97 Germany’s failure to secure al-Gaylani’s rule was rendered all the more damaging for the Axis by the territory’s strategic importance. As German agent Rudolf Rahn noted in his memoir, Iraq occupied a crucial “oil intersection,” flanking the Persian and Russian oil regions and housing many oil wells itself. Control of Iraq could have supplied Germany with access to Iraq’s vast oil reserves and placed the Reich in a better position to threaten its enemies’ reserves in the Caucasus and Iran, which produced more crude petroleum than all of non- Soviet Europe combined in 1939.98 An al-Gaylani triumph in Iraq might also East, 131. 92 Memorandum on the State of Military Support for Iraq, May 16, 1941. NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61770-61774. 93 Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 131. Robert Lyman, Iraq 1941 — The Battles for Basra, Habbaniya, Fallujah and Baghdad (New York, Osprey, 2005), 7-8. 94 Grobba, Männer und Mächte im Orient, 245-247. Simons, Iraq, 222. 95 Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 131. 96 Peter Wien, Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarianism, Totalitarianism and Pro- fascist Inclinations, 1932-1941 (New York: Routledge, 2006), 108. 97 Even the British, who technically “won” their brief struggle against al-Gaylani’s Iraq, probably would have preferred that the revolt had never happened in the first place. Lyman, Iraq, 132. 98 Rudolf Rahn, Ruheloses Leben: Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen (Duesseldorf: Diedrichs Verlag, 1949), 170. Mohamed-Kamal El-Dessouki, “Hitler und der Nahe Osten” (PhD diss., Freie Universität Berlin, 1963), 35. El-Dessouki writes that access to oil from Iran and Saudi Arabia would have eliminated Germany’s lack of oil. Iran produced 10,367,000 metric tons of petroleum in 1939, compared to 7,969,000 for Europe (excluding the USSR). League of Nations, Statistical Yearbook of the League of Nations 1940-1941 (Geneva: League of Nations
- 57. Rally Point, 57 have helped the Axis attain its strategic aims in the Mediterranean more broadly because of Mesopotamia’s proximity to other critical theaters of war, most notably Libya and Egypt, where Erwin Rommel’s Afrikakorps had been embroiled in a back-and-forth struggle with Archibald Wavell’s British forces since March.99 In the midst of this standoff at the Egyptian-Libyan border, Iraqi troops were struggling to fend off the British in a different but related theater of war. While Rommel’s North Africa campaign figures in the historical memory of the Second World War much more prominently than the Anglo-Iraqi War does, the two struggles were different sides of the same coin. Iraq, Syria, and Palestine formed Egypt’s flank, something that became clear in June 1941 when Churchill ordered Wavell to use his troops in Egypt to attack Syria and Lebanon to his east.100 Indeed, the war in Iraq, had it turned out differently, could have transformed the conflict in North Africa. Axis and Iraqi forces, having expelled the British from Mesopotamia, might have pivoted south towards Egypt and attacked Wavell’s army from its rear — an operation which, if successful, could have enabled Germany and Italy to form a corridor of Axis control stretching from Casablanca to Basra. May 16, 1941 map from the New York Times showing the proximity of Syria and Publications, 1941), 128. https://wayback.archive- it.org/6321/20160901222852/http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/league/le0280ah .pdf. 99 After repelling some initial Italian attacks from Libya into Egypt, English forces in Egypt under General Archibald Wavell had pushed into Libya beginning on December 9, 1940. The British army captured tens of thousands of Italian troops as it advanced, taking Benghazi in early February. The balance of power in North Africa changed when Hitler sent Erwin Rommel and his Afrikakorps to Tripoli on February 12. By the end of March 1941, Rommel had 25,000 troops under his command in Libya and started moving East against the British. Beevor, 146-153, 174-178. 100 Beevor, 178.
- 58. Rally Point, 58 Iraq to Egypt.101 Most of the existing work on Germany’s role in the Middle East during World War Two seeks to describe the magnitude of German-Arab collaboration, rather than its strategic motivations and the causes of its downfall. On one hand, writers such as Jeffrey Herf and Edwin Black highlight the strong ties between al-Gaylani and Amin al-Husseini, the grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and Hitler’s Germany.102 On the other hand, other scholars, including Peter Wien and Francis Nicosia, downplay the importance of the German-Arab alliance. Nicosia describes “Hitler’s move towards the Arabs” as “largely superficial,” while Wien argues that “the link between Arabs and Germany was generally marginal throughout the Nazi period.”103 Wolfgang Schwanitz, one of the most prolific scholars of German-Arab relations, takes a middle road, rightly pointing out the fascist and anti-semitic inclinations of prominent Arab leaders while also recognizing that the pro-Hitler views of a few Arab leaders did not mean that all Arabs were Nazi admirers.104 Scholars’ focus on the extent of Arab leaders’ ties to Nazi Germany has meant that historians have spent much less time exploring why the Iraqi revolt unfolded in the way it did, even though the failure and seemingly haphazard execution of the Nazi-sponsored revolt in Iraq raise questions about the strategic logic guiding the Axis powers’ efforts to support al- Gaylani. Hitler’s “Führer Directive Number 30” ordering the creation of a special military force for Iraq, Germany’s most significant move to support al-Gaylani’s government, was not issued until May 23, nearly two months after al-Gaylani had seized power and just one week before his eventual demise.105 Why did Germany take so long to intervene in Iraq despite the country’s geostrategic significance, and after it had waited so long, why did Germany bother intervening at all? Was the country that mastered the art of Blitzkrieg really “too slow in reacting to events” in the Middle East, as Schwanitz and Nicosia argue, or was the Luftwaffe’s belated arrival in Iraq the product of other causes?106 The reality of Germany’s strategic position vis-à-vis the Middle East in 101 “With France Under Pressure, Her Near East Mandate is Drawn into War,” New York Times, May 16, 1941. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1941/05/16/85492438.pdf?pdf_red irect=true&ip=0. 102 Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). Edwin Black, The Farhud — Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust (Washington, D.C.: Dialog Press, 2010). 103 Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, 71. Wien, Arab Nationalism, 7. 104 Rubin and Schwanitz, 1-4. Written with Barry Rubin. 105 Lyman, Iraq, 145. Documents in German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945 (DGFP), No. 543, “Führer’s Directive,” May 23, 1941. Eds. Paul Sweet, Howard Smyth, James Beddie, Arthur Kogan, George Kent, Margaret Lambert, K.H.M Duke, F.G. Stambrook, K.M.L Simpson, Z.A.B Zeman, Maurice Baumont, Georges Bonnin, Andre Scherer (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1962), 862- 864. https://archive.org/details/DocumentsOnGermanForeignPolicy-SeriesD- VolumeXii-February1-June/page/n945. 106 Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis and Islamists, 130. Francis Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 169.
- 59. Rally Point, 59 1941 was that it should not have had such a difficult time supporting Iraq. The timeline of Germany’s Middle East operations in 1941 and the communications exchanged by various German diplomats as those operations unfolded suggest the dilatory nature of the German intervention was as much a product of the difficulties of Germany coordinating with its fascist allies in the region as it was of the logistical difficulties of conducting a campaign in the Middle East. Even though France had surrendered to Germany in June 1940, it took Germany until May 1941 to secure access to France’s military resources in Syria — a delay that proved fatal to the Reich’s Iraq operation because only by transporting weapons and matériel through Syria could Germany finally manage to supply al-Gaylani with some military aid.107 When German agents did arrive in Syria, they found a French administration wary of cooperating with an empire that they rightfully feared did not have Vichy’s best interests at heart. “Suspicion and mistrust,” rather than friendly collaboration, “characterized the German Intelligence Service’s relationship vis-a-vis the other Axis intelligence services,” the United States’s Central Intelligence Agency concluded after a study of Germany’s activities in the Middle East during the war. Friction between Italian, German, and French forces in the Middle East further slowed the progress of a campaign that had no time to spare and cost the Axis what should have been a winnable fight.108 In many ways, though, Germany’s failure to work effectively with its fascist allies in France, Italy, and Iraq during the Anglo-Iraqi War was not surprising. Instead, the problems Germany encountered in its relations with its allies in the Middle East in 1941 were emblematic of the challenges of inter- fascist collaboration more broadly. In hindsight, it is not shocking that ultra- nationalists from France, Germany, and Italy could not sacrifice their particular national interests and egos for the sake of a shared Axis project. What makes the Iraq episode so remarkable, though, is that it brought these intra-Axis tensions to the fore in a way not seen elsewhere during the war. While in Europe the German Wehrmacht could crush any collaborator who dared question its 107 “Memorandum by the Director of the Political Department,” May 8, 1941, No. 476, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 742-743. Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 16, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61770-61774. 108 Central Intelligence Agency, Study of German Intelligence Activities in the Near East and Related Areas Prior to and During World War II, 8. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81-01043R003500080004- 7.pdf. Rudolf Rahn, Ruheloses Leben, 154-155, 159. Memorandum by Rudolf Rahn, May 15, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61757-61758. Memorandum by Rahn, May 22, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61818-61819. I explain these documents later in the paper when I provide details of French intransigence in Syria. Together, the resources available to Iraq, Germany, Vichy France, and Italy in the Eastern Mediteranean would probably have been enough to expel the British from Mesopotamia. In Syria, the French had 20 infantry battalions, 12 field artillery batteries, 2 cavalry regiments and 9 flak batteries, for a total of around 33,000 men, a further 18,000 native soldiers, and 50 aircraft. While Rahn noted that the troops possessed “insufficient numbers and equipment” to undertake a significant offensive initiative, they still could have at least nearly doubled al-Gaylani’s forces. Memorandum by Rahn, May 24, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256932- 256933.
- 60. Rally Point, 60 supremacy and in Asia no other Axis power existed to challenge Japan, in the Middle East, the interests of three fascist powers collided with no single country having the upper hand. Germany, France, and Italy’s shared weakness in the Middle East forced a genuine negotiation between their competing interests unique in the war’s history — a negotiation documented in this paper through an examination of the communiqués that passed between German, Iraqi, French, and Italian diplomats as events in Iraq unfolded. Thus, while historians have so far focused on cooperation between Arab leaders and Nazi Germany in the Middle East, this paper makes the case that the attempted cooperation between European powers in the same region deserves at least as much attention for its role in compromising Axis efforts to support Iraq. Indeed, the combination of this tortured collaboration between the Axis powers and the logistical challenges of conducting a military initiative outside of Europe doomed an operation that might have changed the course of the war in the Near East and North Africa.109 I illustrate this history by first describing Germany’s historical ties to the Middle East and the interwar political developments that laid the groundwork for collaboration between Nazi Germany and Arab nationalists during the Second World War. Next, I chronicle Iraqi attempts to secure Axis support and the al-Gaylani coup that set off the Anglo-Iraqi War in the spring of 1941. I then detail the Axis powers’ failures in their efforts to work together to assist Iraq and conclude by considering these shortcomings in light of the challenges intrinsic to fascist foreign policy. Berlin to Baghdad from Kaiser Wilhelm to the Third Reich: Germany and the Middle East At the outset of the Second World War, the Middle East seemed a perfect venue for Axis meddling, given the historical ties between Germany and notables in the region. Indeed, Hitler’s leap into Middle Eastern politics during the Second World War came on the heels of decades of diplomatic missions and economic projects linking Germany and the Near East, dating from the fin de siècle rule of Kaiser Wilhelm II. German firms became involved in the construction of the famed Berlin-Baghdad Railway in 1889 when the Deutsche Bank-owned Anatolian Railway Company obtained a charter to build the railroad.110 Kaiser Wilhelm II had long expressed a personal interest in the Middle East, visiting Constantinople for the first time in 1889 and traveling there again in October 1898 for a “Grand Tour” of the Middle East. On his journey, Wilhelm visited Damascus where, at a banquet held in his honor, he delivered 109 Together the resources available to Iraq, Germany, Vichy France and Italy in the Eastern Mediteranean would probably have been enough to expel the British from Mesopotamia. In Syria the French had 20 infantry battalions, 12 field artillery batteries, 2 cavalry regiments and 9 flak batteries, for a total of around 33,000 men, a further 18,000 native soldiers, and 50 aircraft. While Rahn noted that the troops possessed “insufficient numbers and equipment” to undertake a significant offensive initiative, they still could have at least nearly doubled al-Gaylani’s forces. Memorandum by Rahn, May 24, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256932- 256933. 110 Sean McKeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010). 38-39, 41-46.
- 61. Rally Point, 61 his infamous proclamation that “the Sultan and his 300 million Muslim subjects scattered across the earth” could “be assured that the German Kaiser will be their friend for all time.”111 Wilhelm also hoped to use pan-Islamism against Germany’s enemies in the event of a war, declaring on July 30, 1914, that he intended to “inflame the whole Mohammedan world” against Great Britain if it came into conflict with Germany.112 Other Germans were also fascinated by the military potential of a pan-Islamic movement. Martin Hartmann, a scholar of Islam, penned a tract on “The Ultimatum of Pan-Islam” during the Italo- Ottoman War of 1911-1912 arguing that “the [Ottoman] Caliphate must […] make use of its right to call upon all Muslims, wherever they may be, for help in the form of fighting men and money” to fend off the Italians, while scholars Heinrich Becker and Helmuth von Glasenapp were also excited about the prospect of exploiting Islamic revolts to Germany’s advantage.113 As the Great War engulfed Europe in the fall of 1914 and the German Empire formed an alliance with the Ottoman Empire, Germany found itself presented with an opportunity to leverage pan-Islamic sentiment to its advantage in a way that German orientalist scholars had dreamed about for decades. At the war’s outset, Hans von Wangenheim, the German ambassador to Constantinople, elucidated his country’s broader ambitions in the Middle East to the American ambassador Henry Morgenthau. “Turkey is not the really important matter,” Wangenheim told Morgenthau, “her army is a small one, and we do not expect it to do very much.” The “big thing,” instead, was “the Moslem world,” in Wangenheim’s eyes. “If we can stir the Mohammedans up against the English and Russians, we can force them to make peace,” he expounded to Morgenthau.114 To this end, the Reich began to send what historian Sean McKeekin terms “German jihad-preparation teams” throughout the Muslim world in order to incite the “Mohammedans” against their Christian colonial overlords. A small group of Armenians armed with German money ventured into Baluchistan in July 1914, while Otto Mannesmann went to Tripoli in August to stir a revolt against the French, planning to drop jihad propaganda across the region from balloons. Bernhard Moritz, a German based in Cairo, gave the Ottomans intelligence about British military positions at the Suez Canal and Robert Mors, another German, went to Alexandria armed with “dynamite, detonators, propaganda leaflets and several Egyptian cohorts” to cause trouble for the British there. Countless other Germans ventured into other parts of the Muslim world to undermine the rule of Germany’s enemies — Oskar von Niedermayer led a mission of 30 Germans to Afghanistan, Fritz Klein tackled 111 McKeekin, Berlin-Baghdad, 7, 11-15. 112 McKeekin, Berlin-Baghdad, 86. 113 Martin Hartmann, “Das Ultimatum des Panislamismus,” Das freie Wort. Frankfurter Monatschrift für Fortschritt auf allen Gebieten des geistigen Lebens, vol. 11 (April 1911-April 1912), 605–10, in Gossman, Max von Oppenheim, 64-65. Timothy W. Childs, Italo-Turkish Diplomacy and the War Over Libya: 1911-1912 (London: Brill, 1990), xi-xiii. Wolfgang Schwanitz, “Max von Oppenheim und der Heilige Krieg. Zwei Denkschriften zur Revolutionierung islamischer Gebiete 1914 and 1940,” Sozial Geschichte, vol. 19, no. 3 (2004), 32-33. 114 Henry Morgenthau Sr., Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (New York: Doubleday, 1918), 161.
- 62. Rally Point, 62 the Shiite regions, Alois Musil went to Central Arabia, Kress von Kressenstein joined the Ottoman Army in Damascus, and Max Roloff-Breslau was supposed to win the support of Muslims in the Dutch East Indies. By the end of October, McKeekin writes, “every day trains were arriving at Constantinople’s Sirkeci station full of suspicious-looking characters from Central Europe, along with German gold, guns and ammunition.”115 In the end, though, these “suspicious-looking characters from Central Europe” failed to foment the mass revolts Wangenheim envisioned. “From the first,” Morgenthau later recalled, “the Holy War proved a failure.” The Kaiser’s plan to “let loose 300,000,000 Mohammedans in a gigantic St. Bartholomew massacre of Christians,” as Morgenthau described it, did not deprive Britain of Egypt or India, and the war instead cost the Ottoman Empire control of the holy cities of Jerusalem and Mecca.116 While the Germans and their Ottoman allies did manage to marshal the Sanusis against the Italians in Cyrenaica, the grand pan-Islamic revolt envisioned by Hartmann, Kaiser Wilhelm, and their colleagues failed to materialize.117 The shortcomings of the first “jihad” mission during the Great War and the subsequent defeats of both the German and Ottoman Empires did not stop some German diplomats from continuing to advocate for closer German ties to the Middle East. The eccentric German explorer and sometime diplomat Max Von Oppenheim kept up his contacts in the Middle East during the 1920s and 30s, maintaining correspondences with Amin al-Husseini, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, and Shakib Arslan, a Lebanese Druze prince.118 In the summer of 1940, Oppenheim traveled to Syria and made trips to Baghdad to meet with al-Gaylani and al-Husseini.119 The latter had visited the German consulate in Jerusalem in 1933 upon Hitler’s ascension to power, seeing opportunities for collaboration, and received financial support from the Italian and German governments for his efforts to resist the British in Palestine in the late 1930s.120 Al-Husseini, united with Hitler in his virulent anti-semitism, advocated for Muslims to kill all of the Jews in the Middle East and asked the Nazis for assistance to this end.121 Through Amt official Fritz Grobba and other agents, German intelligence services “began building up contacts [in Iraq] in the early 1930s,” as the Central Intelligence Agency noted in a post-war report.122 Grobba — who 115 McKeekin, Berlin-Baghdad, 87-88, 92-97. 116 Morgenthau, Story, 168-169. Eugene Rogan, Fall of the Ottomans (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 115, 283. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/yale- ebooks/reader.action?docID=1866936&ppg=76. 117 Jonathan Wyrtzen (Forthcoming), Reimagining the Middle East in the Long Great War (New York: Columbia University Press). Unfortunately, I do not have room here to provide details about the many reasons why the plan did not work. 118 Gossman, Oppenheim, 232-235, 148. Central Intelligence Agency, Study, 114- 115. 119 Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis and Islamists, 124. 120 Ahmad A. R. Shikara, Iraqi Politics 1921 — 1941: The Interaction between Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy (London: LAAM, 1987), 166. Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis and Islamists, 4. 121 Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis and Islamists, 4. 122 Central Intelligence Agency, Study, 106. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81-01043R003500080004-
- 63. Rally Point, 63 saw himself as a “German Lawrence,” according to one of his colleagues — worked in Afghanistan in the 1920s and served as the German ambassador in Baghdad from 1932 until the outbreak of war in 1939, when Iraq suspended diplomatic relations with Germany.123 During Grobba’s time in Baghdad, his residence was known as a gathering place for Arab nationalists.124 One of Grobba’s nationalist acquaintances, the publisher of the al-‘Alam al-‘arabi newspaper in Baghdad, ran a serial print of an Arabic translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf in his paper between October 1933 and spring 1934.125 Interwar archaeological expeditions to the Middle East, meanwhile, furnished a generation of German Orientalists with first-hand knowledge of the region. Adam Falkenstein, who served as Grobba’s translator in Baghdad in 1941, had been a member of the Warka Expedition’s excavation missions during the 1930s, while Werner Junck, the commander of the German air mission in Iraq, had Oluf Krückmann as his translator and guide to the region, who worked from 1934 to 1938 as an epigraphist for the Warka expedition and as a teacher in Iraq’s antiquities administration.126 The plethora of contacts between members of the German diplomatic staff and notables in the Middle East meant that the region was a natural place for Nazi Germany to look for allies in the Second World War. Developments in Arab politics in the 1930s also facilitated closer diplomatic ties between Hitler’s Germany and leaders in the Middle East. Iraq, established as a British mandate state in the wake of the Great War, remained under the influence of the British Empire well into the 1930s. Under the terms of the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930, Britain had the right to move troops through and maintain two RAF bases in Iraqi territory, train the Iraqi army, and install British judges in some areas.127 Even after Iraq nominally gained its independence in 1932, the country remained in the British sphere of influence.128 This arrangement chafed at many Iraqi and Arab nationalists, who began to look abroad for a means of escaping British domination. Colonel Salah al-Din al- Sabbagh, a pan-Arab leader in Iraq, lamented the influence of European empires in the Middle East, remarking “wherever I turn I see the foreign wolf preying 7.pdf. 123 Susan Pedersen, “Getting out of Iraq — in 1932: The League of Nations and the Road to Normative Statehood,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 115, No. 4 (October 2010), 998. https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.115.4.975. Grobba, Männer und Mächte, 182. Wolfgang Schwanitz, “The Jinnee and the Magic Bottle,” in Wolfgang Schwanitz (ed.), Germany and the Middle East 1871-1945 (Princeton, NJ: Degruyter, 2004), 89, 94. Wilhelm Kohlhaas, Hitler-Abenteuer im Irak - Ein Erlebnis-Bericht (Freiburg: Heder, 1989), 31. 124 Renate Dieterich, “Germany's Relations with Iraq and Transjordan from the Weimar Republic to the End of the Second World War,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 41, No. 4 (2005), 467. DOI: 10.1080/00263200500119217. 125 Ekkehard Ellinger, Deutsche Orientalistik zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus 1933- 1945 (Edingen-Neckarhausen: deux mondes Verlag, 2006), 191. Germany’s seat on the League of Nations’ Permanent Mandates Commission, obtained in September of 1927, added to its influence in the Near East. Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, 31. 126 Ellinger, Deutsche Orientalistik, 253. 127 Pedersen, “Getting out of Iraq,” 978-979, 988. 128 Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis and Islamists, 115.
- 64. Rally Point, 64 upon and torturing my nation… ” al-Sabbagh conceived of a broader pan-Arab nation that was not confined to the borders of mandatory Iraq, but instead extended to “the Meditteranean, Oman, the Persian Gulf, [the] heart of the Arabian Peninsula and […] the tomb of the Prophet.”129 Britain’s role in the Middle East was particularly pernicious, as al-Din al-Sabbagh saw it. “There is no more murderous wolf for the Arabs and no deadlier foe of Islam than Britain… three hundred and fifty million Muslims are still groaning under the yoke of British imperialism,” he declared.130 Nationalists like al-Sabbagh found inspiration in Nazi Germany as an example of a country that had ostensibly escaped the oppression of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and risen to prominence despite the humiliation of its defeat in the Great War. “Many Arabs hoped to copy Nazi Germany” and its “seemingly magic formula for quickly becoming strong and victorious […] ” Schwanitz and Rubin contend.131 By strengthening their state in a fascistic manner as Germany had done, some Iraqi nationalists thought they could resist British imperialism and carve out a role for Iraq as an independent power in the Middle East.132 The fact that Hitler’s Germany and its Axis co-conspirators were challenging the traditional Western allies whose influence Arab nationalists detested gave Arab nationalists even more reason to turn to Germany for inspiration and support.133 While admiration of Nazi Germany may not have been “almost instinctive” for the Arabs, as Fritz Grobba claimed it was in 1937, a confluence of domestic and geopolitical factors certainly made the sentiment prevalent in the Arab world in the 1930s.134 The Arab nationalists’ interest in the German model served to strengthen political and financial ties between Germany and the Middle East. Abdullahad Daoud, a Baghdad politician and Arab nationalist who would assist Germany during the Second World War, went to school in Germany, and Tahsin el-Askari, another Iraqi notable, joined Iraq’s secret National Socialist organization in 1939.135 The al-‘Alam al-‘arabi newspaper in Iraq, whose editors “openly supported the idea of dictatorship,” according to Peter Wien, allegedly received financial support from German diplomats in Baghdad, and another paper expressed admiration for “the sense of strength all over Germany.”136 The German government also supported a pan-Islamic weekly based in Switzerland, funded pan-Islamic intellectuals through the Central Islamic Institute in Berlin and the Mullah School in Dresden, and even paid for a number of Iraqi students to attend university in Germany.137 Germany’s Radio Berlin and the Italian- sponsored Radio Bari ran Arabic-language broadcasts in the Middle East that 129 Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 123. 130 Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 123. 131 Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis and Islamists, 4. 132 Wien, Arab Nationalism, 13. 133 Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 118, 184. “The emergence of the axis powers as a challenge to the traditional allies, therefore, offered the pan-Arabist elements a favourable opportunity to exploit Great Power rivalry to their best advantage.” 134 Dieterich, “Germany's Relations with Iraq and Transjordan,” 463. 135 Central Intelligence Agency, Study, 112-113. 136 Wien, Arab Nationalism, 57, 75. 137 Schwanitz, “Jinnee and the Magic Bottle,” 100. Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis and Islamists, 116.
- 65. Rally Point, 65 were part entertainment and part propaganda, while the British diplomat Henry Cox noted in 1934 that “three broadcasting stations in Italy now include news and addresses in Arabic in their programme.”138 A rightist paramilitary youth group called Al-Futuwwa resembling Germany’s Hitler Youth also emerged during the 1930s in Iraq and a contingent of its members marched alongside the Hitlerjugend in the 1938 Nazi Parteitag in Nürnberg.139 Sami Shawkat, a leader in Iraq’s Ministry of Education and the organizer of the Al-Futuwwah, extolled the sort of militarism practiced by Europe’s fascist countries and made explicit appeals to the likes of Germany and fascist Italy when justifying the militaristic education provided by the Futuwwah: The nation which does not excel in the Profession of Death with iron and fire will be forced to die under the hooves of the horses and under the boots of a foreign soldiery…had Musolini not had tens of thousands of Black Shirts well versed in the Profession of Death he would not have been able to put on the temples of Victor Emanuel the crown of the first Caesars of Roma.140 Shawkat declared this in 1933, making it clear that his push to militarize Iraq had at least in part been inspired by European fascists. Reaching further into Germany’s past, the story of Prussia’s success in unifying a number of weak German states into the powerful German Empire resonated with Arab nationalists who hoped that Iraq could act as an “Arab Prussia” and unify Arabs throughout the Middle East into a single political entity.141 “Sixty years ago, Prussia used to dream of uniting the German people. What is there to prevent Iraq, who fulfilled her desire for independence ten years ago, from dreaming to unite all the Arab countries?” Shawkat asked pupils of the Central Secondary School in Baghdad in 1933.142 Sati al-Husry, another Arab nationalist leader, also looked to Germany as a model for Arab unification in the Middle East.143 As the views of Shawkat, al-Husry, and others show, Iraq’s status as the first independent Arab state contributed to the Iraqis’ claims to the mantle of pan- Arab leadership.144 The pro-German sympathies of many prominent Iraqis in the 1930s should have encouraged German leaders, given the Middle Eastern country’s outsized strategic importance. Iraq’s role as one of the world’s top oil-producing countries made access to its wells critical in the age of mechanized warfare. 138 Dieterich, “Germany's Relations with Iraq and Transjordan,” 466. Callum A. MacDonald, “Radio Bari: Italian Wireless Propaganda in the Middle East and British Countermeasures, 1934-38,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2 (May 1977), 195-196. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4282642. 139 Wien, Arab Nationalism, 107. Stefan Wild, “National Socialism in the Arab near East between 1933 and 1939,” Die Welt des Islams, New Series, Vol. 25, No. 1 (1985), 136. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1571079. 140 Sami Shawkat, quoted in Wild, 136. Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 120, 121. 141 Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 118. 142 Wild, “National Socialism,” 136. Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 121. 143 L. M. Kenny, “Sāṭi' Al-Ḥuṣrī's Views on Arab Nationalism,” Middle East Journal, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Summer 1963), 239-240. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4323606. 144 Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 130. Shikara writes that Iraq was “the first of its kind” in terms of being an independent Arab state.
- 66. Rally Point, 66 Together, Iraq and Iran supplied Britain with “all of its non-American oil,” according to the military historian Robert Lyman.145 Refineries in Abadan, meanwhile, just outside of Iraq’s borders, processed much of the oil coming from neighboring Iran. Iraq produced so much oil in 1940 that it could have “met all of Germany’s petroleum needs” at the time, Lyman maintains.146 While Nazi Germany did have access to oil in Romania and Russia, it needed other sources as the war progressed in order to continue to fuel its military — a need that most famously drove Hitler to invade the Caucasus in the summer of 1942.147 Great Britain also placed a premium on maintaining its role in Iraq, though. The country’s abundant oil reserves, coupled with the fact that British armies had suffered some 90,000 casualties conquering the territory during the Great War, gave Great Britain a strong interest in maintaining its influence in Baghdad.148 Al-Gaylani and the Turn to Germany Among Iraq’s pro-German politicians in the interwar period was Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, the scion of an old Baghdad family who rose to political prominence in the 1920s. Trained as a lawyer, al-Gaylani became Iraq’s Minister of Justice in 1924 and served as a member of Parliament and Minister of Interior after resigning from his first cabinet position.149 From the beginnings of his political career, al-Gaylani was known for his hostility to the influence of foreign powers in Iraq. He resigned as Minister of Justice “because of his opposition to foreign oil concessions,” as the CIA noted, and quit his post as Minister of Interior to express his animosity towards the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi pact. In the wake of this resignation, al-Gaylani even formed his own anti-British political party.150 Over the next decade, al-Gaylani's political success ebbed and flowed; he attained high positions in the Iraqi government, serving as a cabinet minister and even the country’s prime minister, but also experienced periods of exile abroad.151 The most important phase of al-Gaylani’s political career, though, began on March 31, 1940, when he became Prime Minister of Iraq in the midst of the Second 145 Lyman, Iraq 1941, 7. A pipeline that ran from Kirkuk to Haditha and then on to Tripoli and Haifa connected Iraqi pumping stations with oil-consuming countries and firms across the world. 146 Lyman, Iraq 1941, 8. 147 Lyman, Iraq 1941, 8. Joel Hayward, "Too Little, Too Late: An Analysis of Hitler's Failure in August 1942 to Damage Soviet Oil Production," The Journal of Military History, Vol. 64, No. 3 (2000): 769-770. doi:10.2307/120868. Securing more oil in the East was also one of the motivating factors in Hitler’s Lebensraum plan. Beevor, Second World War, 5. 148 Pedersen, “Getting out of Iraq,” 978-979. 149 Central Intelligence Agency, Study, 114-115. 150 Central Intelligence Agency, Study, 115. Pedersen, “Getting out of Iraq,” 988- 989. Pedersen on the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi Pact: “Britain did recognize Iraqi sovereignty in the Anglo-Iraq Treaty of 1930, but at a considerable price—including the right to move troops over Iraqi soil, the continued presence of the RAF, British ownership of two airbases, the right to train and supply the Iraqi army, the continued employment of some British judges, and a phased diminution of other British staff.” Some saw the treaty’s terms as creating a British “protectorate in disguise” out of Iraq.” 151 Central Intelligence Agency, Study, 115.
- 67. Rally Point, 67 World War.152 Germany’s early successes in the conflict, which seemed to indicate an imminent German victory, together with al-Gaylani’s deep-seated animosity towards the English, convinced al-Gaylani that an alliance with the Axis was the means through which Iraq could finally achieve its independence from Britain.153 Iraq had broken off its diplomatic relations with Germany in accordance with its treaties with Great Britain shortly after the outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939 — “against the wish of the overwhelming majority of the [Iraqi] people,” Fritz Grobba asserted — but al-Gaylani was determined to realign Iraq’s diplomacy. He resisted British attempts to force Iraq to cut ties with fascist Italy and set about working to re-establish Iraqi contacts with Germany, despite the lack of official relations between the two countries.154 It seemed as if al-Gaylani and his allies, united with Italy and Germany in their contempt for Great Britain, were well poised to join the Axis against Great Britain. Al-Gaylani would not be able to expel the British from the Middle East on his own, however. By al-Gaylani’s own count, only four divisions of the Iraqi military could be depended upon to stand behind him. Al-Gaylani estimated that without outside assistance, “Iraq could at most only put up one to two months of resistance” before it succumbed to the British.155 Consequently, representatives of the Iraqi government began to reach out to German and Italian diplomats early in al-Gaylani’s premiership in order to gauge the Axis’ willingness to support Iraq against Great Britain. These efforts bore their first fruits in October 1940, when Germany issued a statement proclaiming that Germany had “always been filled with feelings of friendship for the Arabs.” Though the statement offered no specific promises of aid, it made Germany’s stance on the issue of Arab independence clear. “The Arab lands can continue to count on Germany’s complete sympathy in their efforts to reach this goal [of independence],” the statement concluded.156 Later that year, communication between al-Gaylani’s government and the Axis became more explicitly anti- British. In December, al-Gaylani asked Axis emissaries if Germany could use Radio Berlin to create Arabic-language broadcasts about Britain’s mistreatment of Iraq.157 Over the coming weeks, al-Gaylani’s requests became more urgent, contending that Britain was pursuing “impermissible policy of interference in Iraq’s domestic politics” and that Iraq would need outside assistance to resist 152 Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 168. 153 Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 168. Al-Gaylani’s motives for siding with Germany are obviously a subject of debate, and for a more thorough discussion of this question (and the historical discussion surrounding), the reader should turn to the books by Nicosia, Herf, Wien, and Schwanitz listed in the bibliography. 154 Fritz Grobba, Irak (Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1943), 17. Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 169. 155 Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, December 9, 1940. NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61508-61510. 156 Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, 150-151. Grobba, Männer und Mächte, 199. 157 Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, December 9, 1940. NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61508-61510.
- 68. Rally Point, 68 Britain’s encroachments.158 In January 1941, one of al-Gaylani’s allies, referred to as “General Salahudin” in German documents, provided the Italian envoy in Baghdad with a list detailing the machine guns, munitions, armored cars, flak batteries, anti-tank matériel, mines, and 100,000 gas masks which Iraq would need from the Axis. The Germans and their Italian allies could send these weapons to Iraq through the Soviet Union, Salahudin offered, and provide aircraft to supplement the Iraqi air force.159 Yet the logistical challenges inherent in the operation proposed by Salahudin were myriad, as diplomat after diplomat noted in the telegrams exchanged by Amt officials on the matter. On December 16, Ernst Woermann expressed concern about the “transport route difficulties” that would come with an attempt to send weapons to Iraq, and the Japanese were similarly skeptical of another of al-Gaylani’s plans that involved shipping weapons from Japan to Iraq.160 “Contrary to the assumption of Iraq,” Japanese diplomats explained, it was impossible for Japanese steamers to travel from Japan to Basra without putting in at any English-controlled ports.161 In March, the Amt returned to the question of Iraqi weapons shipments once again, contemplating “whether captured English weapons sufficient for the arming of a division of 15,000 men were available.” An internal accounting found that Germany had some matériel available, but Hitler had apparently set these weapons aside for an assault on Ireland.162 Transport of these weapons, even if available, would be even more challenging, as Woermann had surmised in December. Under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Germany was not allowed to ship military equipment over Soviet territory, therefore “in present circumstances only a transport over Turkey is possible,” Georg Ripken, an Amt official, reported.163 Yet Turkey would not accept shipments bound for Iraq, so any cargo being sent to Iraq would have to be “declared as being in transit for Iran or Afghanistan” and then covertly unloaded before reaching its official destination. Only a limited amount 158 Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, December 23, 1940. NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61529-61530. 159 Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, January 27, 1941. NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61541. Salahudin asked that the Axis procure these weapons from stores of captured English weapons, so that they would appear less suspicious to British onlookers who were accustomed to seeing Iraqi soldiers armed with English weaponry. 160 Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, December 16, 1940. NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61523-61525. Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, December 23, 1940. NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61526-61528. 161 Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, December 31, 1940. NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61531. 162 Memorandum by Georg Ripken, March 7, 1941. NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61550-61552. 163 Memorandum by Georg Ripken, March 7, 1941. NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61550-61552. Woermann had expressed a similar sentiment a few weeks prior, informing the Italians that “the transport over the Soviet Union is not considered feasible by us,” and that another transport route would have to be found. Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, February 7, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61542-61544.
- 69. Rally Point, 69 of matériel could be transported in this manner. “It is completely out of the question [...] to procure the entire amount of supplies envisioned for Iraq in this way,” Ripken wrote.164 Luftwaffe aircraft could not just fly to Iraq, either, because the country was out of range of the Luftwaffe’s nearest bases.165 While the German authorities were trying to determine a means of shipping weapons to Iraq, the British continued to put pressure on al-Gaylani’s government. In December 1940, Iraq’s pro-British regent Abdul Ilah demanded that al-Gaylani resign as prime minister, but al-Gaylani refused.166 At the end of January, al-Gaylani reported to the Axis that England was “exerting a great pressure on Iraq” and even preparing a “military occupation” of the country. The Axis’s dilatory responses to his requests for aid were making his political position untenable, al-Gaylani argued, and his colleagues in government were accusing him of compromising Iraq’s integrity without getting anything from the Axis in return. Al-Gaylani claimed that his rule would “not last long under these circumstances” and begged the Axis powers to send military aid as soon as possible.167 Torn by divisions between its pro-British and pro-Axis members, the Iraqi cabinet reached a crisis by the end of January and al-Gaylani was forced to resign, replaced by Taha al-Hashimi. Al-Hashimi initially steered a middle course between the opposing factions in his government, but gradually adopted a stance more accommodative of the British and even prevented al-Gaylani and his allies from establishing a new political party.168 This antagonized the members of the Golden Square, an anti-British group of powerful military officers who had initially supported al-Hashimi’s rise to power but did not think it prudent to cut ties with Italy as al-Hashimi was now considering.169 Meanwhile, the British military moved to shore up its position in and around Iraq. In February and March, British ships unloaded over 20,000 crates of arms and munitions and nearly 40,000 crates of provisions in Basra, a maneuver that suggested Britain had plans for a military operation in the region.170 In mid-March, the British foreign secretary Anthony Eden told an Iraqi minister in a meeting in Cairo that he wanted to send two more Indian-English divisions of soldiers to Iraq to strengthen Britain’s presence there.171 It seemed as if Britain was increasingly willing to use force — not just verbal demands — to assert its will in Iraq. 164 Memorandum by Georg Ripken, March 7, 1941. NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61550-61552. 165 Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, 193. 166 Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 171. 167 Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, February 7, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61542-61544. The Woermann memorandum is dated February 7, but as Woermann states, the missive from al-Gaylani dated from his last days as prime minister. 168 Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 172-174. For a more thorough account of this episode, see these pages in the Shikara book. 169 Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 173-174. Grobba, Männer und Mächte, 205. Al-Gaylani resigned January 30. Grobba gives the date as January 31 but I am using the date from Shikara’s historical account. 170 Memorandum by Ettel, April 22, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61598. 171 Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, March 24, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61553.
- 70. Rally Point, 70 Coup d’etat and War By the end of March, the Axis had yet to settle on a plan for supporting Iraq, or even commit to a specific program of aid for the country. Yet the simmering conflict within the Iraqi government, together with the British government’s aggressive stance towards Iraq, forced Iraq’s pro-Axis leaders to act sooner than they had expected and much earlier than the Germans had hoped they would. The crisis came to a head on April 1, 1941, when a military division in Baghdad under the command of the anti-English officer Halil Schabib received orders from al-Hashimi’s government to relocate to Dilanieh southeast of Baghdad.172 When the troops refused to obey, some officers were arrested and others shot, but the soldiers fought back against the government’s discipline and initiated a coup d’etat against the al-Hashimi regime. Schabib’s division occupied public buildings in Baghdad and worked with the Iraqi Chief of Staff Amin Saki to depose al-Hashimi and his cabinet. The military leaders who seized power then “commissioned former Minister President Gaylani with taking over the Government” while al-Hashimi and his allies fled Baghdad, according to an Amt memorandum written on April 7.173 In the days following the coup, Amt officials reported that al-Hashimi’s imminent decision to comply with some of Britain’s demands had motivated the coup. “The army had to act swiftly, as the Taha government had already decided to accept the conditions, including the breaking off of diplomatic relations with Italy, which were contained in the agreements initialed between [Iraqi foreign minister Tawfiq al-Suwaidi] and [Anthony] Eden in Cairo,” Amt official Max Mueller reported to his colleagues on April 8.174 On April 19, Ernst Woermann noted that the situation had been even graver, passing on Italian intelligence which suggested that “delay in the conduct of the coup d'état would have put Iraq before the fact of military occupation by England.”175 Al- Hashimi’s move to send Schabib’s troops away from Baghdad, therefore, may have been seen by Iraq’s military leaders as an attempt to facilitate the arrival of British forces.176 172 Lyman, Iraq 1941, 12. Unsigned Amt Staff Memorandum, April 7, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61558. 173 Unsigned Amt Staff Memorandum, April 7, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61558. The military appointed a new regent to replace the pro-British regent who had fled to Basra and the new regent confirmed al-Gaylani as Prime Minister of Iraq. Memorandum by Ettel, April 13, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61574. Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, April 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61579-61584. 174 Memorandum by Max Mueller, April 8, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61559-61560. In German al-Suwaidi’s name is written as “Suedi.” Barrie G. James, Hitler’s Gulf War: The Fight for Iraq 1941 (Barnsley, Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Books, 2009). Viewed online, no page numbers. 175 Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, April 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61579-61584. 176 Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, April 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61579-61584. The Iraqi people’s reaction to the coup appeared to be positive, at least according to the undoubtedly highly filtered reports that reached the Amt in Berlin. “[The new government] is receiving excited declarations of support from all parts of the country,” Woermann related, adding that “the Iraqi press consistently praises the army and Gaylani himself.”
