The Murrow-McCarthy Broadcasts

A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy – March 9, 1954

EDWARD R. MURROW: Because a report on Senator McCarthy is by definition controversial, we want to say exactly what we mean to say, and I request your permission to read from script whatever remarks Murrow and Friendly may make.

If the senator feels that we have done violence to his words or pictures and desires so to speak to answer himself, an opportunity will be afforded him on this program. Our working thesis tonight is this quotation: "If this fight against communism is made a fight between America's two great political parties, the American people know that one of these parties will be destroyed, and the Republic cannot endure very long as a one-party system."

We applaud that statement, and we think Senator McCarthy ought to. He said it seventeen months ago in Milwaukee.

SENATOR JOSEPH MCCARTHY: The American people realize that this cannot be made a fight between America's two great political parties. If this fight against communism is made a fight between America's two great political parties, the American people know that one of those parties will be destroyed, and the Republic can't endure very long as a one-party system.

MURROW: But on February 4, 1954, Senator McCarthy spoke of one party's treason. This was Charleston, West Virginia, where there were no cameras running. It was recorded on tape.

MCCARTHY: The issue between Republicans and Democrats is clearly drawn. It has been deliberately drawn by those who have been in charge of twenty years of treason. Now the hard fact is—the hard fact is that those who wear the label—those who wear the label "Democrat" wear it with the stain of a historic betrayal.

MURROW: Seventeen months ago, candidate Eisenhower met Senator McCarthy in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and he laid down some ground rules on how he would fight communism if elected.

DWIGHT EISENHOWER: Now, this is the pledge that I make. If I am charged by you people to be the responsible head of the executive department, it will be my initial responsibility to see that subversion, disloyalty, is kept out of the executive department.

We will always appreciate and welcome congressional investigation, but the responsibility will rest squarely on the shoulders of the executive, and I hold that there are already ample powers in the government to get rid of these people if the executive department is really concerned in doing it. We can do it with absolute assurance that American principles—of a trial by jury, of the innocent until proved guilty—are all observed, and I expect to do it.

MURROW: That same night in Milwaukee, Senator McCarthy stated what he would do if the General was elected.

MCCARTHY: I spent about half an hour with the General last night. While I can't report that we agreed entirely on everything—I can report that, when I left that meeting with the General, I had the same feeling as when I went in. And that is that he is a great American, will make a great president; an outstanding president. But I want to tell you tonight, tell the American people: as long as I represent you and the rest of the American people in the Senate, I shall continue to call them as I see them, regardless of who happens to be president.

MURROW: November 24, 1953.

MCCARTHY: A few days ago, I read that President Eisenhower expressed the hope that, by election time in 1954, the subject of communism would be a dead and forgotten issue. The raw, harsh, unpleasant fact is that communism is an issue and will be an issue in 1954.

MURROW: On one thing the senator has been consistent. Often operating as a one-man committee, he has traveled far; interviewed many; terrorized some; accused civilian and military leaders of the past administration of a great conspiracy to turn over the country to communism; investigated and substantially demoralized the present State Department; made varying charges of espionage at Fort Monmouth. The Army says it has been unable to find anything relating to espionage there. He has interrogated a varied assortment of what he calls "Fifth Amendment Communists."

Republican Senator Flanders of Vermont said of McCarthy today, "He dons his war paint. He goes into his war dance. He emits his war whoops; he goes forth to battle and proudly returns with the scalp of a pink Army dentist."

Other critics have accused the senator of using the bullwhip and the smear. There was a time two years ago when the senator and his friends said he had been smeared and bullwhipped.

FRANK KEEFE: Well, you'd sometimes think to hear the quartet that call themselves "Operation Truth" damning Joe McCarthy and resorting to the vilest smears I have ever heard. Well, this is the answer. If I could express it in what's in my heart right now, I'd do it in terms of the poet who once said:

Ah 'tis but a dainty flower I bring you,
Yes, 'tis but a violet, glistening with dew,
But still in its heart there lies beauties concealed
So in our heart our love for you lies unrevealed.

MCCARTHY: You know, I used to pride myself on the idea that I was a bit tough, especially over the past eighteen or nineteen months when we've been kicked around and bullwhipped and damned. I didn't think that I could be touched very deeply. But tonight, frankly, my cup and my heart is so full I can't talk to you.

MURROW: But in Philadelphia on Washington's Birthday, 1954, his heart was so full he could talk. He reviewed some of the General Zwicker testimony and proved he hadn't abused him.

MCCARTHY: Nothing is more serious than being a traitor to the country as part of the communist conspiracy. Are you enjoying this abuse of the General?

A question: "Do you think stealing fifty dollars is more serious than being a traitor to the country and part of the communist conspiracy?"

Answer: "That, sir, was not my decision."

Shall we go on to that for a while? I hate to impose on your time, but I've just got two pages. This is the abuse which is the real meat of abuse. This is the official reporter's record of the hearing. After he said he wouldn't remove that General from the Army who cleared a communist major I said to him, "Then, General, you should be removed from any command. Any man who has been given the honor of being promoted to general and who says, 'I will protect another general who protects communists,' is not fit to wear that uniform, General."

I think it is a tremendous disgrace to the Army to have to bring these facts before the public, but I intend to give it to the public, General. I have a duty to do that. I intend to repeat to the press exactly what you said, so that you can know that and be back here to hear it, General.

And wait till you hear the bleeding hearts scream and cry about our methods of trying to drag the truth from those who know, or should know, who covered up a Fifth Amendment Communist major. But they say, "Oh, it's all right to uncover them, but don't get rough doing it, McCarthy."

MURROW: But two days later Secretary Stevens and the senator had lunch, agreed on a memorandum of understanding—disagreed on what the small type said.

ROBERT T. STEVENS: I shall never accede to the abuse of Army personnel under any circumstance, including committee hearings. I shall not accede to them being brow-beaten or humiliated. In the light of those assurances, although I did not propose the cancellation of the hearing, I acceded to it. If it had not been for these assurances, I would never have entered into any agreement whatsoever.

MURROW: Then President Eisenhower issued a statement that his advisers thought censured the senator. But the senator saw it as another victory—called the entire Zwicker case "a tempest in a teapot."

MCCARTHY: If a stupid, arrogant, or witless man in a position of power appears before our committee and is found aiding the Communist Party, he will be exposed. The fact that he might be a general places him in no special class as far as I am concerned. Apparently the president and I now agree on the necessity of getting rid of communists. We apparently disagree only on how we should handle those who protect communists.

When the shouting and the tumult dies, the American people and the president will realize that this unprecedented mudslinging against the committee by the extreme left wing elements of press and radio was caused solely because another Fifth Amendment Communist was finally dug out of the dark recesses and exposed to public view.

MURROW: Senator McCarthy claims that only the left wing press criticized him on the Zwicker case. Of the fifty large circulating newspapers in the country, these are the left wing papers that criticized him. These are the ones that supported him. The ratio is about three-to-one. Now let us look at some of these left wing papers that criticized the senator.

The Chicago Tribune: "McCarthy will better serve his cause if he learns to distinguish the role of investigator from the role of avenging angel."

The New York Times: "The unwarranted interference of a demagogue…a domestic Munich."

The Times Herald of Washington: "Senator McCarthy's behavior towards Zwicker not justified."

The Herald Tribune of New York: "McCarthyism involves assaults on basic Republican concepts."

The Milwaukee Journal: "The line must be drawn and defended or McCarthy will become the government."

The Evening Star of Washington: "It was a bad day for everyone who resents and detests the bullyboy tactics which Senator McCarthy so often employees."

The New York World Telegram: "Bamboozling, bludgeoning, distorting way."

