STEC Archives, Digital Document Division
Curator signature: Jer
Format: Textual Record
Special Documents Division
Archival Scan of “the General,” 1st edition
Author: Unknown
Publisher: The John Birch Society
Dated 1958
Curator’s comments:
In 1958, the John Birch Society, a popular anti-communist and self-described patriot group, sends a 565 page pamphlet titled ‘the General’ to its 800,000 members scattered around the United States. Within days, the anti-Eisenhower publication propels itself into the forefront of national discourse and ignites what would ultimately culminate in the Freedom from Wars affair.STEC has chosen to archive and digitize the entirety of the pamphlet as it was presented in order to inform and educate the American people. Our position is that the Eisenhower administration is instrumental to STEC’s early efforts and played an unparalleled role in the efforts to preserve humanity from the Abyssal invasion. The precedent it set and the actions it may have taken may not necessarily be sensible to people at the time, but history has a tendency to vindicate when the full truth is made known.
Preface
It is difficult for many of us to remember just what the score was, only a few years ago, so a brief review of the situation at the time may be helpful.
While the affairs of the Kremlin were more unsettled than they had been since the purges of 1937, it is now known with certainty that the Russians were well on their way with a nuclear weapon. The few they had obtained for demonstration and prestige purposes had been assembled from parts stolen from our plants. Had Lavrenti Beria and Georgi Malenkov be not locked into their mortal contest for dictatorial power, few wonders what more could the International Communist order could accomplish in these short years.
General Van Fleet could have been in position to inflict a devastating defeat on the Chinese Communists in Korea. The South Koreans could have won an overwhelming victory, and should have been allowed to do so.
Chiang Kai-shek had an army, two million strong, on Formosa, straining at the leash to return triumphant to the mainland – either independently, or as our allies in Korea.
Japan had not yet been infiltrated and subverted by Communist influence as it has today. Ramon Magsaysay was in the very process of routing the Communists in the Phillipines. Ho Chi Minh was on the verge of defeat in Vietnam. Sukarno had not yet dared to show his true colors in Indonesia. Across the world, no strategically serious Communist advances could have been found. Not in Africa. Not in the Middle East, except for Israel with its longstanding solidarity, could there be any sympathizers of the communist movement found. Turkey had shown a stunning willingness to actually fight the Communists judging by their actions in Korea. Greece, Spain, Italy, all solidly in the anti-Communist camp, with Italy’s Christian Democrats still firmly in control.
Of our traditional allies, England had thrown out the leftist socialists and installed a Tory government, which, Winston Churchill’s successor being the sole exception, was at least a bit awake to the latent Communist threat. France, always a hotbed of leftist activity, was at least managing the nefarious influence of that rascal de Gaulle and his tireless efforts to deliver France into communist hands.
West Germany was attempting to establish an anti-Communist European Defense Community, given the extraordinary resentment found in the enslaved peoples of Poland, the Balkans, the Satellites. Flames of anti-Soviet rebellion burned bright across all of Europe, and the East Germans arose in the most determined and dangerous uprising Moscow ever had to face.
Yet it is the American government that had saved it once again. The American government had saved the Soviet regime from financial collapse in 1933, and given its prestige and credit the vital hypodermic injection of diplomatic recognition. The American government had saved the Soviet regime from destruction by Hitler’s armies in 1942 and 1943 through intervention with both supplies and military force. The American government had made possible all the post-war expansions of the Soviet empire via its acquiescence and frequent collaborations with the Soviet subjugation. And it is the sad truth today that the tyranny of the Soviet Union was actually saved, in this period of great vulnerability, by just one thing.
The inauguration of Dwight David Eisenhower as President of the United States.
In a time period where the American people had just begun to wake up to the extent of Communist infiltration into our government and into every segment of our public life, it was imperative for him to bring good men into his government and that he talked (at least for a while) a good brand of anti-Communism. However, the Communist influence swhich completely controlled him kept the reins tight and effective.
Subtly, cleverly, always proclaiming otherwise and finding specious excuses for what were really pro-Communist actions, these Communist influences made him put the whole diplomatic, economic, military, and political powers of this country to work on the side of Russia and the Communists.
You only have to look at where we stand today, a few short years later, at exactly these same spots on the scoreboards reviewed above, to realize the truth of this assertion and the extent of Communist success. The score, as I will painfully point out, is zero. One if you count Canada, who had at least uncovered a most seditious affair in her country and excised it with all due diligence.
How is it possible for the forces of the free world to lose so much ground, so rapidly, to an enemy so inferior, by chance or by stupidity?
The only remaining explanation calls for a very sinister and vile word, but one which by no means is new in the history of government or of nations. The word is treason. It is the province of this treatise to show the part played in these treasonous developments, however unwittingly or unwillingly, by Dwight Eisenhower.
This treatise shall endeavor to demonstrate to the reader how, as the most completely opportunistic and unprincipled politician America has ever raised to high office, he was so supremely fit for the part. Eisenhower was cunning and entirely without principles and hungry for glory, but a man as such could not simply have acted as a tool of the Communists. No. With regard to Eisenhower, it is difficult to avoid the question of deliberate treason.
The publication of this book is not for me a happy occasion. We live today in a world which none of us – except the conspirators who have made it this way – wanted. I do not relish the experience of condemning others, nor of living myself amid a torrent of protests and condemnations. But it takes a great deal to wake up those perfectly good and patriotic citizens who have had so skillfully and patiently bestowed upon them so large a vested interest in error. If this bit of history will ring and continue to ring like a disturbing alarm clock in the minds of many men, then so much the better.
For this is history in substance, though not in format or in literary quality. Who fears history, and who would there be protests against it? If this history contains facts that are unpleasant and disturbing to the reader and myself, that is the fault of those who made history rather than him who wrote it.