- 71. Rally Point, 71 Al-Gaylani and his allies had successfully expelled their country’s pro- British government, but they still had to eliminate the British military presence in Iraq. The military assistance from the Axis that al-Gaylani thought “would be instantly forthcoming in the event of war,” moreover, had yet to materialize, and there still existed no concrete plan for shipping such aid to Iraq.177 German officials expressed doubt about al-Gaylani’s ability to withstand an armed confrontation with Britain. A memorandum dated April 9 warned that “a speedy armed conflict between British forces and those of Iraq is possible” and that “the [Iraqis] can not withstand the British in the long run without receiving help from the Axis powers.” The report’s author suggested that the Axis advise the Iraqis “to delay the armed conflict” until military support could be procured.178 Kroll echoed this sentiment on April 21, reporting that "the Iraqi government is firmly committed to its anti-English stance, but is too weak […] to risk an open fight with Britain.” The Iraqi government “could last only 1 month under current conditions,” he remarked.179 The Germans had intelligence suggesting that the regular Iraqi army was around 43,000 men in strength, but it was unlikely that this force would be able to withstand the might of the British Empire.180 Indeed, the British forces in Palestine alone stood at around 36,000 men.181 Recognizing the peril of Iraq’s situation, Amt officials busied themselves trying to find a route for transporting arms to Baghdad. On April 10, Germany’s foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop ordered Woermann to “immediately make a report about the transport possibilities” for sending aid to Iraq.182 As these documents make clear, German officials were fully aware of the vulnerability of al-Gaylani’s position by mid-April, but had yet to determine whether transporting weapons and troops to Iraq would even be possible. Outgunned by Great Britain and lacking decisive support from the Axis, al-Gaylani’s position unravelled rapidly in the weeks following the April 1 coup. On April 5, Woermann reported that the British were trying to unload three divisions in Basra and send them to Mosul and also planned to move two divisions from Palestine to the Iraqi border.183 Britain’s diplomats, meanwhile, made it clear to Iraq that they would continue to assert their military dominance over the region despite al-Gaylani’s rise to power. Amt official Prince Otto von Bismarck relayed on April 19 that Britain had told the Iraqi government that it 177 Lyman, Iraq 1941, 12. 178 Unsigned Amt Staff Memorandum, April 9, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61563. This sentiment differs from Franz von Papen’s analysis of April 7, in which he reported that “In Iraq it is not believed that the English will decide on military occupation,” but this comfort seems to have quickly evaporated, as the documents described here from the following days illustrate. Memorandum by Franz von Papen, April 7, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61557. 179 Memorandum by Kroll, April 21, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61594. 180 Memorandum by Kramarz, May 7, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61687- 61688. 181 Unsigned Amt Memorandum, May 3, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61641-61644. 182 Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, April 10, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61566. 183 Memorandum by Ernst Woermann, April 5, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61556.
- 72. Rally Point, 72 planned to send “strong English contingents through Iraq to the War Theater in the Middle East” and hoped “that the Iraqi government would not make any difficulties” — a clear sign that England would not tolerate any abrogation of its access to Iraqi territory.184 Al-Gaylani responded to Britain’s message by declaring that he would allow the troop movements so long as “no more than 3,000 [British] men at one time will stay on Iraqi territory.” This answer angered English emissaries, who retorted that “the British troops would have to march through Iraq without much further ado.”185 The British navy also appeared to be bolstering its presence in the Persian Gulf. “Numerous warships and an aircraft carrier are cruising in the Persian gulf and are at the entrance of the Schab-el- Arab,” Bismarck related on April 19.186 Al-Gaylani, meanwhile, continued to make appeals to the Axis for help, still unsure of whether he could count on air support from the Luftwaffe or the receipt of weapons from the Axis. The Italians conveyed that Il Duce was “basically ready to send the Iraqi government the requested aid” but that “the feasibility seemed to him to be extraordinarily limited.”187 Astonishingly, the Axis had yet to formulate a concrete plan for aiding al-Gaylani a full two weeks after his coup. Over the following days the Amt received increasingly grave reports from Iraq. On April 21, German diplomats learned that the British air bases in Iraq which the Iraqi military hoped to capture at Sheiba and Habbaniya were garrisoned with 2,000 and 3,000 soldiers, respectively, and that 6,000 more British troops had landed in Kuwait.188 On the nights of the 18th and 19th, three more British ships dropped anchor outside of Basra and ten more transport vessels arrived, “probably loaded with Indian troops.” Al-Gaylani asserted to the Germans that “under no circumstances would he allow a breach of the limits established by the Iraqi government,” a stance that put him on course for conflict with the British who, although they had nominally accepted al-Gaylani’s conditions on April 18, seemed intent on sending increasing numbers of soldiers to Iraq and its neighbors.189 Bismarck lamented the evasiveness of the Amt’s responses to al-Gaylani’s pleas, writing in a telegram dated April 21 that “it is imperative that we take a decisive position in giving the expected assurances to this government.”190 Bismarck’s foreboding turned out to be well-warranted, as two days later, the Amt learned that despite England’s initial acceptance of Iraq’s 184 Memorandum by Bismarck, April 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61577-61578. This Otto Chrstian Archibald Bismarck was a grandson of the famed Chancellor Bismarck. 185 Memorandum by Bismarck, April 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61577-61578. 186 Memorandum by Bismarck, April 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61577-61578. 187 Memorandum by Bismarck, April 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61577-61578. 188 Memorandum by Bismarck, April 21, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61592-61593. 189 Memorandum by Bismarck, April 21, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61592-61593. 190 Memorandum by Bismarck, April 21, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61592-61593.
- 73. Rally Point, 73 conditions, the British army had landed 40,000 Indian troops in Basra. “It is understood in Iraq that the English are preparing the occupation of the country,” the Reich’s ambassador in Rome, Hans von Mackensen, reported, adding that the Iraqi government and army “urgently request a clear declaration from the Axis” of support for Iraq.191 Iraq submitted a “diplomatic protest at the British embassy” in response to Britain’s violation of the agreed-upon transport terms, but it was to no avail. Thousands of troops were already stationed in Basra, four more steamer ships sat in Basra’s harbor with troops yet to be disembarked, and another contingent with “a strength of 50,000 to 60,000 men” was allegedly underway from India.192 The situation “could become critical in 3 or 4 days,” an Amt official telegrammed to Berlin on April 25.193 Anticipating armed conflict with Britain, al-Gaylani sent 30,000 Iraqi troops to Basra to monitor the British there and 20,000 more to surround the airbase at Habbaniya. War between the two countries officially broke out on May 2 as a result of the Iraqi blockade of Habbaniya.194 By mid-May, Iraq was on the defensive on all fronts, having lost the town of Rutba to the British and fearing that “the English will break through the Iraqi positions around Basra,” as Bismarck relayed on May 17. “The Iraqi army is neither able to stop the British advance east of the Euphrates, nor able to in any serious way disrupt the advance, as virtually nothing has been left of the Iraqi Air Force,” Bismarck informed his colleagues in the Amt.195 Iraq and its sympathizers grew increasingly frustrated by the Axis’s continued lack of aid. “Iraq is lost and Britain will become its ruler if the Axis powers remain passive,” the Italian emissary in Baghdad wrote to the Amt on May 12.196 Al-Husseini called for an Arab “Holy War” against the British but this appeal did not do much to change the grim reality of Iraq’s military situation.197 Iraq’s air forces were “greatly reduced by damage and loss of battle” while Britain continued to land thousands of additional troops in Kuwait and bomb Iraqi forces in Fallujah with 191 Memorandum by Mackensen, April 23, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61600. The 40,000 number may be inaccurate, as Mackensen notes in the telegram, because the cipher made this figure hard to understand. For identification of Mackensen: Manfred Messerschmidt, “Die deutsche Rechtsgeschichte unter dem Einfluß des Hitlerregimes,” Kritische Justiz, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1988), 135. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23997939. 192 Memorandum by Mackensen, April 25, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61608-61610. 193 Memorandum by Mackensen, April 25, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61608-61610. 194 Shikara, Iraqi Politics, 196. Memorandum by Ettel, May 2, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61635.. 195 Memorandum by Bismarck, May 17, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61777-61778. 196 Memorandum by Bismarck, May 12, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61738-61749.. 197 “Memorandum by an Official of the Foreign Minister’s Secretariat,” May 14, 1941, No. 511, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 797-806. https://archive.org/details/DocumentsOnGermanForeignPolicy-SeriesD-VolumeXii- February1-June/page/n943/mode/2up. Gossman, Oppenheim, 234. Al-Gaylani was quickly removed from power by British forces.
- 74. Rally Point, 74 “demoralizing effects” on the Iraqi army.198 Fritz Grobba, based in Baghdad and working under the pseudonym of “Franz Gehrcke,” sent increasingly desperate messages to his superiors in Berlin. “Incessant British air bombardment shatters the morale of Iraqi troops who are without any shelter, flak or their own air defense […] area of the capital is endangered [...] Iraqi government and army desperately request strengthened German air protection,” he telegrammed on May 20.199 Around May 22, Iraqi troops evacuated Fallujah and retreated to a position just 40 kilometers outside of Baghdad.200 The next day, the Iraqi army flooded the land south of Fallujah to impede the advance of the British, but to no avail.201 By May 24, Iraq’s fate appeared to be sealed. Rudolf Rahn reported from Syria that “morale in Bagdad is bad, the government is preparing to depart […] the families of the Minister-president [Gaylani] and the defense minister are already in Turkey.” Iraq’s finance minister and foreign minister, meanwhile, had fled to Tehran.202 The Iraqi army surrendered on May 31, 1941 and al-Gaylani’s rule was over.203 Al-Gaylani’s ill-fated resistance to the British Empire was not entirely without aid from the Axis, however. For all of the ink that German and Italian diplomats spilled fretting over the lack of a viable transport route for shipping arms to Iraq, they eventually found a perfectly sound means of conveying weaponry and Luftwaffe aircraft from Europe to al-Gaylani’s forces in Iraq — one that they probably could have identified and exploited much earlier than they actually did. In mid-May 1941, Germany sent a Luftwaffe expeditionary force under Axel von Blomberg to Baghdad by way of Athens, Rhodes, and Vichy France-controlled Syria. While Blomberg suffered an unfortunate demise upon his arrival in Baghdad, the route by which he had come to Baghdad was in fact a convenient path along which the Axis managed to supply Iraq with arms and other military support.204 The Axis assembled a force of 12 aircraft in Rhodes on May 13, for instance, and moved them from there to Baghdad via Syria in the following days.205 Italy also began shipping munitions to Iraq by transporting them by train to Thessaloniki, shipping them from there to Rhodes, and then flying them to Syria and Baghdad.206 On May 13, fighter planes carrying 100 198 Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 17, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61791. Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61799. 199 Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 20, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61801. 200 Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 23, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61838. 201 Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 24, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61845. 202 Memorandum by Rudolf Rahn, May 24, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61846. 203 Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, 177. 204 Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 16, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61770-61774. 205 Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 16, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61770-61774. 206 Memorandum by Kramarz, May 21, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61812.
- 75. Rally Point, 75 machine guns left Italy for Rhodes and the Middle East.207 Germany’s diplomatic services used these same transport routes to convey their agents to the Middle East in early May 1941. Grobba left Berlin on May 7 and arrived in Baghdad on May 11, his staff and bags of gold designated for al-Gaylani’s cause in tow, after making intermediate stops in Munich, Foggia, and Rhodes.208 The Abwehr, Germany’s military intelligence branch, sent Rudolf Rahn to Syria by way of Rhodes in early May. Rahn, operating out of Damascus under the name “Kaufmann Renouard,” arrived on May 10 and was tasked with working with Grobba to transport weapons from Syria “through the steppes and desert roads to the East.”209 Rahn quickly amassed weapons and other matériel gathered from French stores in Syria and transported 27 train cars full of these supplies to the Iraqi border near Mosul on May 13, where Grobba met the convoy. English aviators bombed the Mosul train station as the supply-laden train was nearing the city, but with little effect. Grobba’s agents, unscathed, took control of the train carrying 15,700 guns and 5 million rounds of ammunition, and Grobba and Rahn returned to their respective bases safely.210 Unfortunately for al-Gaylani, though, the German support arrived too late to make much of a difference. The planes that did arrive in Iraq were quickly expended in battle. Grobba reported on May 18 that the German air commander in Iraq estimated that the aircraft at his disposal would “be depleted by enemy action in the air and on land in one week if ongoing losses are sustained.”211 The following day Grobba received news that “Iraq’s plane fuel situation [was] catastrophic” and that the country’s remaining reserves would sustain the German and Italian planes already in Iraq for only a week. “New supplies from Iran or Romania are absolutely necessary,” Grobba telegrammed, “production of aviation fuel in the country probably not possible with present facilities.”212 Ironically, given that Iraq was a major oil producer, it had almost none of the type of fuel required by airplanes once Luftwaffe support arrived, despite the fact that al-Gaylani had been begging for this very air support for months.213 Nazi 207 Unsigned Amt Memorandum, May 13, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61747. 208 Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, 168. Kohlhaas, Hitler Abenteuer, 33-34. The stops are important because it shows that the Germans could reach Syria without use of Greece — meaning that they could have conducted a similar operation even before Germany conquered Greece in April 1941 (Rhodes was controlled by Italy). 209 Rahn, Ruheloses Leben, 151-153. Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, 173. For Rahn being based in Damascus: Memorandum by Rudolf Rahn, May 15, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61757-61758. 210 Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 13, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61752. Memorandum by Rahn, May 11, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61725. 211 Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 18, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61793. 212 Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 19, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61795. 213 Schwanitz and Rubin, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 131. Robert Lyman, Iraq 1941 — The Battles for Basra, Habbaniya, Fallujah and Baghdad (New York, Osprey, 2005), 7-8. “The continuation of our military
- 76. Rally Point, 76 Germany’s most powerful show of support for al-Gaylani and his allies — Hiter’s “Directive No. 30” that ordered the creation of a special military mission for battle in Iraq — came on May 23, 1941, just days before Iraq surrendered. As Franz Nicosia writes, “by that date, the battle between British and Iraqi forces had been underway for almost three weeks, and the complete defeat of the Iraqis and the overthrow of al-Gaylani’s regime was about a week away.”214 Assistance from the Axis arrived too late to play the decisive role in the conflict that al- Gaylani and his allies had hoped it would play.215 “Now the Orient is Really on Fire” — An Uneasy Axis Partnership in the Middle East An operation already stalled by logistical challenges and problems of geography was rendered even more unlikely to succeed (and delayed further) by faltering collaboration between Nazi Germany and its allies in Vichy France, on whom Germany relied for access to Syria. This flawed cooperation was in large part a product of the all-too-apparent contradictions inherent in Germany’s plan for the Middle East, which called for both inflaming Arab nationalism and maintaining vestiges of European imperial power in the region. On the one hand, the Reich aimed to inspire a wave of pan-Arab and pan-Islamic sentiment across the Middle East that would expel the British from the area, yet on the other hand, the Nazis sought to ensure that their French and Italian allies would be able to retain their colonies in Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Ethiopia, and elsewhere. Germany, too, hoped to be able to access Iraq’s oil and markets once the coup had succeeded, despite al-Gaylani’s long history of rhetoric condemning concessions to foreign powers.216 These contradictions are conspicuous in Hitler’s infamous “Directive No. 30,” which called for a propaganda campaign that would convey that “the victory of the Axis brings to the countries of the Middle East liberation from the English yoke and the right of self-determination,” but in the very next sentence stresses that “propaganda against the French position in Syria must be avoided.”217 Hitler hoped to spark a pan-Arab revolt across the Middle East, yet he wanted this pan-Arab movement to conveniently steer clear of the territories coveted by his allies. Put simply, Germany was trying to “have its cake and eat it too” in the Arab world. action in Iraq is hampered or even called into question by the fact that sufficient quantities of suitable gasoline are not available in Syria and Iraq for our aircraft,” an Amt official relayed grimly to his superiors on May 22. Memorandum by Ritter, May 22, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61823-61824. 214 “Führer’s Directive,” May 23, 1941, No. 543, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII. Eds. Paul Sweet, Howard Smyth, James Beddie, Arthur Kogan, George Kent, Margaret Lambert, K.H.M Duke, F.G. Stambrook, K.M.L Simpson, Z.A.B Zeman, Maurice Baumont, Georges Bonnin, Andre Scherer (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1962), 862-864. Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, 168. 215 Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, 168. 216 Central Intelligence Agency, Study, 115. Lyman, Iraq 1941, 8. Rahn, Ruheloses Leben, 170. Rahn’s commentary here is an example of Germany’s desire to secure Middle Eastern oil. 217 “Führer’s Directive,” May 23, 1941, No. 543, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 862- 864. https://archive.org/details/DocumentsOnGermanForeignPolicy-SeriesD- VolumeXii-February1-June/page/n943/mode/2up.
- 77. Rally Point, 77 The problems created by the incongruity between the pro-nationalist and pro-imperial facets of Nazi Germany’s Near East policy were evident in the halting manner in which Germany and its allies cooperated in the Middle East. To start, it took Germany until May 1941 to reach an agreement with Vichy permitting Axis use of Syria for military purposes, even though France had been conquered by Germany almost a year earlier. Ribbentrop on May 3 asked the German ambassador to France, Otto Abetz, “to focus on the issue of arms shipments from Syria to Iraq” with his French counterparts, and on May 5, 1941, François Darlan, the admiral of the French navy, conveyed that Petain and his cabinet members had agreed to “support […] the shipment of arms to Iraq through Syria.”218 In negotiations over the following few days, Vichy’s leaders agreed to make their stocks of weapons in Syria “available for arms transports to Iraq” and to assist shipments to Iraq by allowing German planes to “make intermediate landings and take on gasoline in Syria” and by giving French planes and bombs in Syria to Iraq. In return though, Germany had to enter negotiations for reducing French occupation payments to Germany and allow France to rearm seven of its torpedo boats.219 Germany was also forced to reassert its commitment to protecting the French Empire. On May 11, Darlan asked Hitler for “support for the French propaganda among the natives of Syria to the effect that France would in all circumstances retain the mandate over this area,” and Hitler reassured Darlan that he had “no intention of destroying the French colonial empire.”220 In order to arm Arab nationalists in Iraq, Germany would have to agree to help subdue their ideological compatriots in Syria. In the messages they sent back to the Amt, German agents stationed in Syria and Iraq in May 1941 expressed concerns about the commitment of their French allies to the Axis’s plans for the Middle East. On May 8, Ernst Woermann reported that Abetz “[did] not consider sending Minister [Werner Otto von] Hentig to Syria advisable at this time” because “Hentig was so well known in Syria, particularly among Syrian nationalists, that the French government had objected to him being sent there.” As a result, the Amt was forced to send the less-experienced Rahn to Syria in place of Hentig.221 During a stopover in Rhodes en route to Syria, Rahn painted his plane with French colors because he was “uncertain whether German machines could get across Syrian territory unhindered” due to anti-German animosity222 When Rahn arrived at his destination, he was met with a cold reception from local French leaders. During 218 Memorandum by Woermann, May 3, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61649. “The Embassy in Paris to the Foreign Ministry,” May 5, 1941, No. 459, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 718-720. For Darlan background: Robert L. Melka, “Darlan between Britain and Germany 1940-41,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Apr., 1973), 57-80. https://www.jstor.org/stable/259994. 219 “Memorandum by the Director of the Political Department,” May 8, 1941, No. 475, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 740-742. 220 “Record of the conversation between the Führer and admiral darlan in the presence of the reich foreign minister,” May 11, 1941, No. 491, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 763-774. 221 “Memorandum by the Director of the Political Department,” May 8, 1941, No. 476, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 742-743. 222 Rahn, Ruheloses Leben, 153.
- 78. Rally Point, 78 his first meeting with Rahn, Henri Dentz, Vichy’s Commissioner in Syria, coldly informed his German interlocutor that his “father [had] emigrated from Alsace in 1871 so that his sons would not become Germans.” On top of his ingrained anti-German animosity, the Frenchman was concerned about the “Arab unrest that flares up again and again” — a form of agitation that the Germans had historically specialized in inflaming.223 The French, Rahn found, instead of viewing Germany as an ally, associated the Germans with “bloody Arab riots” incited by past German missions to the Middle East.224 Faced with a reluctant French counterpart, Rahn had to tread carefully in his dealings with his Vichy allies. “Under all circumstances prevent the Wehrmacht from interfering here,” Rahn told the Amt on May 15. “Every time German officers arrive, [Dentz] asks questions that clearly reveal his mood,” Rahn continued, noting that, while Dentz had been “exceptionally accommodating so far,” the Frenchman’s “main concern” was “the connection between German Wehrmacht agencies and Arab agitation.” The “delicate Arab question,” Rahn advised, required that Amt representatives be fully informed on French-Arab matters.225 The Germans would have to respect the interests and concerns of the French if the Reich wanted to win any cooperation from Vichy, Rahn quickly realized. “Every clumsy gesture leads to dissent and at least passive resistance,” Rahn warned on May 28.226 Abetz shared Rahn’s fears, expressing concern on May 24 about the “reliability” of the French in Syria and noting a recent “attempted Gaullist revolt” in Damascus.227 Grobba seemed to agree with his colleagues, arguing on May 15 that, “in order to avoid friction between possibly politically untrained German military members and French authorities” Germany should “grant political power of attorney over all Germans in Syria to Rahn.”228 Joseph Goebbels’ diary entries from the time of the Iraq operation also suggest that France’s collaboration was not taken as a given by Germany’s upper leadership. “Hopefully Pétain will stay in line,” Goebbels penned on May 18 as the conflict in Iraq was heating up, noting on May 19 “in Syria, German aircraft make stopovers on the flight to Iraq […] Vichy has remained true to the set course so far” and the following day writing “Fighting continues in Iraq and Syria. Vichy holds the position so far..”229 Goebbels’s recurring comments on Vichy’s commitment to the “course” set by Germany illustrates that Vichy’s loyalty was still an open question at this point in its collaboration with the Reich. Germany’s fragile relationship with the French in Syria meant that the 223 Rahn, Ruheloses Leben, 154-155, 159. 224 Memorandum by Rahn, May 28, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256910- 256911. 225 Memorandum by Rudolf Rahn, May 15, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61757-61758. 226 Memorandum by Rahn, May 28, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256910- 256911. 227 Memorandum by Otto Abetz, May 24, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61844. 228 Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 15, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61759-61760. 229 Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels Online, Entries May 18, May 19 and May 20. https://www.degruyter.com/databasecontent?dbid=tjgo&dbsource=/db/tjgo.
- 79. Rally Point, 79 Germans had to make material concessions to Dentz in order to secure his support. In the midst of the Iraq operation, for example, instead of receiving French and German supplies by way of Syria, Grobba found himself loading trains with supplies for shipment from Iraq to Syria in order to satisfy Dentz’s demands. “Today a train departed from Mosul for Syria with sugar, rice, fat and fuel. A second, similar train will follow,” Grobba reported to the Amt on May 15.230 When these shipments did not arrive on time or failed to meet Vichy’s expectations, the French retaliated. On May 21 only six wagons of fuel arrived in Damascus, disappointing the French authorities. Rahn reported that, as a result, “the French, quite rightly upset, are slowing down their pace in organizing arms transport.”231 Rahn, exasperated, wrote to the Amt on May 22 after food had yet to arrive in Syria, even though the French had already received 190,000 liters of gasoline from Iraq. “What really left Mosul?” he demanded. “Grobba is to arrange that new food transports leave as soon as possible because we need wagons for weapons,” the frustrated agent added. As a result of France’s intransigence, Iraq found itself trading “wagons for weapons” when it should have been focused fighting for its own survival.232 The Arab nationalist propaganda efforts sponsored by some of Rahn’s German colleagues added further strain to Franco-German relations. German orientalist Werner Otto von Hentig had been in Syria in early 1941 meeting with Arab nationalists who sought to undermine Vichy’s rule and six months earlier, Rudolf Roser had conducted similar work in Beirut.233 Nazi Germany’s initial plans for the Middle East, approved by Hitler himself, had envisioned a “Great Arab Union” vassal state in the Middle East, while the prominent German intelligence agent and archaelogist Max von Oppenheim had in July 1940 called for Germany to “revolutionize” the entire Arab world and depose the Vichy regime in Syria.234 Even after al-Gaylani’s coup succeeded and the need to work with the French became obvious, Germany’s intentions regarding a pan-Arab revolt remained suspect. As Grobba’s aids were preparing to leave Berlin for Baghdad in early May 1941, Amt officials asked them to “ignite a colossal uproar in the Orient,” and at least one of the Germans dispatched to Iraq with Grobba was under the impression that his superiors wanted the party to traverse the Arab world on camelback and “ignite the spirits of the wide Arabian peninsula for a great uprising” like T.E. Lawrence had.235 Later that month, the Axis-backed propaganda operation, Radio Bari, actually began broadcasting anti-French messages at the same time as Germany and Italy were trying to secure the 230 Memorandum by Fritz Grobba (writing as Gehrcke), May 15, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61759-61760. 231 Memorandum by Rahn, May 21, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256948- 9. 232 Memorandum by Rahn, May 22, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61818- 61819. 233 Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, 172. Central Intelligence Agency, 154. 234 Schwanitz, “The Jinnee and the Magic Bottle,” 93, 95. Max von Oppenheim, “Denkschrift zur Revolutionierung des Vorderen Orients Mitte 1940,” in Gossman, Oppenheim, 366-370. 235 Kohlaas, Hitler Abenteuer, 32.
- 80. Rally Point, 80 cooperation of the French in Syria, much to Rahn’s dismay. “On May 25, Bari broadcaster spoke of the exploitation of Arabs by the French. Please stop for further anti-French tone, as this makes the task here unnecessarily difficult,” Rahn implored his colleagues at the Amt.236 The Abwehr, meanwhile, aimed to arm “rebellious Arabs” in Palestine and Transjordan with weapons shipped from Europe, an initiative that did not sit well with Vichy leaders who saw such a maneuver as a “danger to the Mandate government.”237 Some Germans, even if they did not have a particular commitment to Arab nationalism, seemed unwilling to make accommodations to French soldiers and diplomats whose country had just been conquered by Germany. Luftwaffe directives asking pilots to avoid flying above Syria in “full German war point” frustrated German aviators. “Why not? We are the victors!” they retorted.238 Grobba seemed especially tone deaf when it came to French sensitivities in the Middle East, proclaiming at a dinner with French officers shortly after his arrival in Syria in May 1941 that “it smells of revolution!” — the last thing a Vichy soldier would have wanted to hear at a time of already increasing precarity for the French mandate.239 The German propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, meanwhile, was gleeful about the prospect of inflaming Arab nationalism in the Middle East and paid little mind to its implications for Germany’s relations with Vichy. “The tension is increasing in Iraq. All of Arabia has started to move. We are stoking the fire through Arabic broadcasts. Tension in Iraq is spilling over to Syria and Palestine. It's like wildfire,” Goebbels noted cheerfully in his diary on May 4, 1941. Goebbels echoed these sentiments the next day, writing “Unrest broke out in Transjordan and Palestine. We stoke diligently.”240 Goebbels was proud of the “wild propaganda” that his agency was spreading in the Middle East and seemed thrilled by the opportunity to irritate the English, regardless of the broader consequences. “We're turning up our broadcasts in Arabic… It is a pleasure for us to cause England trouble,” he confided to his journal on May 6, adding on May 16 that “a fight between England and France would be just right for us.”241 Goebbels seemed to view the Iraq situation as an opportunity to incite chaos in the Middle East, rather than a delicate geopolitical situation to be handled with the utmost care. On the ground in Syria, German troops had to wear French uniforms to mask their identities.242 The “extremely fragile mood in the [French] army” in Syria meant that Rahn had to launch a “systematic propaganda campaign” within 236 Memorandum by Rahn, May 26, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256923- 256924. 237 Memorandum by Rahn, May 26, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256923- 256924. 238 Kohlhaas, Hitler Abenteuer, 40-41. 239 Kohlhaas, Hitler Abenteuer, 42. 240 Goebbels, Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels Online, edited by Elke Fröhlich (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), May 4 and May 5. https://www.degruyter.com/databasecontent?dbid=tjgo&dbsource=/db/tjgo. 241 Goebbels, Tagebücher, May 6 and May 16. 242 Memorandum by Ritter, May 9, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61712- 61713. Memorandum by Ribbentrop, May 31, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256892.
- 81. Rally Point, 81 its ranks in order to win the Vichy forces over to the German cause.243 Getting the French to agree on strategy consumed time and energy that German agents simply could not spare. On one occasion it took a “4-hours-long debate” with one of Dentz’s confidantes for Rahn to convince the French of the wisdom of “arming insurgent Arabs” for battle against the English.244 Rahn also appears to have had to spend a great deal of time trying to obtain airplane fuel from the French, asking his superiors at the Amt on May 12 to “send a skillful French speaking officer here as I cannot always be at the airfield.”245 The French, meanwhile, did not really seem to be following through on their commitments to their German conquerors. Dentz did not give his subordinates orders to shoot at Gaullist troops until almost the end of May and Vichy had apparently refused to expel the British Consul in Syria when asked to do so three months earlier.246 When the Italians asked France to allow Italian aircraft bound for Iraq to use Syrian airfields the French initially refused because they found “the appearance of the Italian Air Force in Syria undesirable.”247 Moreover, the French maintained, because France had not been defeated by Italy, they “had no intention of making concessions” to Mussolini, as Darlan explained to Hitler.248 France’s protests forced the Axis to reconsider Italy’s role in the Middle East because an Italian presence in Syria “would only complicate negotiations with the French.”249 This was despite the fact that Italy already had 400 machine guns, 20 anti-tank guns and 12 fighter planes “ready for action” in Iraq — equipment that could have played a significant role in the fighting there.250 When German planes landed in Syria, the French complained about it, telling Rahn that there were too many German aircraft in Damascus and asking that they be sent to Palmyra instead. “[Dentz] protests against a long stay and too high a petrol requirement [for the German planes in Syria],” Rahn reported to his colleagues at the Amt. “Gasoline issue needs to be resolved with Vichy, as the High Commissioner is likely to refuse further contribution after the 30,000 liters [allotted by earlier agreements] have been used up.”251 When the mission in Iraq failed and England invaded Syria on June 8, Dentz blamed the Germans for French Syria’s demise. “Now the Orient is really on fire, and you have lit the 243 Memorandum by Rahn, May 28, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256910- 256911. Memorandum by Rahn, May 24, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256942. 244 Memorandum by Rahn, May 28, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256910- 256911. 245 Memorandum by Rahn, May 12, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61728. 246 Memorandum by Rahn, May 31, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 345/256910- 256911. Asked by Dentz. 247 “Memorandum by the Director of the Political Department,” May 9, 1941, No. 479, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 744-745. 248 “Record of the conversation between the Führer and admiral darlan in the presence of the reich foreign minister,” May 11, 1941, No. 491, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 763-774. 249 Memorandum by Welck, May 9, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 681/209599- 600. 250 “Memorandum by an Official of the Foreign Minister’s Secretariat,” May 14, 1941, No. 511, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 797-806. 251 Memorandum by Rahn, May 12, 1941, NARA RG 242, T-120, Roll 80/61730.
- 82. Rally Point, 82 fire,” he told Rahn.252 For people who had technically been German vassals since June 1940, the French leadership in Syria seemed to be behaving more like conquerors than the conquered. Though less fraught than the German alliance with France in Syria, Italo- German cooperation in the Middle East was also dependent on Germany remaining sensitive to Italy’s interests. According to guidelines established by Ribbentrop in February 1941, German diplomats had to “take strong account of Italian sensitivities in Arab politics.”253 This was in part because Germany had agreed to place the Middle East in Italy’s sphere of influence in July 1940.254 The Italians, probably rightly, worried that “Arab nationalist demands and aspirations” incited by the Germans would undermine Italy’s plans for a revived Italian Empire in the Mediterranean.255 Italy was also apprehensive about sharing a theater of war with the Wehrmacht which they knew “would want to run everything,” Antony Beevor explains.256 When Germans and Italians did find themselves working together in Syria in May 1941, they did not always get along. One prideful Italian lieutenant colonel based in Syria irritated his German and French allies with constant reminders that much of the Middle Eastern theater of war had once been ruled by Rome. “Syria — Antiochia — Palmyra — yes, the Romans owned it all!" he opined.257 The fact that Arab leaders were suspicious of Italy’s imperial aims in the Middle East and intended to “oppose Italian imperialism” just as “ the Arab national movement had fought Anglo-French imperialism,” as Iraqi leader Naji Shawkat explained to Amt officials in 1940, made Italy’s participation in the Reich’s plans even more complicated.258 Although not as costly as Vichy’s intransigence in Syria, having to manage the “division of labor” and territory between German and Italian forces in the Middle East only made Germany’s efforts to aid Iraq more cumbersome than they already were. Conclusion: The Metaphysics of Fascism and Foreign Policy While in a sense the Axis’s failures in Iraq represented a massive missed opportunity for Germany and its allies, to scholars of fascism the fraught partnership between the Axis powers in the Middle East should not be surprising. In a way, the inter-fascist conflict that arose when the Axis tried to spread fascist rule to a new part of the globe may have even been inevitable. After all, fascism 252 Rahn, Ruheloses Leben, 168. Antony Beevor, The Second World War (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012), 178. 253 Grobba, Männer und Mächte, 206. El-Dessouki, “Hitler und der Nahe Osten,” 33, 42. El-Dessouki quotes the July 7 agreement between Italy and Germany as saying that “Das Mittelmeer und die Adria hätten von jeher zum historischen Interessengebiet der italienischen Halbinsel gehört, und Deutschland erkenne dies vollkommen an.” A German attack would require the “Zustimmung” of the Italians. 254 Grobba, Männer und Mächte, 209. Gossman, Oppenheim, 241-242. 255 Shikara, 189-191. Shikara writes that “the Italians felt that they could not back Arab nationalism and the drive for independence and unity, since it would not be conducive to the Axis interest in the long run.” 256 Beevor, Second World War, 146. This motivated Italy’s reluctance to ask for German assistance in Libya until the situation became truly critical at the beginning of 1941. 257 Kohlhaas, Hitler Abenteur, 38. 258 Gossman, Oppenheim, 251.
- 83. Rally Point, 83 as an ideology has never been very well suited to export — as historian Gilbert Allardyce points out, fascism is almost always “defined in national terms.”259 A German fascism grounded in an understanding of the German nation’s particular superiority and politico-historical destiny, for instance, cannot simply be adopted by rightists in France or Poland. As many have observed, the rallying cry “workers of the world unite” is logical in a way that “nationalists of the world unite” is not.260 In his groundbreaking work Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche, German historian Ernst Nolte convincingly argues that fascist ideology is characterized by a “resistance to transcendence,” or, as Allardyce helpfully rephrases Nolte’s term, the “fear of modernism’s power to disintegrate nations, races and cultures.”261 At the heart of fascist thought is a metaphysics that is explicitly anti-universal. Nolte’s characterization of fascism as an anti-universal ideology is consistent with how fascist leaders described their own ideologies. Mussolini, who had a famously difficult relationship with Hitler, described fascism as “our [Italy’s] thing” and said that the ideology was “not for export.”262 An attempt at a pan-fascist congress held at Montreux in 1934 was boycotted by the leader of the Spanish Falange and only managed to agree on a few general “common articles of faith” and the principle that “each nation must solve its problems in its own way,” as Allardyce describes its outcomes.263 The problem with the inter-fascist diplomacy orchestrated by Nazi Germany in the Middle East, then, was that it constituted an attempt at the very sort of “transcendence” rejected by the metaphysics of fascism. The inconsistencies between imperial and nationalist ambitions in Nazi Germany’s plans for the Middle East were the same inconsistencies that lay at the core of inter-fascist foreign policy itself. What made the Iraq situation unique, though, when compared to Nazi Germany’s other attempts at inter-fascist collaboration, was that it brought into close proximity, and forced a confrontation between, the interests of German, Italian, French and Iraqi fascists in a way that pulled the issues inherent in inter- fascist collusion to the fore. The Reich’s other inter-fascist efforts, meanwhile, while they harbored the same inconsistencies, never advanced to a stage where these contradictions could fully manifest themselves. In some cases this was because Germany’s overwhelming military might have eliminated the possibility of conflict between it and its fascist allies. Negotiation between opposing fascist interests could not take place in theaters where the Wehrmacht held all the cards. When Mussolini watched in April 1941 as Germany’s swift takeover of Greece rendered the 150,000 casualties Italian armies had suffered while attempting to conquer the country the previous fall obsolete, Il Duce had no choice but to stand back and concede the territory to Hitler. At this point in the war, Beevor writes, 259 Gilbert Allardyce, “What Fascism is Not: Thoughts on the Deflation of a Concept,” American Historical Review, Vol. 84, No. 2 (April 1979), 381. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1855138. 260 Allardyce, “What Fascism is Not,” 370. 261 Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, trans. Leila Vennewitz (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 429-434. Gilbert Allardyce, “What Fascism is Not: Thoughts on the Deflation of a Concept,” American Historical Review, Vol. 84, No. 2 (April 1979), 383. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1855138. 262 Allardyce, “What Fascism is Not,” 370, 381. 263 Allardyce, “What Fascism is Not,” 382.