The St. Louis Post Dispatch: "Unscrupulous McCarthy bullying. What a tragic irony it is that the president's political advisers keep him from doing what every decent instinct must be commanding him to do."

Well, that's the ratio—about three-to-one—so-called "left-wing" press.

Another interesting thing was said about the Zwicker case, and it was said by Senator McCarthy.

MCCARTHY: Well, may I say that I was extremely shocked when I heard that Secretary Stevens told two Army officers that they had to take part in the cover-up of those who promoted and coddled communists. As I read his statement, I thought of that quotation, "On what meat doth this, our Caesar, feed?"

MURROW: And upon what meat does Senator McCarthy feed? Two of the staples of his diet are the investigations, protected by immunity, and the half-truth. We herewith submit samples of both.

First, the half-truth. This was an attack on Adlai Stevenson at the end of the '52 campaign. President Eisenhower, it must be said, had no prior knowledge of it.

MCCARTHY: I perform this unpleasant task because the American people are entitled to have the coldly documented history of this man who says, "I want to be your President."

Strangely, Alger—I mean, Adlai...but let's move on to another part of the jigsaw puzzle. Now, while you would think—while you may think there could be no connection between the debonair Democrat candidate and a dilapidated Massachusetts barn, I want to show you a picture of this barn and explain the connection.

Here is the outside of the barn. Give me the pictures showing the inside, if you will. Here is the outside of a barn up at Lee, Massachusetts. It looks it couldn't house a farmer's cow or goat. Here's the inside: a beautifully paneled conference room with maps of the Soviet Union. Well, in what way does Stevenson tie up with this?

My investigators went up and took pictures of this barn after we had been tipped off of what was in it, tipped off that there was in this barn all the missing documents from the communist front, IPR. The IPR which has been named by the McCarran Committee. Named before the McCarran Committee as a cover shop for communist espionage.

Now, let's take a look at a photostat of a document taken from that Massachusetts barn. One of those documents was never supposed to have seen the light of day—rather interesting it is. This is a document that shows that Alger Hiss and Frank Coe recommended Adlai Stevenson to the Mont Tremblant Conference, which was called for the purpose of establishing foreign policy—postwar foreign policy—in Asia. Now, as you know, Alger Hiss is a convicted traitor. Frank Coe has been named under oath before congressional committees seven times as a member of the Communist Party. Why? Why do Hiss and Coe find that Adlai Stevenson is the man they want representing them at this conference? I don't know. Perhaps Adlai knows.

MURROW: But Senator McCarthy didn't permit his audience to hear the entire paragraph. This is the official record of the McCarran hearings. Anyone can buy it for two dollars. Here's a quote: "Another possibility for the Mont Tremblant conferences on Asia is someone from Knox's office or Stimson's office. Frank Knox was our wartime Secretary of the Navy; Henry Stimson our Secretary of the Army. Both distinguished Republicans." And it goes on: "Coe and Hiss mentioned Adlai Stevenson, one of Knox's special assistants, and Harvey Bundy, former Assistant Secretary of State under Hoover and now assistant to Stimson, because of their jobs."

We read from this documented record not in defense of Mr. Stevenson, but in defense of truth. Specifically, Mr. Stevenson's identification with that red barn was no more, no less than that of Knox, Stimson, or Bundy. It should be stated that Mr. Stevenson was once a member of the Institute of Pacific Relations. But so were such other loyal Americans as Senator Ferguson, John Foster Dulles, Paul Hoffman, Harry Luce, and Herbert Hoover. Their association carries with it no guilt, and that barn has nothing to do with any of them.

Now, a sample of an investigation. The witness was Reed Harris, for many years a civil servant in the State Department directing the Information Service. Harris was accused of helping the communistic cause by curtailing some broadcasts to Israel. Senator McCarthy summoned him and questioned him about a book he had written in 1932.

MCCARTHY: May we come to order. Mr. Reed Harris? Your name is Reed Harris?

REED HARRIS: That's correct.

MCCARTHY: You wrote a book in '32, is that correct?

HARRIS: Yes, I wrote a book. And as I testified in executive session—

MCCARTHY: At the time you wrote the book—pardon me, go ahead. I'm sorry.

HARRIS: At the time I wrote the book, the atmosphere in the universities of the United States was greatly affected by the Great Depression then in existence. The attitudes of students, the attitudes of the general public, were considerably different than they are at this moment, and for one thing there certainly was no awareness to the degree that there is today of the way the Communist Party works.

MCCARTHY: You attended Columbia University in the early thirties. Is that right?

HARRIS: I did, Mr. Chairman.

MCCARTHY: Will you speak a little louder, sir?

HARRIS: I did, Mr. Chairman.

MCCARTHY: And were you expelled from Columbia?

HARRIS: I was suspended from classes on April 1, 1932. I was later reinstated, and I resigned from the university.

MCCARTHY: And you resigned from the university. Did the Civil Liberties Union provide you with an attorney at that time?

HARRIS: I had many offers of attorneys, and one of those was from the American Civil Liberties Union, yes.

MCCARTHY: The question is did the Civil Liberties Union supply you with an attorney?

HARRIS: They did supply an attorney.

MCCARTHY: The answer is yes?

HARRIS: The answer is yes.

MCCARTHY: You know the Civil Liberties Union has been listed as "a front for, and doing the work of," the Communist Party?

HARRIS: Mr. Chairman, this was 1932.

MCCARTHY: Yeah, I know this was 1932. Do you know that they since have been listed as a front for, and doing the work of, the Communist Party?

HARRIS: I do not know that they have been listed so, sir.

MCCARTHY: You don't know they have been listed?

HARRIS: I have heard that mentioned, or read that mentioned.

MCCARTHY: Now, you wrote a book in 1932. I'm going to ask you again. At the time you wrote this book, did you feel that professors should be given the right to teach sophomores that marriage, let me quote, "should be cast out of our civilization as antiquated and stupid religious phenomena?" Was that your feeling at that time?

HARRIS: My feeling was that professors should have the right to express their considered opinions on any subject, whatever they were, sir.

MCCARTHY: All right, I'm going to ask you this question again.

HARRIS: That includes that quotation. They should have the right to teach anything that came to their minds as being a proper thing to teach.

MCCARTHY: I'm going to make you answer this.

HARRIS: All right, I'll answer yes, but you put an implication on it, and you feature this particular point out of the book which of course is quite out of context; does not give a proper impression of the book as a whole. The American public doesn't get an honest impression of even that book, bad as it is, from what you're quoting from it.

MCCARTHY: Well, then, let's continue to read your own writing, and—

HARRIS: Twenty-one years ago, again.

MCCARTHY: Yes, but we'll try and bring you down to date, if we can.

HARRIS: Mr. Chairman, two weeks ago, Senator Taft took the position that I took twenty-one years ago, that communists and socialists should be allowed to teach in the schools. It so happens that nowadays I don't agree with Senator Taft as far as communist teaching in the schools is concerned, because I think communists are in effect a plainclothes auxiliary of the Red Army—the Soviet Red Army—and I don't want to see them in any of our schools teaching.

MCCARTHY: I don't recall Senator Taft ever having any of the background that you've got, sir.

MCCARTHY: I resent the tone of this inquiry very much, Mr. Chairman. I resent it, not only because it is my neck, my public neck, that you are, I think, very skillfully trying to wring, but I say it because there are thousands of able and loyal employees in the federal government of the United States who have been properly cleared according to the laws and the security practices of their agencies, as I was—unless the new regime says no—I was before.

SENATOR JOHN MCLELLAN: Do you think this book that you wrote then did considerable harm—its publication might have had adverse influence on the public by an expression of views contained in it?