- 84. Rally Point, 84 “Mussolini was no longer Hitler’s ally, but his subordinate,” a man in no position to bargain with the Third Reich.264 In Iraq, though, the relative weakness of each of the fascist powers with a stake in the conflict enabled a more genuine negotiation between Italian, German, French, and Iraqi interests. Mesopotamia’s distance from the Axis heartlands in Central Europe meant that the Wehrmacht could not simply steamroll intra-Axis disputes out of existence like it could elsewhere. Some of Germany’s other inter-fascist alliances, meanwhile, most notably with Japan, did not reach a stage where the sorts of questions raised in Iraq could have presented themselves. Japan and Germany never found their armies or territories in close proximity in the same way that Italy, France, and Germany found theirs in Iraq in 1941. While the world may have gotten to witness this sort of confrontation between the ambitions of German and Japanese fascism if Japan and Germany had succeeded in vanquishing the Soviet Union and found themselves separated by a tenuous German-Japanese border somewhere in Siberia, the defeat of the Axis powers left Iraq in 1941 as one of the few theaters where the inconsistencies of fascist diplomacy were on full display. Nicosia posits that German leaders in many cases seemed to think that they could overlook the contradictions in their diplomacy “so long as the war continued and Britain remained undefeated;” in Iraq, this was not possible, at least not without consequences.265 In Mussolini’s Italy, fascism was inseparable from Italian nationalism in a way that made it hard for Mussolini to subvert Italy’s national interests to the goal of spreading fascism in the Middle East. Italian fascists presented their ideology as a “religion of the nation” and members of the Partito Nazionale Fascista had to pledge their loyalty “to the Nation and to the Revolution.”266 Mussolini appealed to the legacy of the Roman Empire in justifying the 20th-century Italy’s efforts to establish a revived Italian Empire centered on the Mediterranean, expressing a vision of a “Roman Italy” for the 20th century. “We dream of a Roman Italy that is wise and strong, disciplined, and imperial. Much of what was the immortal spirit of Rome, resurges in Fascism… civis romanus sum,” he proclaimed in 1922267 This fascism was both imperial and nationalist, as Italian fascists’ appeals to ancient Rome and the Italian nation demonstrate. Italian fascists held that Italy was “the one country and people capable of carrying out the original universal mission of the Roman Empire to civilize the world,” according to historian Michael Leeden, while another scholar of Italian fascism writes that, for Mussolini and his allies, “fascism was the fulfillment and rebirth of the true spirit and soul of the Italic race.268 Mussolini and his supporters sought 264 Beevor, Second World War, 148-150. 265 Nicosia, Nazi Germany and the Arab World, 171. 266 Emilio Gentile, “Fascism as Political Religion,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 25, No. 2 (May-June 1990), 236. https://www.jstor.org/stable/260731. 267 Jan Neils, “Constructing Fascist Identity: Benito Mussolini and the Myth of ‘Romanita,’” The Classical World, Vol. 100, No. 4 (Summer 2007), 402-403. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25434050. 268 Michael A. Ledeen, “Italian Fascism and Youth,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 4, No. 3 (July 169), 149. https://www.jstor.org/stable/259736. Philip Cannistraro, Mussolini's Cultural Revolution: Fascist or Nationalist?" Journal of
- 85. Rally Point, 85 to revive an empire that would span many peoples and cultures but that would be headed by the Italian nation. In other words, there was no fascism as conceived by the Italians without Italy. The incompatibility of Nazi Germany’s imperial vision with the fascism of Vichy France, meanwhile, was evident in the fears that Vichy’s leaders shared with Hitler, Abetz, and Ribbentrop. In the midst of the Iraq operation, Darlan told Hitler that Petain wanted “to be able to tell the French […] whom he was asking to defend their territory against the English […] that they were actually defending territory that would remain French.” Some French “groups were constantly asking him why they should defend a territory which will after all be taken away from them later on.” It would “greatly facilitate the work of the Marshal and his own work with the French people if the French Government could somehow make it understandable to these overseas Frenchmen that they do not work for the “Roi de Prusse,” Darlan explained to Hitler.269 “Among the French at home,” Vichy’s leaders explained, “the question was raised time and again how one could cooperate with a Germany which had divided France into two parts, had imposed high occupation costs, and prevented the French Government from governing the two parts uniformly.”270 Vichy France may have been a vassal of Germany and its leaders might have come around to the idea of a Nazi-led rightist domination of Europe, but they still believed in preserving what remained of the French Empire. Even fascist France would not bow to the wishes of fascists in Germany who did not respect the integrity and rights of the French nation. Working for the Roi de Prusse was antithetical to French fascism, even if that Roi de Prusse was also a fascist. French rightists, like their counterparts in Italy and Iraq, chafed at the idea of putting the interests of an international fascist alliance above those of the French nation. While France’s military impotence did force it to concede to Germany’s requests in Syria, the reluctance of Vichy’s leaders to fall into line with the Reich’s German imperial vision still reveals a striking resistance to the idea of a transcendent fascism.271 On April 7, 1941, the New York Times reported on a curious mission undertaken by German agents to stir up trouble in the Middle East. According to the Times, three “Reich plotters” — Werner Otto von Hentig, Fritz von Contemporary History Vol. 7, No. 3/4 (1972): 126. www.jstor.org/stable/259908. In the world Mussolini envisioned, Italy would serve as the “director of world culture” and command a significant empire outside of Europe. Alan Cassels, “Was There a Fascist Foreign Policy? Tradition and Novelty,” The International History Review, Vol. 5, No. 2 (May 1983), 260-261, 266. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40105294. Mussolini sought Italian expansion in the direction of its “historical objectives” in “Asia and Africa,” proclaiming that “South and East are the cardinal directions which must excite the interest and will of Italians.” 269 “Record of the conversation between the Führer and Admiral Darlan in the presence of the Reich Foreign Minister,” May 11, 1941, No. 491, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 763-774. 270 “Record of the conversation between the Führer and Admiral Darlan in the presence of the Reich Foreign Minister,” May 11, 1941, No. 491, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 763-774. 271 “Memorandum by the Director of the Political Department,” May 8, 1941, No. 475, DGFP, Series D, Vol XII, 740-742. France did end up facilitating German efforts in the Middle East, as a I discussed earlier.
- 86. Rally Point, 86 Grobba, and Max von Oppenheim — were busy fomenting “Nazi agitation in Syria” and laying the groundwork for the recent “coup d’etat in Iraq.” Von Hentig, posing as “the head of a commercial mission” to French Syria, “devoted himself exclusively to stirring up unrest,” allegedly telling Syrians that once Germany conquered the country, those who had not supported the Nazis would “go to a concentration camp.” He organized showings “day after day in the Hotel Metropol in Beirut” of the German propaganda film “Victory in the West” about the conquest of France in order to impress the locals with the strength of the Third Reich. “To poor Arabs [Hentig] pictured Adolf Hitler as the protector of Islam, sent by Allah to aid the devout,” recounted the Times correspondent. Some of “the simpler Arabs” were “dazzled by promises of a vast German-protected Arab kingdom” made by Hentig and his companions.272 While some aspects of the Times story were inaccurate — Grobba was in Germany at the time, not the Middle East, and von Hentig left Syria over a month before the al-Gaylani coup took place — on the whole it captured truthfully the subversive nature of German activities in Syria. Hentig did, in fact, show “Sieg im Westen” all across Mandate Syria, and launched what historian Isaac Lipschits describes as “a campaign of anti-French propaganda” throughout the territory.273 According to some reports, Hentig “envisaged the convocation of an Islamic congress in Damascus” in his conversations with Arab leaders and “advised them to get together with the Iraqi Futuwwah movement” to form a broader Arab movement. By the end of Hentig’s time in Syria, some Syrian Arabs had even begun to recite the pro-German and anti-English, anti-French refrain “No more Monsieur, no more Mister: all of you, get out, scram. In Heaven Allah, here on earth Hitler!274” The von Hentig episode seems to be emblematic of the contradictions in Germany’s efforts to turn the Middle East into an Axis stronghold in 1941. Discussion of an Arab Kingdom in the Middle East, an Aryan-supremacist sent by Allah to aid the Arab people, a pan-Islamic Congress in Syria, a commercial mission to a French colony, Arab concentration camps and an Iraqi-Syrian alliance, all in one trip? It is easy to see why the French and Italians were reluctant to work with Nazi Germany in May 1941 when those same Nazis seemed willing to deploy almost any argument imaginable in order to win the support of Arabs in the Middle East. How could anyone, let alone ultra-nationalist fascists preoccupied with their own national interests, trust a power that showed little respect for the imperial ambitions of its allies? In this light, historians should see the failure of Axis efforts to aid Iraq in 1941 as not just failures of tactics, but as the product of inconsistencies embedded in the Axis’s foray into Middle Eastern politics more broadly. While the “tactical” level of warfare is typically the least 272 “3 Reich Plotters Try to Win Syria,” New York Times, April 7, 1941, pg. 8. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1941/04/07/85476853.pdf?pdf_red irect=true&ip=0. 273 Isaac Lipschits, La Politique de la France au Levant 1939–1941, pp. 83–84, quoted in Gossman, Oppenheim, 267-268. Gossman, Oppenheim, 263-270. 274 Les Allemands en Syrie sous le gouvernement de Vichy (London: Publications de la France combattante, brochure no. 201, 1942), pp. 5–6, quoted in Gossman, Oppenheim, 266-267.
- 87. Rally Point, 87 important to historians, in the case of German operations in Iraq in 1941, shortcomings on the tactical plane were evidence of higher-level strategic and even philosophical issues of much greater interest to historians.275 275 USAF College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education. “Three Levels of War,” in Air and Space Power Mentoring Guide, Vol. 1 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1997). https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~tpilsch/INTA4803TP/Articles/Three%20Levels%20of %20War=CADRE-excerpt.pdf.
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- 90. Rally Point, 90 Blind für die Geschichte?: arabische Begegnungen mit dem Nationalsozialismus. Edited by Gerhard Höpp, Peter Wien und René Wildangel. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2004. Cannistraro, Philip V. "Mussolini's Cultural Revolution: Fascist or Nationalist?" Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 7, No. 3/4 (1972): 115-39. www.jstor.org/stable/259908. Cassels,Alan. “Was There a Fascist Foreign Policy? Tradition and Novelty.” The International History Review, Vol. 5, No. 2 (May 1983), 255-268. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40105294. Childs, Timothy W. Italo-Turkish Diplomacy and the War Over Libya: 1911-1912. London: Brill, 1990. Dieterich, Renate. “Germany’s Relations with Iraq and Transjordan from the Weimar Republic to the End of the Second World War.” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 41, No. 4 (July 2005), 463-479. https://doi.org/10.1080/00263200500119217. El-Dessouki, Mohamed-Kamal. “Hitler und der Nahe Osten.” PhD diss., Freie Universität Berlin, 1963. Ellinger, Ekkehard. Deutsche Orientalistik zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus 1933- 1945. Edingen-Neckarhausen: deux mondes, 2006. Gentile, Emilio. “Fascism as Political Religion.” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 25, No. 2 (May-June 1990), 229-251. https://www.jstor.org/stable/260731. Gossman, Lionel. The Passion of Max von Oppenheim: Archaeology and Intrigue in the Middle East from Wilhelm II to Hitler. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2013. https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product.php/163/?163/. Hamdi, Walid. Rashid al-Gailani and the Nationalist Movement in Iraq 1939-1941: A Political and Military Study of the British Campaign in Iraq and the National Revolution of May 1941. London: Darf Publishers, 1987. Hayward, Joel. "Too Little, Too Late: An Analysis of Hitler's Failure in August 1942 to Damage Soviet Oil Production." The Journal of Military History, Vol. 64, No. 3 (2000): 769-794. doi:10.2307/120868. Herf, Jeffrey. Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. James, Barrie G. Hitler’s Gulf War: The Fight for Iraq 1941. Barnsley, Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Books, 2009. Kenny, L.M. “Sāṭi' Al-Ḥuṣrī's Views on Arab Nationalism.” Middle East Journal, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Summer 1963), 231-256. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4323606. Ledeen, Michael. “Italian Fascism and Youth.” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 4, No. 3
- 91. Rally Point, 91 (July 169), 137-154. https://www.jstor.org/stable/259736. Lemke, Bernd. Der Irak und Arabien aus der Sicht deutscher Kriegsteilnehmer und Orientreisender 1918 bis 1945: Aufstandsfantasien, Kriegserfahrungen, Zukunftshoffnungen, Enttäuschungen, Distanz. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012. Lyman, Robert. First Victory — Britain’s Forgotten Struggle in the Middle East, 1941. London: Constable, 2006. Lyman, Robert. Iraq 1941 — The Battles for Basra, Habbaniya, Fallujah and Baghdad. New York, Osprey, 2005. MacDonald, Callum A. “Radio Bari: Italian Wireless Propaganda in the Middle East and British Countermeasures, 1934-38.” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2 (May 1977), 195-207. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4282642. Marchand, Suzanne. German Orientalism in the Age of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. McKale, Donald. Curt Prüfer, German diplomat from the Kaiser to Hitler. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1987. McKeekin, Sean. The Berlin-Baghdad Express. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010. Melka, Robert L. “Darlan between Britain and Germany 1940-41.” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Apr., 1973), 57-80. https://www.jstor.org/stable/259994. Messerschmidt, Manfred. “Die deutsche Rechtsgeschichte unter dem Einfluß des Hitlerregimes.” Kritische Justiz, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1988), 121-136. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23997939. Neils, Jan. “Constructing Fascist Identity: Benito Mussolini and the Myth of ‘Romanita.’” The Classical World, Vol. 100, No. 4 (Summer 2007), 391-415. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25434050. Nicosia, Francis. Nazi Germany and the Arab World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pedersen, Susan. “Getting out of Iraq — in 1932: The League of Nations and the Road to Normative Statehood.” The American Historical Review, Vol. 115, No. 4 (October 2010), https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.115.4.975. Rogan, Eugene. The Fall of the Ottomans. New York: Basic Books, 2015. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/yale- ebooks/reader.action?docID=1866936. Schroeder, Bernd Phillip. Deutschland und der Mittlere Osten im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Frankfurt am Main: Musterschmidt Göttingen, 1975. Schroeder, Bernd Phillip. Irak 1941. Freiburg: Rombach, 1980.
- 92. Rally Point, 92 Schwanitz, Wolfgang. “Max von Oppenheim und der Heilige Krieg. Zwei Denkschriften zur Revolutionierung islamischer Gebiete 1914 und 1940.” Sozial Geschichte, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2004), 28-59. http://trafoberlin.de/pdf- dateien/Oppenheims%20Jihad%20Dokumente%20WGS%20%20120 207.pdf. Schwanitz, Wolfgang G. and Barry Rubin. Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Schwanitz, Wolfgang. Germany and the Middle East 1871-1945. Princeton, NJ: Degruyter, 2004. Simons, Geoff. Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam. New York: Springer, 2016. Stephenson, Charles. A Box of Sand: The Italo-Ottoman War 1911-1912. Ticehurst, East Sussex, England: Tattered Flag Press, 2014. USAF College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education. “Three Levels of War,” in Air and Space Power Mentoring Guide, Vol. 1. Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1997. https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~tpilsch/INTA4803TP/Articles/Three% 20Levels%20of%20War=CADRE-excerpt.pdf. Wien, Peter. Iraqi Arab Nationalism: authoritarianism, totalitarianism and pro-fascist inclinations, 1932-1941. New York: Routledge, 2006. Wild, Stefan. “National Socialism in the Arab Near East between 1933 and 1939.” Die Welt des Islams, New Series, Vol. 25, No. 1 (1985), 126-173. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1571079. Wyrtzen, Jonathan. (Forthcoming). Reimagining the Middle East in the Long Great War. New York: Columbia University Press.
- 93. Rally Point, 93 THE OSS AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN COVERT OPERATIONS: HOW WARTIME LESSONS IN BURMA AND NORTH AFRICA SET THE POSTWAR STAGE BY KESHAV A. RAGHAVAN Pictured above: Overlay image of Williams, Coughlin, and Peers in Burma, set above an organizational plan for TORCH resistance groups in Casablanca. The
- 94. Rally Point, 94 author created the composite image from source pictures in the National Archives. If there is one thing the Second World War changed in the annals of history, it was the ability of the state to exert its influence. In the twilight of the conflict, as the postwar order was the talk of town in Washington, London, and Moscow, one thing that became eminently clear was the role which foreign intelligence agencies would play in that brave new world. Shadow operations and espionage, considered with contempt by the old guard, had won the war. From Bletchley Park to Donovan’s irregulars in Washington, the up-and-coming generation of politicians and soldiers saw the value of breaking the honor codes which had, anyway, become all but irrelevant on the global stage — if they had ever been relevant in the first place. This was a distinctly 20th-century phenomenon. The war was an endeavor which required flexibility and adaptability: services that organizations such as the SOE and the GRU could provide. In turn, nations had to either adapt or suffer the consequences of falling behind in the race for information. At Potsdam, it was a competition of which party knew the most about the others’ mail, under the table. Formerly, such international conferences were important not just for their symbolic, adversarial, and transactional value, but also as opportunities for allies to exchange information and share notes. The order of the day was revealed when Truman, in an unassuming sidebar at the conference, informed Stalin of the atomic bomb for the time. Stalin didn’t react at all. Secretary Byrnes later recounted that it seemed as if Stalin did not understand what Truman had said. In fact — as Molotov cryptically hinted to Harriman in a separate discussion — Soviet spies had infiltrated the Manhattan Project itself.276 Espionage, it was clear, was here to stay. In the ascendant cold war, intelligence would be paramount for any effective statecraft. In the United States, the experiences of the Office of Strategic Services laid the groundwork for the formation of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947.277 Those wartime experiences were far from homogeneous, and the OSS met with varied success in the many theaters in which it operated. The OSS was one of the world’s earliest international intelligence agencies. Its innovations in the fields of secret intelligence and special operations would be widely applied in the second half of the twentieth century. The nature of special operations engagement differed from theater to theater: What allowed the organization to succeed in the places that it did was rapid prototyping, observation, evaluation, and evolution. A flexible command structure and the resources to implement a thorough design process tailored to regional strategic objectives was an important precondition to achieving operational objectives. The OSS’s respective operations in the China-Burma-India and Mediterranean Theaters, offer valuable contrasting case studies in the different approaches that the US took during the war. In Burma, the OSS adopted a model 276 Michael Gordin, Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009): 3-25. 277 Michael Warner, “What Was OSS?” in The Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency (Washington: CIA Studies in Intelligence, 2007). https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/intelligence-history/oss/art03.htm
- 95. Rally Point, 95 that focused on the acquisition of cultural familiarity on the ground, the utilization of local agents friendly to American interests, and rapid, small-scale forward operations with limited strategic objectives. They took risks, made mistakes, and rapidly learned from them. In the latter half of the twentieth century, this approach would prevail in times of war. This set of structures and guidelines endured into CIA special operations in subsequent conflicts. Until operation TORCH, the approach used in North Africa, in Morocco and Algeria, placed its emphasis instead on diplomatic postings with limited operational scope, emphasis on the acquisition of intelligence, and infiltration into circles of economic prominence. In part this approach was a legacy of the vice-consul system during peacetime. America’s most obvious assets in the region were businesspeople and travelers familiar with its cultures and norms. As such, North African special operations did not evolve or achieve objective success in the way that the OSS’s Detachment 101 did in Burma. While the decision to intervene in 1942 in Operation TORCH — culminating in the severance of relations between France and the US — cut short the time frame in which North African special operations could have evolved, the OSS’s activities in the region were not even on a trajectory towards the development and scale that it had achieved in Burma. Burma provided a blank slate that prompted greater institutional innovation. In the face of unfamiliar terrain and a challenging task, the Office of Strategic Services was drawn to expand its capabilities in special operations. This contrasts against the North African case, where the OSS embraced a more traditional conception of a spy agency’s role. What were the strategic differences and similarities between the OSS’s approach in the two theaters, and how successful was each? What did American operatives in Burma learn from early failures, and why didn’t a similar process occur in North Africa, two years earlier? This paper will address the development of American special operations during the war through the comparative lens of these two case studies. Both missions had similar imminent operational objectives, and intelligence acquisition was successful in both places. However, the outcomes of efforts to organize partisan resistance could not have been more different. In the analysis, the paper will look at the methods which Detachment 101 utilized to establish rapport with local peoples and establish successful forward groups behind enemy lines. These methods will then be contrasted against the less effective ones employed in the North African case. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down”: The shadow war in the Burmese jungle278 When Japanese forces invaded Burma in 1942, they were popularly received as liberators by the ethnic majority Bamar people.279 The Japanese, after 278 This quote, in dog Latin, was Stilwell’s personal motto: “Illegitimi non carborundum.” It summarizes the philosophy behind the detachment’s operations, and adequately describes the vibe of the theater. 279 See infra note [5], and Dorothy H. Guyot, “The Political Impact of the Japanese Occupation of Burma” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1966). Also, in the A-group file [infra note 18], we find references to the Japanese’s popularity. The new government had reversed petty British policies: Lifted restrictions on timber harvesting, removed land tax, limited drug traffic, led anti-corruption efforts, and so
- 96. Rally Point, 96 all, unseated British colonial authorities who had ruled the territory, in places, for more than a century.280 Allied efforts to directly repulse the advance proved difficult, given the unfamiliar terrain, dense jungles, and unfriendly — if not outright hostile — locals. Against this backdrop, in spring of 1942, the first American special operations detachment in Asia received its commission. The Office of the Coordinator of Information — the precursor to the OSS — had been in existence for less than a year.281 That office’s mandate was never very well defined. After a series of in-person meetings between Roosevelt, and William Donovan, the office’s soon-to-be-director, the president issued a formal “Memorandum of Establishment of Service of Strategic Information.”282 On paper, the COI existed to reduce the profound inefficiencies in the way the U.S. government handled foreign intelligence, and facilitate the collection and appropriate distribution of information between various agencies in existence. The organization was primarily an intelligence-gathering service, though it was also given some scope to engage in irregular warfare, though this was limited at first by their resources and experience in the field. Donovan saw the emergent value and need for this in modern war. When he first approached Roosevelt in December 1941 with the idea of experimenting with different methods of guerrilla warfare, Roosevelt advised him to “take this up with Mr. Churchill and find out whom we should work with in England toward this end.”283 The instinct to turn to the British for expertise — particularly when operating in their former empire — was one that would characterize early COI operations. When the COI was eventually revised to the OSS, its formal operational mandate and emphasis evolved in a dramatic way, specifically expanding to include paramilitary missions outside of the traditional scope of the on. The intelligecnce report in the file reads: “The slogan, ‘Burma for the Burmans’, is the cry of the day and the Japs play up to this by giving the villagers such leniency as mentioned above.” 280 David W. Hogan Jr., U.S. Army Special Operations in World War II (Washington: Army, 1992): 11-37 281 Warner, “COI Came First,” https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/intelligence- history/oss/art02.htm. 282 This document is a a real gem. Roosevelt writes, “Strategy, without information upon which it can rely, is helpless. Likewise, information is useless unless it is intelligently directed to the strategic purpose. Modern warfare depends upon the economic base.” Then, the president quotes the Prussian military historian Friedrich von Bernhardi on the second page, before going into depth describing the COI’s proposed duties. See Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Memorandum of Establishment of Service of Strategic Information,” July 11, 1941, declassified and approved for release October 18, 2013. CIA Library Electronic Reading Room. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA- RDP13X00001R000100240004-4.pdf 283 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Memorandum for Bill Donovan,” December 23, 1941 in the President’s Secretary File (Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration), Box 153, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, NY. National Archives and Records Administration 16620578. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/16620578
- 97. Rally Point, 97 military.284 That expansion corresponded to a newfound confidence in the capabilities of American intelligence. The organization was also incorporated in the Joint Chiefs of Staff system.285 In the Burmese field, where the COI formerly had little experience, it would develop extensive capabilities, through a process of collaboration with the Army and supported by the U.S. government. British intelligence operatives would play a useful role in training the Americans to operate behind lines. What began as an intelligence-gathering operation, though, would evolve to be what is properly speaking a shadow army. The China-Burma-India theater in the Second World War would be a proving ground for the modern enterprise of American intelligence.286 Donovan, after duly reaching out to the British and being referred over to the SOE, was ready to commence COI guerrilla operations in Southeast Asia. The idea had come from Millard Goodfellow, one of Donovan's associates at the COI in Washington who drew up the analysis to support such a plan. In April 1942, Donovan issued the order to assemble the detachment in Burma.287 The COI was still technically under the jurisdiction of the U.S. federal government. Donovan reported directly to the president. In the field, however, it was understood that agents would report to the relevant theater commander. The Burmese detachment was formed in the absence of specific orders to the contrary from General Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, who was then in charge of the CBI theater. When first approached by Donovan, Stilwell — an old- fashioned military man — refused the offer without hesitation.288 After repeated requests from Washington, Stilwell assented to the assembly of such a group of irregular soldiers, but had little idea of their operational potential. He insisted that 284 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Military Order,” June 13, 1942, CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intelligence/kent-csi/vol37no3/pdf/v37i3a10p.pdf 285 Roosevelt and Donovan were at first concerned by deficiencies in American intelligence capabilities, which prompted the formation of the COI. After Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt was particularly grateful that he had begun to think about this side to modern war. Following the COI’s early successes in intelligence gathering, and a realization of the potential for guerrilla operations, the OSS was created. The later ambitious strategies used in Burma are one of the achievements that would convince Washington in 1947 that intelligence agencies could play a much broader role than intelligence gathering. 286 “We are something new and definitely unproven in American methods of fighting,” wrote Eifler, in a letter to William Donovan. See Troy Sacquety, The OSS in Burma: Jungle War against the Japanese (University Press of Kansas, 2014): 13. 287 David P. Coulombe, “Learning on the Move, OSS Detachment 101 Special Operations in Burma,” (MMAS diss., U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2015): 30-31 288 This was not an unusual position to take: General MacArthur, for instance, would never permit American forces to lead guerrilla operations under his command. See William J. Casey, “OSS: Lessons for Today,” Studies in Intelligence (Winter 1986). Central Intelligence Agency. RG 263, A1 27, Box 10, Textual Reference, National Archives at College Park. NARA 7283227. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7283227. Also see: Clayton D. Laurie, “General MacArthur and the OSS, 1942-1945,” Studies in Intelligence, released September 5, 2014. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0006122568.pdf
- 98. Rally Point, 98 Carl Eifler — an Army man — be the detachment’s leader. Stilwell warned the COI to make it happen before he changed his mind on the subject. He gave them three months, telling Eifler: “All I want to hear are booms from the Burma jungle.”289 Though reticent at first, in the end, Stilwell’s support and eventual recognition of Detachment 101’s ability to contribute to the advancement of the front would prove invaluable in their success in Burma.290 By the end of the war, the OSS had centrally assembled more detailed intelligence on its own strategies, organization, and efforts than it had collected on the enemy. The OSS’s self-awareness by 1945 cut across theaters. Training manuals integrated an astounding array of expertise, from practical advice, such as best intel-reporting strategies and field disguises, all the way to specific information on the enemy in each theater, including munition sizes, uniform patterns, and behavioral standards.291 Indeed, this might seem like a trivial thing to note. But it is a remarkable shift in mindset: In 1941, individuals gave little thought to the COI as an institution that existed independent of the war effort. This is apparent in the archived cables from Washington, and the reports that officers in the field would file when they returned from missions. The focus is on attainable strategic targets: Destabilize Japanese supply chains, organize unrest in the low-lying fields, take the Ledo Road. The OSS needed to prove itself to other divisions. It needed to make a tangible contribution. Also, the war was a more desperate fight in its early years. Concrete deliverables were what Stilwell wanted to see on his desk. The means did not matter, so long as the ends were achieved. Indeed, all special operations are, to some extent, carried out with this mindset. But, as the tide of the war turned against the Axis powers, more thought in Washington was given to the modi operandi. There was a world to be won after the war, and the OSS recognized its own value in that framework.292 Detachment 101 started this process of assembling and recording operational knowledge very early on in the war — right from its inception in 1942.293 The members of the detachment would meticulously document their mistakes and best practices, and their strategies evolved accordingly. Aside from their success and innovation, yet another reason Burma provides an insightful 289 Stilwell told him: “Eifler I don’t want to see you again until I hear a boom from Burma.” See Barbara Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 340; Thomas D. Mays American Guerrillas, (Guilford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017): 183; John Whiteclay Chambers II, OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II (Washington: NPS, 2008): 390. 290 W. R. Peers, “Intelligence Operations of OSS Detachment 101,” Historical Review Program Studies 4, no. 3 (September 1993). Center for the Study of Intelligence. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent- csi/vol4no3/html/v04i3a11p_0001.htm 291 OSS Schools and Training Branch Records 1943-1945, RG 226 E161, Textual Records, National Archives and Records Administration at College Park. 292 The cataclysmic success of the Manhattan Project, incidentally, would actually help the case of the OSS in Washington, since the two endeavors fell into the same thematic category of ‘novel war strategies,’ in the eyes of many decision-makers. The sense was, “Now, we’ve done it … But, what exactly did we do?” 293 “A Group File,” Summer 1943, RG 226, OSS E154, Box 447, National Archives at College Park.
- 99. Rally Point, 99 example for us to study are the detailed records that Eifler and his men left behind. That continual process of different forward attempts and reevaluation was also a key to their success. William R. Peers, who would later preside over the Vietnam war crimes commission that bears his name, was a senior member of Detachment 101. After Col. Eifler was medically relieved following the November 1943 plane crash, Peers would lead the detachment.294 Peers’ reflections on the war offer invaluable insight into the detachment’s process. He summarized their approach in the early phrase of the deployment: We knew that we were neophytes in this type of business, but we were determined to take advantage of our mistakes and not commit the same error twice if we could possibly avoid it. We set up a procedure of trial and error. As this operation and succeeding operations progressed, an account was maintained in minute detail. Each message was analyzed. When the personnel returned from the field, they were debriefed, and also required to write an inclusive account of their activities, good and bad.295 Peers and Eifler saw value in the early missions as allowing headquarters on the ground in Burma to assess which of their methods worked, and which of them did not. Unlike their colleagues in North Africa, they did not shy away from taking risks and changing tactics. As the war intensified and the scale of the OSS’s operations grew by necessity, they were prepared for it with these lessons — though at the cost of dozens of men. To understand the contrast between Burma and the Mediterranean theater, we must first understand the process that shaped and allowed for the OSS’s eventual direct operational success in Burma. The detachment’s first challenge on the ground was gaining approval from the conventional military. Without support planes to fly paratroopers, behind lines, and broader logistical support from the rest of the Army, the OSS’s job would be a difficult if not impossible one. In exchange — though few in the military really accepted this yet — without the OSS’s work, the armed forces would have struggled to accomplish its objectives in the Myitkyina offensive in 1944, and ultimately push through in Burma. The situation in the CBI theater was much less tractable than the one on the Mediterranean coast of Africa. Stilwell had been persuaded by Eifler, Goodfellow and Donovan — under assurance that the detachment would pose a minimal draw on other resources. Now, it was up to the men on the ground to prove Stilwell’s investment and Donovan and Goodfellow’s proposal were the right call. The early operational groups were endearingly resource-light — they needed scarcely more than the usual soldier, since behind enemy lines operatives could not carry very much. In fact, one operative reported in the A-Group file that “99 times out of 100 the kit is too much,” while emphasizing the importance of limiting parachuted supplies for the sake of discretion. One of their greatest challenges — overcome with Stilwell and the military’s backing — had been securing aircraft to fly agents over enemy territory and provide logistical support. 294 William R. Peers and Dean Brelis, Behind the Burma Road (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1963) 295 Richard Dunlop, Behind Japanese Lines: With the OSS in Burma (New York: Skyhorse, 2014). Dunlop was a member of the detachment during the war.
- 100. Rally Point, 100 The original strategy they put to the test did not achieve the success Eifler had hoped for.296 One of the detachment’s earliest major missions, operational group A, was quite promising.297 The forward team set out in early 1943, and would return by June of that year. The underlying original idea was to take Allied operatives far behind enemy lines, and install them there with minimal support. Those operatives would work to compromise Japanese infrastructure, including the destruction of railroads, bridges, and other military targets.298 The objective was to weaken Japanese aerial capabilities out from Myitkyina, and make it easier for the Allies to support Chinese military operations further inland. Eifler wrote to one of the members of the group, British Burma Army Capt. Red Maddox to explain “What we need more than anything else right now is information giving the location of suitable air targets. Dumps and troop concentrations are plenty important and with the air superiority that we have they can be given plenty of hell.”299 Eifler wanted intelligence from around Mogaung, about 144 miles north of Allied Fort Hertz. In the early phase of Detachment 101’s operations, the import of actionable intelligence is tangible. Most of the the individuals in operational group A were British, along with a few Lisu.300 Dropped behind lines, they found themselves facing far too great a task, and had to work in secrecy. The group met with early successes sabotaging railways and bridges. However, after a barely coordinated series of attacks, and several lucky breaks, the men resolved to break apart and rendezvous later. A mere three weeks after operational group A set out, they would shelter at their forward base at Mogyopit, “a shadow of their former selves.” After a harrowing set of near misses with fate, by early April, they “realised the longer we stayed in this base, our chances of being discovered slowly increased.”301 The men recognized the value of versatility and the untenability of this way of conducting operations, with a lack of support and an overly ambitious mission. Though they managed to achieve particular objectives, their position was never secure. Things would come to a head in early June, when the team exchanged fire with Japanese sentries in the village of Washaung, prompting their retreat to Fort Hertz.302 The British members of the team were rather perturbed by whole affair. Two would return to the SOE, while others damned the Americans’ inexperience and recklessness.303 At the end of the A group report, they note that the Kachin people supported the Allies. By the end of the year, most of the missions would be run by Americans with the aid of such local agents. Eifler’s 296 Or, for that matter, what Stilwell had hoped for. See Coulombe, supra note 12, for more on his involvement. 297 Sacquety., 31-46. 298 Detachment 101, “Report on Secret Operations in Burma,” 1943, RG 226, OSS E154, Box 447, Textual Records Unit, National Archives at College Park, Maryland. (Note: A narrative and reflective account of operational group A, written as a “record of the work done by the group.”) 299 Letter from Carl Eifler to Capt. Red Maddox, A Group File, RG 226, OSS E154, Box 447, Textual Records Unit, National Archives at College Park, Maryland. 300 “Report on Secret Operations in Burma,” 1, and Sacquety 33. 301 “Report on Secret Operations in Burma,” 14. 302 ibid., 16. 303 Sacquety, 37.
- 101. Rally Point, 101 attitude on operational failures is best summarized by what he had to say immediately after surviving a plane crash in November 1943: “Well, there is no use crying over spilt milk.”304 True to that philosophy, and before he had heard how the first operational group turned out, in spring 1943 Eifler attempted other missions with similar longer-term ambitions. Operational group B, they would find out in 1945, was captured and were likely killed by the enemy. W group met a similarly gruesome fate in March 1943 at the hands of the Japanese.305 Other missions that appear in their file, such as BALLS and REX would prove no more successful or sustainable. There is no indication in the record that they managed to retrieve actionable intelligence from those missions, nor is there concrete evidence of their operational execution. In each case, the detachment would move on, to attempt further missions and different strategies. Substantiating Peers’s point on the detachment’s experimental method, the reports in the A-group archival file are remarkably detailed. One report touches on aspects of food, kid, expeditionary size, disguise, opium, pass words, cash, psychological reactions, knives, container packing for supply drops, inflatable rafts, training, matches, intelligence methodology, and waterproof jackets.306 The author of that report emphasized the importance of propaganda and the necessity of subject-matter experts at headquarters who understand the situation on the ground. A good understanding of the culture in rural areas was important, and the A-group report stressed this. There was no need to learn about Burmese town norms, since the group stayed away from villages. However, learning how to interact effectively with local tribes was important. The cultural disconnect sometimes led to humorous, and potentially hazardous, incidents. For instance, Capt. Wilkinson in A-group would verify a counterpart’s identity by asking them if their dah (knife) was double-edged. If they answered ‘yes,’ then he knew they were the right person. This worked since, according to the A-group file, “Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the Kachin or in fact any race in Burma knows that no knives are double edged.” One exchange, with the deaf Kachin headman of Nanghka, went as follows: Capt. Wilkinson: Is your dah sharp on both sides? Kachin: No, it is only sharp on one side, of course. Capt. Wilkinson: (Worried.) Listen. Did an American tell you that someone would ask you if your dah was sharp on both sides? Kachin: Yes, but I don’t know what he was talking about.307 304 Carl Eifler, “Report from Carl Eifler to Carl Hoffman,” November 4, 1943. ed Troy Sacquety. Center for the Study of Intelligence Studies (Fall-Winter 2001). https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi- studies/studies/fall_winter_2001/article07.html. 305 Sacquety 31-46. 306 “A Group File,” Summer 1943, RG 226, OSS E154, Box 447, National Archives at College Park. 307 ibid. 1-2.
- 102. Rally Point, 102 As time went on and further missions were attempted, these novice errors and tactical shortcomings became less and less common. The detachment learned from their mistakes. These early reports evidently influenced the subsequent conduct of operations, culminating in a workable model. In 1943, after much trial and error, the Americans would hit upon a successful strategy. Their approach, as prototyped in operation FORWARD, relied on establishing ties with anti-Japanese minority factions throughout the country, particularly in the territory’s north. That region had only seen British rule since the Third Anglo-Burmese War in 1885.308 The people there were fiercely independent, and the Allies recognized the value of that such ambitions could have in the struggle against the Japanese. In this region, the British had taken a hands-off approach in government, and due to the relatively recent assimilation of the territory of the British empire, sentiment against the former colonial authorities was not so well-developed.309 The Kachin people, in particular, had long hoped for an independent state. Kachin autonomy had been denied not just under the British, but before. The Kachins once had a kingdom, but it was a fiefdom beholden to, and under the effective control of, the dominant Konbaung dynasty.310 The Kachins viewed their new emperor with as little reverence as they had had for their former kings, whether in Shwebo, Sagaing, Ava, Amarapura, Mandalay, or London. The Karens and the Indian Chindits would also prove most valuable allies in the ensuing jungle war against the Japanese.311 The Allies would, as elsewhere, use the desire for decolonization and independence in Burma to the military effort’s advantage. Detachment 101, under the command of Lt. Carl F. Eifler until late-1943, would conduct guerrilla operations behind enemy lines, gather intelligence on the movements of occupation forces, identify aerial targets, and undertake search and rescue missions for marooned servicemen.312 In the process, they revolutionized the abilities of the American intelligence community and shaped not only Burma’s future, but the course of the war itself. The “FORWARD” group has been identified as the inflection point in the operational history of Detachment 101. This was the detachment’s “first short-range effort.”313 By October 1943, the group, which was first organized in December 1942, had grown to operate over a wide swathe of territory, 308 Thant Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006): ch. 1 309 Carine Jaquet. Kachin history, perceptions, and beliefs in The Kachin Conflict: Testing the Limits of the Political Transition in Myanmar, (Bangkok: Institut de recherche sur l’Asie du Sud-Est contemporaine, 2015). Note also that Kachins had faith in British guarantees of greater autonomy after the war. 310 Mandy Sadan, Being and Becoming Kachin (Oxford: OUP for British Academy, 2013): ch. 2 311 Steven J. Ackerson, “Detachment 101 and North Burma: Historical Conditions for Future Unconventional Warfare Operations” (monograph, United States Army Command and General Staff College, 2016) 312 Carl H. Marcoux, “Yankee Guerrillas in Burma: The Story of OSS Detachment 101,” Warfare History Network, accessed March 8, 2019. https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/yankee-guerrillas-in-burma/ 313 Troy J. Sacquety, The OSS in Burma: Jungle War against the Japanese (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014): 47-58.
- 103. Rally Point, 103 encompassing hundreds of square miles.314 The philosophy behind the mission elevated incremental success and deferment of short-term gains, rather than seeking instant gratification and overextension.315 It was an approach that reflected the teachings of Sun Tzu and Confucius, rather than Clausewitz — though the ends-oriented leaders of the detachment may not have thought about it this way. Instead of fighting head-on and making an unequivocal commitment to large territorial advance — as Clausewitz would have advised — they decided to prioritize self-preservation, while keeping the end goal in mind.316 Instead, Detachment 101 patiently collected small victories, bleeding the enemy to death, while committing minimal men and resources.317 Geographically, the strategy was much wiser. The operation’s target, as the name suggests, was to establish a reliable forward base in Burma. With cultural knowledge having been acquired, they selected a Kachin stronghold whose position was well situated with respect to the Chinese border, the Japanese base of Myitkyina, and the Allied Fort Hertz. The new strategy was easier to supply and manage given its location, and had safer fallback options in the event of a mission-critical failure. A declassified military report on FORWARD in the archives describes it as a “one of [the detachment’s] most successful operations.”318 While there was not much preventing a Japanese advance and capture of Fort Hertz — which would have emasculated the forward group — the fact that they did not, permitted the detachment to set up its foothold and grow. The successful aspects of operational group A, including the use of Kachin recruits — together with the failures of the other bold missions — seem to have shaped Eifler's thinking in designing FORWARD. The same report goes on to describe that, in its early phase, “although [FORWARD was] primarily an intelligence gathering group, [it] did have a force of 80 armed Kachins.”319 The Kachin force marked the start of coordinated armed resistance among the natives against the Japanese. The report emphasizes the importance of the group in organizing resistance, rescuing Allied airmen, and gaining on-the-ground intelligence which would enable quick advances of conventional forces. The intelligence gathering efforts were moving forward successfully as early as 1943. The detachment’s guerrilla capabilities would grow dramatically over the course of the war. The importance of FORWARD is particularly clear from the fact that, more than a year after its inception in 1944, the group, referred to as “Group 1,” was still active and thriving in a SEAC report. “Recent reports of the activities of 314 Though one of the detachment’s early missions, it is the one which evolved the most, and the strategy would shape their other activities behind enemy lines. 315 ibid. and supra 16. 316 Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Gutenberg, 2006): Book IV, Ch. 11 317 Sun Tzu, The Art of War (MIT Classics, 2009): Book II, “Waging War,” tr. Lionel Giles 318 Report on operations entitled “‘FORWARD’ group,” Detachment 101, RG 226 OSS E190, Box 41, Folder 68, Textual Records Unit, National Archives at College Park, Maryland. (undated) 319 ibid.
- 104. Rally Point, 104 these groups have been excellent,” that report narrates.320 This is a markedly different picture from that of earlier operations. In March 1945, the operation had grown to include more than 60 Americans commanding over 5500 armed natives. FORWARD was one of the detachment’s largest operational groups. At its height, across all such groups, Detachment 101 would grow to include hundreds of Americans, leading almost 10,000 armed natives.321 Their results in action were impressive: 5,428 known enemy dead, with an estimated 10,000 other casualties, 75 Japanese captured, 574 Allied servicemen rescued, 51 bridges blown, 9 trains derailed, and over 3700 tons of enemy supplies either captured or destroyed.322 It is said that Japanese prisoners estimated a single Kachin soldier to be equivalent, in terms of effectiveness, to ten Japanese. At one point during the war, the Kachins reported that — for every one of their men — there were 25 enemies they had killed.323 Stilwell, incredulous of these statistics, asked one Kachin: “How can you be so sure of your numbers?” The soldier placed a sack on the general’s desk, and told him: “Count these ears and divide by two.”324 Compared against the mainly British operational group A, the demographics of the “Area 1” operational group reveals the enormous growth and assertion of operational independence that the OSS saw in Burma. In fact, Eifler made a point to highlight that, in early 1943, “while the British were evacuating, the Kachins were doing a good job of their own and wondering why the British were running.”325 By all indications, the Kachins — who saw mutual interest in the fight against the Japanese — were more reliable partners for the Americans in 320 Report on “Processing of Current and Future Operational Plans,” January 25, 1944 in Planning “P” Division, Headquarters, South East Asia Command, Detachment 101, RG 226 OSS E190, Box 44, Folder 319.1, Textual Records Unit, National Archives at College Park, Maryland. 321 This peak was likely attained in late 1944. U.S. Army Special Operations Command, “Detachment 101” in The OSS Primer, https://www.soc.mil/OSS/det- 101.html; W. R. Peers, “Intelligence Operations of OSS Detachment 101”; Troy Sacquety, ed. “Report from Carl Eifler to Carl Hoffman,” November 4, 1943. The detachment was commended for their accomplishments in the final battles of the Burmese theater, where it led “coordinated battalions of 3,200 natives to complete victory” against 10,000 Japanese over 10,000 square miles. See infra, note 45, page 208. The source in supra note 41 indicates the numbers for FORWARD. 322 Peers and Brelis, 217-220. 323 These latter statistics would pertain not just to Kachins who worked with and were coordinated by the detachment, but extend to tribespeople fighting everywhere. The kill rate is likely exaggerated. 324 Likely apocryphal. Diana Cary, Jackie Coogan: The World’s Boy King (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2004): 194; Japanese American Veterans Association, “OSS Detachment 101: Nisei Guerrilla Fighters of World War II,” Nov. 1, 2006. http://www.javadc.org/Nisei%20Guerrilla%20Fighters%20of%20World%20War%2 0II.htm; Ian Dear, “Detachment 101: Behind Japanese Lines” in Sabotage and Subversion: The SOE and OSS at War (Stroud: The History Press, 2016); “Obituary: Colonel Carl Eifler,” The Telegraph, May 3, 2002, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1392977/Colonel-Carl-Eifler.html; Sterling Johnson, “Detachment 101 (Feature),” HistoryNet, August 19, 1996, https://www.historynet.com/detachment-101-may-96-worldwar-ii-feature.htm 325 “FORWARD” group report, 5
- 105. Rally Point, 105 the heat of the Burmese jungle. We also see hints of the postcolonial future in this dynamic. Eifler himself struggled to find an appropriate term for these guerrillas: “These companies are not soldiers in the sense that we refer to soldiers. They are natives without any military experience of any kind, armed” with weapons of all kinds. “Their mission is to guard the roads and trials coming up from Jap held territory and to ambush and harass the enemy if he attempts any forward movement.”326 Nevertheless, their impact was clear, and their importance to the Allied war effort evident from their consistent inclusion in tactical plans in this offensive. Eifler appreciated their legitimate role in the American war effort and hence searched for a way to describe their function accurately. Moreover, the model that FORWARD defined, as spelled out in reports, is one that was replicated in future missions like KNOTHEAD and DONOVAN. The operation focused on coordination with Kachin recruits, radio communication, and limited-distance expeditions with focused targets. The preservation of defensive guerrilla positions and specific, local sorties out from those positions was essential to their success. The operation, along with others like it, laid the groundwork for further guerrilla organization and a stronger relationship with the Kachin peoples in the northern Burmese hills. In some ways, is difficult to isolate FORWARD from the operations that came before and after it — or, for that matter, to clearly define the operation as an atomic entity. The learning process for the unit was continuous from 1942 onwards, and the missions which followed FORWARD also played an essential role in achieving victory in the offensive.327 There is a compelling case, given how early the operation starts and how late it runs, that this was a watershed development. However, FORWARD is not really a single moment. Instead, it came to define Detachment 101’s entire strategy and mission in CBI. From its core idea, it evolved in time and across territory. What we can say, properly speaking, is that start of the FORWARD group was the beginning of a decidedly different approach to operations. It signaled a different and consequential mindset. The novelty of this trial-and-error approach is more apparent when viewed in contrast to the OSS’s approach in North Africa, which did not effectively adapt to its environment. Altogether, the alliance between the U.S. and the Kachin rangers, and the FORWARD-type operations, would eventually play a pivotal role in the Myitkyina offensive to open the Ledo Road in 1944, allowing the transport of supplies to China and shifting the tide of the theater against the Japanese.328 The geographic criticality of Burma to the wider war effort in Asia was evident early on in the war. The urgency prompted Donovan, in February 1942, to highlight the importance of holding on to the territory in a memo to the President, in order to get supplies to China and protect India from Japanese advance.329 326 ibid. 2 327 Report on “Processing of Current and Future Operational Plans,” National Archives. 328 The Kachins, who were largely anti-Japanese have strived for independent nationhood to this day. 329 The Burma theater headlined Donovan's memo. William J. Donovan, “Memorandum for the President,” No. 296, February 28, 1942, 12 Noon, Box 148, in the President’s Secretary’s File, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, NY.
- 106. Rally Point, 106 By 1944, the OSS began to standardize its operations across the board. The “Burma system” of frequent and detailed reports, with an emphasis at operational improvement, had reached Washington. In a memo to all officers and mission chiefs, William Donavan specified a form in which reports were to be filed, and established a clear categorical system to allow for the “systematic analysis or comparative evaluation of field accomplishments.”330 Also on Donovan’s mind in the moment was accountability. With OSS missions now proving decisive in several theaters, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (whether wary of the OSS’s power or more interested in utilizing its capabilities) was interested in receiving monthly reports. The office had, by 1944, begun systematizing its training regimens, and established a schools and training division.331 Late in the war, the office had turned to the business of ensuring that the knowledge it had acquired would be shared. It was preparing, in other words, for a permanent existence. This was a prescient decision, since much of the knowledge the agency gained through the war would define the future of warfare. In addition to manuals describing many of the takeaways the field reports run through, they prepared organizational flowcharts of a “typical” field organization and the expected structure of operations.332 This is one of the earliest examples of decision makers in Washington conducting global comparative analysis: They sought to distill what parts of a given theater’s operations could be ascribed to cultural and environmental factors, and what part could be applied elsewhere. The meticulous reporting system of Detachment 101, and its scientific, empirical view on special operations would be a defining one for the OSS and its successor organization. However, the OSS never needed to head down this path. At the same time as the earliest operations in Burma, agents of the same organization were pursuing similar objectives, but with a different mindset and significantly less success, whose story offers a cautionary tale: The institution of modern American special operations was by no means a guaranteed legacy of the war. Carthago delenda est, right? A more ‘diplomatic’ approach to espionage and guerrilla Parallel to Burma, one of the COI’s earliest missions was in North Africa.333 After the fall of France in early summer 1940 and the establishment of Vichy thereafter, the United States maintained diplomatic relations with the puppet nation. America kept an ambassador posted through to 1942, and thereafter had a chargé d’affaires in the nation, until Operation TORCH cut all ties between the two.334 As the tension between Vichy and the United States grew National Archives and Records Administration. NARA 16620506. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/16620506 330 William Donovan, Memorandum “To all strategic services officers and chiefs of mission,” March 22, 1944. RG 226, OSS E190, Box 44, Folder 319.1, Textual Records Unit, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 331 OSS Schools and Training Branch Records 1943-1945, RG 226 E161, Folders 81 and 85 332 Image in appendix. 333 Lee Borden Blair, “Amateurs in Diplomacy: The American Vice Consuls in North Africa 1941-1943,” The Historian (August 1973): 607-620. 334 Vincent Jones, Operation TORCH (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972)
- 107. Rally Point, 107 taut in 1942, the OSS began to pursue more forthright operations in France’s colonial possessions along the Mediterranean. This early in the war, there was persistent skepticism about the potential of covert operations. Allied command had no fidelity to the idea that the OSS could materially improve the military landscape in the Mediterranean theater. And, they had no reason to do so, since the idea itself was unproven. Moreover, the Mediterranean theater was much more accessible to conventional military options, and a direct invasion was far less complicated than it would have been in Burma. To the credit of this point, Marshall himself admitted that he had given Stilwell “one of the most difficult” theaters in the war, with few supplies to work with. Secretary Stimson, for his part, asked if Stilwell would not be better off attempting a “less impossible” task than the CBI campaign.335 The target at the end of the Mediterranean theater, in addition, was Germany itself, whether in the desert war against Rommel, or via Vichy intermediaries. There are, however, essential parallels between the two situations. The question of why OSS operations met with runaway success in one theater within a year, while they floundered in the other for the same period, has a more substantive answer than the comparative willingness of the American government and military to gamble on a conventional assault. The OSS in North Africa was willing to perform an appendant function, gathering baseline intelligence without any coherent vision for expansion or a plan to attempt consequential operations. It instead set an unambitious and unassuming policy, which would culminate in its operational failure during TORCH. Agents on the ground did not refine, develop, or for that matter, even begin to execute effective testing procedures for their operational units. The paramilitary work of the OSS in Burma was revolutionizing the way we fight wars, while the intelligence gathering of the OSS in North Africa was an orthodox way to win the peace before the fighting had even started. The strategies of Detachment 101 would form the basis for modern special operations after the war. The legacy of the OSS in North Africa is more apparent in the State Department and intelligence units associated to it. Morocco and Algeria in 1941 were in some respects a different situation from the one in Burma a year later. However, there are significant parallels that make the comparison worthwhile. Both territories were colonial possessions and each was overrun by Axis powers during the first stage of the war — whether Vichy or imperial Japanese. Although some internal resistance emerged in each case, ultimately it was military campaigns following extensive foreign intelligence operations that liberated each territory. In May 1941, before the United States even seriously considered entering the war, “vice consuls” were sent under diplomatic cover to collect intelligence on the Vichy colonies. These individuals were, at first, organized under the oversight of the Coordinator of Information. On paper, the consuls was organized to enforce the Murphy-Weygand agreement to facilitate American exports to Vichy North Africa, but not to Germany or 335 Barbara Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China: 1911-1945 (New York Random House): 469. The desperation in Burma, and the tangible lack of a confident strategy in the theater, is one of the factors that allowed for the Detachment’s strategy to prosper as it did.
- 108. Rally Point, 108 Italy.336 In reality, they had a dual role in espionage.337 The commercial and diplomatic basis for the spy network was both a hindrance and a liberator. The system in many ways defined the template for postwar peacetime espionage operations: Conducted under the protection of an embassy, and with a veneer of supposed legitimacy. This is an important innovation of the North African case. The critique instead pertains to the wartime mobilization of the OSS in advance of and during operation TORCH in late 1942. After Pearl Harbor, the COI agents started to specifically look at potential landing sites, the possibility of guerrilla groups, and stirring up coups in the Vichy command structure. The guerrilla forces that the COI organized with were mainly French, with minority Arabs.338 These forces, according to the COI’s plan, would mobilize to assist Allied landings. In terms of gathering intelligence, both the archival record and the historians who have studied their work agree that the COI was largely successful.339 The organization gained detailed information on military positions, reported on infrastructure, devised appropriate cipher communications systems, established contact with resistance groups, and developed a kilometer-scale understanding of the the lay of the land in sensitive areas, such as littoral topography.340 One hand-drawn map describes the position of radiosonde trucks in the town center of Guercif, Morocco, while a secret telegram reveals an unnamed agent's sources to the home office.341 This detail exemplifies a rigor in OSS intelligence reporting. By August 3, 1942, the OSS would have detailed information on Moroccan strategic targets, economic resources, cartography, railroads, and highways. Further material on airfields, electric power, water supplies, communications, and fuel storage were added prior to the invasion.342 After TORCH, the OSS would continue to collect detailed information on the “day-to-day opinions, viewpoints, hopes and aspirations of the population.”343 Agents tracked the movements of high-ranking Vichy military officers, and political views of French elites on Vichy policy. Most of the intelligence collection, by merit of the vice consul system, was conducted from cities — an inherent limitation on their potential. However, cities concentrated enough 336 Blair, 607. 337 According to a document found in the archives, the Italians, it seems, were aware of this arrangement as early as September 1941, seven months after its negotiation! I’m sure the Germans would have appreciated the memo: They only managed to arrest Maxime Weygand after the Allied invasion in late 1942. See infra 62. 338 David A. Walker “OSS and Operation TORCH,” Journal of Contemporary History 22, no. 4 (October 1987): 667-679. https://www.jstor.org/stable/260815. (Of the non-Europeans, mostly Moroccans.) 339 OSS, “Algiers Field Station Files, 1941-1945” RG 226, A1 97, Boxes 25-29, National Archives. 340 ibid. See also, Walker 669. 341 “Incoming Message from Casablanca,” and “Map of Guercif,” Algiers Field Station Files, NARA. 342 “Report on Morocco,” Vol. I, August 3, 1942, Algiers Field Station Files, NARA. 343 “Blue Papers, Set 1” from Casablanca, March 3, 1943, OSS Op. 2, Algiers Field Station Files, NARA.
- 109. Rally Point, 109 knowledge for the OSS’s gathering efforts to yield successful military information. As in Burma, however, Donovan’s men saw the OSS’s contribution as one which could extend beyond such intelligence gathering. They wanted to expand their capabilities to conduct in-depth and behind-enemy-lines analysis of enemy strategy, recruit resistance forces against the French and Germans, and compromise enemy operations through sabotage. In this regard, the OSS failed spectacularly in North Africa: It expected Vichy forces to capitulate and join the Allies when faced with landings in operation TORCH. This was, of course, far from what happened on the day of the attack: the Vichy fought back.344 David Walker, in his monograph on the subject, summarizes, “OSS’s guerrilla teams were a manifest failure, almost all of them failing to achieve their objective.” Walker suggests that the OSS was too “ambitious” in its efforts. However, all things considered, the contrary seems to have really been the case. Indeed, it is true that the OSS was too bold on the day of the landings, given the limitations of its developed and proven capabilities on the ground. But it is its lack of ambition in the Mediterranean theater, up to the TORCH landings that shaped that critical operational inadequacy. In the Burmese example, we find rapid and immediate operational groups with large goals, that failed, and were ultimately revised to successful models such as the one we see in FORWARD. Prior to TORCH, the OSS agents in North Africa did not take such a forward attitude against the enemy. Most of the operations were air drops, and short-scale irritations that did not build momentum or consistent internal organization. The time frame is not enough to explain North African delay, either: Detachment 101 had a successful approach to guerrilla warfare in 8 months.345 The vice consuls and OSS agents had a similar time frame to develop such a model, at similar scales. That opportunity was sacrificed for a more discretionary and low-key approach. That conservative approach was shaped by the fact that the agents, often diplomats and businesspeople, took steps to ensure that they were not caught as partisans. They were operating in what was technically a pre- war zone, while CBI theater was openly militarized early on. However, for that discretion and quietude — whatever they may have gained by it — they sacrificed much in the way of actual guerrilla capabilities. They sequestered themselves to the role of intelligence gatherers, and therefore failed to provide a compelling reason for their existence. Military intelligence units already existed. The OSS failed to define a role for irregular warfare in the North African theater. There is no reason the organization could not have begun coordinating and driving resistance activities even prior to the commencement of active hostilities. 344 David A. Walker “OSS and Operation TORCH,” Journal of Contemporary History 22, no. 4 (October 1987): 667-679. https://www.jstor.org/stable/260815. To some, such as Walker, this was an intelligence failure that prolonged the war, while to others, this was an intelligence blunder that nevertheless tricked the Allies into pursuing the TORCH landings in the first place. Their false sense of security worked out in the end. 345 FORWARD group was established in December 1942, eight months after the detachment’s activation. The detachment only began to realize the extent of its success — and assess its results properly — later in 1943.
- 110. Rally Point, 110 OSS operatives in Morocco and North Africa ought to have taken a more bold strategy from the onset, taking greater risks, in order to achieve greater operational success. The vice consuls’ memos indicate a frustrating reticence to take such risks. One of the resistance group leaders in TORCH, codenamed Bacchus, led a team of 10 Corsicans in cutting electrical wires. Bacchus told vice consul David W. King that he wanted to keep his group “limited to this number until a few hours before the time of action.”346 Limiting resistance numbers is not the best strategy in a time of invasion. Similar sentiments are voiced by other groups: One railroad sabotage group CHARLOTTE, sought to remain in the “coulisses” (wings, i.e. of a theater) until the “right moment.”347 The group voiced particular fears of being found out as part of the resistance. This relative hesitation sets apart these groups from the more forward operations in Burma, and reflects the impulse to remain as quiet as possible, and participate in civil society, until the invasion. Such silence — the traditional modus operandi of spy agencies — came at the cost of much-needed experience when the invasion finally came. Without doubt, King and the other vice consuls in North Africa (like Eifler in Burma) would have received angry phone calls from the Army if they had made significant mistakes. But the Burmese operational groups ran the same risks of being captured and exposed to the Japanese as enemy fighters. These risks, however, carried clear rewards later in the conflict. The surprise element of TORCH, though important, would not necessarily have been compromised by earlier and more expansive guerrilla operations by the OSS. By definition, the advantage of covert operations is their lack of ties to conventional combatant states. The Burma case illustrates that such operations, far from complicating eventual conventional invasion, has immense power to complement it. The only consequence of a more consistently ambitious guerrilla strategy would have been closer Axis attention to interior resistance in the North African colonies. Such a strategy — creating general hell and pandemonium — need not have given away the imminent invasion along the coast.348 There is a broader role for guerrilla organization in North Africa prior to, and independent of, TORCH. The King memos describe detailed strategies for resistance groups to advance under fire in towns, yet such groups had little to no practical training in such military tactics. The calculations of such teams’ efficacy is based on allocated 346 “Memorandum for Mr. Murphy and Colonel Eddy from Vice Consul King. Resistance Groups,” October 17, 1942, Algiers OSS Op. 2, Folder 121, Algiers Field Station Files, NARA. 347 “Memorandum for Mr. Murphy and Colonel Eddy from Vice Consul King. Organization of resistance groups in P.T.T. services,” October 15, 1942, ibid. Algiers Field Station Files, NARA. 348 No connection exists between the invasion and the operations proposed here, aside from their common target. In the hypothetical: For guerrilla activities to reveal anything about the invasion, they would need to be conducted in an exceptionally unintelligent way. For example: intensifying sabotage dramatically in October 1942 from the baseline; or, tying American operatives in an open, obviously and extensive way to guerrillas. The Axis knew early on that the Americans in North Africa were not friends, as counterintelligence reveals. The Americans were in a position to spy and surreptitiously coordinate irregular warfare behind enemy lines.
- 111. Rally Point, 111 materiel and personnel numbers, rather than fighting ability. The failure of guerrilla mobilization against the Vichy during TORCH reveals this lack of training and commitment. The plan described in King’s memos even goes so far as to remind agents that “It should not be forgotten that … the teams are intended to support a movement coming from the outside.”349 This reveals the lack of actual engagement resistance team members had in the larger strategy. The whole plan of resistance for TORCH calls for 1,500 men scattered throughout Moroccan cities, yet it fails to develop any resistance in the countryside to the extent that it would have been possible.350 Other resistance plans include cutting railroad lines, sending false telegraphs, interrupting telephone lines, and seizing the radio. While each of these methods is helpful, each is also marginal in its effect, and so to make an impact the scale of operations is critical. King initially claimed that the plans come from a General “Richert.” In an amusing follow-up note, he corrects himself to say that they actually came from a Col. “Lorillard.”351 King’s faith in the plan fades after hearing this: “Col. Lorillard is an energetic regimental officer, but both General Richert and I think he has vastly exaggerated the number of groups upon which one can really depend.” The question is, if this was understood to be likely, why were more aggressive steps taken? One answer: Guerrilla operations was not yet viewed as one of the OSS’s mandates; intelligence collection was. The exaggerations also allowed the vice consuls to give their higher ups in the military good news.352 However, the OSS was not designed to be a quixotic cheerleader. It was designed to deliver results, in terms of actionable and accurate knowledge, as well as impactful guerrilla operations. Prior to TORCH, under the joint leadership of King, vice consul Robert Murphy, and Col. William Eddy, OSS involvement in North Africa did not grow to encompass coordinated paramilitary operations. Instead, mere weeks before TORCH, King, “in order to avoid confusion,” met with each resistance group leader he oversaw. King ordered each resistance group to constrain its activities within disjoint and prescribed geographical areas, rather than cooperate across wider regions. “I told both Cheesecake and Cabby that I was going to limit various men to their regions; that they were to stay in their regions and improve the efficiency of their various groups, but not to go out into other people’s territory.”353 Any personnel that they commanded outside of their earmarked territory needed to be explicitly disclosed to the vice consuls, who would then 349 “Resistance Groups” memorandum, October 17, 1942 350 ibid. 3. Moreover, countryside resistance would have offered a safer alternative to practice prior to TORCH. It is unlikely increased resistance activity would have drawn serious Vichy attention to the Americans, particularly if it were planned appropriately. 351 “Memorandum for Mr. Murphy and Colonel Eddy from Vice Consul King,” undated, though sent shortly after the memorandum on resistance groups, Algiers Field Station Files, NARA. These are not the actual names of the people in question. 352 See Eleony Moorhead, “The OSS and Operation TORCH: The Beginning of the Beginning,” Tempus: The Harvard College History Review 10, no. 1 (Summer 2009): 1-20. 353 Until October 23, 1942, Cheesecake was the commander of the native police, guards, municipal services and public utilities in Port Lyautey.
- 112. Rally Point, 112 reorganize those men under appropriate resistance leaders. King told them that he would dispatch a Frenchman who would be his liaison and leader for the French groups. “Neither they nor their groups were to become involved with anyone coming into their territory recruiting groups unless they had written orders from me.” King’s intentions are noble here: He feared spreading the resistance too thin, and hence ordered strict geographical boundaries on each resistance group. There were fears about the recruitment of double agents, and a lack of trust in the agents they had.354 King also wanted to balance the number of different types of groups in each region: the OSS had divided TORCH resistance groups by task.355 However, the actual effect of this policy was to reduce the overall efficiency of the operation by hindering cooperation within the resistance. This centralized command structure — controlling many different operational teams — may have worked in the foreign service and conventional military, but it was not appropriately flexible for guerrillas. The OSS agents in charge — the vice consuls and Col. Eddy — set themselves at the center of the resistance operation and managed the tactics of the various groups at a relatively low level. This micromanagement is decidedly different from the Burma case, where Kachin-American units developed organically and operated with autonomy in the jungle. Eifler and Peers were Army men by training, while many of the OSS agents in North Africa were diplomats and members of civil society. The distinction is tangible in their contrasting approaches to the organization of special operation units. Eifler and Peers, for instance, each commanded men on the ground in combat for prolonged periods of time. In the larger picture, they were responsible for all of the detachment’s various groups — even the ones which which they had only periodic contact. But, for the groups that they did not directly oversee, they 354 This is a perennial fear in espionage, and one which also existed in Burma. Increased political cultural familiarity with the Kachins remedied these fears. It is difficult to keep secrets among family and friends; similar dynamics existed in North Africa to take advantage of. 355 “Resistance Groups” memorandum, October 17, 1942. There were three classes of groups, each determined by a specialized role. “A” groups were “operation or destruction” groups, consisting of specialists who were employed in public utilities, who would sabotage or suspend infrastructure. “B” groups were “protective” or covering groups, which would prevent counter-interference and guard the A groups. Lastly, “C” groups were “purely combat groups,” whose role was to remain mobile and engaged in the fighting. C groups wold protect B groups in last resort. Firstly, the men in these teams were largely civilians who were seldom well-trained. It is, moreover, unclear why this rather artificial distinction was drawn up. In order to be effective, groups in different classes would need to work together closely, and so it does not make sense to divide units of men along these lines. (Only the A and B group leaders were at all familiar with one another.) Likely, this system was to ensure that each designated territory had an adequate number of experts in each class. In Burma, the operational groups were organized on a principle of sovereign sufficiency, so each unit had adequate proportions of experts across all tasks. This is clearly a preferable approach, since it allows for more efficient operation within each group. The vice-consuls organized the teams like a foreign service office or a traditional military, when, what they really needed in special operations was a flexible structure.
- 113. Rally Point, 113 managed only at a high level: They were hands-off handlers and intimately involved soldiers. Their principal duty as leaders was to coordinate the detachment’s guerrilla groups with larger strategic objectives and then update Stilwell on the groups’ progress. In Burma, the command structure set the ends, and the various groups decided on the means independently. In Morocco and Algeria, the commanders did not delegate and expand the organizational tree on such a principle: They set both the ends and means, and it failed miserably. The fear of establishing too large a presence stymied operational potential for each resistance group. Men were assigned to divisions according to necessity rather than possibility. Instead, the OSS should have pursued the development of guerrilla capabilities more fully, and spent more time devising operable and actionable strategies to undermine the enemy, like was done in Burma. Rather than fear overextension, it would have been better policy to develop a special operational reach, outside of merely creating havoc from positions in civil society. They could have experimented more — if at a higher cost — to develop capabilities which could have contributed in a much more material way to the success of TORCH. In the end, TORCH was a successful undertaking, if a bloody one.356 However, its success was dependent on Darlan’s deal in Algiers, Hitler’s violation of nominal Vichy independence, and outright conventional military superiority.357 Without any one of these things, TORCH could have gone in a different direction. Accordingly, the OSS could have done much more to operationally support conventional forces in irregular warfare behind lines. The overall success of TORCH, the value of OSS intelligence, and the rapid progress of the war after the landings, left positive thoughts about the organization in the minds of the higher-ups.358 There was nothing tactically decisive that made them stand out from other military intelligence divisions, as in Burma, however. Donovan’s hopes that OSS North Africa would redeem their organization’s existence would be let down.359 At the very least, though, given the other circumstances of the war in the Mediterranean, the OSS did not make itself a bad name during the war. However, it would be up to theaters such as Burma to earn the OSS the high and independent regard it would attain by 1947. Ironically, the lack of consistent reporting and documentation in North Africa on the OSS’s strategies and work initially proved to be an asset, when those same operations failed during TORCH. By the same token, it held them back from learning adequately. The lack of a consistent organizational structure, and a comparative inability to coordinate that organization, proved detrimental to the North African mission. By the end of the war, the OSS would become adept at information- 356 The invasion was particularly bloody for the OSS’s unprepared guerrilla fighters. 357 Breuer, William, B. Operation TORCH: the Allied gamble to invade North Africa (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988) 358 Thomas Dorrel, “The Role of The Office of Strategic Services in Operation Torch,” (MMAS diss., U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2008). https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a483008.pdf 359 John C. Beam, “The Intelligence Background of Operation Torch,” Report, May 23, 1983, U.S. Army War College. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a129136.pdf
- 114. Rally Point, 114 sharing across theaters, within the organization. Early on, however, there was little impulse to cooperate or share information. For one, there was the novelty of international war, and a lack of understanding that best practices in one theater might be helpful elsewhere. Moreover, there was a reticence, given traditional ideas about espionage, to systematically document one’s work. Such secretiveness, without doubt, served a useful purpose in the preservation of secrets and the maintenance of a low profile. But it also held back the growth and development of a successful operation, by limiting cooperation with allies, and hindering the process of learning from failures and successes. Secrecy is an important part of espionage, but when it begins to interfere with team members’ ability to operate, then it goes too far: Secrets must be kept from the enemy, but shared with allies and individuals within the organization who need to know. Illustrating this, in March 1943, Australian captain Franklin Canfield, then stationed at the British embassy in London, wrote a letter to Arthur Roseborough, one of the OSS’s agents in Algiers. The letter enclosed details on SOE operations in the Mediterranean. Canfield displayed the lack of information-sharing between the British and American spy agencies in North Africa, when he politely asked Roseborough: “I should very much appreciate your letting us have at your convenience an off the record description of the shape which the O.S.S. family tree has taken, and is likely to take, in Algiers.” He wasn’t the only one with questions for Roseborough: Donovan, from Washington, would chastise the same agent for disobeying orders.360 A lack of discipline was only one of the OSS’s many issues in North Africa, however. There was a lack of incentive to innovate, paired with a fear of overreaching. That fear is clear from the way they talked to one another. The OSS’s internal communications in North Africa reveal the touch of diplomats. Its memos on resistance operations are written in a congenial tone, as one would write a letter to a colleague or an intelligence briefing update. They stand in contrast to the cold and calculating evaluations that Detachment 101 favored.361 The lack of candor in the North African memos was another barrier to operational success. The vice consuls’ non-military background worked against them in this regard. Still, there were structural obstacles to expanding in North Africa that did not exist in Burma, which deserve further mention. For one, the President 360 Sherman Kent, “Book review of OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency,” Intelligence in Recent Public Literature, July 2, 1996, declassified under CIA Historical Review Program, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent- csi/vol16no4/html/v17i1a09p_0001.htm. In other tellings, however, Roseborough — a former Rhodes scholar who headed strategic information in Algiers — is cited as “a forgotten hero” and a “courageous idealist.” Contrary to State Department policy, he was sympathetic to the plight of the Jews, and North African desires for self- determination. His political leanings could have played a factor in his relation to the other members of the Algiers station. See Robert Satloff, “Operation Torch and the Birth of American Middle East Policy, 75 Years on,” Mosaic, The Washington Institute, October 9, 2017, https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy- analysis/view/operation-torch-and-the-birth-of-american-middle-east-policy-75- years-on 361 Memoranda for Mr. Murphy and Colonel Eddy from Vice Consul King, October 1942, Algiers Field Station Files, NARA.
- 115. Rally Point, 115 was intent on a conventional military assault, and this option was the one weighed most heavily in discussions around operational prerogatives — despite initial reluctance from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.362 Even after the TORCH landings, the Allied Force Headquarters kept the OSS under close supervision. Closely related to this, there was a burden of bureaucracy that did not exist in Burma: For example, from August 7, 1943 onwards, AFHQ Algiers had to receive all authorization requests for personnel coming to the theater.363 It would inform the Fifteenth Army Group, which would then inform the Seventh Army Group, which would have approval authority in conjunction with the OSS’s liaison there. After making a decision, the Seventh Army Group would transmit the news back along the same route. Altogether, Washington’s perspectives on special missions and shadow wars was still thoroughly ambiguous. The lessons from the Burmese case had not percolated, and it was unclear what to expect of the OSS beyond mere intelligence collection. There was also the question of geography. The jungles of Burma offered exceptional and natural conditions for guerrilla secrecy. The terrain along the Mediterranean coast is largely mountainous and cliffy, with the sea standing in contrast to it. The Atlas Mountains — close to the coastal landing points in Algeria — would have been well-suited to guerrilla organization. The rest of the Maghreb is relatively flat, and there, human settlements offer the best cover in the landscape.364 This was particularly the case with respect to the urban operational targets that the OSS had set in North Africa. The lay of the land is not a good enough deterrent: To the contrary, the United States, along with its allies, had run successful special operations in the similar environments before: From the last world war, Lawrence of Arabia’s example stands out.365 Moreover, in such a territory, one would expect a greater reliance on native recruitment to facilitate expansive operations with less scrutiny. Arab resistance in North Africa was a more subtle and less familiar opponent to the Vichy than French resistance in Europe. Particularly in the countryside, Arabs could have played a useful role for the OSS in operational terms. It is true that the Nazis supported certain Arab nationalist movements as a strategy of war. At first glance, this may seem to be an impediment against native recruitment in North Africa. However, the Nazis principally supported Arab nationalists in their 362 Carrie Lee, “Operation Torch at 75: FDR and the Domestic Politics of the North African Invasion,” War on the Rocks Commentary, November 8, 2017. https://warontherocks.com/2017/11/16075/ 363 “Incoming Message,” Tangier, August 3, 1943, Algiers Field Station Files, NARA 364 The terrain is flat in the interior of Algeria and along certain coastal areas in Morocco. Inland of the mountains, there is mostly desert. Many of the targets recognized by the OSS as being valuable were in areas of higher population density. The OSS failed to recognize infrastructure targets in the country side to the same extent. The organization’s lack of operational ambition limited their potential even further by restricting their organization to urban areas, in which it was difficult to undertake missions. 365 T.E. Lawrence’s case is the famous one, but there are many besides from the colonial era and before that. The Riffian Berbers, for instance, had mastered such modes of warfare. See C.R. Pennell, A country with a government and a flag: the Rif War in Morocco, 1921-1926 (Boulder: MENA Studies Press, 1986)
- 116. Rally Point, 116 push for decolonization against the British, as a tactical way to destabilize the empire. This strategy appears to have only been utilized in British-controlled territory, and in support of anti-Semitic Islamic rulers, such as the Mufti of Palestine.366 There was no such cooperation nor guarantees of independence in the Vichy colonial possessions, where the Germans had already established a strong foothold. In these departments, the Axis powers assumed the mantle of the status quo. Even if the Germans had been uniformly supporting Arab nationalism, the lessons of Burma — where a very similar dynamic existed — belie the intractability of the situation. The Burmese innovation was to seize upon internal and native political dissent. Identifying pockets of dissatisfaction with Axis rule — of which there were cases — would have been a constructive development. North Africa was a much more integral territorial component to the French than Burma was to the British. However, in the quest to win the war and turn back the tide of Nazism, these diplomatic considerations could not, and should not, have been material to the United States. The main issue at hand, then, was a matter of strategy and commitment in North Africa to a special operations program. Over its tenure, the consul system evolved from a covert intelligence network to one that would attempt to organize guerrilla resistance, gather information about roads and infrastructure, and prepare for the full-scale landings. Agents included as diverse figures as diplomats, regional authorities, and industrialists — many of whom had hardly any prior experience in operations. Carleton S. Coon, the Harvard anthropologist, fell into this category. Coon operated in Morocco both before TORCH and during the subsequent occupation in 1942.367 Coon, together with Gordon Browne — who had originally proposed COI intelligence gathering in North Africa — was tasked before the landing day to organize subversive groups in Spanish Morocco. Coon noted in his memoirs, “Like almost all North Africans, [the nationalist party] despise the French for taking away their lands and privileges and treating them as inferiors … what they want is political equality, relief from economic exploitation, and above all the opportunity for education.”368 The question of why this sentiment was not adequately mobilized against the Vichy, by the Allies, remains unanswered. The extent of native involvement is one prominent difference between these two cases: In North Africa, agents guiding OSS operations were largely French, and secondarily — if at all — Maghrebi.369 This made natural sense, since the French— unlike the English in Burma — could 366 Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2010): 57-158 367 Carleton S. Coon, A North Africa Story: The Anthropologist as OSS Agent, 1941- 1943 (Ipswich: Gambit Publications, 1980) 368 ibid. 17-24. Coon spends his conclusion discussing the various “covers” that agents could adopt. “So in general and except for very special jobs of brief duration, it is my feeling that OSS agents in Old World theaters can best use a military … cover, on some kind of detached service or special mission” (135-136). In cases, where this is not possible — behind enemy lines, for instance — diplomatic cover may be the only option. Unless, such as in Burma, agents stay away from the enemy altogether, in guerrilla positions. 369 Walker, 668
- 117. Rally Point, 117 operate behind enemy lines without arousing immediate suspicion. Local involvement was a precondition for success in Burma. However, just because it wasn’t necessary for operations in North Africa does not mean that it would not have greatly expanded the OSS’s potential scope and ability to exploit political discord. The distinctions between the OSS’s strategies in the two theaters are profound. The organization’s lack of operational success — or, for that matter, its lack of effort to actively prototype its guerrilla organizations — set up a poor precedent on the battlefield and limited expectations. The TORCH resistance groups augured the OSS’s broader ambitions in the field, which would eventually grow to encompass systematic irregular capabilities. What would really draw the attention of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — and legitimize the idea in terms of tactical advantage — was the approach in Burma. North Africa presented a different view of what the OSS could have been: With a limited interpretation of their charge, the OSS was more consistent with traditional expectations people had about espionage. Its failures did not challenge the assumption that the OSS would not be as useful an operational entity. The Mediterranean theater commanders did not support the OSS’s efforts to the same extent that Stilwell eventually would.370 There was little need for such attention, since the OSS did not venture to grow so much in the paramilitary direction in North Africa. This is not to say that the military did not support the OSS in the region: Mediterranean commanders still recognized the value of the intelligence the OSS provided, and were largely laudatory.371 Those commanders, though, did not yet fully understand what greater investment in the OSS, and a more ambitious OSS strategy, could have achieved.372 Conclusion: A brave new battlefield for a brave new world. What OSS operations in Burma and North Africa boil down to is the willingness of the agency to reinvent itself and define its prerogatives in the field. In each territory, the respective Axis powers retained a similar disposition. Each territory was a colonial holding, peripheral to the center of political attention and military defense. The local populations in each area had comparable political dynamics under the changed regimes. Thought the majority were indifferent, or begrudgingly supportive, there was no lack of internal dissent and native resistance. The OSS was, as an organization, amenable to the idea of colonial independence, especially if the postwar order could be mobilized to the effective 370 Stilwell, after all, had encouraged the growth of OSS forces by providing further men and materiel to accommodate the FORWARD base’s growth. He also set growth targets for their operations, with respect to the Kachins. After seeing the intelligence value of their fieldwork, and preliminary tactical successes, Stilwell certainly came around to support their work in the end. 371 Stephen Ambrose, Ike’s Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1999). Note: In Europe, the OSS would prove itself ahead of the Normandy D-Day, coordinating resistance in France with operations Jedburgh and Maquis. 372 The essential desire for quick territorial reacquisition also led war planners to not think very much about such hypotheticals.
- 118. Rally Point, 118 aid of military operations.373 Arab nationalism was a nascent yet tangible force at this point in history, with decolonization on the horizon. The hesitant approach the OSS took in North Africa, by not approaching everyday, lower-class Arab populations directly, prevented them from seizing on such ambitions. Kachins — and not necessarily the distinguished or warrior-class among them — demonstrated remarkable abilities in the field, at minimal Allied cost. These fighters had skin in the game. The use of British agents was not as effective as the use of Kachins in FORWARD. Given the parallels, one must wonder how the choice and organization of personnel in North Africa failed to capitalize on prevailing popular sentiments. To develop guerrilla warfare on a serious scale in Vichy North Africa would have required broader involvement. The limited and narrow-minded philosophy of the OSS in North Africa stands in contrast to a more innovative one in Burma. On a global scale, we see the contrast in irregular warfare strategies that the OSS employed, and the resultant difference in the potential strategic effect within each theater. The environmental differences and challenges of the battlefield in North Africa are not persuasive. Instead, the OSS in North Africa — facing the skepticism of a military intent on conventional invasion — made the decision to focus on intelligence gathering. Bound by tradition, operatives placed an emphasis on reading the enemy’s mail, rather than training effective guerrilla forces at a paramilitary scale. When the time came to put down the pen, and pick up the sword, the OSS was unable to deliver. They lacked experience and command versatility on the battlefield, since they had stayed in the coulisses until the day of the operation. The OSS was limited in North Africa by its inflexible and conservative approach in revising its methodology. Rather than proactively address the factors that held back special operations in enemy territory — the Burma route — such options were neglected at the JCS and cabinet level, in favor of quicker conventional intervention. Not until Detachment 101’s experiments in Burma would the full form of American special operations materialize. The novelty of the development in Burma — both its impact and the larger forces it reflected — cannot be overstated. With Gen. Stilwell’s uncounted blessings, there was a bolder — if at times reckless — pursuit of high-stakes operations. In the Burmese case, this ambition is what allowed Eifler to adapt his missions to the more effective, smaller scale attacks that eventually won the war there. The Burmese lesson — adaptability, short-scale attacks, rapid experimentation and strategic adjustment — was not learned in the Mediterranean. And this is precisely what the North African front was missing, both before and after TORCH. Developing Allied intelligence networks and special capabilities further could have expedited military operations in the desert and allowed for an earlier advance to Messina. While the TORCH and the North African operations as a whole provided invaluable training for later landings in Normandy, this was one theater in which 373 Though, its allies including the Free French, were much more ambivalent about the concept. See: Tony Smith, “A Comparative Study of French and British Decolonization,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 20, no. 1 (January 1978): 70-102. “What the [French] Union assured, in essence, was that the peoples of the Empire would be neither French nor free.” Likewise, the war in Burma shaped and was shaped by pressures on the British to decolonize in that region.