HARRIS: The sale of that book was so abysmally small, it was so unsuccessful that a question of its influence—really, you can go back to the publisher. You'll see it was one of the most unsuccessful books he ever put out. He's still sorry about it, just as I am.

MCLELLAN: Well, I think that's a compliment to American intelligence. I will say that to him.

MURROW: Senator McCarthy succeeded in proving that Reed Harris had once written a bad book, which the American people had proved twenty-two years ago by not buying it. Which is what they eventually do will all bad ideas. As for Reed Harris, his resignation was accepted a month later with a letter of commendation. McCarthy claimed it as a victory.

The Reed Harris hearing demonstrates one of the senator's techniques. Twice he said the American Civil Liberties Union was listed as a subversive front. The Attorney General's list does not and has never listed the ACLU as subversive, nor does the FBI or any other federal government agency. And the American Civil Liberties Union holds in its files letters of commendation from President Truman, President Eisenhower, and General MacArthur.

Now let us try to bring the McCarthy story a little more up to date. Two years ago Senator Benton of Connecticut accused McCarthy of apparent perjury, unethical practice, and perpetrating a hoax on the Senate. McCarthy sued for two million dollars. Last week he dropped the case, saying no one could be found who believed Benton's story. Several volunteers have come forward saying they believe it in its entirety.

Today, Senator McCarthy says he's going to get a lawyer and force the networks to give him time to reply to Adlai Stevenson's speech.

Earlier the senator asked, "Upon what meat does this, our Caesar, feed?" Had he looked three lines earlier in Shakespeare's Caesar, he would have found this line, which is not altogether inappropriate: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind as between the internal and the external threats of communism.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities.

As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear. He merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

Good night, and good luck.

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Senator McCarthy Responds on See It Now – April 6, 1954

EDWARD R. MURROW: One month ago tonight we presented a report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. We labeled it as controversial. Most of that report consisted of words and pictures of the senator. At that time we said, "If the senator believes we have done violence to his words or pictures, if he desires to speak to answer himself, an opportunity will be afforded him on this program." 

The senator sought the opportunity; asked for a delay of three weeks because he said he was very busy and he wished adequate time to prepare his reply. We agreed. We supplied the senator with a kinescope of that program of March 9, and with such scripts and recordings as he requested. We placed no restrictions upon the manner or method of the presentation of his reply, and we suggested that we would not take time to comment on this particular program. The senator chose to make his reply on film. Here now is Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, junior senator from Wisconsin.

SENATOR JOSEPH MCCARTHY: Good evening. Mr. Edward R. Murrow, Educational Director of the Columbia Broadcasting System, devoted his program to an attack on the work of the United States Senate Investigating Committee, and on me personally as its chairman. Now over the past four years he has made repeated attacks upon me and those fighting communists.

Now, of course, neither Joe McCarthy nor Edward R. Murrow is of any great importance as individuals. We are only important in our relation to the great struggle to preserve our American liberties. The Senate Investigating Committee has forced out of government, and out of important defense plants, communists engaged in the Soviet conspiracy. And you know, it's interesting to note that the viciousness of Murrow's attacks is in direct ratio to our success in digging out communists.

Now, ordinarily I would not take time out from the important work at hand to answer Murrow. However, in this case I feel justified in doing so because Murrow is a symbol, the leader, and the cleverest of the jackal pack which is always found at the throat of anyone who dares to expose individual communists and traitors.

I am compelled by the facts to say to you that Mr. Edward R. Murrow, as far back as twenty years ago, was engaged in propaganda for communist causes. For example, the Institute of International Education, of which he was the acting director, was chosen to act as a representative by a Soviet agency to do a job which would normally be done by the Russian secret police. Mr. Murrow sponsored a communist school in Moscow. In the selection of American students and teachers who were to attend, Mr. Murrow's organization acted for the Russian espionage and propaganda organization known as VOKS (V-O-K-S). And many of those selected were later exposed as communists. Murrow's organization selected such notorious communists as Isadore Begun, David Zablodowsky—incidentally, Zablodowsky was forced out of the United Nations, when my chief counsel presented his case to the grand jury and gave a picture of his communist activities.

Now, Mr. Murrow, by his own admission, was a member of the IWW—that's the Industrial Workers of the World—a terrorist organization cited as subversive by an attorney general of the United States, who stated that it was an organization which seeks, and I quote: "to alter the government of the United States by unconstitutional means." Now, other government committees have had before them actors, screenwriters, motion picture producers, and others, who admitted communist affiliations but pleaded youth or ignorance. Now, Mr. Murrow can hardly make the same plea.

On March 9 of this year, Mr. Murrow, a trained reporter who had traveled all over the world, who is the Educational Director of CBS, followed implicitly the communist line, as laid down in the last six months; laid down not only by the communist Daily Worker, but by the communist magazine Political Affairs and by the National Conference of the Communist Party of the United States of America.

Now the question: why is it important to you, the people of America, to know why the Educational Director and the Vice President of CBS so closely follow the Communist Party line? To answer that question we must turn back the pages of history.

A little over a hundred years ago, a little group of men in Europe conspired to deliver the world to a new system, to communism. Under their system, the individual was nothing, the family was nothing; God did not even exist. Their theory was that an all-powerful State should have the power of life or death over its citizens without even a trial; that everything and everybody belonged to the rulers of the states. They openly wrote—nothing's secret about it—that, in their efforts to gain power, they would be justified in doing anything. They would be justified in following the trail of deceit, lies, terror, murder, treason, blackmail. All these things were elevated to virtues in the communist rule book. If a convert to communism could be persuaded that he was a citizen of the world, it of course would be much easier to make him a traitor to his own country.

Now, for seventy years the communists made little progress. Let me show you a map of the world as it stood in the middle of the First World War in 1917, before the Russian Revolution. You will see there is not a single foot of ground on the face of the globe under the domination or control of the communists, and bear in mind that this was only thirty-six years ago.

In 1917 we were engaged in a great world war in defense of our way of life and in defense of American liberty. The Kaiser was obliged to divide his armies and fight in both the Eastern and the Western fronts. In the midst of the war, the Russian people overthrew their Czarist master and they set up a democratic form of government under the leadership of Alexander Kerensky. Now, Kerensky's government instantly pledged all-out support to the Allies. At this instant the Imperial German government secretly financed the return to Russia of seven communist exiles led by Nikolai Lenin, exiles who had been forced to flee the country. A rather important event in the history of the world.

Now once in Russia, by the same methods which the communists are employing in the United States today, they undermined the Army; they undermined the Navy; the civilian heads of the government. And in one hundred days those seven communists were literally the masters of Russia. Now, with all of the wealth of the nation at their command, they proceeded to finance communist parties in every country in the world. They sent to those countries trained propagandists and spies. In every country they of course had to find glib, clever men like Edward R. Murrow who would sponsor invitations to students and teachers to attend indoctrinational schools in Moscow, exactly as Murrow has done. They trained communists in every country in the world. Their sole purpose was to infiltrate the government, and once communists were in government they in turn brought others in.

Now let us look at the map of the world as it was twenty years ago. At that time there was one country with 180,000,000 people in communist chains.

Now let us look at a map of the world as of tonight, this sixth day of April, nineteen hundred and fifty-four. Over one-third of the earth's area under communist control and 800,000,000 people in communist chains, in addition to the 800,000,000 in communist chains in Europe and Asia. Finally, the communists have gained a foothold and a potential military base here in our half of the world, in Guatemala, with the communists seeping down into the Honduras.

My good friends, how much of this was achieved by military force and how much was achieved by traitors and communist-line propagandists in our own government and in other free governments?