- 119. Rally Point, 119 special operations — setting aside intelligence — did not scale in the way it ought to have. It is ironic that, years later, when American forces would return to the Middle East, they used the models of special warfare developed by Detachment 101 in Burma, combined with local intelligence. This is indeed a preferable adaptation. If the OSS in North Africa had developed in a similar way, American intelligence would have had a better understanding of regional dynamics in the postwar half of the century. Better North African intelligence would also have aided the progress of the war itself; the Burmese case illustrates the possibilities of OSS operations, and the remarkable impact they could have in a territory. In the world order that would come to pass in the years after 1945, intelligence agencies would grow in their importance and capabilities. Warfare in the latter half of the twentieth century would increasingly follow irregular formats. Special operations, as those subsequent conflicts would illustrate, was the way of the future. The myopia of viewing spy agencies as exclusively intelligence-oriented organizations, has become evident in the past eighty years. The decentralized, commanded-on-the-ground structure of the OSS — one of the very things that allowed it to succeed in Burma — is also what held back that organization on the international level. Strategies that worked in one location were not shared elsewhere, for comparison and adaptation, until late in the war. To varying degrees of success, the United States’ strategies in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan would all rely on ideas which were first developed in the Second World War. The Central Intelligence Agency, in defining its mandate, would learn from these wartime experiences. In a large way, the agency was structured on the basis of the lessons discussed in this paper. With Cold War tensions emerging, it was clear that, in order to win the peace, governments would have to not just know more than their adversaries, but be able to project their force around the globe in shadow proxy wars. Modern intelligence agencies, with special operational capabilities, intelligence gathering functions, and an international reach, were the perfect institutions to preside over this geopolitical reality.374 That legacy endures to this day. 374 Rome and Britain each relied on permanent structures and hard power to preserve their empires. It is remarkable that, thanks to these developments, the United States does not need such things to maintain global military influence. It is easy to speculate that the latter arrangement is more resilient than the former.
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- 123. Rally Point, 123 October 18, 2013. CIA Library Electronic Reading Room. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA- RDP13X00001R000100240004-4.pdf Roosevelt, Franklin D., “Memorandum for Bill Donovan,” December 23, 1941 in the President’s Secretary File (Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration), Box 153, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, NY. National Archives and Records Administration 16620578. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/16620578 Roosevelt, Franklin D., “Military Order,” June 13, 1942, CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the- study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol37no3/pdf/v37i3a10p.pdf Sacquety, Troy J., The OSS in Burma: Jungle War against the Japanese (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014): https://muse.jhu.edu/book/35869 Sadan, Mandy Being and Becoming Kachin (Oxford: OUP for British Academy, 2013) Satloff, Robert “Operation Torch and the Birth of American Middle East Policy, 75 Years on,” Mosaic, The Washington Institute, October 9, 2017, https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/operation- torch-and-the-birth-of-american-middle-east-policy-75-years-on Smith, Tony, “A Comparative Study of French and British Decolonization,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 20, no. 1 (January 1978): 70-102. Tuchman, Barbara, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 (New York: Macmillan, 1972) Tzu, Sun, The Art of War (MIT Classics, 2009), tr. Lionel Giles. http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html U.S. Army Special Operations Command, “Detachment 101,” The OSS Primer, https://www.soc.mil/OSS/det-101.html Walker, David A. “OSS and Operation TORCH,” Journal of Contemporary History 22, no. 4 (October 1987): 667-679. https://www.jstor.org/stable/260815 Warner, Michael, The Office of Strategic Services: America’s first intelligence agency (Washington: CIA Office of Public Affairs, 2007). Online at http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS16244 Wenner, Randall D. “Detachment 101 in the CBI: An Unconventional Warfare Paradigm for Contemporary Special Operations” (Leavenworth: School of Advanced Military Studies United States Army Command and General Staff College, 2010), monograph. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a523185.pdf Wood, James R. “Detachment 101, Office of Strategic Services Burma - April 14, 1942 to July 12, 1945: ‘The American-Kachin Rangers’” OSS-101, archived July, 24, 2001. https://web.archive.org/web/20010724174025/http://www.oss- 101.com/history.html Zimmerman, Dwight Jon, “Office of Strategic Services (OSS): American Special Operations Gets Its Start,” Defense Media Network, accessed
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- 125. Rally Point, 125 Appendix An organizational flow-chart of a typical O.S.S. field organization, in the OSS Schools and Training Branch Records, 1943-1945, E161, National Archives and Records Administration. 6282643.
- 126. Rally Point, 126 THE GREAT STARING CONTEST: 200 YEARS OF CRUSADING AND CULTURAL EXCHANGE IN THE BALTICS BY WILLIAM HOGAN In the late 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer praised the concept of knightly chivalry in The Canterbury Tales. His symbol of chivalry, the Knight, is revered by a narrator who describes him as loving: “the profession / Of arms; he also prized trustworthiness, / Liberality, fame, and courteousness.” 375 All of which are venerable attributes that accompany the contemporary image of a medieval knight. Interesting to note is where Chaucer’s Knight gained and displayed his vaunted characteristics—crusading. Chaucer mentions that the Knight took part in well-known Christian adventures to the Levant, but he also gives glancing acknowledgement to a crusading theater largely forgotten by popular culture: Often he took the highest place at table / Over the other foreign knights in Prussia; / He’d raided in Lithuania and Russia, / No Christian of his rank fought there more often.376 Chaucer’s English knight crusaded in Prussia, Lithuania, and Rus’ia (a contemporary term for parts of medieval Russia that were not the Grand Duchy of Moscow). What business did an English crusader have fighting in the Baltics when the Holy Land was firmly under Islamic control? What situation could possibly attract warriors with dreams of retaking Jerusalem to the frigid shores of the Baltic Sea? This essay will not account for the decision making of a fictional 14th century knight. However, it will account for the decision making of monastic German knights and Lithuanian Pagans who clashed during the Baltic Crusades of the 13th and 14th centuries. Most importantly, it will account for the consequences of the crusade and what the crusade implies about the concept of transcultural warfare. As presented by Stephen Morillo in “A General Typology of Transcultural Wars - the Early Middle Ages and Beyond”, transcultural warfare can be understood as a war where combatants have significant cultural differences, to the point where the opposing culture is looked down on. Morillo’s concept of intercultural warfare, a sub-group of transcultural warfare, is most relevant here. Morillo defines intercultural warfare as conflict between groups with extreme cultural misunderstandings that result in a lack of conventions that govern warfare between the two.377 The Baltic Crusades against Lithuania are a prime case study for intercultural warfare. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the very last bastion of European Paganism; for nearly 200 years this state stood in defiance to a 375 Geoffrey Chaucer, David Wright, and Christopher Cannon. The Canterbury Tales. New ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 4. 376 Ibid. 377 Stephen Morillo. “A General Typology of Transcultural Wars: The Early Middle Ages and Beyond” (in Hans-Henning Kortüm, ed., Transcultural Wars from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century. Akademie Verlag, 2006), 29-42.
- 127. Rally Point, 127 powerful, militant branch of Catholicism. The ideals of this branch are personified by The Hospital of St. Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem. They were known by their English counterparts as the Teutonic Order and from here on are referred to as the Order, the Teutons, the Teutonic Knights, or the knights. Their crusade was more than a struggle between religions, it was a struggle between competing states and economic systems. For Pagan commoners, the encroaching ‘German God’ did not just threaten their cultural inheritance, he threatened to replace their relative freedom with serfdom. For the Order, campaigns were not just opportunities to enlarge Christendom, they were acts of penitence to assuage medieval fears of mortality. These are not two-dimensional combatants; both represent complex cultures that cohabited a world where neither could survive the success of the other. In order to accomplish an objective analysis of this intercultural war, it is necessary to pose and answer a few questions about the Baltic Crusade against Lithuania. How did the Teutonic Order and Lithuanians fight the crusade through military and political channels? What allowed Lithuanian Pagans to maintain their religious traditions and sovereignty, despite the crusades? How much cultural exchange took place between the combatants and how significant were such exchanges? The historiography of the Baltic Crusades, specifically the crusade against Lithuania, is largely written in the languages Central and Eastern Europe. English language scholars owe their wealth of information to the translation of 19th century sources (especially period High-German texts transcribed in the 19th century) and stores of correspondence and records. The two most prominent English language scholars of the Teutonic Order and the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania are William Urban and S. C. Rowell. Urban, who has dedicated his career to the study of the Teutonic Knights, paints the Order as a complex political organization whose military success against Lithuania provided the pressure necessary to spread Catholicism, but military might did not prevail alone. Rowell, author of Lithuania Ascending, contends that cultural, social, and political developments contributed more to the success of the crusade than did military campaigns. Individual campaigns were military actions, but the crusade was bigger than that. The crusade was a religious struggle, the outcome of which was tied to military success but not totally married to it. The success of the Baltic Crusade against Lithuania should not be measured in military conquest, the expansion of the Teutonic state, or economic gain. Rather, its success should be measured by how deeply the Catholic faith (and its accompanying socio-political hierarchies) penetrated its target. The consequences of this are vast. Chiefly, the crusade lasted 200 inconclusive years because the Teutonic Order, and certainly the Lithuanians, could not survive a total military victory. The Teutonic Order and their state could not exist without a holy war; without wars to pursue they were a liability to the papacy and a danger to local rulers. As such, the propagation of the crusade was the best guarantor of the Teutonic state’s existence. The Lithuanians fought and negotiated with this knowledge, prolonging their absorption into Christendom long enough for it to be on their own terms. Thus, crusader victories were necessary to set the conditions where Lithuania could be pressured into conversion, but it was not the driving force. The ultimate success of the Baltic Crusade against Lithuania
- 128. Rally Point, 128 lay not with military force, but cultural exchange between the Catholic world and Lithuania. Setting up a Holy War The Teutonic Knights were built to serve the interests of the German speaking world in the crusading arena. They were a late addition to a collection of monastic warrior orders, beholden only to the Pope and church authority. The concept for these orders stemmed from the writings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who envisioned monastic knights as the fighting arm of the clergy.378 Moreover, the order and discipline of professional religious warriors would better legitimize crusading campaigns, which tended to attract all sorts of unsavory characters. This goal to professionalize the crusades certainly gained weight after egregious displays of ‘unsavoriness’ in Constantinople and Zara during the 4th Crusade. The burden to professionalize fell on the Teutonic Order form the moment of its inception in 1190. The Order’s Germanic heritage influenced its identity from inception and would eventually lead its area of operations back to the borders of the Holy Roman Empire. Though founded as a hospital order to care for German crusaders at the Siege of Acre in 1190, the need for more crusading orders drove the papacy to bless their transition to a military order in 1198.379 Here, the status of the Order in Catholic hierarchy becomes important to note. Brothers in the Order take oaths as friars, not monks. This distinction means that fighting members of the Order do not baptize, teach religion, or live in cloisters; they fight.380 Such duties fell to the priests and monks employed in the service of the Order. Organizationally, this required great stratification of hierarchies within the Order. All members of the Order were volunteers, but all volunteers served distinct roles based on class and ability. The primary fighting men attracted to the order were the second sons of lesser nobility and well-off adventurers looking to make a name for their families. Young men swore an oath of chastity, poverty, and “obedience unto death”, then entered the order as half-brothers, “Halbbruder”.381 Experienced half-brothers from noble families could be knighted as full brothers, “Ritterbruder”.382 Ritterbruder never numbered more than 200 and made up the backbone of Teutonic leadership. From this elite, 378 Bernard of Clairvaux, In Praise of the New Knighthood, Prologue-Chapter Five (from Bernard of Clairvaux: Treatises Three, Cistercian Fathers Series, Number Nineteen, Cistercian Publications, 1977, pages 127-145), (translated by Conrad Greenia), https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/344bern2.html, (Accessed 30 April, 2020). 379 Nicolaus von Jeroschin, The Chronicle of Prussia: A History of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, 1190-1331, (Farnham, Surrey, England; Ashgate, 2010), (translated by Mary Fischer), 38. 380 William L Urban, The Teutonic Knights: A Military History, (London: Greenhill, 2003), 13. 381 Ibid., 14. 382 Ibid., 18.
- 129. Rally Point, 129 governing chapters were formed based on location; these chapters convened to elect a Grand Master.383 The Grand Master wielded supreme authority over the order, appointed his own council, and was charged with Papal relations. The fighting men from good stock were supported by an array of lower- class help. Priests and clergy within the order handled church teaching, baptism of converts, and administered the eight daily masses that knights were required to attend.384 These priests connected the Order to the Catholic hierarchy and cemented relationships with other religious orders, such as the Franciscans, whose loyalty helped protect the Order from Roman Curias (the Church’s administrative branch).385 The military and religious arms relied on the labor of servants and slaves to run hospitals, handle daily chores, and manage land owned by the Order. These social strata were enforced by a rigid code of conduct. Even a Ritterbruder accused of a crime, such as murder or breaking his vow of chastity, could be punished by demotion to slave for a period.386 This organization and rigid discipline served the Order well during the 13th century, as it desperately tried to hold onto possessions in the Holy Land. As the Holy Land gradually became an unsuitable location for crusading, small chapters of knights experimented with European arrangements. From 1211 to 1225, the Teutons were guests of King Andrew of Hungary.387 The knights set up castles along the outskirts of the Hungarian steppe to hold off nomadic raids. When not fighting, the Order tilled farmland and invited hordes of German settlers to their new lands in Hungary. They proved to be too successful for the liking of Hungarian nobles, who convinced their king to evict the Knights in 1225.388 This was a formative moment for the Order and the origin of their distrust of secular authority. Kings wanted Teutonic help when their kingdoms were threatened, but they had no interest in allowing a private army to overstay its welcome. The Teutons would only find security and prosperity on land they alone controlled. Conveniently, in 1226, the knights were presented with such an opportunity. A Polish duke offered the Knights Pagan lands in Prussia in return for military assistance.389 This fateful offer defined the legacy of the Teutonic Order. In 1231, with the blessing of the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, a chapter of knights under Herman Balk built the Order’s first Prussian castle.390 Balk was an astute 383 Ibid., 16. 384 Ibid., 52. 385 Preussisches Urkundenbuch, “The Franciscans of Thorn defend the Teutonic order.” 1.2: no. 65, (translated by Helen J. Nicholson), https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/12-13Cbalticcrusade.asp, (Accessed 19 March, 2020). 386 Indrikis Sterns, "Crime and Punishment among the Teutonic Knights." (Speculum 57, no. 1 (1982): 84-111), doi:10.2307/2847563, (Accessed 19 March, 2020). 387 Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 31-36. 388 Ibid. 389 Huillard-Bréholles, J L A Ed., “The Golden Bull of Rimini, March 1226.” (Historia diplomatica Fridericii secundi, 6 vols in 11 (Paris, 1852-61, repr. Turin, 1963), vol. 2.1, pp. 549-52), (translated by Helen J. Nicholson), https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/12-13Cbalticcrusade.asp, (Accessed 19 March, 2020). 390 Jeroschin, The Chronicle of Prussia, (translated by Fischer), 67.
- 130. Rally Point, 130 leader; the Prussian chapter prospered and put Pagan tribes to the sword. Balk relied on a constant stream of crusading visitors from Germany for the bi-annual reisen; in 1233 alone, 10,000 men campaigned with Balk.391 Their militant fervor was no doubt riled by priests who characterized the Pagan enemy as “slow and simple” savages, who worshipped demons and sacrificed Catholic missionaries to their heathen gods.392 These campaigns were not just raids; they were conquests. Pagans on captured land were converted and forced to relocate further West, to prevent escape to yet unconquered tribes. Pagan nobles who accepted baptism were awarded land and titles by the Order, their estates were farmed by converted Pagans and a seemingly infinite supply of German immigrants. This Teutonic system of conquest and land reorganization was perfected in Prussia. Prussian tribes failed to unite, so they fell one by one to the ‘German God’. Converted Prussians were by no means passive subjects. By the end of the 1270s, the Knights had put down four major rebellions, each larger than the last.393 Rebellion ended in reprisals and forced relocations to the West. Ironically, after rebellious Prussian armies were defeated, the Prussians became reliant on Teutonic protection from Lithuanian raiders. By 1283, the Knights had established their own successful state in Eastern Prussia, swelling with German immigrants. From 1283 to 1340, the Teutonic Knights issued over 500 land grants for towns in Prussia.394 Much to the dismay of slighted Polish nobles, Eastern Prussia was a German crusader state. As the Order consolidated power and organized during the 13th century, so too did the Lithuanian Pagan tribes of the Baltics. Medieval Lithuania sat between the Nemunas (Memel) River and the forests of modern-day Latvia. It was divided into two major regions, the lowlands of Samogitia and the highlands of Aukstaitija. These two regions were comprised of war-like tribes that, unlike the Prussians, shared a common language, common economy, and a common religion. Lithuanian social hierarchies appeared primitive to Christian powers. They were organized into chiefdoms. There were various chiefs and princes, each paid in labor and grain by those under his protection. These local leaders were primarily war chiefs. They owned horses, weapons, and armor which they would divvy out to their subjects when called to war.395 This nobility-centered military organization facilitated the rise of strong families that claimed royal titles, securing order through civil war. Though mostly agricultural, Lithuania opened to trade by expansion as nobles consolidated power and formed a kingdom. Lithuanian raids had two material goals: to capture plunder and to take slaves. Plunder was a reward for loyal warriors and successful chiefs, but slaves from neighboring Prussia, Rus’ia, and Poland were trade goods. In the 1230s, Mindaugas, an Aukstaitijan chief, 391 Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 56. 392 Jeroschin, The Chronicle of Prussia, (translated by Fischer), 70. 393 Jeroschin, The Chronicle of Prussia, (translated by Fischer), 88. 394 S. C. Rowell, Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire Within East-Central Europe, 1295-1345, (Cambridge [England]; Cambridge University Press, 1994), 201. 395 Eric Christiansen. The Northern Crusades, (2nd, new ed. London, England; Penguin, 1997), 38.
- 131. Rally Point, 131 united the Lithuanian tribes into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.396 At the head of the duchy ruled the Grand Duke, Mindaugas, surrounded by less powerful dukes from his family.397 Unification coincided with the Teutonic Order’s arrival in Prussia and a Lithuanian victory over a lesser German crusading order, The Livonian Brothers of the Sword (based in modern day Latvia), in 1236.398 Fear of Catholic invasion fostered cooperation. The Duchy then established dominance in the Baltics via conquest in modern day Belarus, where the Grand Dukes exiled troublesome nobles.399 Mindaugas successfully prepared Lithuania for the coming onslaught of crusaders. Though, he himself grew too friendly with the Catholic world. He was baptized by the Teutonic Order in 1251 and was crowned king by a Bishop in 1253.400 Mindaugas hoped to attract Christian merchants and settlers but instead he sparked a civil war that ended in his apostacy, the expulsion of Christianity, and his own assassination.401 Lithuanian nobles were set on having a Pagan king to defend their cultural inheritance. The defense of this inheritance, especially Paganism, provided the Lithuanian tribes a common sense of purpose. Lithuanian Pagans had an abundance of gods, spirits, and prophesizing mystics. The hierarchy of gods fell underneath Perkunas, the chief war god who later Grand Dukes styled their office after.402 Paganism was very decentralized; communities relied on local priests, priestesses, and soothsayers for all aspects of life. Individual worship was done in the home or in holy sites in nature. Natural sites were not themselves worshiped, as many Christians suspected; they were just conduits to another plane of existence that their gods and ancestors cohabited. Sacrifices and rituals took place at such sites; animal sacrifice of goats, oxen, and horses were common.403 Less common were human sacrifices to invoke the favor of the gods in war, only done after a painstaking review of omens by priests.404 Such practices horrified contemporary Christians. Missionaries condemned Lithuanians as demon worshipers and warned other Christians of the existence of the “Criwe”, an elusive Pagan anti-Pope.405 It was perhaps easier for contemporary Christians to understand their Pagan foe as a manifestation of anti-Christianity rather than a religion that existed outside of Christianity. These religious traditions complicated the emergence of Lithuania as a local power. Crusading orders saw the Lithuanians as a backwards forest-people, living in defiance of Christ, rather than a legitimate state. This ultimately fueled the ferocity of the Lithuanians. Despite this hotbed of subversive demon worship, most of the Teutonic Order had little interest in the Baltics until the fortunes of crusading orders turned sour in the early 1300s. The majority of Ritterbruder wished to remain in the Holy Land; however, the loss of their headquarters in 1271 and the fall of 396 Rowell, Lithuania Ascending, 51. 397 Ibid. 398 Jeroschin, The Chronicle of Prussia, (translated by Fischer), 86. 399 Rowell, Lithuania Ascending, 51-52. 400 Ibid., 51. 401 Ibid., 52. 402 Ibid., 119. 403 Ibid., 123. 404 Ibid., 124 405 Jeroschin, The Chronicle of Prussia, (translated by Fischer), 71.
- 132. Rally Point, 132 Acre in 1291 proved too much.406 The Order trickled into Venice to debate their future; they did not have to wait long for inspiration. In 1303, Philip IV of France kidnapped and beat Pope Boniface VIII as revenge for ex-communication.407 Boniface’s successor, Clement V, wished to stay in Phillip’s good graces. This meant moving the papacy to France and reigning in the crusading orders that Phillip saw as a threat. Thus, in 1307 the Knights Templar were all but obliterated and their properties absorbed by France.408 Phillip and the Pope unsettled the Teutonic Order enough to move the entire organization to Prussia in 1309.409 They needed to distance themselves from the papacy and any monarch. The knights could not survive without their own state; thus, began a century of war with Lithuania and her Eastern European allies. Opposing Forces It is important to note the make-up of the opposing forces, their tactics, their strengths, and their weaknesses in order to make sense of the military and political events of the crusade. From its unification and expansion from the 1230’s onwards, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania relied on a sizeable army, capable of bringing tens of thousands of men into action. Lithuanian horsemen were skilled at ambushing invaders, the Battle of Suale in 1236 being the prime example. At Suale, Grand Duke Mindaugas snuck his entire army to the edge of a Livonian Sword Brother encampment. In the morning, the crusaders walked straight into Mindaugas, who slaughtered over half of their order.410 Pagan victories were not limited to within the borders of Lithuania, as they launched constant raids into Christian lands. Mounted parties of 100 Lithuanian raiders could ride some 40 kilometers per day, burning villages and taking slaves as they went.411 So successful were some of the larger raids that in 1275, Lithuanians burnt the crusader city of Konigsberg (Kaliningrad) to the ground and slaughtered the townspeople.412 The Lithuanians were unmatched in their mobility and cunning, but they struggled to compete with Western European armies on open ground. Thus, the Grand Dukes would balance out military shortcomings with diplomatic success. The Teutonic Knights fought incrementally, building mutually supported castles and forts to deter Lithuanian raiders and hosting reisen that slowly bit off chunks of Lithuania. Teutonic military organization was centered around the banner, a unit of 10-15 fighting men under the command of a Ritterbruder.413 Each banner had Halbbruder, sergeants, and men-at-arms, all 406 Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 28. 407 Julien Théry, "A Heresy of State: Philip the Fair, the Trial of the “Perfidious Templars,” and the Pontificalization of the French Monarchy." (Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 39, no. 2 (2013): 117-48.), doi:10.5325/jmedirelicult.39.2.0117, (Accessed 30 April, 2020), 120. 408 Ibid., 120-121. 409 Jeroschin, The Chronicle of Prussia, (translated by Fischer), 254. 410 Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 87-88. 411 Rowell, Lithuania Ascending, 244. 412 Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 67. 413 Ibid., 14.
- 133. Rally Point, 133 professional fighting men who had sworn an oath of service to the Order.414 As the backbone of the Order, banners garrisoned a checker board of castles along the Memel River in the South, the Livonian frontier to the North, and East across the Curonian Split. Each biannual crusading season, thousands of armed pilgrims and paid mercenaries traveled to these forts and rode with the Order into battle. These heavy cavalrymen, trained archers, and crossbowmen broke any Lithuanian force on open ground. At the Battle of Woplauken in 1311, Teutonic heavy cavalry rode down a Lithuanian raiding army in Prussia, commanded by Grand Duke Vytenis. The overconfident Vytenis erred and fought on open ground; his 4,000-man force was crushed, and Vytenis barely escaped the field.415 This ideal situation would not often be repeated for the knights. The Crusade Against Lithuania: 1309-1398 The Gediminid Dynasty, the inheritors of Mindaugas’ Lithuania, learned from Mindaugas’ demise. Gediminid power was secure so long as they kept the Christians at a comfortable distance. From 1295 to 1316, Vytenis, the second Gediminid, proved this maxim and defeated the Teutonic Order in three major battles, burned multiple cities, and formed alliances with anti-Teutonic Christians in Riga and Poland.416 In 1298, Vytenis took the side of Riga in a war with the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order, going so far as to send Pagan soldiers to help defend the Christian city; this alliance would become extremely relevant.417 Though a skilled general, Vytenis did not have the military resources to halt the Order, as Lithuanian armies struggled to siege stone castles. Upon his death in 1316, Vytenis’ brother, Gediminas, assumed the throne.418 The namesake of the Gediminid dynasty cemented Lithuania’s statehood and disrupted the crusade for nearly 30 years. Gediminas skillfully thwarted crusaders through the establishment of thin alliances with Christian monarchs and clever deception of the papacy. In 1322, Gediminas wrote to Pope John XXII, hinting of a desire to convert Lithuania to Catholicism. The only thing stopping him, he told the Pope, were “the savage wrongs and innumerable treacheries of the master of the brothers from the Teutonic house”.419 The Bishop of Riga, no doubt indebted to Lithuanian since 1298, championed Gediminas’ cause. It did not take much to land the Teutonic knights in hot water. After a pay dispute with Polish nobles in 1308, the Teutonic Knights took all Western Prussia from Poland, including Culm and Danzig, and refused papal demands to give them back.420 By 1322, the papacy and the Order were seriously at odds. 414 Ibid. 415 Jeroschin, The Chronicle of Prussia, (translated by Fischer), 256-259. 416 Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 158-162. 417 Jeroschin, The Chronicle of Prussia, (translated by Fischer), 233-234. 418 Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 168. 419 Gediminas Pukuveraitis, Gediminas Pukuveraitis to Pope John XXII, 1322, Letter, (from Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences, Volume 15, Number 4 - Winter 1969), (Ed. Antanas Klimas and Ignas K. Skrupskelis.), http://www.lituanus.org/1969/69_4_02.htm, (Accessed 30 April, 2020). 420 Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 115.
- 134. Rally Point, 134 So bad was the Teutonic knight’s relationship with the papacy that the knights decided to boycott the papal courts. However, 1322 was different; Pope John XXII considered excommunicating the Teutons.421 The Order was spared the fate of the Templars by Grand Master Karl von Trier. Trier was an astute negotiator and fluent in French, handpicked to deal with Avignon.422 The Order escaped disaster; they were forced to issue a mea culpa and enter into a ten-year truce with Gediminas and Poland (which no one followed).423 Meanwhile, Gediminas’ courtship with the Pope attracted Christian merchants to Vilnius and Franciscan and Dominican scribes to his court; this bolstered his economy and helped centralize his institutions. The Grand Duke styled himself “Gediminas, by the grace of God of Lithuanians and Russians king” and he certainly ruled as a king.424 Unsurprisingly, the Pagan Grand Duke had no intention of meeting Mindaugas’ fate. He used the years of truce to establish a true military alliance with Poland and Hungary, he was biding his time. When the Pope called Gediminas’ bluff and sent a delegation to baptize him, the Grand Duke told the frightened delegation: “let the devil baptize me.”425 Gediminas declared total toleration for all Christians (with the caveat that any missionary blaspheming Paganism would be executed) and renewed the raids against Teutonic subjects.426 The Teutonic knights scrambled to counter the Lithuanian-Polish forces and launched a massive, 20,000 man reise in 1329.427 This proved to be too little. In 1331, the Teutonic Order and their crusading visitors were crippled by Lithuanian-Polish-Hungarian forces at the Battle of Plowce.428 The Teutonic Knights proved to be such bad neighbors that their old employers joined forces with the Pagans. Though freshly crippled, the Teutonic knights were too firmly planted to be pushed out of the Baltics. Gediminas merely bought Lithuania more time, as the Teutons could only be defeated with the help of Christian allies; after Plowce, these allies slipped away. In 1335, Poland and the Order signed a truce and in 1336, the reise returned in full.429 During the 1340s strokes of good fortune for the Teutons secured years of uninterrupted crusading. Pope John XXII’s next three successors all took a ‘hands-off’ approach to dealing with the 421 Rowell, Lithuania Ascending, 215. 422 Jeroschin, The Chronicle of Prussia, (translated by Fischer), 261. 423 Rowell, Lithuania Ascending, 215. 424 Pukuveraitis, Gediminas Pukuveraitis to Pope John XXII, 1322. 425 Report of the Envoys of the Papal Legates, 1324, Letter, (from Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences, Volume 15, Number 4 - Winter 1969), (Ed. Antanas Klimas and Ignas K. Skrupskelis.), http://www.lituanus.org/1969/69_4_02.htm, (Accessed 30 April, 2020). 426 Gediminas Pukuveraitis, Letter of Gediminas to the Monks of the Fransiscan Order, May 26, 1323, Letter, (from Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences, Volume 15, Number 4 - Winter 1969), (Ed. Antanas Klimas and Ignas K. Skrupskelis.), http://www.lituanus.org/1969/69_4_02.htm, (Accessed 30 April, 2020). 427 Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 122. 428 Ibid., 128-130. 429 Ibid., 133.
- 135. Rally Point, 135 knights. Gediminas died in 1341, and his absence weakened Lithuania for some time.430 Gediminas had been unable to break the triangle of crusader strongholds at Konigsberg, Ragnit, and Memel. In 1343, the Order signed a lasting peace with Poland.431 In 1347, Charles of Moravia, a veteran of the crusade and friend of the Order, took the helm of the Holy Roman Empire.432 From now on, the Teutonic Order could focus on the crusade against Lithuania, without outside interference. This ushered in the glory days of Baltic chivalry. From the late 1340s- 1398, knights from Western Europe took advantage of lulls in the Hundred Years war to crusade in Lithuania. Each summer and winter, knights from as far away as Portugal followed experienced Teutonic knights on campaign.433 Since Gediminas’ death, Lithuanian raids were too weak to seriously threaten Prussia. This freed the Order to campaign into Samogitia, where they planned to build a string of forts connecting Prussia to Livonia. This would destroy Lithuania’s burgeoning economy by cutting off access to the Baltic Sea. The crusade had become as much a battle over land and trade routes as it was a holy war. Consequentially, the Order had mostly quit the practice of converting Pagan commoners while on campaign; converts had a nasty habit of apostatizing and betraying the knights.434 Instead, the knights burnt villages, took prisoners, and killed whatever refused to be burnt or captured; few distinctions were made between age or gender.435 The campaigns were so brutal that besieged Lithuanian warriors would often kill their families and themselves to escape capture.436 But brutality was successful; rural Lithuanian nobles gradually became convinced that the Grand Dukes were too weak to protect them. As a result, the crusaders enjoyed a steady stream of Lithuanian deserters willing to be baptized in exchange for advancement.437 Aided by this top-down strategy for converting Lithuania; the border of the Teutonic state was well on its way to connecting Prussia and Livonia. These decades of success coincided with the weakening of the order Gediminas established from Vilnius, as the firmness of his rule was gradually supplanted by disorder. Upon Gediminas’ death, his eldest son Jauntis inherited the title of Grand Duke. During Jauntis’ unremarkable tenure, his younger brothers, Algirdas and Kestutis, secured the loyalty of lesser dukes by way of military conquest in Rus’ia and countering Teutonic reisen. In 1345, Kestutis deposed Jauntis in a bloodless coup and Algirdas ascended to the throne.438 430 Rowell, Lithuania Ascending, 59. 431 Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 136. 432 Ibid., 137. 433 Jean Froissart, Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the adjoining countries,: from the latter part of the reign of Edward II to the coronation of Henri IV, (From Making America Books), 391, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moa/acg8357.0001.001/409?rgn=full+text;view=imag e;q1=Prussia, (Accessed 30 April, 2020). 434 Jeroschin, The Chronicle of Prussia, (translated by Fischer), 289. 435 Ibid., 288. 436 Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 133. 437 Ibid., 121. 438 Rowell, Lithuania Ascending, 285.
- 136. Rally Point, 136 Although Algirdas mirrored many of Gediminas’ policies, dynastic instability and persistent reisen shook the Pagan nobility’s confidence in the Gediminids. This confidence was again strained when civil war broke out after Algirdas’ death in 1377. Kestutis and his son Vytautas moved against Jogailia, the son of Algirdas.439 Noble families were forced to pick sides. Poland, reliant on Lithuanian strength to keep the Teutonic Order occupied, was certainly concerned. Here, the crusade took an odd turn. In their power struggle, the warring Gediminids lost sight of their ancestral war against the Teutons, but they did not forget how to hold onto power. In 1382, Jogailia assassinated Kestutis and signed a secret pact with the Teutonic knights. In return for military support, he would grant them all Samogitia and convert to Catholicism.440 Vytautas, seeing no other path to becoming Grand Duke, outdid Jogailia; he personally presented himself to the Teutonic Grand Master, offered similar terms, and was baptized.441 Vytautas and his new friends ripped through Samogitia, which deeply upset the Pagan nobility. Vytautas had a serious conflict of interest. He hoped to rule Pagan Lithuania, but he was in service to his people’s sworn enemy. In 1384 Vytautas betrayed the Order, apostatized, and rejoined Jogailia; together, they pushed the now confused crusaders back to the Memel River.442 In February of 1386, Jogailia, Vytautas, and an assortment of nobles were baptized as Catholics in Poland. Hours later, Jogailia married Princess Jadwiga, heiress of the Polish Crown. Lithuania voluntarily became a Catholic kingdom, much to the frustration of the Teutons and to the chagrin of the staunchly Pagan Samogitians.443 Despite this conversion, the crusade did not end in 1386. Rather, the holy war underwent yet another metamorphosis; the Teutonic Order now warred over which Lithuanian would be king. In 1389, the loosely loyal Vytautas once again betrayed Jogailia and joined the Teutons.444 From 1390 to 1393 his forces and the Order launched wildly successful reisen. This force practically subjugated Samogitia and prosecuted numerous sieges against Jogailia’s seat of power in Vilnius.445 It was during this era that a flood of English and French knights, including the future King Henry IV of England, came to Prussia.446 These pilgrims were surprised to find that many of the “Saracens” they expected to fight were converted Lithuanians and their Polish allies.447 This stage of the war 439 Ibid., 287. 440 Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 180. 441 Ibid., 181. 442 Ibid., 182-183. 443 Ibid. 444 Ibid., 186. 445 Ibid., 187. 446 Timothy Guard, "The Baltic." In Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade: The English Experience in the Fourteenth Century, 72-97, (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK; Rochester, NY, USA: Boydell & Brewer, 2013), 80, doi: 10.7722/j.ctt2jbkzz.11, (Accessed March 19, 2020). 447 John Henry Bridges, Ed. (1964), The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon Oxford, 1877- 1900, (repr. Frankfurt, 1964 vol. 3, p. 121-2, part 3, Ch. 13), (translated by Helen J. Nicholson), https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/12-13Cbalticcrusade.asp, (Accessed March 19, 2020).
- 137. Rally Point, 137 was so bitter that the Grand Master of the Teutons ordered that any Christian caught fighting for the Lithuanians (convert, Polish, or Rus’ian) be put to death immediately.448 The strategic situation became even more fluid in 1393 as Vytautas betrayed the Teutonic Knights for the last time.449 In return, Vytautas was crowned Grand Duke, nominally subordinate to Jogailia, the king of both Lithuania and Poland. Vytautas’ fourth time switching sides seemed to have been enough to tire out all of the combatants. The Teutonic Order now fought a dual Catholic crown. Their holy war had lost its purpose; the Pagan kingdom was gone. The stream of pilgrims slowed for the last time and most of the arrivals after 1393 were assigned to garrison frontier forts as the knights tried to deescalate the conflict.450 In winter 1398, the last reise was launched into Samogitia. The dominance of the ‘German God’, his knights, and their hierarchies had become inevitable. In September of 1398, the Teutons signed the Peace Treaty of Sallinwerder with Jogailia and Vytautas; in exchange for peace, the Teutons were awarded Samogitia. The last Samogitian stronghold, Kaunas, bitterly surrendered.451 It is not hard to imagine that they, and all the remaining Pagans, felt abandoned by their Grand Duke. By the close of the 14th century, the Teutonic Order had secured a state that spanned from Prussia to modern day Latvia. Analyzing the Crusade: Three Major Themes It is apparent that the Teutonic knights could only ensure their existence through holy wars. This prevented the possibility of peace. Without an ‘enemy’ of Christendom to stand against, they lashed out at Christian powers and became a serious liability to the papacy. The papacy was forced to act as a barrier between the knights and the Christian enemies they made, Poland, Hungary, and Riga. When the knights were in the favor of the Pope, they could brush off constant charges of undue cruelty, corruption, and harassing local bishops.452 They could expand their territories. This benign neglect ended during the Avignon Papacy, when John XXII and the Order disagreed over the rightful Holy Roman Emperor.453 This instability provided the Order’s enemies the opportunity to do serious damage. The response of the Teutons to Gediminas’ courtship with the Pope is the most telling sign that the Teutons could not survive peace. When Gediminas granted total toleration, opened his borders, and feigned interest in baptism, he pulled the rug from under the crusade. The Teuton’s entire struggle revolved around converting Lithuania by the sword; if Gediminas could do away with the 448 Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 189. 449 Ibid., 192. 450 Ibid., 194. 451 Ibid., 193. 452 A. Phillips Ed., “The complaints of Bishop Christian against the Teutonic order.” (Preussisches Urkundenbuch, 6 vols (Königsberg, Aalen and Marburg, 1882-1986), vol. 1.1, no.134.) (translated by Helen J. Nicholson), https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/12-13Cbalticcrusade.asp, (Accessed March 19, 2020). 453 Rowell, Lithuania Ascending, 191.
- 138. Rally Point, 138 need for war, Pope John XXII would have no further use for the knights. This terrified the Grand Master so much that he offered to pay Gediminas to stop and, when Gediminas refused, he bribed Pagan nobles in Samogitia to threaten rebellion if Gediminas went through with baptism.454 Even more damningly, the Teuton’s cut deals with the Grand Dukes to open Lithuanian trade routes, where the knights even sold weapons to the Pagans.455 If the Teuton’s grand strategic goal was the conversion of Lithuania, they had no business bribing and supplying Pagan leaders during lulls in the reisen. But peace was not their goal; they were a private army whose raison d’être was war. They ruled a fledgling state on highly disputed land that recently belonged to Poland; peace meant losing their source of papal protection and their legitimacy. Their goal was survival and survival for a private army looks a lot like endless war. This is not to say that the Teutonic knights had the means to end the war and just chose not to. Quite the opposite is true. Thus, a second theme of the crusade is Lithuania’s remarkable ability to resist the crusaders as other Baltic peoples crumbled. As previously mentioned, a shared religion, language, economy, and culture facilitated the union of the Lithuanian tribes. However, similarities do not guarantee unity. Individual Prussian and Livonian tribes certainly shared a lot in common, but they were all subjugated just over 50 years after first contact with German crusaders. Lithuania is the exception in the Baltics because their powerful Grand Dukes centralized authority before the full strength of crusade was brought against Lithuania. From Mindaugas’ union after the Battle of Suale to the very end of the crusade, Lithuanian tribes stood united against crusaders. While the Prussian and Livonian tribes were defeated in a piecemeal fashion, the Lithuanians put aside internal quarrels long enough to counter the reisen. Unity aside, countering the reisen was largely reliant on the diplomatic and economic clout that Gediminas and his successors developed. Mindaugas established a dialogue with Western Europe, he opened Lithuania to trade, and even he even built a cathedral in Vilnius.456 But that compromise was rejected by his people, who killed him and opted to fight. Vytenis was the last of these non- compromising rulers. But despite his numerous victories in battle, he was just delaying the Teutons. Vytenis had the capacity to win battles, but he could not force the crusaders off their land. Their castles were too well established. However, after Vytenis’ death there is a distinct shift in how the Grand Dukes fight the crusade. Starting with Gediminas, Grand Dukes had an unofficial policy to make compromises that undermined the Teutonic Order. Most striking of these compromises was Gediminas’ previously mentioned flirt with Christianity, where he gained allies within Catholicism that eagerly championed grievances. Compromise also won Lithuania a host of strange bedfellows (Poland, Hungary, Riga, etc.) who proved invaluable at diverting crusader attention away from Lithuania. The Gediminds compromised to the point of total toleration for Christians and tax exemptions for immigrants. They even allowed Christian enclaves to govern themselves under German law. Despite the words of 454 Ibid., 214. 455 Ibid., 77. 456 Ibid., 132.
- 139. Rally Point, 139 contemporary chroniclers, these are not the actions of uncivilized forest people. Instead, a strategy of compromise demonstrates the existence of self-aware rulers; ones that endeavored to thwart Western Europe by adopting new channels of dispute resolution. The aforementioned compromises segue nicely into the third theme of the crusade, that crusader military successes did not directly translate into victory. From first contact with the Livonian Sword Brothers around 1202 to the signing of the Treaty of Sallinwerder in 1398 with the Teutonic Order, the Lithuanians were never subjugated. On the surface, this rests with the sheer resilience of the war-like Lithuanian Pagans. However, upon closer analysis, the Teutonic Order was fighting from an untenable position. The knights could conquer land, defeat armies, and build castles, but they could not force Pagans to truly accept Catholicism. Not only did the Church refuse to recognize baptisms under duress, but Pagan commoners had no interest in converting. Pagans feigned conversion or slipped away into the forest; in one instance, half of the Pagans of Semigallia up and moved to Lithuania when the rest of Livonia surrendered.457 Yes, capturing forts, raiding, and destroying Pagan armies looked good in chronicles and in The Canterbury Tales; but these military victories did little to convince Pagan commoners to accept Christianity. To be fair to the Teutons, they only dedicated their full attention to the Baltics after 1309 and even then, they had a fair amount of distractions. This does not change the fact that clear-cut military victories did not bring the crusaders to their desired end state, the collapse of Lithuania’s Pagan ruling class and the conversion of the common people. The crusade ended on favorable terms for the Teutons, but not as a direct result of military actions. The Most Effective Tool of Crusading: Cultural Exchange The crusade against Lithuania provides insight in the role of cultural exchange as a side effect of intercultural war. It is through cultural exchange that Lithuania’s 200-year shift from isolationist Pagan tribes to an expanding Catholic monarchy can be explained. Simply put, two cultures, even cultures at war, that spend enough time in contact are bound to change as a result of their contact. What is exchanged and the magnitude of the exchanges will vary between the two cultures. The full-time crusaders were deeply entrenched in their faith and culture (to the point of being zealots), they numbered far less than the entire Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and there are no example of crusaders abandoning their faith and joining the Pagans. The same cultural conviction cannot be found in all Pagans, as examples of deserters, collaborators, and willing converts are common. Thus, it follows that the Pagans were more susceptible to cultural exchange than their opponents, explaining why Lithuania drastically changed while the Teutonic Order did not. Change came slowly due to the cultural miscomprehension that is common in intercultural wars. This miscomprehension is most clearly demonstrated by the crusaders, who actively demonized their Pagan enemy. As a result of demonization, the crusaders could not coexist with Pagans; they would have to convert or die. Demonization is clear in crusader chronicles. Chroniclers clearly label the Lithuanian’s religion as demon worship, complete with human 457 Ibid., 285.
- 140. Rally Point, 140 sacrifice and the “Criwe” anti-Pope.458 They also detail Pagan atrocities against Christians. The longwinded descriptions range from common disembowelment and impalement to, human sacrifice, and an anecdote about two Lithuanians who resolved a dispute over sharing a captured Polish girl by cutting her in half.459 At the same time, not only did contemporary religious officials charge the knights with similar atrocities at the Papal Curia, but the knight’s own chroniclers admit to violence against Pagan noncombatants.460 However, these are glossed over and even justified as an unfortunate consequence of holy war. Such certainty of righteousness influenced chronicler writing style to include divine visions, used to explain ‘preordained’ events in the crusade. Crusader victories are often predicted by visions that a knight or pious hermit had on the eve of battle.461 Even defeats are predicted by visions and often rationalized as God testing the crusaders to reinforce faith or humility.462 There can be no understanding of an opponent if even their successes are interpreted as a mix of satanic meddling or a lesson from God. Such demonization was the ultimate form of miscomprehension and precluded a peaceful resolution to the crusade. Interestingly, this level of miscomprehension is not seen among the Lithuanians, who understood the crusader’s culture and goals quite well. Lithuanian atrocities against Christian’s cannot solely be attributed to hatred of Christians, as they committed the same atrocities against other Pagan peoples. Extreme violence was just a consequence of their environment, a warlike people that raided and traded slaves in the remote North. Lithuanian’s had been in contact with the Christian faith before the crusade started, as they were the at the crossroads of the Orthodox and Catholic worlds. As a result, they had a long time to become accultured to Christianity and had varying reactions to it. Positive reactions included willing converts to Christianity, which was a strategic asset for the crusaders, and prisoners of war accepting baptism in return for clemency.463 Many apathetic Pagans simply took the Christian faith at face value and added Jesus Christ or the entire Holy Trinity to their own lineup of gods.464 However, negative reactions were more common and ranged from simply refusing to convert, to ceremonially washing off baptism after the Christians had left, or even mass suicide during doomed sieges to escape baptism.465 To the Lithuanians, Christianity was just the religion of their neighbors, trading partners, and invaders. It was not an abomination or evil ideology; it was just foreign. As Grand Duke Gediminas told Pope John XXII: “We do not fight Christians to destroy the Catholic faith, but to resist our injuries, as do Christian kings and 458 Jeroschin, The Chronicle of Prussia, (translated by Fischer), 71. 459 Ibid., 284. 460 Ibid., 261. 461 Ibid., 124. 462 Ibid., 137. 463 Henricus Lettus, The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), (translated by James A. Brundage), 153. 464 Rowell, Lithuania Ascending, 120. 465 Lettus, The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, (translated by James A. Brundage), 27.
- 141. Rally Point, 141 rulers.”466 This association of Christianity with foreign influence was relevant for Lithuanian rulers, who grew to see Christianity as a model for centralizing power. The decentralized Pagan religion was well suited to remote Lithuanian settlements, deep in ancient forests. The authority of local rulers and social hierarchy was not reinforced by religion. The opposite is true in contemporary Christian powers, where Church hierarchy provided legitimacy to local rulers and provided theological means to enforce social hierarchies. The Grand Dukes envied this level of control and tried to replicate it in Lithuania. Therefore, Grand Dukes flirted with Christianity, not out of interest in salvation, but to secure power. The problem they faced was finding the right amount to adopt. Mindaugas went too far by converting. He angered conservative factions and the cathedral he built was destroyed, ushering in decades of anti-Christianity. However, Gediminas found the right balance. The Gediminid dynasty succeeded where Mindaugas failed. They utilized Christian influences to make cultural reforms and further centralize their power. Before Gediminas, there were no Pagan temples in Lithuania; worship was done outside. However, during his flirt with Christianity, he introduced the construction of temples for worship.467 Gediminas converted Mindaugas’ ruined cathedral into a Pagan temple with ordained priests. These reforms attempted to centralize a very decentralized religion made up of various cults. Like Western monarchs, Gediminas and his successors decided that their authority was ordained from on high. These changes coincided with a massive social restructuring; Gediminas and his successors revoked Mindaugas’ expulsion of Christianity and actively encouraged Christian peoples to emigrate to Lithuania. Gediminas promised total toleration for the Christian faith.468 Not only did this undermine the crusade, it was good for business. These changes were the result of over a century of cultural exchange between Lithuanian Pagans and Christian invaders. It is here that a clear delineation can be made among the Grand Dukes: those before Gediminas more staunchly defended Pagan traditions and rejected change, while Gediminas and those after him became more receptive to change. Cultural exchange eventually backfired on the Lithuanians and gradually shifted their rulers away from Pagan roots. This gradual shift won the crusade for the Teutonic Knights, but not to the extent they wished. The crusade was only partially successful: Lithuania did enter Christendom, but it entered on its own terms. Toleration, centralization of Paganism, alliances, diplomacy, and occasional military victories proved only to be delaying actions against the crusaders. Most importantly, the constant pressure that the Reisen applied on Lithuania greatly aided the Teutons ‘top down’ conversion strategies. Rather than forcing commoners to convert, the knights made life uncomfortable for Pagan nobles and greatly rewarded those who converted. In return, newly Catholic nobles would eventually force the faith on those they ruled. Undoubtedly, Lithuanian nobles on raids saw the rigid social hierarchy of the Christian world 466 Pukuveraitis, Letter of Gediminas Pukuveraitis to Pope John XXII, 1322. 467 Rowell, Lithuania Ascending, 134. 468 Pukuveraitis, Letter of Gediminas to the Monks of the Fransiscan Order, May 26, 1323.
- 142. Rally Point, 142 that tied commoners to farm the land, benefitting landed nobility. It was here that the Pagan nobility began to transform from war chiefs with loosely tied peasants and murky land ownership to Western European style nobles. Converting to Christianity presented an opportunity to make money, as converted nobles took advantage of Christian hierarchies that did not exist in the Pagan world. The upper echelons of Lithuanian society are to blame for the final transition to Christianity. After Gediminas, each generation of the royal family became more comfortable blending Paganism with Christianity. Kestutis briefly converted to Catholicism to secure an alliance with Hungary for his brother and Grand Duke, Algirdas. But this early Lithuanian Catholicism was really a mix of Paganism and Catholicism. To secure the alliance, Kestutis and his men sacrificed a bull to the Christian God and sprinkled themselves and horrified members of the Hungarian court with its blood.469 Finally, when it became evident that the crusaders were on the cusp of toppling Lithuania, both Kestutis’ son and nephew officially converted to Catholicism. Two generations of allowing total toleration, trade, and emigration lead to the conversion of the ruling class. If crusader military pressure had not been so biting and so constant, it is doubtful that Pagan nobles would have converted and forced their new religion on their peasants. It is even more doubtful that the dynasty that worked to centralize Paganism would have converted. In this way, Lithuania was converted by the coin rather than the sword. This is not to say that the crusaders were immune to cultural exchange, just that cultural exchange had a massively more punctuated effected on Lithuania. Nonetheless, the crusaders did struggle with aspects of their opponent’s culture rubbing off on them. An innocent example of cultural exchange is that knights often learned local Pagan languages, especially Prussian and Lithuanian, as to communicate with their local guides and militia.470 However, there are examples of more bizarre cultural exchange. In the papal investigation of 1312, papal legates accused remote garrisons of Teutonic knights of adopting Pagan rituals. Before the Pope, investigators cited examples of knight’s fortune telling using pig bones, mercy killings of wounded, and knights cremating their dead.471 All of these were Pagan practices, most likely learned from local allies. However, the clearest evidence of Pagan influence comes from a crusader chronicler in The Livonian Rhymed Chronicle. The chronicler describes that after a battle against some Lithuanians, the Teutons and their local allies celebrated victory by sacrificing horses and casting loot into a fire, to honor the Christian God.472 Surely, animal sacrifice was not something that Western 469 Rowell, Lithuania Ascending, 145. 470 Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 21. 471 Kaspars Kļaviņš, “The Ideology of Christianity and Pagan Practice among the Teutonic Knights: The Case of the Baltic Region”, (Journal of Baltic Studies 37, no. 3 (2006): 260-76), 262, www.jstor.org/stable/43212723, (Accessed 5 May, 2020). 472 Jerry C. Smith and William Urban eds. The Livonian Rhymed Chronicle. (Chicago: Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, 2001), 40, as cited in Kaspars Kļaviņš, “The Ideology of Christianity and Pagan Practice among the Teutonic Knights: The Case of the Baltic Region”, (Journal of Baltic Studies 37, no. 3 (2006): 260-76), 265, www.jstor.org/stable/43212723, (Accessed 5 May, 2020).
- 143. Rally Point, 143 European knights learned from the Church and took with them into Lithuania. These accusations, though denied by the Order at the Papal Curia, demonstrate that not even devout knights remained totally unaffected by their interaction with Pagan culture. Intercultural Warfare in The Context of The Crusade Above all, the crusade dragged on for as long as it did because neither side could have survived the total military victory of their opponent. Military victory for the Teutonic Order would have wiped out Lithuanian culture and independence, possibly on a scale like Prussia. Military victory for the Lithuanians, before conversion to Catholicism, would have resulted in a collapse of the Teutonic Order and a black mark on the Church. This cultural struggle reveals four truths about the crusade. Firstly, that the Teutonic Order, as a private army, needed a constant supply of church sanctioned holy war to exist; without legitimacy from the Pope they became vulnerable. Secondly, the Lithuanians escaped the fate of other Baltic tribes because they formed a united front in times of crisis. Thirdly, because the crusade was a war between cultures rather than a war between governments, individual military successes did not affect great change. Finally, the ultimate success of the crusade came from 200 years of cultural exchange that forced Lithuania’s ruling class to compromise with the Christian world. The scenario where Lithuania achieves victory is not too far removed from what happened. The new Catholic union of Lithuania and Poland obliterated the Teutonic Order at the Battle of Tannenberg in 1410. Though the Order did not cease to exist, it was now too weak to maintain its defensive posture. The Teutons slunk back to Prussia and slowly deteriorated into ruin.473 Tannenberg falls outside this paper’s timeline but it clearly demonstrates that over 200 years of crusading failed to turn Lithuania, unlike Prussia, into a German crusader state. The crusade against Lithuania contextualizes the reality of an intercultural war, it cannot be easily won by force. A proud, isolationist culture will interpret military intrusion as not only an affront on their sovereignty, but an attack on their cultural heritage. In the case of the crusade, Christian forces were not fighting an entire culture. Just defeating Pagan tribes or even a government was a feasible task, the crusaders did this in Prussia. But short of ethnic cleansing or genocide, there was no feasible way the crusaders could completely erase Pagan culture with the sword. Despite the adoption of Catholicism, local cultures were still passed from generation to generation. As late as the 16th century, Lutheran missionaries traveling through East Prussia noted that remote villages, though Catholic, still practiced animal sacrifice and Pagan burial rites.474 If Pagan rituals were still found in German controlled territories, one can only imagine the extent to which ancient Paganism survived in remote regions of Lithuania. 473 Urban, The Teutonic Knights, 218. 474 “About the Religion and Sacrifices of the Ancient Prussians”, (1553), as cited in Fred C. Conybeare. "The Paganism of the Ancient Prussians.", (Folklore 12, no. 3 (1901)), 295, www.jstor.org/stable/1254295, (Accessed 5 May, 2020).
- 144. Rally Point, 144 Consequentially, the ultimate factor in resolving wars between irreconcilable cultures is gradual cultural exchange. Military force can be applied as a catalyst to motivate societal change, but military force will not win over zealots. Instead, the best course of action is to gradually diminish the number of zealots via cultural exchange. Military, social, and economic presence creates contact points where opponents meet. In the case of the crusade, there was an understanding that social change (conversion) would in turn increase economic contact and decrease military contact, incentivizing Pagans to adopt Christianity. Thus, when more military force was applied to the Pagans, the pressure to convert became greater. In Lithuania, constant military pressure motivated nobles to compromise with the Christian world, eventually to convert. The more of Lithuania that converted, the less pressure the crusaders needed to apply. This result can be broadly be applied to war against extremist cultures. Fight the zealots who will never change their ways, but always incentivize the moderates with an opportunity to compromise. The coin wins more hearts and minds than the sword. Over time, constant contact will break down cultural miscomprehension. As combatant cultures become less foreign, the collaboration and compromise of the moderates may offset the efforts of the Zealots, as happened in Lithuania.
- 145. Rally Point, 145 Bibliography Primary Sources “About the Religion and Sacrifices of the Ancient Prussians”, (1553), as cited in Conybeare, Fred C. "The Paganism of the Ancient Prussians." Folklore 12, no. 3 (1901): 293-302. Accessed May 5, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/1254295. “Report of the Envoys of the Papal Legates, 1324”. Letter. From Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences, Volume 15, Number 4 - Winter 1969. Ed. Klimas, Antanas and Skrupskelis, Ignas K. Accessed April 30, 2020. http://www.lituanus.org/1969/69_4_02.htm. Bernard of Clairvaux. In Praise of the New Knighthood, Prologue-Chapter Five. From Bernard of Clairvaux: Treatises Three, Cistercian Fathers Series, Number Nineteen. Cistercian Publications, 1977, pages 127-145. (translated by Conrad Greenia). Accessed April 30, 2020. https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/344bern2.html. Bridges, John Henry Ed. (1964). The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon. Oxford, 1877- 1900, repr. Frankfurt, 1964 vol. 3, p. 121-2, part 3, Ch. 13. (translated by Helen J. Nicholson). Accessed March 19, 2020. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/12-13Cbalticcrusade.asp. Chaucer, Geoffrey, and Wright, David, and Cannon, Christopher. The Canterbury Tales. New ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Froissart, Jean. Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the adjoining countries: from the latter part of the reign of Edward II to the coronation of Henri IV. From Making of America Books. 391. Accessed April 30, 2020. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moa/acg8357.0001.001/409?rgn=full+ text;view=image;q1=Prussia. Huillard-Bréholles, J L A Ed. “The Golden Bull of Rimini, March 1226.” Historia diplomatica Fridericii secundi, 6 vols in 11 (Paris, 1852-61, repr. Turin, 1963), vol. 2.1, pp. 549-52. (translated by Helen J. Nicholson). Accessed March 19, 2020. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/12-13Cbalticcrusade.asp. Lettus, Henricus and James A. Brundage Ed. The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. (translated by James A. Brundage). Philipps, A Ed. “The complaints of Bishop Christian against the Teutonic order.” Preussisches Urkundenbuch, 6 vols (Königsberg, Aalen and Marburg, 1882-1986), vol. 1.1, no.134. (translated by Helen J. Nicholson). Accessed March 19, 2020. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/12-13Cbalticcrusade.asp. Philipps, A Ed. “The Franciscans of Thorn defend the Teutonic order.” Preussisches Urkundenbuch, 6 vols (Königsberg, Aalen and Marburg, 1882-1986), vol. 1.1, no.65. (translated by Helen J. Nicholson). Accessed March 19, 2020. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/12-13Cbalticcrusade.asp. Pukuveraitis, Gediminas. “Gediminas Pukuveraitis to Pope John XXII, 1322.” Letter. From Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences, Volume 15, Number 4 - Winter 1969. Ed. Klimas, Antanas and Skrupskelis, Ignas
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- 147. Rally Point, 147 KILLING 'JOHNNY REB' AND THE MYTH OF THE MONOLITHIC SOUTH BY MICHAEL AVALLONE Introduction “That noble band of 162 Southern graduates, cradled and reared in state allegiance, but rescued from treason by West Point influences, bravely battled against rebellion, and no less firmly against every appeal of relative and friend to swerve them from loyalty and duty.”475 George Washington Cullum, an Army General and West Point Superintendent, stated this in the aftermath of the Civil War, arguing that this anecdote proved the usefulness of the U.S. Military Academy. In an era when treason was commonplace, these Southerners who fought for the United States demonstrated a seemingly uncommon sense of duty to country. Their story, and that of the Southern Unionist has hardly been told. Left to the annals of registrars, the Civil War we know, of the Northern and Southern monolithic brothers brawling for the nation’s soul, has dominated the narrative both public and academic. This paper intends to shine light on a different topic: the stories of the many Southern-born officers during the Civil War who chose service in the U.S. Army over treason. In April of 1865 the smoke cleared across the Southern United States to reveal a devasted and war-torn landscape. The U.S. Army triumphed over the Confederate rebels.476 The once again united country eventually moved on from the schism, but many former Confederates did not. They instead used historical journals and editorials to justify, re-live, and recount the war. The narrative they produced became the overarching story of the American Civil War, a tragedy piece which highlighted a war between brothers.477 To this day, elements of the ‘Lost Cause’ narrative pervade American popular history which many passionately embrace. Average Americans need look no further than the current debates surrounding Confederate memorials or Rebel flags as evidence to this. A plethora of issues in the past decade have brought 475 George Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.: from Its Establishment, March 16, 1802, to the Army Re-Organization of 1866-67, Vol. 2, (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1868), 13. 476 In the interest of historical accuracy, any references to the ‘North’ or ‘South’ will entail geography. As this paper intends to display, not all people in or from the south were Confederates, thus referring to the South as a monolithic bloc is disrespectful and factually misleading of the many proud and duty-bound southerners who kept faith in the United States. Furthermore, the U.S. Army was never renamed as the Union Army, and allusions to the latter imply two equally warring powers, when in fact there was only ever legally the former, fighting against rebel forces. 477 For more information on Confederate historiography, see works such as The Myth of the Lost Cause And Civil War History by Gary Gallagher and Alan Nolan, an excellent survey history of this narrative. For the foundational pieces of this trend, see papers published by the Southern Historical Society, as well as the many works of individuals such as Jubal Early.
- 148. Rally Point, 148 these principles to light. One blatant example was the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ rally regarding the Charlottesville City Council’s decision to remove Confederate monuments. The rally became a riot and was punctuated by several deaths. Lost Cause history is deeply entrenched in the American psyche. The Lost Cause emphasized the nobility and innocence of the courageous, over-powered, out-produced South, which only sought to maintain their states’ rights and to defend their homes from a federal invasion. Thanks to the work of hundreds of historians over the previous decades, the academic field has slowly moved to reject this narrative. Civil War historiography has ebbed and flowed since this first rejection, but many significant gains have been made in the process. For instance, historians now accept that the war was not about states’ rights, but about slavery (the extent of which is still under debate). The U.S. Army did not merely out-produce the Confederacy but defeated them outright in combat both tactically and strategically. Black Americans played an enormous and decisive role in the Civil War, driving their self-emancipation. Their performance was so exceptional that their right to citizenry should have been unquestionable. The extent of these sub-topics is perpetually debated, but they are generally accepted by many contemporary Civil War historians. However, there is another fundamental component of the Lost Cause which has yet to be addressed. Many Americans still believe that the war existed between the North and the South, the two monoliths, nation versus nation, people versus people. 478 The truth is much more complicated. The existence of U.S. Army soldiers from the South, their experiences, and their motivations for fighting, tells a different story which defies this omnipresent binary. Acceptance of this more complex ‘New South’ in the Civil War, a region of diverse peoples, ideologies, and loyalties, has several implications. Foremostly, the rise of a New South further disproves the Lost Cause and any allusions to a united, uniform, Southern bloc during the war. It forces us as historians to redefine Southern identity during the era. As these Southern Unionists will demonstrate, the New South further acknowledges the role of slavery in wartime motivations. This New South draws attention to the role of duty and honor in a new light and demonstrates that Southern Unionists represent a microcosm for the heart-wrenching issues which confronted the country at the time. The structure of the typical, publicly accepted Civil War narrative and the South within it, is wrong. The undeniable truth is that Southern Unionists, particularly those who chose to fight for the U.S. Military, were deliberately left out of the story for a reason. All the characteristics and implications of the New South can be illustrated through the in-depth case studies of Southern Unionists. This paper will endeavor to do that. Each case study was selected because of a unique manner through which they each broaden and further complicate typical assertions of the South during the war. The story of Tully McCrea, a West Point 478 I reference a variety of theses in this paragraph that can be found in many works over the past century, examples include Joseph Glatthaar’s Forged in Battle Which discusses the contributions of black soldiers as seen through the eyes of their white officers, James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, an excellent survey of the War, as well as Edward Bonekemper’s The Myth of the Lost Cause which summarizes much of the work done deconstructing the myth.
- 149. Rally Point, 149 Cadet and subsequent Junior Officer in the U.S. Army at the start of the war, demonstrates just how divided the American officer corps was. Furthermore, his story shows how the desire to serve one’s country could cause someone to choose nation over familial obligations, a common theme amongst Southern Unionists. George Henry Thomas represents a different, yet surprisingly common case study for the time. He was a senior officer with over a decade of federal service, who nonetheless continued his soldiering in the name of the United States. The third section offers a broader view explaining how, despite the varying backgrounds and motivations which guided Southern Unionists, many arrived at the same conclusion: that they would continue to serve the United States. All of these stories depict just how difficult the decisions were for patriotic Southerners who were forced to make heart-wrenching choices, often putting even their loved ones and homes behind their commitment to national duty.479 Southern Historiography and Civil War History In 1861, loyalty and duty became a forefront debate in the lives of thousands of prospective soldiers, both officer and enlisted, regular army and volunteer. Contrary to popular memory, this was not a one-sided debate in the South. Over one-hundred thousand Southerners joined state militias and fought in the United States Army against the Confederacy.480 Thousands participated in ‘Peace Societies,’ which refused to recognize the law of the Confederate government and lived as free states despite harsh reprisals from others.481 Large anti-secessionist movements existed in every state except South Carolina, and numerous works have established the ever-present Unionist passions which continued throughout the war.482483 All of these topics are under-researched, and 479 The number of case studies in this essay was dictated by time and resources available at the U.S. Military Academy during writing, and further construed by the global issues of the time. With further research and time this argument could be broadened and extended to look at more case studies outside of the West Point, regular Army mold. The officers of U.S. state militias in both border and southern states, would be a worthy addition to this thesis, further complicating the southern narrative, but subsequently confirming my assertion that the typical mold of the south during the war is incorrect. 480 Richard Nelson Current, Lincoln's Loyalists: Union Soldiers from the Confederacy, (Northeastern University Press, 1992), 197. 481 Georgia Lee Tatum, Disloyalty in the Confederacy, (Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina press, 1934), 7. 482 Carleton Beals, War Within a War; the Confederacy Against Itself, [1st ed.], (Philadelphia, Chilton Books, 1965), 4. 483 This topic is covered by Beals, but other examples of these works include but are not limited to Lincoln’s Loyalists by Richard Current, The Scalawags by James Baggett, or even by earlier works such as Disloyalty in the Confederacy by George Lee Tatum.
- 150. Rally Point, 150 historians have only scraped the surface of the notoriety which they deserve. They all draw light to the same point, the degradation of the monolithic South. This paper will draw attention to the need for further research into white Southern Unionists, particularly officers, but this does not represent the extent of the issue. Another component of how the Lost Cause attempted to portray a monolithic South is through the myth of the black Confederates. Since the end of the war this story has been perpetually alluded to by various spokespersons and politicians. The persistent myth is that many black Southerners voluntarily fought and died for the Confederacy. This story has been retold countless times and is perhaps one of the most convenient narratives through which people have justified Lost Cause nostalgia. Whenever a Confederate monument or rebel flag is threatened with removal, white supremacists have contested by citing the supposed numerous black Confederates. If a multitude of black Americans fought to defend the Confederacy, then such symbols could not possibly be related to racial discrimination. Such was the argument forwarded by the Sons of the Confederacy when the Confederate flag over the South Carolina state capitol was threatened with removal.484 Their reasoning for wanting the Civil War South to be seen as monolithic regardless of race, class, or ideology, is to an extent the same which caused decades of historians to leave out the stories of Southern Unionists in the U.S. Military. By portraying the South as monolithic during the war, Lost Cause advocates retroactively justify the actions of the white men who fought for the Confederacy. Thus, those who wrote the first histories of the war vaguely understood then what many historians have come to argue, that the Confederacy largely stood for the continuation of a slave republic which today is seen as a morally wrong, violation of basic human rights. As New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu stated as citizens begrudgingly removed a statue of Robert E. Lee from the capitol, the Confederacy “sought to tear apart our nation and subjugate our fellow Americans to slavery.”485 Thus, by portraying a narrative in which the South was unified in its support for the Confederacy, the story delicately justifies their actions. In the true sense of a bandwagon fallacy, it is much less likely that an entire region of the country was wrong if everyone agreed, as opposed to pockets of angry whites dominating over blacks and disagreeing whites. The emergence of the polar North-South story came, like most Lost Cause narratives, from the fight against Reconstruction. In 2004, historian James Alex Baggett wrote Scalawags: Southern Dissenters during the Civil War and Reconstruction. His expressed purpose for the work was to, “rescue those early white Southern Republican leaders from the shadows.”486 Those shadows, as he 484 Kevin M. Levin, Searching for Black Confederates The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth, (Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 177- 184. 485 Levin, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth, 183. 486 James Alex Baggett, The Scalawags : Southern Dissenters in the Civil War and Reconstruction , (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 2003), xii.
- 151. Rally Point, 151 goes on to explain, were the accusations, chastising, and even violence against white Republicans in the South which eventually led to their ostracization in the Southern history of the war. Though Baggett does justice to the Scalawags, he largely focuses on civil leaders and private individuals to an extent during the war, but mostly during Reconstruction. His book fails to complete the circle. He does not address born Southerners that fought against the Confederacy in battle. That is how this paper intends to extend the narrative. Thanks to the work of historians over the last century, white Southern republicans are finally being recognized for their contributions. Attention is being drawn to the real lost cause: Reconstruction. The fight against Reconstruction provided the catalyst for many Southern historians to create the monolithic South. The Lost Cause narrative is easier to accept if those who fought for the Confederacy were not radical members of a violent rebellion, but a united front across the entire South, all devoted to the mutually accepted decision to secede. Southern officers in the U.S. Army highlighted this incongruency by demonstrating that the South was divided, detracting from the arguments of those who resisted Reconstruction on the basis of northern aggression. From the perspective of those patriots who fought as U.S. Army soldiers in the Civil War, their states were being dominated by traitors leaving them no choice but to fight for their homes’ liberation, an unkind view of the Confederacy.487 Thus, the contributions of Southern Unionists throughout the war were heavily downplayed in the Lost Cause narrative. Much of this story has been underdeveloped in Civil War histography. However, Carl Degler’s groundbreaking 1974 analysis The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century broke from this trend. In this work, Degler became one of the first historians to seriously attempt to degrade the myth of the monolithic South. He argues his book “is about losers… white Southerners who stood out against the prevailing views and values of their region.”488 Degler’s argument was that there were in fact white people in the South who did not support the Confederacy. It was still a new and unique argument for the 1970s. History is traditionally written by the victors, and though the United States won the war, ex-Confederates eventually won autonomy over the South during Reconstruction. Therefore, though over a hundred thousand Southern white men fought against the Confederacy, their contributions were never recognized nor appreciated. When their story is finally acknowledged by historians, a large growth in the historiography of the South during the war can occur, greatly expanding the region’s complexity. The South is no longer the uniform Confederate state that the Lost Cause narrative so often portrays. Instead the region becomes a population of individuals, individuals who thought, considered, and often disagreed with the ebb and flow of historical events. If the concept of the South as a non-monolithic region is new, then the story of Southerners’ contributions to the war effort has barely been addressed. In 1992, author Richard Current did just that with his work, Lincoln’s Loyalists which strictly looked at the enormous enrollment and service of Southern white men in the U.S. Army within the geographic South. His book was pioneering in 487 Current, Lincoln’s Loyalists, 147. 488 Carl N. Degler, The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century, [1st ed.], (New York, Harper & Row, 1974), 1.
- 152. Rally Point, 152 the sense that it was the first in its field. Current addresses the lack of pre-existing conversation in his introduction. “Very little has been written about white Southerners who fought for the Union… nothing has been published about the group as a whole.”489 This is shocking, because when the numbers are totaled, well over one-hundred thousand Southerners fought against the Confederacy as a part of the U.S. Army. These men rose up across the South, and U.S. Army Recruiters at one point or another helped raise units from every state. The United States Military Academy at West Point (USMA) and the Officer Corps provides a unique but completely untouched case study for such Southern Unionists. As educated, and frequently notable role-players of the era, the story of Southern-born U.S. Officers has enormous potential to help historians better understand Southern identity during the war. This new Southern identity would thus be not only broadened by variety but lengthened in depth. The white Southerner during the war was not simply an analogous cog in the pro-slave Confederate machine, but of various backgrounds, contrasting loyalties, and differing opinions on issues of the time. This new understanding shows much more deference to the complexities of the South during the Civil War era. West Point and its graduates, composed of members from every state, provides a convenient foundation for such research. In 1998, James L. Morrison wrote “The Best School:” West Point, 1833-1866.490 His expressed reasoning for writing the book was that for such an influential place in American history, there was no legitimate analysis of the institution during the Antebellum years. He collected a series of primary documents regarding the makeup of the school, from the era itself as well as from Reconstruction, which he published as appendices. Not unusually, Morrison highlighted the rising controversies typical of anywhere in the U.S. during the immediate years leading up to the war. Typical of many military histories of the antebellum, he also highlights the departure of the many Southern cadets and officers who left West Point to serve as officers in the Confederate Army. Morrison is not stating necessarily anything about the secessionists versus patriots at West Point, but he does provide evidence of their existence. In the immediate years leading up to the war, as well as in 1861, records from West Point show seventy-four Southern cadets either resigned or suffered dismissals for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the United States.491 Morrison describes the internal struggles of many cadets such as Henry Du Pont or John Pelham. The two supposedly desired deeply to remain at West Point and to serve their country, but inevitably resigned due to an espoused inability to take up arms against their states. Morrison’s work included many anecdotes of Southern cadets and officers who left for the Confederacy. Yet as the numbers and stats of West Point’s documents hint, many did not. At least 15 percent of Southern cadets did not leave West Point to fight with other people 489 Current, Lincoln's Loyalists, ix. 490 Appendix 8: Participation in the Civil War, Graduates Classes of 1833-1861. Read in James L., Morrison, “The Best School”: West Point, 1833-1866, (Kent, Ohio, Kent State University Press, 1998), 127. 491 A miniscule, yet existent contingent of northern cadets and officers opted for service in the Confederacy. In Morrison’s records, he denotes this as a footnote because the number was so small as to be negligible.
- 153. Rally Point, 153 from their seceded states, but instead fought for the U.S. Army, which he notes is “an impressive figure considering the heart-wrenching costs.”492 Though several professors were Southerners, none defected. These West Pointers helped justify the Academy’s very existence, dissuading the concept that the institution merely trained military leaders but instilled no allegiance to the United States. As any contemporary ROTC or OCS graduate would quickly assert, West Point is not an accurate microcosm for the U.S. Officer corps. However, for the sake of convenience it provides a useful tool for shedding light on how the issues of the day were received by the regular Army, because the institution was composed of both cadets and officers from all sects of the country. The stories of those Southerners who despite enormous risk, did not betray their country, has never been a priority of Civil War historiography. These Southerners possessed an unusually high level of courage, frequently facing not only the threat of the battlefields, but also the threat of retaliation against them or their families back home. Their heroism challenges stereotypical views of Southern identity during the Civil War. Southern Unionists who fought especially hard to liberate their own states. As Abraham Lincoln said after one Southwestern battle, there were “no more loyal men in the country than the Union men of Texas.”493 The extent to which loyal Southern officers served has been largely unexplored.494 Tully McCrea and Loyalty Challenged at West Point Cadet Tully McCrea serves as an excellent case study which highlights an excruciating time for decision-making as the war broke out and took form. Tully McCrea was born in 1839 in Natchez Mississippi. He eventually moved to Ohio for his father’s work, and it was there that he received his appointment to the United States Military Academy for the Class of 1862. He graduated from West Point in June of 1862, and three months later received his baptism by fire while launching artillery rounds into oncoming Confederate infantry at the Battle of Antietam. McCrea served with honor and distinction as a U.S. officer throughout the Civil War. He received three brevets for gallantry and meritorious service during the conflict. McCrea, ever a patriot, continued to serve in the Army after the war, retiring as Brigadier General on February 22, 1903 after over forty years of service.495 McCrea, like many cadets from Southern states in the months leading up to the Civil War, was in a difficult position. Though he was one of many who 492 James L., Morrison, “The Best School”: West Point, 1833-1866, (Kent, Ohio, Kent State University Press, 1998), 127-9. 493 Current, Lincoln's Loyalists, 148. 494 The following two case studies used in this essay are both of southerners from Confederate states. There are other phenomenal examples of Unionists from border states such as Brigadier General John Buford from Kentucky, who also served with valor against some of their friends and brothers from home. However, this paper focuses on those who came from largely southern states in order to highlight the enormity of social resistance these people faced in the name of duty, as well as the inconsistency of viewing these states as strictly Confederate blocks. 495 Tully McCrea, Sarah Isabel Shofstall, and Catherine S. Crary. Tully McCrea Papers., (1853), Obituary.
- 154. Rally Point, 154 staunchly supported the U.S., most other cadets were apprehensive to make their ideologies known publicly. Unlike many of his classmates though, McCrea was outspoken about his support for the Union, making him even more fit to illustrate the mindset of Southern Unionist cadets. Morris Schaff, McCrea’s classmate, eloquently describes the events, emotions, and mindsets at West Point during this tumultuous era in his book The Spirit of Old West Point, including anecdotes involving Tully McCrea. For example, Cadet McCrea was involved in a challenging situation that revolved around a mock presidential election held by members of the Corps of Cadets at West Point in 1860: While performing his [the Southern Cadet searching for Lincolnites] despicable mission he came to the room occupied by Tully McCrea and his roommate George Gillespie. With a loud and impertinent voice, he wanted to know how they had voted. When McCrea announced his vote for Lincoln, the tallyman made a disparaging remark, whereupon McCrea told him in significant tones to get out of the room, and after one glance from Tully’s chestnut eyes he promptly complied. How often I have seen those warm chestnut eyes swimming as they responded to the tender and high emotions of his heart! Two or three years later, McCrea was called on once more to show his courage. It was the afternoon of Pickett’s charge, and all through those terrible hours he stood with his battery on the ridge at Gettysburg; over him were the scattering oaks of Ziegler’s grove and with his commanding officer, Little Dad woodruff, who there met his death, he faced the awful music. In one way I really think it took more courage to vote for Lincoln than to face Pickett; but however that may be, he met both ordeals well.496 This anecdote says a tremendous amount about the experiences of Southern Unionists during the antebellum. Particularly, it draws light to two aspects of that experience. First, long before the first shots of the war were fired, Southerners were forced to decide where they stood on the issues of the day. Being neutral towards both sides as a Southern white man was not an option. Second, there was no kinship amongst disagreeing parties as that pollster, and a later story about McCrea’s family, would demonstrate. McCrea’s story during the Civil War is a complicated one, because despite his patriotic inclination, his roots still very much remained in the South, particularly his extended family. Upon learning of his decision to remain loyal to the United States, McCrea was subjected to egregious assaults from even his most beloved family members. He recalled that “They all regarded my conduct in remaining in the North as highly improper…that I am a traitor in taking sides against my native state.” The irony of ‘treason’ in this case draws light to the messiness of the conversation. If McCrea had stayed loyal to his state and family, he would have thus been a traitor to his country. He instead chose to stay loyal to his country, making him a traitor to his home and loved ones. This highlights the complexity of the loyalty of Southerners during this time period. ‘Loyalty’ provided no binary for these individuals. Conflicting ties called on their obligations to several ideals, compelling them to rank their personal priorities. Whichever one of those loyalties ranked supreme then dictated to whom they 496 Morris Schaff, The Spirit of Old West Point, 1858-1862, (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1907), 167.
- 155. Rally Point, 155 sought not to betray. Well before Fort Sumter and years before Bull Run, McCrea’s stance brought his Aunt Margaret to state she would prefer to see McCrea “dead in his grave” than in the service of the United States during the coming war. Furthermore, his sister’s fiancé had recently enlisted into the Confederate military. She wrote to Tully in 1861 asking if he would take up arms against his future brother, someone of whom she loved so deeply. He responded that though it pained him enormously because of how greatly he held her happiness, “This is a time when every true American must sacrifice his personal feelings and inclinations to the cause of his country.” McCrea was a patriot through and through.497 McCrea’s familial reaction plainly illustrated the cost of his decision. Though his direct quotes espouse his unhindered loyalty to country, he understood the enormity of his actions. It would have been all too easy for him to flow with the tide of the majority and return to his home and family to fight for the Confederacy. His northern compatriots at West Point likely would not have even judged him for such a decision, family over country. Yet in one fell swoop, he permanently isolated himself from his family, and forbid himself from ever returning home with any dignity or welcome. He made this sacrifice consciously by weighing his principles of duty, honor, and country, over his blood. With this is mind, one can easily grasp why describing the war as simply North versus South is an incomplete and incorrect framework. Generalizing the South as a single entity is not only historically inaccurate but prohibits historians from understanding the true nature and depth of both Southern identity and American identity during the Civil War. The old South’s framework does not do justice to the people it supposedly represented. McCrea’s case study is an important one. He serves as a microcosm for those Southerners who faced controversy and negative responses surrounding and immediately following their decision to remain loyal. He lays out his logical argument for the decision and held that logic in comparison with the egregious outcry he was subjected to by his loved ones back home. Similarly, his experiences shed better light on the events at West Point at the time. Rather than the neutral or even romanticized retelling of the controversies unfolding there, McCrea offers us the perspective of an individual who denounced and condemned the decisions to resign or secede made by many of his regional peers. Where popular myth of West Point at the time tells of George Armstrong Custer (McCrea’s Plebe year roommate and good friend) rendering a rifle salute while walking hours to a Southern cadet fleeing the campus to secede, McCrea offers a dipole perspective.498 McCrea not only condemned the individuals who did resign, but he similarly equated and condemned the “myth of Southern chivalry.” 499 This ‘chivalry’ is common in both the texts of the time, as well as within Lost 497 Tully McCrea, Sarah Isabel McCrea Shofstall, and Catherine S. Crary, Dear Belle; Letters from a Cadet & Officer to His Sweetheart, 1858-1865, (Middletown CT, Wesleyan University Press, 1965), 96-100. 498 Stephen E. Ambrose, Crazy Horse and Custer: the Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, 1st ed. (Garden City, N.Y, Doubleday, 1975), Chapter 6. 499 McCrea, Dear Belle; Letters from a Cadet & Officer to His Sweetheart, 1858- 1865, 96.