Let's start in Europe, if we may. They took by military force a little piece of Finland. In the same way they took three small Baltic States: Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. They took half of Poland in the same way. They acquired the rest of Poland through Polish traitors and communists in our own government, who gave American dollars and American support to the communists in Poland. They took over Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary without firing a single shot. They did this by the infiltration of communists in the key spots in the governments.

The communists took over Czechoslovakia without firing a shot. This they did by the infiltration of communists into the Czechoslovakian government also. And listen to what a high official in the anticommunist government of Czechoslovakia had to say about the communist enslavement of Czechoslovakia. Here's what he said. He said:

"In my country, the pattern was identical to what it is in the United States. If anyone, before the communists took over, dared to attack those communists who were preparing and shaping the policy of my government—shaping the policy to betray my people—he was promptly attacked and destroyed by a combination of communists, fellow travelers, and those unthinking people who thought they were serving the cause of liberalism and progress, but who were actually serving the cause of the most reactionary credo of all times: communism."

Still quoting: "Because of those people, night has fallen upon my nation and slavery upon my people."

Now, shifting to another area of the world, to the East, how about this vast land area and the teeming masses of China? Let's just take a look at that map, if you please. Keep in mind that a few short years ago China was a free nation friendly to the United States. Now, were the—were—let's take a look at that map. Were those 400,000,000 Chinese captured by force of arms? Certainly not. They were delivered. Delivered to communist slave masters by the jackal pack of communist-line propagandists, including the friends of Mr. Edward R. Murrow, who day after day shouted to the world that the Chinese Communists were agrarian reformers, and that our ally, the Republic of China, represented everything that was evil and wicked.

Now, my good friends, if there were no communists in our government, would we have consented to and connived to turn over all of our Chinese friends to the Russians? Now, my good friends, if there had been no communists in our government, would we have rewarded them with all of Manchuria, half of the Kuril Islands, and one half of Korea? Now how many Americans—how many Americans have died and will die because of this sellout to Communist Russia? God only knows.

If there were no communists in our government, why did we delay—for eighteen months—delay our research on the hydrogen bomb, even though our intelligence agencies were reporting day after day that the Russians were feverishly pushing their development of the H-bomb? And may I say to America tonight that our nation may well die—our nation may well die—because of that eighteen-months deliberate delay. And I ask you, who caused it? Was it loyal Americans? Or was it traitors in our government?

It is often said by the left wing that it is sufficient to fight communism in Europe and Asia, but that communism is not a domestic American issue. But the record, my good friends, is that the damage has been done by cleverly calculated subversion at home, and not from abroad. It is this problem of subversion that our committee faces.

Now, let us very quickly glance at some of the work of our committee—some of the work it's done in slightly over a year's time. For example, 238 witnesses were examined in public session; 367 witnesses examined in executive session; 84 witnesses refused to testify as to communist activities on the ground that, if they told the truth, they might go to jail; 24 witnesses with communist backgrounds have been discharged from jobs in which they were handling secret, top secret, confidential material, individuals who were exposed before our committee.

Of course you can't measure the success of a committee by box score, based on the number of communist heads that have rolled from secret jobs. It is completely impossible to even estimate the effect on our government of the day-to-day plodding exposure of communists. And that is, of course, why the Murrows bleed.

For example, the exposure of only one Fifth Amendment communist in the Government Printing Office, an office having access to secret material from almost every government agency, resulted in an undisclosed number of suspensions. It resulted in the removal of the loyalty board, and the revamping of all the royal—of the loyalty rules, so that we do have apparently a good, tight loyalty set up in the Printing Office at this time. Also disclosure of communists in the military and the radar laboratories resulted in the abolition of the Pentagon board which had cleared and ordered reinstated communists who had for years been handling government secrets. Also, as a result of those hearings, Army orders have been issued to prevent a recurrence of the Major Peress scandal, which was exposed by the committee.

Now to attempt to evaluate the effect of the work of an investigating committee would be about as impossible as to attempt to evaluate the effect of well-trained watchdogs upon the activities of potential burglars.

We Americans live in a free world, a world where we can stand as individuals, where we can go to the church of our own choice and worship God as we please, each in his own fashion; where we can freely speak our opinions on any subject, or on any man. Now whether we shall continue to so live has come to issue now. We will soon know whether we are going to go on living that kind of life, or whether we are going to live the kind of life that 800,000,000 slaves live under communist domination. The issue is simple. It is the issue of life or death for our civilization.

Now, Mr. Murrow said on this program—and I quote—he said: "The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have given considerable comfort to the enemy." That is the language of our statute of treason—rather strong language.

If I am giving comfort to our enemies, I ought not to be in the Senate. If, on the other hand, Mr. Murrow is giving comfort to our enemies, he ought not to be brought into the homes of millions of Americans by the Columbia Broadcasting System.

Now, this is a question which can be resolved with very little difficulty. What do the communists think of me? And what do the communists think of Mr. Murrow? One of us is on the side of the communists; the other is against the communists, against communist slavery.

Now, the communists have three official publications in America, and these are not ordinary publications. They have been officially determined to be the transmission belts through which communists in America are instructed as to the party line, or the position which communist writers and playwrights must take—also, of course, telecasters, broadcasters.

The first of these is a booklet which I would like to show you, if I may. It's entitled "The Main Report," delivered at the National Conference of the Communist Party of the USA, published in New York in October 1953.

The report states, quote: "The struggle against McCarthyism is developing currently along the following main lines"—keep in mind this is the communist publication giving instructions to members of the party—"...along the following main lines: struggle against witch hunting, struggle against investigations of the McCarthy/McCarran type, and defense of the victims of McCarthyism such as Owen Lattimore, etc. In addition there is the direct attack on McCarthy." May I ask you, does that sound somewhat like the program of Edward R. Murrow of March 9 over this same station?

Now, in this report the communists do not hesitate to instruct the comrades that their fight on McCarthy is only a means to a larger end. Again, let me quote from the instructions from the Communist Party to its membership, from page thirty-three. I quote:

"Our main task is to mobilize the masses for the defeat of the foreign and domestic policy of the Eisenhower administration and for the defeat of the Eisenhower regime itself. The struggle against McCarthyism contributes to this general objective."

Just one more quotation, if I may, from page thirty-one of these instructions from the Communist Party to its members. I quote: "Since the elections, McCarthyism has emerged as a menace of major proportions." I think maybe we know what the Communist Party means by "a menace of major proportions." They mean a menace of major proportions to the Communist Party.

Now let's take thirty seconds or so, if we may, to look a little further to see who's giving comfort to our enemies. Here is a communist Daily Worker of March 9, containing seven articles and a principal editorial, all attacking McCarthy. And the same issue lists Mr. Murrow's program as—listen to this—"One of tonight's best bets on TV."

And then—just one more—here's the issue of March 17. Its principal front page article is an attack on McCarthy. It has three other articles attacking McCarthy. It has a special article by William Z. Foster, the head of the Communist Party in America—and now under indictment on charges of attempting to overthrow this government by force and violence—this article by Foster, praising Edward R. Murrow.

Just one more, if I may impose on your time: the issue of March 26. This issue has two articles attacking witch hunting, three articles attacking McCarthy, a cartoon of McCarthy, and an article in praise of Mr. Edward R. Murrow.

And now I would like to also show you the communist political organ, entitled Political Affairs. The lead article is a report dated November 21, 1953 of the National Committee of the Communist Party of the United States, attacking McCarthy and telling how the loyal members of the Communist Party can serve their cause by getting rid of this awful McCarthy.

Now, as you know, Owen Lattimore has been named as a conscious, articulate instrument of the communist conspiracy. He's been so named by the Senate Internal Security Committee. He is now under criminal indictment for perjury with respect to testimony in regard to his communist activities. In his book Ordeal by Slander he says, and I think I can quote him verbatim, he says: "I owe a very special debt to a man I have never met. I must mention at least Edward R. Murrow."

Then there's the book by Harold Laski, admittedly the greatest communist propagandist of our time in England. In his book Reflections on the Revolution of Our Times he dedicates the book to "my friends E.R. Murrow and Latham Tichener, with affection."

Now, I am perfectly willing to let the American people decide who's giving comfort to our enemies. Much of the documentation which we have here on the table tonight will not be available to the American people by way of television. However, this will all be made available to you within the next two weeks.

In conclusion, may I say that under the shadow of the most horrible and destructive weapons that man has ever devised, we fight to save our country, our homes, our churches, and our children. To this cause, ladies and gentlemen, I have dedicated and will continue to dedicate all that I have and all that I am. And I want to assure you that I will not be deterred by the attacks of the Murrows, the Lattimores, the Fosters, the Daily Worker, or the Communist Party itself.

Now, I make no claim to leadership. In complete humility, I do ask you and every American who loves this country to join with me.

MURROW: That was a film of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, presented at our invitation. It was in response to a program we presented on March 9th. This reporter undertook to make no comment at this time, but naturally reserved his right to do so subsequently.

Good night, and good luck.

 _________________________________

 Murrow Addresses McCarthy's Accusations – April 13, 1954

EDWARD R. MURROW: Last week, Senator McCarthy appeared on this program to correct any errors he might have thought we made in our report of March 9th. Since he made no reference to any statements of fact that we made, we must conclude that he found no errors of fact. He proved again that anyone who exposes him, anyone who does not share his hysterical disregard for decency and human dignity and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, must be either a communist or a fellow traveler.

I fully expected this treatment. The senator added this reporter's name to a long list of individuals and institutions he has accused of serving the communist cause. His proposition is very simple: anyone who criticizes or opposes McCarthy's methods must be a communist. And if that be true, there are an awful lot of communists in this country.

For the record, let's consider briefly some of the senator's charges. He claimed, but offered no proof, that I had been a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. That is false. I was never a member of the IWW, never applied for membership. Men that I worked with in the Pacific Northwest in western Washington in logging camps will attest that I never had any affiliation or affinity with that organization.

The senator charged that Professor Harold Laski, a British scholar and politician, dedicated a book to me. That's true. He is dead. He was a socialist, I am not. He was one of those civilized individuals who did not insist upon agreement with his political principles as a precondition for conversation or friendship. I do not agree with his political ideas. Laski, as he makes clear in the introduction, dedicated the book to me not because of political agreement, but because he held my wartime broadcasts from London in high regard—and the dedication so reads.

Senator McCarthy's principal attack on me was an attack on the Institute of International Education, of which I was Assistant Director and am now a trustee, together with such people as John Foster Dulles, Milton Eisenhower, Ralph J. Bunche, Virginia Gildersleeve, Philip Reed; to name just a few. That institute sponsored, acted as the registering agent for summer schools in foreign countries including England, France, and Germany, and one in the Soviet Union in 1934. It has arranged in all some 30,000 exchanges of students and professors between the United States and over fifty foreign countries.

The man primarily responsible for starting this institute was Nicholas Murray Butler in 1919. Its work has been praised as recently as 1948 by President Eisenhower. It has been denounced by the Soviet press and radio as a center of international propaganda for American reaction, and I have been labeled by them as a "reactionary radio commentator."

The senator alleged that we were doing the work of the Russian secret police, training spies. We were in fact conducting normal cultural and educational relations with foreign nations. The Moscow summer session was cancelled in 1935 by the Russian authorities.

I believed twenty years ago and I believe today that mature Americans can engage in conversation and controversy, the clash of ideas, with communists anywhere in the world without becoming contaminated or converted. I believe that our faith, our conviction, our determination are stronger than theirs, and that we can compete and successfully, not only in the area of bombs but in the area of ideas.

Senator McCarthy couldn't even get my relationship with CBS straight. He repeatedly referred to me as the Educational Director, a position I have not held for seventeen years.

The senator waved a copy of The Daily Worker, saying an article in it has praised me. Here is an example for what Senator McCarthy calls "praise" by William Z. Foster in the March 17 issue of The Daily Worker. Quote:

"During the past ten days, Senator McCarthy has received a number of resounding belts in the jaw. These came from Adlai Stevenson, E. R. Murrow, Senator Flanders, the Army leadership, broadcasting companies; even Eisenhower himself had to give McCarthy a slap on the wrist."

That was the sole reference to me in Mr. Foster's article.

Another charge by Senator McCarthy was that Owen Lattimore mentioned me in a book. What Lattimore said in substance was that he had never met me, but that I had done a fair job of reporting his testimony; in short, that I had not presumed his guilt. Everything I said on that case is a matter of record and can be examined by anyone who is interested.

I hope to continue to present evidence developed before Congressional committees as impartially as I am able. And that specifically includes the hearings before which Senator McCarthy is shortly scheduled to appear.

I have worked for CBS for more than nineteen years. The company has subscribed fully to my integrity and responsibility as a broadcaster and as a loyal American. I require no lectures from the junior senator from Wisconsin as to the dangers or terrors of communism. Having watched the aggressive forces at work in Western Europe; having had friends in Eastern Europe butchered and driven into exile; having broadcast from London in 1943 that the Russians were responsible for the Katyn massacre; having told the story of the Russian refusal to allow Allied aircraft to land on Russian fields after dropping supplies to those who rose in Warsaw and then were betrayed by the Russians; and having been denounced by the Russian radio for these reports, I cannot feel that I require instruction from the senator on the evils of communism.

Having searched my conscience and my files, I cannot contend that I have always been right or wise. But I have attempted to pursue the truth with some diligence and to report it, even though, as in this case, I had been warned in advance that I would be subjected to the attentions of Senator McCarthy.

We shall hope to deal with matters of more vital interest for the country next week.

Good night, and good luck.

(Thanks to Noah C. Cline for helping locate the footage)

1943. The Aftermath in Stalingrad

Reporters Visit Stalingrad After the German Surrender

Soviet soldiers on the roof of a factory shop in Stalingrad in 1942 (Photo by Arkady Shaikhet – source)

Bill Downs first arrived in the Soviet Union to cover the Eastern Front on December 25, 1942. He and other foreign correspondents were taken to see Stalingrad shortly after the German surrender there in February 1943.

During their long journey, the group came across Axis commanders in Soviet captivity, including Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, whose 6th Army had just been encircled and defeated. The press group then entered the city, where they passed bodies strewn along the streets and came across the wreckage at Mamayev Kurgan, the site of some of the worst fighting of the Battle of Stalingrad.

Recalling the experience, Downs said: "There are sights and sounds and smells in and around Stalingrad that make you want to weep, and make you want to shout and make you just plain sick to your stomach."

This text has been adapted from a script cabled to CBS in New York. The passages in parentheses were censored by Soviet officials for military security or propaganda reasons.

Bill Downs

CBS Moscow

February 8, 1943

The Foreign Office press department summoned the foreign press corps with a mysterious 6 p.m. phone call. They informed us we were leaving for Stalingrad at 8 a.m. the next morning. The trip was extremely hush-hush, although it had been announced that fighting had ceased in Stalingrad the day before. We were warned to dress warmly and take five days' worth of food.

I rushed back to the hotel and collected hard boiled eggs, a slab of smoked fish, sugar, two loaves of bread, and most important of all, a liter of vodka, which is Russia's most important personal antifreeze.