- 156. Rally Point, 156 Cause in reference to Southern gentry, particularly people like Robert E. Lee. As historian Alan T. Nolan argued, Southerners like Lee were portrayed as excessively noble in the Lost Cause narrative to retroactively justify their service in the Confederacy and ignore their condonement of slavery.500 McCrea too saw this chivalry as a façade, brought about by manners and accentuated dignity, which only served to cover an underlying nature of sedition. This, if accepted, challenges the narrative surrounding the typical view of more notorious Southern officers during the war, and particularly, how such officers were remembered after the war. The South and Southern identity were much more complex than the Lost Cause portrays. Robert E. Lee was and still is lauded and deified for his nobility and gallantry in both deciding to choose state over country, as well as his subsequent service in the war.501 Southern Unionists challenged this assertion. McCrea and his roommate George Gillespie claimed, “No sympathy” for secessionists, and similarly “Southern Chivalry” was “not something worth bragging about.”502 This was harsh criticism of Southerners and does not conform to typical Lost Cause narratives. It is though not at all alien to the dialogue of such men at the time. Lee himself stated that he understood his actions were treasonous at the time. “Secession was termed treason by Virginia statesmen… What can it be now?”503 Thus, McCrea and Lee were two Southern born West Point graduates and Army Officers, who viewed the state of secession in the same light and of the same legality but drew completely antithetical opinions. This dichotomy gets at the essence of the debate between the Lost Cause and opposing historians. The Lost Cause glorified those Southerners who chose secession, the true heroes of their narrative, but completely ignored their Southern compatriots who faced the same gut-wrenching decision and chose the United States. They were left out of the story deliberately to advance a false historical narrative which benefited and deified ex-Confederates, subsequently validating their actions in the postbellum. McCrea’s decision to remain faithful to the U.S. was drawn from several motivations, which he outlines at length in his memoirs. Firstly, and most logically, was his espoused loyalty to country overall. He argued to his secessionist sister that, “it is a time when every American must sacrifice his personal feelings and inclinations to the cause of his country.” He firmly stood against the Confederacy’s “doctrine of states,” arguing that it validated no 500 Alan T. Nolan, Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History, (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 171. 501 Early, Jubal Anderson. “The Proceedings of the Southern Historical Convention Which Assembled at the Montgomery White Sulphur Springs, Va., on the 14th of August, 1873: and of the Southern Historical Society as Reorganized: with the Address by Gen. Jubal A. Early.” (Baltimore, MD, Turnbull Bros., 1873), 19. 502 McCrea, Dear Belle; Letters from a Cadet & Officer to His Sweetheart, 1858- 1865, 85-87. 503 Robert E. Lee. “Recollections of General Robert E. Lee.” (Project Gutenberg, no. 5, September 1900): http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2323/2323-h/2323-h.htm, 26.
- 157. Rally Point, 157 disloyalty to nation.504 This assertion is elaborated on later in this paper, but the doctrine of states’ rights was the argument validating secession, that an individual state was entitled to leave the Union of their own accord. As another Southern- born officer who will be elaborated on further in section V, Henry Martyn Robert would confirm, accepting the doctrine of states’ rights does not equate to support for the Confederacy. Robert believed in this doctrine, and furthermore believed that his loyalty to his state and home was supreme, yet wholeheartedly felt that it was in his state’s best interest to remain in the union. McCrea’s assertion was not invalid. This was not the extent of his rationale, though. McCrea’s motivation, while likely largely driven by this fostered sense of loyalty, also seems to have included a sense of abolitionism. McCrea’s abolitionism is never drawn out and explained at length. Although there is no record of him openly stating he was fighting the Confederacy because of his abolitionist viewpoint, his mention of the issue confirms its subtle role in both his decision and secession as a whole. For instance, McCrea gives a vivid scene of the 1860 election while at West Point. After word reached them of Lincoln’s victory, emotions on all sides of the ballot ran high. McCrea was jubilant, “There was rejoicing as you can imagine among us ‘black Republicans’ when we heard the result.” His joy at the election and reference to himself as a ‘black Republican,’ insinuates not only his own opinion on the Republican platform, but also sheds light on his broader grasp of the role slavery played in catalyzing the conflicts which the country was then facing. Furthermore, he addresses the contentious issue in his rationale for the war at large. McCrea asserted that though he wished the war had not come, since it had, he wished slavery would finally be settled and ended forever, “It has been a curse to this country and, but for it, the country would be enjoying happiness and prosperity.” There was no mistaking in the mind of then Cadet Tully McCrea that the cause was in fact slavery. He would be endorsing slavery’s eventual downfall by risking his life in support of the United States’ cause.505 McCrea’s existence and description of the great challenges of loyalty which many other Southerners faced at West Point argues the need for more academic attention to be devoted to Southern Unionists. McCrea was not alone in the rejection of his stereotypical Southern identity in exchange for loyalty to his country. He gives numerous examples of others like him, such as his roommate and best friend from Tennessee, George L. Gillespie who “is a Union man and does not intend to resign… no sympathy for the Southern rebels.”506 Such was the case of many West Point Cadets at the start of the war, despite many accusations launched against the institution. No defense of West Point is more vehement then George Cullum’s, which he outlines at length in his Biographical Registrars of Graduates. Cullum stripped the Registrars of any graduates who served in the Confederate Army. These were the people who in Cullum’s 504 McCrea, Dear Belle; Letters from a Cadet & Officer to His Sweetheart, 1858- 1865, 96. 505 McCrea, Dear Belle; Letters from a Cadet & Officer to His Sweetheart, 1858- 1865, 98. And Tully McCrea, Tully McCrea Papers, Letter to Isabel ‘Belle’ Shofstall, November 10th , 1860. 506 McCrea, Dear Belle; Letters from a Cadet & Officer to His Sweetheart, 1858- 1865, 85.
- 158. Rally Point, 158 words, “forgot the flag under which they were educated to follow false gods.”507 As Cullum defended the Academy, he took measures to ensure this defense did not occur in a vacuum by contrasting West Point’s record with those of other institutions or commissioning sources. For instance, he highlighted that officers appointed directly from civil life defected to the Confederacy at a rate of almost 50 percent, whereas the rate of West Pointer defections was one of 20 percent. He does not stop there, attacking the loyalties of all other government departments, including but not limited to the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, and the Senate, “While the Military Academy has been the butt against every opprobrious epithet of an ungrateful nation… the statistics show that West Point has been the most loyal branch of public service.”508 This also illustrates why West Point serves as such a strong foundation for this analysis of the officer corps. The Academy was examined with excruciating detail both during, and upon the war’s cessation. This was because of accusations made by several government officials particularly in Congress, which asserted that West Point was guilty of having educated and trained all the top leaders of the Confederacy. Furthermore, the Academy was accused of having no moral compass, and of having instilled pure militarism amongst its trainees. George Cullum thus became West Point’s chief sentinel. He wrote at length about the loyalty to country overwhelmingly demonstrated by Military Academy graduates, keenly noting that of all branches of the federal government to include both houses of Congress and the various bureaucracies, the United States Army had the lowest percentage of defections to the Confederacy.509 Cullum in an unintended move, laid the foundation of research for the analysis of this paper. Considering the dynamics of Southern defections, McCrea was neither unique, nor an outlier. McCrea’s records support Cullum’s assertion. McCrea speculated that 25 percent of Southern cadets at West Point at the start of the war inevitably fought for the Union.510 Schaff expanded this analysis, arguing that over 50 percent of Southern graduates living at the beginning of the war, chose service to the United States.511 These analyses are useful, but still very much stuck to the era in which they were written, all of which were in the 1800s. James Morrison’s The Best School was written in 1998, and gives a much better numerical assessment of the validity of the monolithic South claim. The records which he republishes in his book, indicate that in the immediate years leading up to the war, as well as in 1861, seventy-four Southern cadets either resigned or suffered 507 Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. : from Its Establishment, March 16, 1802, to the Army Re-Organization of 1866-67, 12. 508 Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. : from Its Establishment, March 16, 1802, to the Army Re-Organization of 1866-67, 13. 509 Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. : from Its Establishment, March 16, 1802, to the Army Re-Organization of 1866-67, 13. 510 McCrea, Dear Belle; Letters from a Cadet & Officer to His Sweetheart, 1858- 1865, 91. 511 Morris Schaff, Read In; McCrea, Dear Belle; Letters from a Cadet & Officer to His Sweetheart, 1858-1865, 91.
- 159. Rally Point, 159 dismissals for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the United States. This meant that, validating Cullum, roughly 20 percent of those Southern cadets opted for the service in the U.S. Army, “An impressive figure considering the heart- wrenching costs.”512 All of this evidence points to the same idea: a statistically significant number of Southern Cadets and West Point graduates refuted this stereotypically viewed Southern identity and fought for the U.S. Army. They deserve credit, praise, and acknowledgement in the mainstream conversation of Civil War memory. McCrea is the standard for this group. George H. Thomas and the Fight to Prove Loyalty The story of General George H. Thomas is another excellent example of a Southern U.S. Officer, which both complicates the Southern officer experience and accentuates Southern contributions to the war effort. Rather than entering the war as a young Cadet or newly minted Officer, like McCrea, Thomas had over 20 years of Army service at the time of secession. He represents an entirely different class of officer, and thus his story broadens the understanding of these patriotic Southerners. Little is known for certain about Thomas’ upbringing. When one postbellum biographer attempted to retrieve information from siblings, he received a curt reply and dismissal. Born in 1816 in Southampton, Virginia, Thomas was raised on a small rural farm with eight other siblings and numerous slaves. None of these family members, nor any blood relatives attended his funeral in 1870. They never forgave him for betraying his blood and state. Thomas’ contribution to the war effort drove that spike home. From the little historians do know, it seems clear that the man was always driven by a tremendous desire to do right even as a boy, as one childhood friend stated “[he] never did what the other boys wanted unless he absolutely thought it was right.”513 One notable way in which Thomas demonstrated his strong moral compass was through his interactions with slaves his father owned. As stated, the biographer’s attempt to learn something of Thomas from his family members was ineffective. The biographer was far more successful when he interviewed an eighty-one-year-old African American man who had lived on the Thomas property. The man remarked that young George Thomas was, “As playful as a kitten” and “seemed to love the negro quarters more than he did the great house.”514 Furthermore, Thomas not only developed friends to play with from the Slave quarters, but would often bring things from the house to share with the ‘Negro boys.’ After starting school, Thomas frequently taught the young slaves how to read and gave other useful lessons which he acquired from class, against his father’s will. As with McCrea, Thomas never directly stated that any sense of 512 Appendix 8: Participation in the Civil War, Graduates Classes of 1833-1861. Read in James L., Morrison, “The Best School”: West Point, 1833-1866, (Kent, Ohio, Kent State University Press, 1998), 127. 513 Francis. McKinney, Education in Violence; the Life of George H. Thomas and the History of the Army of the Cumberland, (Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1961), 47. And, Brian Steel Wills, George Henry Thomas: as True as Steel, (Lawrence, University Press of Kansas), 10-12. 514 Wills, George Henry Thomas: as True as Steel, 12.
- 160. Rally Point, 160 abolitionism directly influenced his decision to remain in the Army, but his passive acknowledgment of slavery’s immorality subtly reflects his understanding of its role regarding secession. It is nonetheless an important aspect of Thomas’ background which allows for a better understanding from where he came and how he eventually decided to stay loyal. Thomas’ early military career set him on a path for success from which the U.S. Army would consistently benefit. Noticing his potential for success at a young age, Thomas’ Congressman John Mason wrote a letter of recommendation on his behalf to the Secretary of War, winning him admission into West Point for the Class of 1840. Thomas arrived for in-processing in 1836 and was assigned a billet with none other than a young William T. Sherman. By the time the two graduated, Sherman would attest that Thomas was his best friend at the school. Additionally, Thomas would make the acquaintance of and become good friends with his future adversary James L. Longstreet. Upon graduation in the summer of 1840, he was commissioned into the Field Artillery and assigned to the 3rd U.S. Artillery in Florida where he would remain until the outbreak of the Mexican War. After the war’s start, Thomas distinguished himself, particularly at the Battle of Buena Vista. Thomas would later be criticized during the Civil War for being slow, but in a letter to Colonel Robert Anderson (famous for his role at Ft. Sumter in the coming years) he stated, “I saved my section of Bragg’s Battery at Buena Vista by being a little slow.”515 Prior to the Civil War, Thomas had achieved the skill sets and prestige necessary to propel himself to the forefront of attention during the Civil War. A combination of Thomas’ prestige and birthplace made the question of his loyalty at the start of the Civil War one of great attention. To Thomas though, there was never any question in the first place. In 1861, shortly before Virginia seceded, its Governor John Letcher wrote then Major George Thomas asking him if he would accept the position of Chief of Ordnance of Virginia, a prestigious job which would have undoubtedly accrued him rank and pay back in his own home state. Thomas immediately responded defending his desire to remain in the Union, “it is not my wish to leave the service of the United States as long as it is honorable for me to remain.”516 Shortly after this exchange, Virginia seceded and along with it went Colonel Robert E Lee. As Thomas told his dearly interested friend William Sherman, “I have thought it all over, and I shall stand firm in the service of the government.”517 Thomas was immediately given command of the 2nd US Cavalry and called to Carlisle Barracks where he would re-swear his oath of allegiance to the United States. This was typical of all officers at the start of the war, and mandatory following the Battle of Shiloh. While some were offended by this, Thomas remarked “I do not care a snap of my finger about it period. If they want me to take the oath before each meal, I’m 515 Wills, George Henry Thomas: as True as Steel, 37. 516 Wilbur D. Thomas, General George H. Thomas, the Indomitable Warrior, Supreme in Defense and in Counterattack; a Biography, (New York, Exposition Press, 1964), 130. 517 Thomas, General George H. Thomas, the Indomitable Warrior, Supreme in Defense and in Counterattack; a Biography ,135.
- 161. Rally Point, 161 ready to comply.”518 His resolve was certain, and he never questioned a decision so monumental in the face of the treasonous precedence being established by so many of his Virginian peers. On his death bed in 1870, he told his aide, Colonel Hough, that he “never entertained such an idea [of defection], his duty was clear to him from the beginning.”519 Thomas embodied his alma mater’s motto “duty, honor, country” in the fullest sense. This was not only because he fought as part of the U.S. Army in the Civil War, but because he stood behind that decision, and the values the Army stood for, the rest of his life. George Thomas’ struggle differs from that of Tully McCrea. Whereas McCrea’s initial declaration of loyalty seemingly settled all questions of his commitment to the cause of the Union, Thomas’ declaration only began his questioning. Thomas’ struggle to prove his loyalty was two-pronged. The first, and most egregious of the assaults against him, sprung largely from his fellow U.S. Officers. Flaws or occurrences which normally might have surmounted to brief criticism of his performance evolved because of his roots into accusations against Thomas’ character and loyalty. For example, upon travelling to Carlisle to re-swear his oath, Thomas misplaced his foot and fell off a rail cart, a grave accident which almost took his life and seriously wounded him in the process. He was confined to his bed for six weeks, which to his critics, seemed like a convenient excuse to avoid service right at the critical point of secession. Fellow officers and several northern papers labeled him as a “lukewarm Unionist” as a result.520 Two other issues seemed to plague Thomas’ reputation both during and following the war’s cessation. Always known to be a methodical planner and avid in his preparations, Thomas was critiqued several times by officers such as Ulysses S. Grant or even his old friend William T. Sherman for his slowness. Many saw this not necessarily as an effective battle tactic, but as a further expression of his affinity for the South. There is no evidence to support this claim. The second issue which further tarnished his reputation, was his success post-war in being promoted seemingly ahead of his peers by unpopular fellow Southerner, President Andrew Johnson. When Grant was eventually elected President in a massive Republican push against the despised Johnson, Thomas was subsequently snubbed in support of Generals Sherman and Sheridan who Grant had been exceedingly close with during the war. Those feelings of distaste for Thomas, though largely baseless, were built upon the foundation of the original suspicion of his loyalty. 521 George H. Thomas was a soldier of tremendous skill, and steadfast values. He never faltered in his support for the United States and drew upon his expertise to enormously contribute to the Union’s cause. His case study both validates that Southern-born officers contributed to the success of the United 518 Thomas, General George H. Thomas, the Indomitable Warrior, Supreme in Defense and in Counterattack; a Biography, 143. 519 Thomas, General George H. Thomas, the Indomitable Warrior, Supreme in Defense and in Counterattack; a Biography, 136. 520 Thomas, General George H. Thomas, the Indomitable Warrior, Supreme in Defense and in Counterattack; a Biography,128-129. 521 Thomas, General George H. Thomas, the Indomitable Warrior, Supreme in Defense and in Counterattack; a Biography,606-617.
- 162. Rally Point, 162 States, and helps historians better contextualize the depth of backgrounds from which these loyal servants came. Henry Martyn Robert, David Farragut, and Many More While McCrea and Thomas are exemplars of their kind, Southern Unionist officers varied in their backgrounds, occupations, and reasons for staying loyal. This section examines several other Southern Unionist officers, but more importantly further adds to the list and complexity of these individuals, evermore complicating this New South and degrading the Lost Cause. The experiences of these individuals were as dissimilar as McCrea and Thomas were alike, demonstrating just how great the spectrum was of Southern Unionists and their reasons for fighting. Born and raised in Robertsville, South Carolina, Henry Martyn Robert was a member of the West Point Class of 1857. An engineering officer of great repute, he served as an assistant instructor at his alma mater, took part in operations against Native Americans in the West, and supervised the fortifications of bases on the Canadian border all before the outbreak of the war. Robert’s rationale for deciding to stay loyal to the U.S. Army is noteworthy. From his obituary, regarding his loyalty, “he would do whatever he considered best for the State of South Carolina.” Furthermore, Robert even agreed that a state had the right to secede. However, with this in consideration, he felt it was not in South Carolina’s best interest to leave the Union, and thus committed himself to serve in the U.S. Army throughout the Civil War.522 This rationale is ironic in that it mirrors that of Robert E. Lee and countless other Confederate officers, excluding Robert’s analysis of what was truly in the best interest of his state which he placed above all. Once he made a decision, “he followed is out to its logical conclusion without regard to its effect on him personally.” This makes sense given what was said of Robert’s character, that he was thoughtful, deliberate, and thoroughly devoted to whichever path he set himself out upon. 523 Another example which broadens the makeup of Southern Unionist officers, is Admiral David Glasgow Farragut. He was a prodigy at only eleven years old when he was offered a Naval Appointment. Farragut “was a typical sailor, bluff, hearty, courageous, honest as the day, and of jovial manner.” A Captain and frontrunner for admiralty in the U.S. Navy, Farragut’s opinions on issues of secession were originally suspect. He was not only a born and reared Tennessee man, but he had made strong alliances with many notable Virginia families through his marriage to Virginia Loyall, a socially prominent Southerner whose name says it all. Those fears were for naught though, determined “to stick to the flag,” Farragut fled Virginia northward to pursue continued service in the 522 Henry Martyn Robert obituary. 1923. West Point Annual Report, June 11, 1925. 523 Though his Civil War record was relatively uneventful, Robert would continue on to have an illustrious military career, retiring as the U.S. Army Chief of Engineers in 1901. He is best known for his creation of Robert’s Rules of Order, the parliamentary procedure used around the world by political organizations of all types, to include the United States Congress.
- 163. Rally Point, 163 United States Navy.524 Research into the West Point archives produced similar results, there was a plethora of Southern officers who refused to betray their country. Perhaps the most incriminating piece of evidence within these records, was a survey of all Virginian Colonels of the Regular Army in 1861. The historical background states, “In the Spring of 1861 when the Southern States were seceding from the Federal Union, there were several colonels born or raised in Virginia.” They were all West Point Graduates. Their class years range from 1811 to 1840. Two died fighting in the war. The only one who joined the Confederacy, was an 1829 graduate: Robert Edward Lee. Despite the age-old narrative of the war as being between the North and South, John Albert, Edmund Alexander, Washington Seawell, Phillip Cooke, and George Thomas, all Southerners, remained loyal and fought for the United States Army.525 This should cause us as Civil War historians to redefine what we perceive as Southern identity during the conflict. Particularly for members of the U.S. Army before April of 1861, the war was not between the North and South, it was between those who betrayed their oaths to the U.S. and those who remained loyal to them. They came from all over the country, each with their own unique reasoning as to their mutual decision, serving honorably in the United States Military. They were as varied as the South was complex during the Civil War era, and further research would certainly expand historians’ understanding of them and their contributions. Furthermore, this would validate the central assertion of this paper: that there was no monolithic Confederate South. Far from it. Conclusion Referring to the Confederacy and the South as synonymous is a long- standing, lazy, and inaccurate tradition which must end. Despite the best efforts of Confederate veterans, Lost Cause ‘historians’, and both past and present white supremacists, the South and Southerners were far from united in their support for the Confederacy. The truth is much more complicated, the existence of U.S. Army soldiers from the South, their experiences, and their motivations for fighting tells a different story which defies this omnipresent binary. Its implications are far-reaching. The New South implies that above all the Lost Cause narratives and any allusions to some united monolithic Southern bloc during the war are simply inaccurate. It forces us as historians to redefine Southern identity during the era. As the incredible sacrifice of Southern Unionists demonstrated, the New South acknowledges the role of slavery in wartime motivations and draws attention to the role of duty and honor in a new light. These Unionists represent an excellent microcosm for the heart-wrenching issues which confronted the country at the 524 James Schouler, History of the Civil War, 1861-1865: Being Vol. VI of History of the United States of America, Under the Constitution (University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, 1899), 171-1. 525 Virginia Colonels of the Regular Army in 1861, Register of Graduates and Former Cadets, Bicentennial 2002 edition; reunion reports West Point AOG.
- 164. Rally Point, 164 time, and further validate that the longstanding structure of the typical Civil War narrative is wrong. They were left out of the story for a reason. These case studies were selected because they both broadened and further complicated typical assertions of the South during the war. McCrea, a young man at the start of the war, demonstrated how divided the American officer corps was. Furthermore, his story showed the immediate impact that the decision had on the lives of those who made it. George Henry Thomas is unique, but consequentially no outlier, the story of a famous senior officer who continued his soldiering in the name of the United States. All of these stories and thousands more show just how difficult the decisions were for these patriotic Southerners who were forced to make that heart-wrenching decision. The complexity of the South and the Confederacy requires more research. Once conducted, there can be no doubt that we as historians will be better able to understand the Civil War and its wide-ranging impacts as a result. It is necessary because we must rectify these injustices, but furthermore, it is necessary because the men and women who risked all they had in support of these ideals, deserve nothing less.
- 165. Rally Point, 165 Bibliography Ambrose, Stephen E. Crazy Horse and Custer: the Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors 1st ed. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1975. Baggett, James Alex. The Scalawags : Southern Dissenters in the Civil War and Reconstruction . Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003. Beals, Carleton. War Within a War; the Confederacy Against Itself. [1st ed.]. Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1965. Cullum, George. Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. : from Its Establishment, March 16, 1802, to the Army Re-Organization of 1866-67. Vol. 2. New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1868. Current, Richard Nelson. Lincoln's Loyalists : Union Soldiers from the Confederacy. Northeastern University Press, 1992. Degler, Carl N. The Other South: Southern Dissenters in the Nineteenth Century. [1st ed.]. New York: Harper & Row, 1974. Lee, Robert E., “Recollections of General Robert E. Lee.” (Project Gutenberg no. 5 (September 1, 1900): http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2323/2323- h/2323-h.html. Henry Martyn Robert obituary. 1923. West Point Annual Report, June 11, 1925. Levin, Kevin M. Searching for Black Confederates The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019. McCrea, Tully, Sarah Isabel Shofstall, and Catherine S. Crary. Tully McCrea Papers., 1853. McCrea, Tully, Sarah Isabel McCrea Shofstall, and Catherine S. Crary. Dear Belle; Letters from a Cadet & Officer to His Sweetheart, 1858-1865. [1st ed.]. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 1965. McKinney, Francis F. Education in Violence; the Life of George H. Thomas and the History of the Army of the Cumberland. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1961. Morrison, James L., and Morrison, James L. “The Best School”: West Point, 1833- 1866 Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1998. Nolan, Alan T. Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Schaff, Morris. The Spirit of Old West Point, 1858-1862. Boston; New York : Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1907. Schouler, James. History of the Civil War, 1861-1865: Being Vol. VI of History of the United States of America, Under the Constitution. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1899. Tatum, Georgia Lee. Disloyalty in the Confederacy. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina press, 1934. Thomas, Wilbur D. General George H. Thomas, the Indomitable Warrior, Supreme in Defense and in Counterattack; a Biography. [1st ed.]. New York: Exposition Press, 1964. Wills, Brian Steel. George Henry Thomas : as True as Steel Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012. Virginia Colonels of the Regular Army in 1861, Register of Graduates and Former Cadets, Bicentennial 2002 edition; reunion reports West Point AOG.
- 166. Rally Point, 166 THE EXPANSION OF POST-WORLD WAR ONE LITERATURE: THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF FOUR BRITISH WRITERS BY MELISSA GAMMONS Introduction “This war’s like the Bible,” Forster wrote sagely in 1914. “We’re all going to take out of it what we bring to it.”526 Everyone who experienced the Great War had unique personalities, perspectives, and values that the war challenged, strengthened, or redirected. So what did Great Britain, particularly its middle class, bring to the war? And what did its members take from it? To examine these questions, I will discuss the wartime experiences and postwar literary legacies of British writers Rudyard Kipling, J. R. R. Tolkien, E. M. Forster, and Virginia Woolf. Theirs is a multi-faceted if still incomplete perspective that spans the cabinet room and the hospital ward, the battlefield and the home front. For all their lived experiences and contributions to literature, they do not and should not stand in the historical narrative as representatives of their demographic groups. Tolkien did not tap into the singular WWI experience of the ex- schoolboy. Forster’s experiences as a gay man in WWI-era Britain do not speak to the experience of all gay men, any more than Woolf’s perspective is that of all British middle-class women. Rather, each individual story and its application to British literature in the postwar years creates a more complete understanding of the war as experienced by different members of British society. Kipling, Tolkien, Forster, and Woolf channeled their wartime experiences, knowingly and unknowingly, into their postwar literature. They drew upon their nightmares, reflections, and unfulfilled desires to craft the themes and imagery for which their postwar work is known. By analyzing some of their best received and widely read postwar works, I hope to convey the extent to which their takeaways from the war reflect those of the British public and had a lasting impact on their lives and imaginations. Viewed collectively, these literary works speak to trauma’s ability to affect people’s understandings of their worlds and an innate ability for creativity resulting from these altered understandings. Historiography The historiography of World War I is already rich in literary analysis, but when it comes to English literature, it focuses primarily on two platforms. The first is literature written during the war. This is tied directly to the author’s actions in wartime. In Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, Max Egremont presents a poet’s perspective of the war, including a literary analysis as part of his biography of each of his subjects.527 Modern readers are familiar with 526 Letter #136, “To Malcolm Darling,” dated November 6, 1914, in Selected Letters of E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), 214. 527 Max Egremont, Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew. (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014).
- 167. Rally Point, 167 this first platform, which is associated with Wilfred Owen, Edmund Blunden, and Rupert Brooke, all of whom have a place in Egremont’s study. The second historiographical platform is literature written expressly about the war after the war’s conclusion. From Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of An Infantry Officer to Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That, the memoirs and semi- fictional writings in the decades following the war are arguably even more popular in our contemporary conception of WWI literature. But these authors were not the only people who processed their war experiences through their written work. My analysis deliberately avoids authors such as Sassoon and Graves in order to explore other sub-sets of the British middle class whose experiences in the war shaped their postwar work and will thus examine a perspective outside of that belonging to the token infantry officer. Historians have written about the war’s effects on certain individual’s postwar literature. J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis are particularly emblematic of this kind of study. Both men’s works can readily be interpreted in the light of their military experiences, and WWI provides a useful lens for understanding the messages of both The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. In Literature of the 1920s: Writers Among the Ruins: Volume 3, Chris Baldick provides a survey of British literature of the 1920s that gives background analysis of postwar literature. He argues that disagreements among writers that created Modernism, a philosophical and artistic movement urging the need to create ‘modern’ culture after the failure of old culture, stemmed directly from the collapse of an ordered civilization during WWI.528 Baldick conceives of four phases of war-writing, classified by their time periods and attitudes towards the war, and narrows the scope of his analysis to war poetry and memoirs from frontline participants.529530 Also writing on the literature of the 1920s, John Lucas, in his book The Radical Twenties: Writing, Politics, and Culture, analyzes British writers through the lens of their political radicalism rather than their impact on Modernism or their wartime experiences. His study, which includes Virginia Woolf as one of its subjects, casts writers of the 1920s as a ‘lost generation,’ in the political turmoil that was part of the war’s legacy in Great Britain.531 His approach offers an important study of political activism in postwar writing. The Radical Twenties’ discussion of the intersectionality of Woolf’s political activism forms part of the narrative of the British middle class in the post-WWI years. Forster’s calls for social change after the upheaval of war, along with Tolkien and Kipling’s more conservative perspectives, form another part of the narrative. The historiography on Tolkien provides different perspectives on his wartime experiences and his work. Joseph Loconte’s A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War casts Tolkien’s war experience in the light of his Catholicism and charts the path from Tolkien in WWI to his later writings as a function of his faith. 528 Chris Baldick. Literature of the 1920s: Writers Among the Ruins: Volume 3. (Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Pres, 2012), 5. 529 Ibid, 331. 530 Baldick marks four successive phases – 1914-1915, 1916-1918, 1919-1927, and 1928-1937. These phases are distinguished by shifting perceptions of and reactions to the war. 531 John Lucas, The Radical Twenties: Writing, Politics, and Culture. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999).
- 168. Rally Point, 168 Loconte’s book gives a thoughtful analysis of both Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, their war experiences, and the fictional worlds they created out of those experiences.532 Loconte makes clear comparisons between scenes from Tolkien’s service as a signal officer and the famous prose of his Lord of the Rings saga—for example the watery graves of the fallen at the Somme and the dead warriors on display in Tolkien’s Dead Marshes.533 For Loconte, trauma strengthened Tolkien’s faith; however, the source of Tolkien’s trauma that found expression in Middle-earth is the focus of my research. Whereas Loconte ties Tolkien’s experiences to religion, John Garth in Tolkien and the Great War analyzes Tolkien’s friendships and creative output as a schoolboy and young lieutenant on the Somme.534 Literary analysis, however, is outside the scope of his work, and he does not link Tolkien’s experiences to his postwar literature itself. Janet Brennan Croft’s War and the Works of J. R. R. Tolkien acknowledges the debt Tolkien’s writings have to his war experiences, and searches for connections between both world wars and the themes of his work. Finally, Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans evaluate Tolkien’s perspective on postwar environmentalism in their book Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J. R. R. Tolkien in which they trace the environmentalism that resonates throughout Tolkien’s works.535 Silvana Caporaletti provides a similar perspective on E. M. Forster, analyzing one of his short stories in “Science as Nightmare: ‘The Machine Stops’ by E. M. Forster.” Caporaletti places Forster’s thoughts on industrialization and modernization within the context of his contemporaries’ similar postwar thoughts but does not trace the source of these antimachine arguments past domestic scenes of industrialization to the horrors of war.536 Karen Levenback argues in Virginia Woolf and the Great War that Woolf has a place in discussions of WWI memory, and that historians such as Mosse, Fussell, and Eksteins exclude the war’s less-notable participants by failing to analyze her work. In her analysis of Woolf’s The Leaning Tower, Levenback cites the impact the war had on the Woolf’s psyche and imagination. She concludes that too often historians’ narratives of war memory are restricted to those with roles on the frontlines, like Siegfried Sassoon.537 Finally, the historiography surrounding Kipling focuses mainly on his praise of imperialism, his jingoism, and his prewar literature. Biographers have focused on his wartime work as a propagandist and the loss of his son John. 532 Joseph Loconte, A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-1918. (Nashville, TN: HarperCollins Publishing, 2015), xviii. 533 Ibid, 10. 534 John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth. (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003) xiii. 535 Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans, Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J. R. R. Tolkien (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006). 536 Silvana Caporaletti, “Science as Nightmare: ‘The Machine Stops’ by E. M. Forster.” (Utopian Studies 8, no. 2 (1997), 2. 537 Karen L. Levenback, Virginia Woolf and the Great War. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 5.
- 169. Rally Point, 169 After the war, the focus turns to Kipling’s subsequent work on the War Graves Commission, driven by the Kiplings’ failure to find solace in the recovery of John’s body within Rudyard’s lifetime. Phillip Mallet’s Rudyard Kipling: A Literary Life paints a picture of Kipling’s postwar guilt as reflected by his writings.538 Even in such a rich field of analysis and thorough study, there are still facets of works written in the post-WWI period that require dedicated attention. By exploring the post-WWI works of Kipling, Tolkien, Forster, and Woolf that may not explicitly deal with the Great War, but are nonetheless shaped by it, I hope to uncover the extent to which the war left scars on these authors and the British middle class psyche, changing the way in which they viewed their world. Rudyard Kipling Rudyard Kipling left historians with a difficult task. Except for a small stint of note-jotting while in India, he did not keep a journal, leaving much of his personal life and private thoughts in obscurity. He was, on the other hand, a profuse writer of poetry, short stories, and novels, which are undetachable from Kipling’s life experiences and perspectives. The task of sorting out those views Kipling gained in astute observation of others and those which readers can attribute to the author himself is left for the historian and the literary critic, and the difficulty in concrete determination has created a generous field of scholarship. For the purposes of my argument, I will describe the maturation of Kipling’s writing through the trauma of the First World War, and suggest how the biographical details of that trauma influenced Kipling’s ability to create characters and write about situations that resonated not only with his experiences, but with the wartime experiences of the greater British middle class. Kipling’s writings before the war are largely the creative work he is known for today. The Jungle Book (1894), Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (1894), and Just So Stories (1902) draw upon Kipling’s experiences in India, and, with children as the intended audience, are meant to impart a sense of adventure embedded in an underlying masculinization of violence and a love of the British empire.539 “The White Man’s Burden” (1899) and “If” (1910) speak to a more adult audience, but also carry the themes of social Darwinism and imperialism that Kipling is known for.540 Although never a soldier himself, Kipling reveled in the company of soldiers, made them a frequent topic of his work, and lauded their glorious contributions to the esteem of Britain’s empire.541 In his glorification of the veterans of past wars, Kipling seems to foreshadow a generational return in the need for warfare, and with it an explicit pronouncement of guilt on all those who benefit from a previous generation’s sacrifice without making their own. In his 1907 poem “The Veterans,” Kipling completes his praise for the survivors of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 with the plea: “Pray for us, heroes, pray/ That when Fate 538 Phillip Mallet, Rudyard Kipling, A Literary Life (New York, NY: Palgrave, MacMillan, 2003). 539 Phillip Mallet, Rudyard Kipling: A Literary Life (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003). 540 Ibid. 541 Ibid.
- 170. Rally Point, 170 lays on us our task/ We do not shame the Day!”542 Although too old to participate on the frontlines of World War I, Kipling nonetheless issued his challenge, no longer hypothetical, to the generation of men coming of age in the 1910s. Now his call to arms reflected not just a duty to past generations who ‘did their part,’ but also to the future generations of British empire subjects.543 In the brewing conflict, the Indian was no longer the enemy, but the language remained just as racialized: “For all we have and are/ For all our children’s fate/ Stand up and take the war/ The Hun is at the gate!”544 Kipling joined a group of British writers that included H. G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle as a secret member of the War Propaganda Bureau at Wellington House, where he worked behind the scenes to craft a pamphlet, The New Army, and wartime poetry that urged patriotic participation.545 He also worked to secure a commission with the Irish Guards for his son, John Kipling, whose poor eyesight spoiled his bid to join the navy.546 Little over a month after his eighteenth birthday, John was declared missing in action at the Battle of Loos. Like so many relatives of the missing and dead, his family remained unaware of his final fate, and both during and after the war, the Kiplings wrote letters to influential people, conducted interviews, and visited France in a desperate attempt to gain any insight into John’s last moments. The truth, when uncovered, was hardly comforting—John had last been seen by a fellow Irish Guard during an attack against the German line, badly hurt and crying from a wound to his jaw. His body was not recovered during Kipling’s lifetime.547 Kipling’s poetry, although still jingoistic and certain of the war’s righteousness, reflects his newfound personal stake in the violence. His 1919 book of poetry, The Years Between, contains poetry from 1899 to 1918, but significantly publishes nothing written in 1915. A marked difference exists between the book’s 1914 poetry and the poetry that begins again in 1916. The glory of the warrior’s “iron sacrifice/ of body, will, and soul” is replaced in 1916, elevated to a more Christ-like depiction of the WWI soldier’s ordeal.548 For the first time, we see Kipling grapple with the guilt of promoting and witnessing so much death, but his poems contain neat resolutions and self-assurances the cause’s justice. Religious undertones are unmistakable in “The Question” (1916), which asks “how shall it fare with me/ When the war is laid aside/ If it be proven 542 Rudyard Kipling, “The Years Between,” Gutenberg Free Press, (accessed February 27, 2020). 543 From “Lord Roberts,” 1914: “He passed to the very sound of the guns/ But, before his eye grew dim/ He had seen the faces of the sons / Whose sires had served with him.” The poem’s subject, Lord Roberts, is then able to die peacefully, letting new life spring from his death. Rudyard Kipling, “The Years Between,” Gutenberg Free Press, (accessed February 27, 2020). 544 Kipling, “The Years Between,” Gutenberg Free Press, (accessed February 27, 2020). 545 John Simkin, “War Propaganda Bureau – How the Government sold the First World War,” Spartacus Educational (July 28, 2014). 546 Mallet, Rudyard Kipling: A Literary Life. 547 Mallet, Rudyard Kipling: A Literary Life. 548 Kipling, “The Years Between,” Gutenberg Free Press, (accessed February 27, 2020).
- 171. Rally Point, 171 that I am he/ For whom a world has died?”549 The apparent guilt with which Kipling confronts the war’s destruction is quickly tempered: “How shall I live with myself through the years/ Which they have bought for me? […] If it be proven that I am he/ Who being questioned denied?”550 Kipling’s guilt is not the result of living with the scale of destruction he has implicitly advocated for through his propaganda, but rather in the fear of not supporting those whose lives were ostensibly sacrificed for his. “The Question” deliberately likens the sacrifice of soldiers like his son to that of Christ. Mirroring the biblical story of the disciple Peter denying his support for Jesus, Kipling passes judgment on any who does not support the British soldiers who “purchased” freedom for everyone else through their deaths.551 “A Nativity,” also written in 1916, makes use of another biblical story to indicate the personal grief that stemmed from knowing his son’s fate. Mary worries about her newborn son, although she knows he is “laid in the Manger” and “safe from cold and danger.” The poem’s narrator also initially worries about her son: “‘My child died in the dark. Is it well with the child, is it well? There was none to tend him or mark, And I know not how he fell.’”552 The poem’s resolution finds both Mary and the unnamed mother after their son’s sacrifice, content with the understanding of his task and the knowledge of his metaphysical resting place. Says the unnamed mother: “But I know for Whom he fell’ […] ‘It is well—it is well with the child!”553 Thus relief from mourning comes in the form of a religious certainty of the just cause for which the child sacrificed his life. Like Kipling, much of the British middle class turned to religion in their time of grief. Although the general pattern for the 20th century overall was one of decline, approximately 29% of the adult civilian population of Britain were members of a church, up from 27% of the whole population in prewar 1914.554 This data is more significant than it seems at first glance considering that religious males disproportionately volunteered for war and that the 1918 statistic only takes civilians into consideration, which took a million men out of the data pool.555 Both the Roman Catholic and Jewish populations in Britain increased 549 Ibid. 550 Ibid. 551 “Then [Peter] began to curse, and he swore an oath, “I do not know the man!” […] Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.” Matthew 57:74-75, NSRV; Kipling, “The Years Between,” Gutenberg Free Press, (accessed February 27, 2020). 552 Ibid. 553 Ibid. 554 Clive D. Field, “Some Historical Religious Statistics,” British Religion in Numbers (October 12, 2012). 555 Clive D. Field, “Some Historical Religious Statistics,” British Religion in Numbers (October 12, 2012).