The next morning I dressed with three pairs of wool socks under fur boots, two pairs of wool underwear, a wool shirt, two sweaters, a ski jacket, a fur hat, and a fur coat—and I was among the lightest dressed in the party. Someone told me it was a mild winter.

The five hour plane trip in a comfortable Douglas transport was spent recalling hundreds of stories of Stalingrad's four and a half months of concentrated hell, which was worse than Coventry's, Rotterdam's, Warsaw's, or London's—anything Hitler had been able to do to cities opposing him.

The Douglas landed at an obscure little airfield 50 miles north of Stalingrad on steppes which looked like the Texas panhandle or Dakota plains buttered with about three feet of snow. The biting northwest wind of the Kalmyk Steppe made me look down at my legs to see whether I was not wearing a bathing suit.

The airfield was a former fighter-bomber base located in the area where the northern arm of the Red Army's tremendous encirclement of west Stalingrad started. We sheltered in a group of a half dozen peasant farmhouses which formed a tractor station for the surrounding wheat country.

We wondered how in the hell the Russians were able to concentrate an offensive army in these treeless, hill-less steppes without German reconnaissance discovering their striking power. That's mystery number one—or mistake number one—which was one of the major factors for the German defeat at Stalingrad.

At nightfall we headed southward to another peasant farm village where we were liberally fed and tried to warm our freezing hands and feet, to the amusement of Red Army men and women who were interested in foreigners.

We traveled by bus some 60 miles to a point 35 miles directly west of Stalingrad, where the next day we were taken to the headquarters of the commander of the Stalingrad front, Colonel General Konstantin Rokossovsky, who now takes a place as one of the great generals of history. Rokossovsky passed us en route to Moscow, where he went to the Kremlin to be awarded the Order of Suvorov for Stalingrad. We herded into a small peasant house where chairs were lined up like in a classroom, with desks in the corner and a map on the wall.

In walked a medium-sized Red Army general, his breast lined with several medals, dressed in a simple uniform on which the Red Army's new epaulets had yet to be sewn. He is Lieutenant General Mikhail Malinin, chief of staff for the Stalingrad front and one of the men responsible for putting into operation plans for the encirclement of the German 6th Army.

Malinin looked 35, square-faced with hair in a short pompadour which stuck up like a schoolboy's. The only sign of age was the sprinkling of gray hairs around the temples. He picked up a stick with which to point to the map. He looked as out of place standing at the front of that schoolroom as a schoolteacher would have looked in a front-line Stalingrad trench.

Malinin started speaking slowly and deliberately and explained that he wanted to outline briefly the details of the Red Army's encirclement movement where it started.

"Hitler sent his best troops—the German 6th Army—against Stalingrad, containing his crack infantry, tank, and motorized divisions," he said. Continuing in the same matter-of-fact tone, he said that as German forces moved toward the Volga, they created for themselves a sort of second front on the northern flank, "and the task of the defenders was not to give up the city."

Red Army soldiers on the Stalingrad front patrol the snow-covered steppes (source)

Malinin has been in three wars—in addition to the Russian Civil War and the Finnish War, he fought on the Moscow and Smolensk fronts in this war. He formerly was on the faculty of a Red Army military school.

(Malinin said that "Russian resistance forced the Germans to continually send up reinforcements. During the month of October and the first part of November was the fiercest fighting. The Germans continued to pour in huge reinforcements. But by the middle of November there was a certain equilibrium of strength. The Soviet High Command took advantage of its own forces at this time and ordered an offensive aimed at destroying both the Stalingrad and Don front troops of the enemy.")

(This certain equilibrium which Malinin referred to represented the greatest fighting retreat in the history of warfare. It was one place where the Red Army for the first time definitely stopped an Axis advance on the southern sector of the Russian front since the Axis invaded Kiev eighteen months earlier.)

Malinin then explained the great pincer movement (which launched simultaneously on November 19 one hundred miles northwest and some distance southeast of Stalingrad. This blow was so well-timed that in the first four days the northern and southern forces each advanced 55 miles on schedule, and the threat of encirclement became evident.)

Malinin said "the German High Command apparently was unconcerned because they evidently planned to bring up a powerful group of reinforcements from Kotelnikovo anyway. However, the genius of this plan directed by Joseph Stalin foresaw this and even predicted that the Germans would attempt to relieve the group. Thus the Red Army prepared for it. The Germans did just what we thought they would do. They were engaged and routed at Kotelnikovo. We captured the original Paulus order to commanders not to receive Red Army emissaries who advanced under white flag to present an ultimatum. This order specified that this peace delegation was to be fired upon—the exact translation read 'to see emissaries off the premises with fire.'"

Malinin said that American and British equipment played very little part in the Battle of Stalingrad. "We had a small number of British tanks—Churchill tanks—but not enough to take into consideration when reckoning the entire offensive. Where they were used, they stood up well under test. No American tanks or planes were used in the battle. There were some American Dodge trucks, but they don't shoot."

The interviews ended and we filed out of headquarters feeling like we had just taken a college examination for a master's degree in history.

However, the Red Army moves fast, and they took us to a nearby village with a dozen or so scattered unpainted houses around which they posted heavy guard. The conducting Red Army colonel motioned us inside one house. There we found four German generals sitting around a table looking at each other, one in a sweater and the other three in full regalia. In the next room were four others standing and looking out the window, and sitting in the corner looking despondent was woebegone General [Romulus] Dimitriu, the onetime glorified Romanian general.

The Germans in the first room got politely to their feet, smiling sheepishly. These men were Hitler's super-generals, leading super-Aryans against an inferior tribe. The only sign of their "super-ness" now were the magnificent decorations of iron crosses displayed on their uniforms like pictures on a gallery wall.

The German generals of the first group included [Otto] Renoldi, Schlömer, Deboi, and Von Daniels. All fought in the last war and are damn proud of it. We were whisked through the room and had little chance to question them, but when they heard we were American correspondents, Schlömer and Renoldi began long conversations about how they like cigarettes of the American type and had used up their ration of Russian cigarettes. Not a single reporter responded to their hint to give them a smoke. I believe if anyone had, he would have been tackled by the entire press corps when we got outside. These generals were getting a Red Army officer's rations according to the Hague Convention, which is too much considering the kind of rats they are.

In the next room Von Drebber, who looks more like a college professor than a military man, dominated the group which included such nasty types as [Hans] Wulz, who is a small, bald-headed, potbellied Prussian who only managed to squeeze out an unenthusiastic "Heil."

Von Drebber, six feet four inches tall, was asked what primary factors led to his defeat. He drew himself up and politely replied: "The Russians struck from the north and south—we were simply sitting in the middle. We were surrounded, cut off with no munitions and no food."

We tried again asking why they didn't try to break out of encirclement. Von Drebber said: "At one time we could have broken the ring—but you will have to ask Marshal Paulus about questions of strategy."

He was asked if he had Hitler's permission to surrender. Von Drebber said: "I was ordered by Paulus to hold until I pushed back to a certain line. When I reached that line I surrendered."

Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, commander of the Wehrmacht 6th Army, and his adjutant Wilhelm Adam (left) are escorted to the Soviet 64th Army headquarters following the German surrender at Stalingrad, January 31, 1943 (source)

Then we asked Wulz, who is an artillery general, how Russian artillery compared to German artillery. He made a whining, inconsequential answer that "every army has good and bad guns, good and bad artillery—that's how it is with the Russian and German armies."

Schlömer, who was stationed in another house, said however: "The Red Army fought well everywhere we met them."

But the most revealing statements came from Von Arnim and [Fritz] Roske. Roske was asked how the Russians broke them down. Von Arnim interrupted: "That question is badly put. You should ask how we managed to hold out under such conditions."

Roske ignored Von Arnim's remark with a brief statement: "Hunger, cold, and lack of munitions."

However, the Russian colonel was anxious to show us the Red Army's prize exhibit and rushed us to a small farmhouse sitting apart from the others. We gathered outside around the doorway while a grinning Mongolian soldier—definitely non-Aryan—looked down on us.

The door opened and out came Paulus, poker-faced except for a tic which spasmodically twitched from eye to mouth on the right side of his face. He is 53 but looked 65, his face lined and yellowish—almost the same yellowish color of the frozen corpses of men he left lying in gutters in Stalingrad.

Accompanying him was his personal aide, Colonel Adam, a flat-faced Teuton who looked like a slightly overweight ball of concentrated Nazism, and Paulus' chief of staff, General Schmidt, who looked like he'd be happier running a Berlin butcher shop. All men were dressed in fur caps pulled down over their ears against the subzero cold. Paulus answered only two questions, which he appeared to do with effort. He said his first name was Friedrich and that he is 53.

The standing and gazing captured Nazis in those overheated peasant houses, as well as that bare peasant yard where Paulus was held, gave the same feeling one gets when looking in a snake pit at a zoo. But the obvious comparison that strikes when looking at German officers and German soldiers is that the officers are always well-clad while the soldiers are just the opposite. And standing there in that obscure peasant village, these much decorated gold-braided groups of Nazi bigwigs reminded you of a flock of sad-eyed peacocks standing with distaste in a hen run.

The conducting colonel loaded us into drafty buses for a 60 mile trip to Stalingrad. By nightfall the temperature dropped to 40 below, and we started out on a twelve hour, all night trip through snow to Stalingrad.

We would have made the trip sooner when we ran into a Russian supply column moving westward from Stalingrad toward new battlefields. There was a long black line of soldiers, horses, mobile kitchens, guns, and cars. It was an unbelievable sight out there in the steppes to come upon so many people slowly moving along the snow-choked road. But the most unbelievable of all was the sight of camels pulling sledges in three feet of snow.

As we made our way slowly along the road against traffic, a curious Red Army man came up to our bus, looked in, grinned and asked: "Deutschen Soldaten?"

When we explained we were Americans he immediately called all his comrades and soon there was a great crowd around our bus. We passed out cigarettes and someone made a speech with the general theme of friendship between the Soviet Union and the United States. Russians will make a speech at the drop of the hat, but it gave you a warm feeling overcoming even the steppe temperatures to get such a demonstration of friendship at two o'clock in the morning in the swirling snow and wind 30 miles east of Stalingrad on the world's bloodiest battlefield.

We arrived in Stalingrad at about 4 a.m. The driver seemed anxious to get there. We drove around for two hours. The only thing in sight were the dark ruins where we spotted fires which sentries cluttered around to keep warm.

Our driver finally pulled up to one of these fires, and when he got out he was crying. Our interpreter explained that the driver had once lived in Stalingrad and had not been back to the city since the battle. "He can't find any street that he knows," the interpreter explained. "He hasn't yet recognized a house."

This is because there were no houses. The streets were just auto tracks over ruins up and down through bombshell holes. This was the Red October factory district, parts of which changed hands a half dozen times during the fighting.

As the sun came up the scene of devastation was so great it made a lump in your throat. This was the worker's factory district's small homes. These homes were absolutely flat. Not even a gracious blanket of snow could cover the destruction they suffered.

Characteristic of all bombings I have seen in Britain, one of the most indestructible items of furniture in any home is the iron bedstead. It is the same in Stalingrad. The grave of every home is marked by charred headpieces of beds sticking up like tombstones over what was a peaceful home. Occasionally one could mark where a street once existed by looking closely at poles sticking six or seven feet out of the ground. These once were telephone poles which stuck ten to twelve feet up. Now they looked like blasted trees.

Sentries told us that, believe it or not, some civilians holed up in their basements and stuck through the whole bombardment. These included some women who did washing and cooking for the Red Army.

What these people suffered cannot even be imagined. When they were without food, they were forced to forage and risk bombshells. Horse meat was considered a delicacy, and sometimes bread. But they stuck through it, although many are not there to tell their story.

Soldiers of the Soviet 62nd Army walk past dugouts constructed on the banks of the Volga, 1942 (source)

At daybreak we were directed to the headquarters of the 62nd Army, which is credited for saving the city of Stalingrad. The headquarters is built into the side of a western bluff on the Volga near the bottom of a hundred foot high clay cliff. We were led up this cliff to dugouts—zemlyankas—small timber-roofed caves dug into the side of the cliff from where the Red Army held the Germans from establishing themselves on the bank of Russia's greatest river. Just three days earlier the Germans had been only 300 yards away from my zemlyanka. But I slept well—they are now fighting on a line 200 miles away.

Rising above the Volga bluff is Stalingrad's famous Hill 102, Mamayev Kurgan, which the Germans held and placed heavy artillery. The hill commands a view of the entire city as well as the Volga, over which the Red Army's vital supply lines are held. The summit of Mamayev Kurgan is only about a quarter mile from the Volga, and between it and the river are the Red October and Red Barricades factories. Beyond these plants is the high Volga bank wherein zemlyankas are located. This is where some of the bitterest fighting occurred.

We walked single file along a narrow path through the factory. There was little need to remind us the factory was mined, as every minute or so there was a shattering explosion of rock wreckage in a nearby district which Red Army sappers were de-mining.

The Red October factory once made steel for tractors and farm implements. With the war it switched over to tank armaments. After the Battle of Stalingrad the whole plant is now simply a junk heap. The Germans took almost the entire building after it was mercilessly shelled and bombed flat. The only portions of the factory still standing are extremely heavy girders which once held cranes. All other buildings are flat. There literally was not a piece of sheet iron roofing or shovel or piece of metal sticking four inches above ground which didn't have bullet shrapnel or fragment holes through it.

It was in this factory that we saw our first German dead. They were lying at the bottom of a large bomb crater with only their bare feet sticking up. Most of Red October's bodies had been cleaned up earlier.

The de-mined path through the factory led across wreckage and craters. We passed a German dugout in perfectly good condition, clean and well-kept. Beside it stood a sentry, and a sign on the door warned: "Keep Away—This Booby Trap."

The path ended at the most forward-line trenches the Germans held at the factory. These lines are on a small hill facing another factory building which still had two walls standing. The Russians held positions in the factory building which I paced, measuring twelve yards. It was here that some brilliant conversations between warring men occurred. This Russian factory position once manufactured consumer goods. Red Army men did their fighting here among dishpans, skillets, and shovels that littered the floor.

Soviet soldiers fighting in the destroyed Red October factory during the Battle of Stalingrad, January 1943 (source)

The only ordinary looking battlefield we saw was Mamayev Kurgan. This hill is terraced in a series of five foot shelves, and there was a recently planted apple orchard with young saplings about four feet high. There is absolutely no cover, and looking down it from German gun positions are trenches. It appeared that a single squad of machine gunners could hold against advancing infantry forces indefinitely.

Correspondents had trouble even walking over the slick snow uphill in broad daylight. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like for the Soviet soldiers who only a few weeks earlier negotiated slopes under a hail of bullets, artillery shrapnel, and dive bombers. The only statement on the subject I could get from a former Red Army man was a private who grimly admitted: "It was tough."