- 172. Rally Point, 172 throughout the war and into the 1920s, and Anglican, Methodist, and Baptist numbers, after declining during the war, rose in the twenties, bucking the trend of the prewar years.556 The eventual design of British war cemeteries also speaks to the comfort sought in religious symbolism and narratives. A cross of sacrifice stands at the center of larger cemeteries, linking the concept of Christian sacrifice with the war’s destruction. Serving as a member of the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWCG) after the war, Kipling had an intimate part in the design. Lacking a body and associated grave to give focus to his own grief, Kipling dedicated his time and creative energies to establishing such a comfort for other grieving families, stamping his interpretations of the war into the visual representations of the British empire in mourning.557 It was Kipling who suggested the epitaph “Known unto God” for graves of unidentified soldiers, and with his aid that the IWCG developed a plan for British cemeteries abroad that resembled peaceful English gardens.558 Kipling’s time working as literary advisor for the IWCG inspired his 1925 short-story “The Gardener,” the story of a mother who raises her out-of- wedlock son as her nephew. When her son dies in the war, she sinks into a period of grief in which “all sensations […] came to an end in blessed passivity.”559 The words Kipling uses to describe the grieving mother’s behavior bare a strong resemblance to his own biographical details: “She had no interest in any aftermath, national or personal, of the war, but, moving at an immense distance, she sat on various relief committees and held strong views—she heard herself delivering them—about the site of the proposed village War Memorial.”560 Kipling’s pattern of writing about wartime grief through the eyes of mothers suggests he intended to convey some perspective that would have been lacking had he cast a father in these mourning roles. Even though the role of father was more true to his lived experience than that of mother, Kipling’s repeated use of the mother as the subject of grief may signify a level of guilt— 556 Ibid. 557 The Imperial War Graves Commission became the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in 1960, reflecting the changing nature of the British empire. Hannah Smyth, “What was the Imperial War Graves Commission?” for UK National Trust, University of Oxford (accessed February 28, 2020). 558 “6 Poetic Stories from the CWGC Archives,” Commonwealth War Graves Commission, September 28, 2017, https://www.cwgc.org/learn/news-and- events/news/2017/09/28/09/38/6-poetic-stories-from-the-cwgc-archives, (accessed May 1, 2020). 559 “Michael had died and her world had stood still and she had been one with the full shock of that arrest. Now she was standing still and the world was going forward, but it did not concern her – in no war or relation did it touch her. She knew this by the ease with which she could slip Michael’s name into talk and incline her head to the proper angle, at the proper murmur of sympathy.” Rudyard Kipling, “The Gardener,” The Heritage of the Great War online database (accessed February 28 2020). 560 Ibid.
- 173. Rally Point, 173 the mother could not have fought in previous wars or have effected politics leading up to and during the war, and thus that level of identification with and protection of her son is unavailable. The father, on the other hand, is, according to Kipling’s ideology, supposed to have both those experiences. Not only could Kipling not directly identify with the trauma of battle that had killed John, but despite his considerable influence on British culture and through the War Propaganda Bureau, could not affect what he viewed as dastardly tactical decisions from Britain’s war leaders.561 The war had decided implications for the nature of Kipling’s work. The themes remained largely the same, but his audience shifted. He all but ceased to write and publish the adventure stories so beloved by contemporary children, perhaps in part because he had himself lost his own child. In Kipling’s own words, his “Epitaphs,” written from 1914 to 1918 and published as a part of The Years Between, have “neither personal nor geographical basis.”562 His claim makes sense given the wide breadth of people he gives voice to through the epitaph collection, to include a servant, a female rape victim, and a lazy sentinel. But one, labeled “Common Form,” strikes a chord with the guilt of a father who not only manufactured propaganda, but also enabled his son to fight. The epitaph says simply: “If any question why we died/ Tell them because our fathers lied.”563 At the beginning of the war, Kipling wrote “There is but one task for all/ One life for each to give,” but the life Kipling gave was not his own. He fought to keep his faith in his country and his god, but at the end of the war, Kipling was out of adventure stories for young boys. J. R. R. Tolkien Tolkien saw the war from a different perspective than did Kipling. Whereas Kipling viewed Britain’s entry into the war in August 1914 as a chance for a new generation of loyal subjects to prove their mettle in combat, John Ronald Tolkien, a young man in love and about to begin his undergraduate studies at Oxford, was less eager for war. For Tolkien, WWI was an unwelcome break from his wife and his philology, as well as the tragic end to the society of friends that had provided his life with much meaning. Tolkien’s mother died when he was twelve, leaving him and his younger brother orphaned. Tolkien’s new family became the congregation at Birmingham Oratory, specifically the church’s Father Francis, who served as the children’s guardian.564 As he moved through British public schools, he found another family—a carefully cultivated group of young men, similarly minded in their love of academic debate tempered by practical jokes. The Tea Club and Barrovian Society, or TCBS, set precedent for the kind of close-knit fellowship that Tolkien 561 Mallet, Rudyard Kipling: A Literary Life. 562 Kipling Journal no. 39, letter to COL C. H. Milburn, as quoted by Philip Holberton, “Epitaphs of the War,” Kipling Society Database (accessed February 28, 2020). 563 Kipling, “The Years Between,” Gutenberg Free Press, (accessed February 27, 2020). 564 John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003), 12.
- 174. Rally Point, 174 would pursue for the duration of his life.565 The members of the TCBS dispersed to different colleges, but maintained close contact and continued to have society meetings. As the group matured, their inherent differences became more apparent, and the TCBS underwent a rift. Tolkien, along with his friends, G. B. Smith, Christopher Wiseman, and Rob Gilson, convened a meeting to discuss their mutual disregard for the way other TCBS members never “seem to have any mortal thing about which they can get angry [and] merely make light and clever remarks […] about nothing at all.”566 The meeting, which its members called the Council of London, decided that from thenceforth, “TCBS is four and four only.”567 The meeting also solidified the purpose of the society: none of its four members doubted they were destined to academic and literary greatness, and they conceived as the TCBS as a means by which they could encourage each other towards this goal.568 Until the organization’s tragic and premature end, its members would support Tolkien’s fledgling poetry and attempts at fantasy world-building, reading what he had written, asking him for more, and encouraging him to send his work to publishers. The TCBS also served to channel its members desire to accomplish some good on behalf of the greater public, a lofty ideal for men in their twenties but one they believed in nonetheless. This sense of duty became embroiled in patriotic war fervor. Even as its members feared the price they might pay for entering into the conflict, they regarded it as their duty as promising young intellectuals to embark on this path for the people’s good.569 This theme of reluctant service is important to Tolkien’s later writing. Frodo Baggins can withstand the evil of the Ring and be its Bearer because he doesn’t want to, Aragorn is a good leader because he is more comfortable in a humble identity than as the heir to the throne of Gondor.570 Likewise, Tolkien did not want to go to war, and therefore his decision to do so anyway is significant. Just as his most noble characters sublimated their desires for domestic comforts and peace in order to accomplish their mission or fulfil their destiny, Tolkien the academic grudgingly joined the war effort as a signal officer in 1916. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, war brought tragedy to the group of young scholars. Tolkien was the last of the four friends to enlist, waiting to finish at Oxford with a first before following Smith, Wiseman, and Gilson to war, and seeing his first of it at the Battle of the Somme.571 Although the 565 Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, 18. 566 As stated by Wiseman. Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, 55. 567 As quoted by Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, 56. 568 Ibid., 105. 569 Ibid., 106. In Frodo’s words: “I am weary, and full of grief, and afraid. But I have a deed to do, or attempt, before I too am slain.” Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 653. 570 Aragorn says: “Little do I resemble the figures of Elendil and Isildur as they stand carven in their majesty in the halls of Denethor. […] I have had a hard life and […] have crossed many mountains and many rivers.” J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987), 241-242. “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” – Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 50. 571 Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, 42-43 and 165.
- 175. Rally Point, 175 members of the TCBS kept up a steady stream of correspondence, the speed of letters sometimes lagged behind the pace of news, and Smith read about Gilson’s death in a paper in July. The fellowship had been broken, leaving its remaining three members in despair for the future of their friend group.572 To Smith and Wiseman, in his first words about Gilson’s death, Tolkien wrote: “So far my chief impression is that something has gone crack. I feel just the same to both of you—nearer if anything and very much in need of you… but I don’t feel a member of a little complete body now. I honestly feel that the TCBS has ended… I feel a mere individual…”573 Then, in December 1916, Smith died of wounds he had sustained from the blast of a stray shell, leaving Christopher Wiseman and Tolkien the remaining survivors of the TCBS. Tolkien retreated into a fantasy world of his own making. For the rest of the war, he and Wiseman communicated with each other less and less.574 In his time in the trenches, Tolkien rarely wrote about his horrific surroundings—indeed he almost seemed oblivious to them. His letters to his wife, Edith, and the TCBS were full of poetry, philological musings, and an evolving mythical language. Instead of curbing his creative output, life on the frontline seemed to spur on Tolkien’s need to write. “A real taste for fairy-stories was wakened by philology on the threshold of manhood, and quickened to full life by war,” he wrote years later.575 His poetry developed past the stories of those transcending mortal struggles, which he had written in his final year as an undergrad as he watched the prospect of enlistment loom. Now he wrote about the dark lands from which enlightened heroes fled, crafting a richer and richer background of the land that would later become Middle-earth. What had begun as a penchant for linguistics and creating new languages now included characters, kingdoms, and history. The answer to his seeming lack of interest in the war lies in Tolkien’s definition of a fairy tale. Writing years later for an essay titled “On Fairy-stories,” Tolkien makes clear that the purpose of a fairy tale is three-fold: recovery, escape, and consolation. A person might be driven to seek one of these three from a variety of sources. Fairy tales helped the reader escape modern industrial society in favor of a sylvian vision of a simpler past, but Tolkien encouraged readers to understand that stories could do more than that. “There are other things more grim and terrible to fly from than the noise, stench, ruthlessness, and extravagance of the internal-combustion engine. There are hunger, thirst, 572 “I am very tired and most frightfully depressed at this worst of news. Now one realizes in despair what the TCBS really was.” – Smith to Tolkien, as quoted by Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, 168. 573 This was not, notably, his first letter after hearing the news from Smith. Tolkien took several days to find the words he needed and continued his normal correspondence in the meantime, giving the impression that he compartmentalized Gilson’s death in order to process it. Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, 176. As quoted by Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, 176. 574 Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, 251. 575 Ibid., 38.
- 176. Rally Point, 176 poverty, pain, sorrow, injustice, death.”576 Tolkien definitely encountered these in excess on the Somme, and clearly used his poetry and world-building as an escape and consolation. Although he was opposed to the idea of his writing as an allegory for his WWI experiences, writing adamantly and often that “there is no ‘allegory,’ moral, political, or contemporary in the work at all,” Tolkien’s writing was both decidedly developed by the war and indebted to the experiences seared into his imagination.577 He wrote to his son Christopher during WWII: “I sense amongst all your pains (some merely physical) the desire to express your feeling about good, evil, fair, foul in some way: to rationalize it, and prevent it just festering.”578 The fellowship shared by the four members of the TCBS has clear echoes to the fellowship of Middle-earth peoples who journey with Frodo to destroy the Ring, as well as the bonds formed between characters through shared experience with violence. Tolkien paid special attention to the link between Frodo and Sam, admitting that Sam’s loyalty and bravery were based off of the soldiers he had known at a lieutenant at the Somme.579 The idea of death as the end to a journey is also prominent in Tolkien’s writings, and can be traced to the pre-Middle-earth poetry he wrote while undergoing his officer’s training. In Middle-earth, noble elves, members of the Valinor—a higher race, and special mortals such as Frodo Baggins, who have served Middle-earth as Ring Bearers, depart into the west on ships to a new country, a symbolic passing away. Frodo eventually choses this death for himself, once, having returned home at the end of the War of the Ring, he realizes that his wounds “will never really heal.”580 Sam, Frodo’s less traumatized counterpart, is “meant to be solid and whole,” but Frodo cannot be. Before leaving, he tells Sam: “I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one [sic] has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”581 Tolkien had difficulty conceiving of WWI as a necessary war against evil, which made the deaths of his friends even more difficult to bear. The wars chronicled in his fiction, on the other hand, are tales of the forces of good in battle against those of evil. Men could be good or bad but had agency in that narrative. Hand-in-hand with the good vs. evil dichotomy are Tolkien’s views on 576 J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-stories,” Published by Heritage Podcast (accessed February 11, 2020), 12. 577 In a letter to a Mr. Straight, as quoted by Rachel Kambury, “War Without Allegory: WWI, Tolkien, and The Lord of the Rings,” The United States World War One Centennial Commission (accessed November 2019). 578 As quoted by Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, 38. 579 “My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself.” – in a 1956 letter to H. Cotton Minchin. Or, as Tolkien’s Frodo puts it: “Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam.” Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 697. 580 Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 1002. 581 Ibid., 1006.
- 177. Rally Point, 177 nature. The good characters Tom Bombadil and Samwise Gamgee help grow and nurture the forests and fields of Hobbiton.582 Evil orcs at the wizard Saruman’s behest burn Fangorn Forest in order to spawn Uruk-hai, additional agents of evil and war. Nature as a metaphor for good fits into Tolkien’s theme of death as well. As Frodo sails into the West, “it seemed to him that […] the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”583 The final element linking Tolkien’s WWI experiences with The Lord of the Rings is the imagery. Tolkien’s gift with descriptive prose stems not only from an aggressive imagination and effective grasp of the power of language, but also from the memory of lived experiences. It is hard to miss echoes of the Somme’s battlefields in Tolkien’s description of the Dead Marshes, where the corpses of fallen warriors an age old still fester, or of Tolkien’s restful British countryside in the simple peace of the Shire.584 Of all the authors’ works discussed in this paper, Tolkien’s Rings saga arguably has left the deepest and most lasting imprint on the hearts and imaginations of the reading public. Although published in the 1950s, The Lord of the Rings was the culmination of the world-building that began in the trenches of WWI. Its time of publication, however, cast a focus on a different war, which accordingly affected the public’s interpretation of Tolkien’s themes. In WWII, the British believed they had found in Hitler’s Nazism the great evil they had sought to defeat a generation earlier. Tolkien’s tale of good versus evil now read as confirmation of historic events rather than the wish-fulfillment for a war that was discouragingly morally ambiguous. In this reinterpretation, some of what Tolkien intended was lost, along with The Lord of the Rings’ status as the rightful product of WWI. The Second World War, which its participants conferred more readily into a good vs. evil type battle than the First World War, misplaced Tolkien’s reluctance for war and aversion for glory-seeking. Or, as Tolkien might have put it, those whose war experiences had been gilded with the moral right were susceptible to loving the bright sword just for its sharpness.585 Tolkien historians generally regard The Lord of the Rings and its associated world-building as heavily predicated on Tolkien’s experiences during WWI. But Tolkien’s most well-known literature, separated temporally from both the war and the immediate years following in which the reading public could have turned to Tolkien’s fairy tales for recovery, escape, and consolation, missed out on a classification as war literature. Many of its readers associated it more with the evils of Hitler’s Nazi regime than with the First World War.586 Nevertheless, the novel’s great popularity expresses what Tolkien intuitively understood: trauma 582 Ibid., 118 and 1005. 583 Ibid., 1007. 584 Ibid., 614. 585 One of Tolkien’s characters describes his aversion to violence as follows: “War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 656. 586 Rachel Kambury, “War Without Allegory: WWI, Tolkien, and The Lord of the Rings.”
- 178. Rally Point, 178 can be sublimated into a story of ultimate hope. The power of the message far outlives the war in which its author first conceived it. E. M. Forster For E. M. Forster, WWI meant a break from the restrictive rules of British middle-class society, as well as his mother’s Victorian grip on his social life. He spent most of the war, from 1915 to 1919, in Alexandria, where he worked with the Red Cross as a ‘Searcher,’ interviewing convalescing soldiers for details concerning their missing comrades. As he strove to stay in contact with friends and relatives throughout the war, Forster left historians with a rich collection of personal correspondence, from business overtures to soul-bearing essays. His letters provide insight into the daily life of a Red Cross employee and of a conscientious objector. Class, a popular theme in Forster’s writings both before and after the war, was also a prominent theme to his wartime observations and qualms. Forster eschewed the perceived differences between officer and soldier and English or Egyptian that led to unequal treatment. “Give a man power over the other men, and he deteriorates at once,” Forster believed, a thought confirmed by his several years observing officers interacting with enlisted men.587 In his mind, the lower classes had a natural affinity to the earth and reality, an affinity which was juxtaposed by the upper class’ materialism and frivolity. The war was largely perpetuated by the class divide, with the gain-seeking upper classes sending good- hearted working boys to their deaths. Forster’s wartime experience was also associated with a fundamental life change. While in Egypt, Forster developed a romantic relationship with Mohammed el-Adl, a young train conductor. Societal rules as well as legal restrictions mandated the secrecy of the relationship; aside from being blatantly homosexual in nature, their relationship also crossed class and racial lines. Moreover, the relationship was Forster’s first founded on mutual romantic and sexual attraction. In many ways, his relationship with el-Adl assuaged both Forster’s homesickness and lifelong loneliness for companionship, and additionally worked as an antidote to his pre-affair attempt to “live without either hopes or fears” even though “all that [he] cared for in civilization ha[d] gone forever.”588 For Forster, this happiness was predicated on the breakdown of civilization he believed to be a direct effect of the war. Not only did war break down the barriers between upper- and middle-class officers and their lower-class soldiers, creating a bond between them forged in battle, but also resulted in a general loosening of societal expectations and rules. One societal barrier altered during WWI was Britain’s relationship with its colonies. A world war necessitated global resources, and the British empire called its subjects from around the world 587 Letter #188, “To Siegfried Sassoon,” dated May 2, 1918, in Selected Letters of E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), 289. 588 Letter #152, “To S. R. Masood,” dated December 29, 1915, in Selected Letters of E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), 233.
- 179. Rally Point, 179 to the European front, including over one million soldiers from India.589 British soldiers who may have previously had no contact with soldiers from the colonies could now see them as fellow soldiers fighting for a mutual cause. Forster was also affected by this increased familiarity with different peoples. Following his time in India, Forster evaluated Egyptians compared to Indians and found them lacking.590 Time and exposure, however, changed his mind, and he had an increasingly high opinion of and empathy for Egyptians as the war went on. Despite years of difficult work in Alexandria, in a “war which saps away one’s spirit even when one’s body’s whole still,” Forster wrote to a close friend in 1917: “I have never had anything like this in my life—much friendliness and tolerance, but never this—and not till now was I capable of having it” for lack of “the complete contempt and indifference for civilisation” that the war provided.591 But this happiness was not something Forster could share with the vast majority of his wartime correspondents—indeed he only referenced his homosexuality and relationships in a sort of code, crippled both by his Victorian modesty and fear of the censors.592 To most people, his letters were full of book suggestions, humorous anecdotes, and the proceedings of day-to-day life outside of the hospital where he worked. Occasionally, however, we catch a glimpse of the growing disconnect Forster feels with the war, particularly with the newspaper propaganda urging young men on to glory for king and country, juxtaposed with wounded young men who naively yearned to return to a fight that had destroyed their friends. Although some of his work dealt with interviewing convalescing soldiers as they enjoyed the relative freedoms and sunshine of Alexandria, Forster’s time with the Red Cross also contained darker duties that rarely found expression in his letters to friends back home. In a letter to his Cambridge friend Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, Forster mused on the reasons to fight and the nature of the war, some of his frustrations becoming blatant: “I […] expect that everyone and everything else will shatter into dust. The Hospitals here are full of such dust—boys calling out 589 “What role did the British Empire play in the war?” Bitesize BBC News, https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/ zqhyb9q/articles/z749xyc, (accessed May 1, 2020). 590 Letter #152, “To S. R. Masood,” dated December 29, 1915, in Selected Letters of E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), 232. 591 Letter #167, “To Florence Barger,” dated May 29, 1917, in Selected Letters of E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), 256.; Letter #174, “To Florence Barger,” dated August 25, 1917, in Selected Letters of E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), 269. 592 Forster wrote about his affair almost exclusively to his close friend Florence Barger, using euphemisms such as “Yesterday, for the first time in my life I parted with Respectability” in reference to sexual intercourse. (This letter was never sent). He would later refer to his ‘Respectability’ with just a capital R. The frequency of his letters to Barger, along with the fact that he always signed them ‘Morgan,’ rather than his more distant alternatives ‘EM Forster’ or ‘EMF,’ hints at the intimacy between the two.
- 180. Rally Point, 180 ‘Oh Lord have mercy on me, Oh take this thing away’, or even more terribly “I’m in a fix, I’m in a fix.’ […] It’s more a wave of helpless indignation that still shakes me so that I look down the ward at the suffering and […] wonder how long the waste must go on. […] Damn justice, damn honour. They were good enough trimmings for peace time, but the supreme need now is the preservation of life. Let us look after bodies that there may be a next generation which may have the right to look after the soul.”593 Forster reserved such outbursts for close confidants, excluding both casual and business acquaintances and his mother, whom he did not want to worry. He was always careful to follow such outpourings of despair and grief with assurances that he was not as unhappy as he seemed or with a distractingly humous story. But despite the depressing nature of his work, Forster had a new sense of fulfillment from his illicit relationship and a certain freedom from his mother’s sometimes controlling love—both of which he was unable to enjoy in England and would lose when the war concluded. He wrote in 1916: “In some ways I have never been so free—it’s an odd backwater the war has scooped out for me, and I don’t know whether I most dread or long for England.”594 Returning to London at the end of the war, Forster expressed difficulty in shifting back to a postwar civilian lifestyle. He felt the war had been a colossal waste of life and creative energies. He wrote plaintively to Florence Barger: “for my own part I’ve learnt nothing and felt that most people have likewise learnt nothing, despite the assurances of the newspapers to the contrary.”595 He, like every other member of the British society, had lost people close to him. “I can’t even feel that the dead have died in our defence. I didn’t want W. R. to leave No. 21. It seemed to me no good and it still seems no good, and the knowledge that his end didn’t seem meaningless to him doesn’t fill it with meaning for me.”596 His struggles were societal-level struggles—how could the war’s survivors find meaning for their experiences and the deaths of loved ones? Forster’s grief translated readily into difficulty with his creative process, and his work stalled.597 He worked on A Passage to India but found he did not have the inspiration or willpower to complete it. He did not consider his wartime experience to be 593 Letter #165, “To Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson,” dated May 5, 1917, in Selected Letters of E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), 252-253. 594 Letter #157, “To Malcolm Darling,” dated August 6, 1916, in Selected Letters of E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), 238. 595 Letter #193, “To Forrest Reid,” dated January 10, 1919, in Selected Letters of E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), 298. 596 Ibid. W.R. refers to his friend, Willie Rutherford. 597 “Abysmal depression all today. […] While trying to write my novel, I wanted to scream aloud like a maniac, and it is not in such a mood that one’s noblest work is penned.” Letter #197, “To Siegfried Sassoon,” dated May or June 1919, in Selected Letters of E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), 302.
- 181. Rally Point, 181 particularly traumatizing, especially when viewed in comparison to the soldiers he interviewed in his Alexandria hospital ward and did not conceive of his creative difficulties as necessarily a function of the war.598 Forster’s experiences during the war put him in contact with a new element of the British empire, and thus a new perspective. English soldiers fought alongside ANZAC, Canadian, and Indian forces and convalesced overseas in hospitals such as Forster’s in Alexandria. In his difficulties in writing A Passage to India, we see Forster grapple with an enhanced awareness of his own qualms with imperialism, ideas developed through his time in Egypt and his experience with its populace. Forster’s primary complaint with imperialism as the British practiced it was the inherently unequal footing it placed different members of the empire on—an inequality he was intimately aware of and troubled by through his relationship with el-Adl. He was not alone in British society in his growing dislike for imperialism. The question of how to handle rebellious colonial holdings, from Egypt to the Punjab to Ireland, plagued British politics in the 1920s. The war-torn public felt less obliged than previously to support the deployment of British boys for imperialistic and materialistic goals, and the decade following the war saw the British government withdraw militarily from many of its former acquisitions, a policy the result of both rebellion abroad and disillusionment at home. British conceptions of class also changed as a result of World War I experiences. Soldiers had lived and fought alongside their officers, tenants with landowners and laborers with employers. On the home front, an increased wartime reliance on labor coupled with fewer men led to an increased importance and thus bargaining power of labor organizations. Trade union density in the United Kingdom doubled between 1913 and 1920.599 The British Labour party emerged from World War I with a new manifesto and resolved purpose, and a coalition government made Ramsay MacDonald Britain’s first Labour prime minister in 1924.600 For British society then, as well as for Forster, the war had illuminated troubling class divides that seemed antiquated in the new era of postwar Britain. Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf wrote letters that have been collected for posterity and kept a journal throughout her life, and so at first glance is the perfect person to 598 “I make efforts to start something ‘real’ but with no great success, and I don’t know that I am justified in blaming laying my failure to the war. I have been under par some time – so damned nervous and cross – and for a period could do no writing at all.” Letter #202, “To G. H. Ludolf,” undated, after November 4, 1914, in Selected Letters of E. M. Forster, 1879-1920, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), 311. The crossing out of ‘blaming’ is his. 599 Union density refers to the proportion of union members out of the total of those eligible to join; Chris Wrigley, “Labour, Labour Movements, Trade Unions and Strikes (Great Britain and Ireland)” International Encyclopedia of the First World War, 1914-1918 Online. 2015. 600 “Rise of the Labour Party” Bitesize GCSE BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zw38rdm /revision/1 (accessed February 11, 2020).
- 182. Rally Point, 182 turn to for a feminist conscientious objector’s perspective on observing the war from the home front. The strength of her candidacy is confirmed by her prodigious outpouring of creativity after the war—unlike Kipling, Woolf’s best work came after the war—but an additional variable complicated a historian’s access to her perspective. Throughout her life, Virginia Woolf struggled with mental illness that would today be classified as bipolar disorder.601 She spent time in and out of hospice, took long absences from writings and social engagements, and had self- and nurse-regulated restrictions on how much she could write during her periods of illness. Ultimately, however, Woolf’s struggles with mental illness gave her greater insight into the plights of the traumatized after WWI, and her empathy makes her works deeply psychological and compelling to those readers who understood the sentiments expressed, if lacking Woolf’s masterful articulation in expressing them. A severe manic-depressive episode at the end of 1913 left her recovering still in the countryside at the outbreak of war, and her gradual return to her previous life carried through until 1916. She wrote intermittently throughout her recovery, sometimes with the help of a nurse or her husband, and rarely mentioned the war. On the death of her childhood friend Rupert Brooke in April of 1915, Woolf was strangely silent in her correspondence. Significantly, Woolf’s daily journal stops abruptly on 15 February 1915, and does not pick up again until August of 1917. We cannot know when Woolf first received word of Brooke’s death, if it was initially kept from her for fear of affecting her precarious health. Her first mention of the loss, however, was in a letter dated 12 January 1916 to her friend Katherine Cox, who had recently visited her in the country. “I thought perhaps I was arrogant or scratchy in the way I talked of Rupert the other day,” she writes. “I never think his poetry good enough for him, but I did admire him very much indeed.”602 Without knowing Woolf’s private grief, we can only guess at the bigger response hidden behind these casual and somewhat insulting words. In light of her poor health and frequent reticence in her correspondence, most of our understanding of the impact of the war on Woolf comes through literary analysis of her postwar works. In these works, the war is a moving force, and trauma is as important to the plot as any of the characters. Woolf’s two most famous novels, To the Lighthouse (1927) and Mrs. Dalloway (1925), contain themes that, though disguised as tales of domesticity, make both war novels at their core. The popularity of the two novels is due in part to their ability to peak to their readers, predominantly of the British middle class, in terms that they themselves had a deep understanding of. For much of the British middle class, the war was not limited to the trenches—it had followed them back, moved into their homes, and changed the way they viewed themselves and the world. To the Lighthouse is divided into three parts: “The Window,” “Time Passes,” and “The Lighthouse.” “The Window” details the comfortable 601 Manuela V. Boeira et. al., “Virginia Woolf, neuroprogression, and bipolar disorder,” Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry vol. 39, no. 1 (June 2016). 602 Letter #739, “To Katherine Cox,” dated January 12, 12916, in The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Volume II: 1912-1922 (New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Janovich, 1976), 75.
- 183. Rally Point, 183 domesticity of the prewar years and through the characters of the Ramsay family and their summer home boarders, articulates the day-to-day existence of the prewar middle class. Mr. Ramsay, who wanders around the grounds repeating the Tennyson line: “Some one [sic] has blundered!” again and again, and who dreams of being a great man, represents a prewar naivete that glorifies violence by reducing it to a heroic poem.603 The line’s repetition devalues it until Mr. Ramsay seems silly instead of noble, simple-minded instead of the great academic mind he believes himself to be.604 Mrs. Ramsay’s compassion and patience for her emotionally unintelligent husband, brood of children, and diverse set of boarders provides a maternal domesticity that is essential in balancing out the chaos of the household’s competing personalities. When youngest child James is horribly disappointed that his promised trip to the lighthouse the next day will not, in fact, take place, Mrs. Ramsay distracts him with a craft project. In doing so, she shields him from her tactless husband who, like the Tennyson line, continues to state that the weather will prevent the trip.605 Mrs. Ramsay plays an additional role as matchmaker between guests and acquaintances, indicating her willingness to subscribe to a future that, before the war, seems certain. The mood of “Time Passes” is starkly different from that of “The Window.” Woolf no longer moves from character to character, delving deep into their psyches, but weaves a narrative centered around the Ramsay’s summer home, which has been left to the elements for the duration of the war. Woolf centers the house’s narrative around three ideas. First, the house is a participant in the war as much as the unseen characters. “Almost one might imagine […] asking the red and yellow roses on the wall whether they would fade” and questioning “the torn letters in the waste-paper basket, the flowers, the books, all of which were now […] asking, Were they allies? Were they enemies? How long would they endure?”606 Thus even the site of domestic safety from the “The Window” becomes embroiled in the conflict of WWI—if the passage of time fades and ruins the house, then it has also become an enemy. Second, using nature as metaphor, Woolf writes about both the destruction of war and the surprising way in which life continues despite trauma. Nature, like the house, becomes militarized: strong winds become “advance guards of great armies,” and, inexplicably except in metaphor, a “purple stain [develops] upon the bland surface of the sea as if something had boiled and bled, invisibly, beneath.”607 But nature could also seem indifferent to the colossal scale of human-made conflict. Somehow, the beach retains “the usual tokens of divine beauty—the sunset on the sea, the pallor of dawn, […] fishing boats against the moon” and “children making mud pies and pelting each other with handfuls of 603 The line is from “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson which recounts the glorious sacrifice of British light cavalry at the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War. Citation for The Delta 604 This point is not exactly the one made by Megan Mondi in her essay for The Delta, but it was in reading her analysis on Woolf’s use of typical war poetry that I formulated my own thoughts. 605 Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1981), 15. 606 Woolf, To the Lighthouse, 126. 607 Ibid., 134 and 128-129.
- 184. Rally Point, 184 grass.” 608 In a mild confusion of metaphor, Woolf asks the reader to understand the war through changes in nature but also to feel discontented that through the destruction of war, nature remains cheerily the same and untraumatized—“But the stillness and the brightness of the day were as strange as the chaos and tumult of night, with the trees standing there, and the flowers standing there, looking before them, looking up, yet beholding nothing, eyeless, and so terrible.”609 The third idea is the impersonal deaths of characters, bracketed and side- noted as if they lacked importance. The seeming insignificance of these deaths to the larger narrative reflects the ambivalence with which Woolf reports on the death of Rupert Brooke, especially in the light of the detail from the novel’s prewar section.610 The brief mention of Andrew, one of the Ramsay boys, is a primary example of Woolf’s almost dismissive reporting of his demise in battle: “Then again silence fell; and then, night after night, and sometimes in plain mid-day when the roses were bright and light turned on the wall its shape clearly there seemed to drop into this silence, this indifference, this integrity, the thud of something falling. [A shell exploded. Twenty or thirty young men were blown up in France, among them Andrew Ramsay, whose death, mercifully, was instantaneous.]”611 When the Ramsay family returns in the novel’s final part, “The Lighthouse,” both they and the house have changed, the family irreparably so. As the Ramsays and their guests, fewer in number than before the war and feeling the unshakeable loss of those who are missing, they turn again to the prospect of traveling to the lighthouse. For daughter Cam, going to the lighthouse means forgetting the past several years: “Cam could see nothing... the lives they had lived [in the summer house] were gone; were rubbed out; were past; were unreal, and now this was real.”612 As she watches the remaining Ramsays depart in their boat for the lighthouse, house guest Lily finishes the painting she had begun years ago in the events of “The Window” by drawing a line down the middle, marking the difference between the prewar world and the postwar world. The novel ends with Lily looking out into the mist to the “almost invisible” lighthouse, waiting to see if the Ramsays’ boat would reach it. She does not know but feels certain that the Ramsays have arrived.613 Thus the lighthouse represents two different methods for coping with the trauma of WWI. Cam ignores the past and actively pursues the future, whereas Lily understands that everything has changed and can move forward in her world by accepting both 608 Ibid., 133. 609 Ibid., 135. 610 “[Mr. Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched his arms out, but Mrs. Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before, his arms, though stretched out, remained empty.]” page 128 and “[Prue Ramsay died that summer in some illness connected with childbirth, which was indeed a tragedy, people said”] Woolf, To the Lighthouse, 132. 611 Ibid., 133. 612 Ibid., 166-167. 613 Ibid., 208.
- 185. Rally Point, 185 the past and the new future. Finally, by bookending the novel with the quest to reach the lighthouse, Woolf speaks to a loss of childhood due to the war. Although the original reasons for visiting the lighthouse no longer hold true after war and the death of childhood, the Ramsays want to go as a means of finding continuity with their prewar life. Because the fate of the Ramsays’ boat is unknown, leaving the reader unable to ascertain if any of the remaining Ramsays have finished their journey, To the Lighthouse casts doubt that the threads of one’s life can be pieced together after the war. The novel is about nothing if not the war; the war acts as the agent of all change, from death to the end of childhood. To the Lighthouse is a novel intimately aware of the cost of the war on a family, and the emphasis on the cost to the domestic front is an analysis, of the four authors I examine, that is unique to Woolf’s war literature. In Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, the story of the titular character preparing for an evening party runs parallel to that of Septimus Warren Smith, a WWI veteran haunted by the death of his friend Evans. Mrs. Dalloway is a sort of everyman who stands in for many British middle-class women: she runs an errand, gossips, reminisces about past loves, and wonders about different roads her life might have taken. In the character of Septimus, Woolf confronts the mental health stigma many veterans faced upon returning home. Septimus’ wife, an Italian woman named Lucrezia, is more frightened that people will notice that her husband is troubled than she is concerned by his behavior.614 She despairs at what she sees as Septimus’ degeneration: “Septimus had fought; he was brave; he was not Septimus now,” because “it was cowardly for a man to say he would kill himself.”615 The separate narratives merge when the news of Septimus’ suicide reaches Mrs. Dalloway’s evening party. In a daze, Mrs. Dalloway leaves the party for an upstairs window, where she stands in parallel to Septimus’ death from a similar location. Her life, “wreathed about with chatter,” disguises the similarities she feels between her own feelings and those she imagines for Septimus.616 In Mrs. Dalloway’s mind, “death was an attempt to communicate,” to explain a deep loneliness, and a means by which to end that pain: “there was an embrace in death.”617 Mrs. Dalloway’s rambling thoughts suggest that maybe she too had personal experience with a gnawing loneliness that cast suicide as a viable solution.618 There is even guilt for having not acted on these feelings: “It was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress.”619 Finally, as Mrs. Dalloway resolves herself to return to the party and the distraction of her 614 “For she could stand it no longer. [...] Far rather would she that he were dead! She could not sit beside him when he stared so and did not see her and made everything terrible.” Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1981), 23. 615 Ibid. 616 Ibid., 184. 617 Ibid. 618 “Even now, quite often if Richard had not been there reading the Times, so that she could crouch like a bird and gradually revive, [...] she must have perished.” Ibid., 185. 619 Ibid.
- 186. Rally Point, 186 guests, she decides that “she felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away.”620 The connection of these two narratives—the traumatized WWI soldier and the emotionally exhausted woman—through their mutual suicide ideation speaks to the effects of the war’s hard times on the psyches of different kind of participants. Woolf’s repetition of the line “Fear no more the heat of the sun,” from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, in Mrs. Dalloway’s internal thoughts throughout the novel further indicates the frequency with which Mrs. Dalloway casually contemplates death’s ability to transcend life’s pains.621 For readers aware of Woolf’s own suicide in 1941, in the midst of another world war, Septimus’ actions and Mrs. Dalloway’s self-proclaimed kindred spirit speak clearly to their author’s own struggles with mental illness. The British army recorded over 80,000 cases of “shell shock” throughout the war’s duration, and the war had untold effects on the mental wellbeing of soldiers and civilians alike.622 Lacking today’s better understanding of trauma and mental health, the war’s survivors’ best hope was to hide their pain to the best of their abilities. Just as Lucrezia disdainfully regards Septimus, British society also considered sufferers’ “reputations as soldiers and men” corrupted by cowardice.623 For many, the post-WWI years marked a time of serious mental health crisis before the understanding of such a concept existed, and before many extended empathy to others or kindness to themselves. Like Mrs. Dalloway, one could speak of their own desire for death through Shakespearian code, but that was all. Conclusion Lacking the tales of bullets and bloodshed customary to works traditionally categorized as war literature, the postwar writings of Kipling, Tolkien, Forster, and Woolf nevertheless give an important glimpse into both their imaginations and the imaginations of their respective audiences. The long literary lives of these authors’ works speak to their ability to capture both a historic time and universally understood sentiments. World War I brought man- made destruction to a new scale in Europe, and inevitably changed the way its survivors viewed the world in the process. These authors would have perhaps agreed with more recent scholarship that points to creative writing and journaling as therapeutic.624 Perhaps they would have denied their work had any sort of function in allowing them to process their experiences and traumas. But the war 620 Ibid., 186. 621 “Fear no more the heat of the sun/ Nor the furious winter’s rages/ Thou thy worldly task hast done/ Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.” These lines are the opening stanza of a poem recited by grieving characters at the grave of a friend in Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline. 622 Joanna Bourke, “Shell Shock During World War One,” BBC News, March 10, 2011, http://www. bbc.co.uk /history/worldwars/wwone/shellshock_01.shtml, (accessed May 1, 2020). 623 Ibid. 624 Bridget Murray, “Writing to Heal,” Monitor 33, no. 6 (June 2002): 54.; Kathleen Adams, “Writing as therapy,” Counseling and Human Development 31, no. 5 (January 1999): 1.
- 187. Rally Point, 187 indelibly left its mark on them, from what they found to be important, to the monsters that plagued their memories and their expectations for the future. Although they produced very different styles and types of literature in the postwar years, the struggles of Kipling, Tolkien, Forster, and Woolf to digest their experiences through writing speaks to the struggle faced by others like them, the rest of the British middle class who had to pick up the threads of their lives before the war and carry on the best they could with what they had learned and what they had left. Additionally, the enthusiastic reception and the long literary lives of the works discussed here speaks to their ability to preserve an historic time. The Lord of the Rings, A Passage to India, To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway all made Times’ list of 100 best English novels published after 1923.625 Granta named “The Years Between” as the best book of 1919, a recognition it earned almost one hundred years later.626 None of the works discussed have ever gone out of print. In providing perspectives that deviate from the traditional scenes of World War I, the post-war publications of Kipling, Tolkien, Forster, and Woolf speak of universals such as guilt, grief, friendship, death, and hope. These sentiments, timed to speak to a post-WWI audience and developed into poetry and narrative by war survivors, place these works next to the traditional written output of World War I. 625 Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo, “All-Time 100 Novels,” Time, https://entertainment.time.com/ 2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/all/ (accessed March 13, 2020). 626 Robert Chandler, “Best Book of 1919: The Years Between by Rudyard Kipling,” Granta, December 19, 2018, https://granta.com/best-book-of-1919-the-years- between-by-rudyard-kipling/ (accessed March 13, 2020).
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