But once they took positions atop the first ridge a really tough job still awaited. The Germans for weeks held two almost impregnable fortresses atop the hill. They were two circular water tanks about ten feet apart. The tanks were about 50 feet in diameter, dug 30 feet into the ground with about 15 feet of reinforced concrete surfaces sticking above ground. Around the tops these Germans threw earth embankment, forming a shell-proof, bomb-proof position virtually impregnable—until the Red Army decided to take it.

The battlefield before these two fortresses was like any battlefield of the First World War. There were wrecked tanks, smashed Russian and German helmets, empty shell case remnants, and smashed guns. There were bodies which had not yet been cleaned up. There were pieces of mortars, bombs, grenades, and strips of machine gun bullets.

The Russians finally took position by digging trenches up to the fortresses and then launching an infantry assault from there. Tanks were no good, only bayonets, grenades, and Tommy guns were effective in the final clean-out.

The southern part of the eastern slope of the hill Mamayev Kurgan in Stalingrad in 1943 right after the battle. A destroyed Renault UE Chenillette, a French armored carrier used by the Wehrmacht, sits in the foreground (source)

But the greatest shock came when we entered the city of Stalingrad proper. The way Stalingrad is laid out is strip factory districts stretching northward along the Volga, with worker's districts connected by bus and streetcar lines. These settlements were marked by wreckage. Streetcars which ran between community centers now stood burned out, wrecked on what was left of their tracks. Store shops along Communist Street—which is the main highway connecting these settlements—now only had a few walls left. About every quarter mile on Communist Street the Germans built barricades eight feet high, consisting of two fences built five feet apart and filled in with dirt bricks and rubble from nearby houses.

As we approached the city center with its modern buildings, there were more and more signs of increased fighting. Around the ground floor windows, many of which were sandbagged with apertures for machine guns, there were countless chinks made by bullets or holes made by shells.

As we neared the town square called "Heroes of the Revolution" we could see bodies in doorways or behind barricades or lying on sidewalks. Fragments of letters and photographs from home, all written in German, littered streets—letters from Berlin and Hamburg starting out with "Mein Lieber Karl," or Heinrich or Heinz.

There was not a single manhole in Stalingrad's streets with a cover. Germans and Russians not only used the city's basements, housetops, and alleys for battlegrounds, but the sewers as well. Snipers were known to crawl through sewers and come out behind German positions to create panic.

You could almost arm a full division with equipment lying about Stalingrad's ruined streets. Grenades clutter gutters. Full machine gun belts lie across sidewalks, and mortars are a dime a dozen.

Veterans of the Stalingrad fight said it was not uncommon to find Russian and German soldiers locked in each other's death grip during the height of the fighting. That was the way these two armies locked in the city of Stalingrad fought until the Red Army proved itself more powerful and skilled and brought the Wehrmacht to its knees.

Returning to my zemlyanka after this trip through Stalingrad, I went to the headquarters kitchen to ask for a drink of water. The Red Army girl dipped some out of a bucket with a tin cup. The water was cold and clean and good, and I told her so: "Your vodka and wine are great but nothing is better than this water."

She threw back her head and replied: "It ought to be. It's Volga water. It's got Russian blood in it."

1934. "Concept of Third Reich Begins to Take Reality"

Nazis Use Nationalist Nostalgia to Claim Legitimacy

Map featured in The New York Times on March 27, 1938

From The New York Times, October 7, 1934:

CONCEPT OF THIRD REICH BEGINS TO TAKE REALITY

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With Their Leader Firmly Entrenched in Power, the Nazis Hope for a New Era of German Greatness

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By EMIL LENGYEL

Adolf Hitler, heavily entrenched in power, recently predicted that the Third Reich would last a thousand years. Even if, to those outside Germany, it does not seem firmly established, in the minds of the Nazis the concept of the new Reich is taking a definite form. For a year and a half the Third Reich has been a hope and a slogan, with Hitler sharing his power with Field Marshal von Hindenburg. Hindenburg's tomb at Tannenberg was also the Third Reich's birthplace.

What is the Third Reich, and what were the First and Second Reichs from which the new order seeks inspiration?

To Hitlerites the Third Reich is a new Germany in which Nazi supreme authority is exerted by a Leader to whom Germans everywhere bow. Its sources and ideology were described by the theoretician Moeller van den Bruck, whose volume "Das Dritte Reich" is Nazi gospel, second in importance only to Hitler's own book. In the view of van den Bruck and his disciples, the Third Reich must comprise all people of German blood, whether born in Germany or outside. A German, they say, owes allegiance to the Third Reich notwithstanding that he may be the citizen of another country.

It may be pointed out that among the principal Nazi leaders are some who were born in Austria, Egypt, Argentina and Russia. Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, born a Russian but withal the spiritual director of the Third Reich, thus expresses the essence of that realm: "Under its rule race ranks higher than the State, and the protection of the race is the supreme aim of law."

Conformity a Duty

Hence, while Germany's present boundaries contain about 65,000,000 inhabitants, the population of the Third Reich is regarded as 100,000,000. According to the Nazi doctrine, it is the duty of all members of this Reich to feel and think alike. This can be accomplished only by ultimately uniting the Germans living outside of the geographical Reich with their fellows at home.

The Third Reich, as the Nazis set it forth, seeks to emulate the autocratic greatness of the First Empire in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when Germany's famous Hohenstaufen family ruled over a large part of Europe as Holy Roman Emperors. It seeks at the same time to eclipse the greatness of the Second Reich, that was born in 1871 in the Versailles Hall of Mirrors, at the end of the Franco-Prussian War, and died in the same hall in 1918, at the end of the World War. Both the first and Second Reichs are considered by the Nazis in many ways the high points of their country's history.

In adopting the name "Third Reich" the Nazis have taken a label that might militate against Communist gains in Germany. The phrase "Third Reich," it is their hope, will hold greater appeal for Germans than the Third International. It has often been suggested that number three stands for finality. Whereas the First and Second Reichs together lasted for less than two centuries, the Hitlerites expect the Third Reich to endure for a millennium.

Heroes of the First Reich

What inspiration can a twentieth-century Third Reich draw from a twelfth-century First Reich? Nazi leaders express admiration for the sterling virtues of German forefathers. They take particular pride in the two great heroes of the First Reich, who have also been adopted as the heroes of the Third Reich, and about whom books and plays have been written in profusion.

In Adolf Hitler a reverent Nazi author sees the reincarnation of one of these First Reich chieftains, Frederick Barbarossa. According to an ancient legend, Emperor Frederick of the ruddy beard fell asleep centuries ago in a cavern of Thuringia's Kyffhaeuser hills. Ever since then his red whiskers have been growing around the marble slab on which his head rests. In Germany's hour of need he will return and, mounted on a white charger, lead his nation against the enemy.

During his glory-filled lifetime, Frederick Barbarossa was a German Fuehrer in the Nazi sense. He struck terror into Europe's heart and extended Germany's frontiers far beyond the language boundary. The great herald of the German idea of the "Drang nach Osten," he led his army toward the eastern star, bound on the conquest of the Holy Land.

Progress in Second Reich

But the First Reich's greatness was fully revealed only at the court of his grandson, Emperor Frederick II, who was known to his contemporaries as the Marvel of the World. Frederick was a master not only of a large part of Europe's body but also of its soul. He gave Europe a new idea of culture and made the German name respected as far south as Sicily.

In his declining years he showed a desire to return to paganism. His words and deeds are quoted today by anti-Christians of the Third Reich. Dr. Rosenberg takes these words from Frederick's mouth: "The cross must be removed from the altar, because it is the sign of suffering and humility."

As the Nazis survey history, the First Reich was followed by centuries of darkness in which German fought German in wars of religion, of territorial expansion, or merely as a manly sport or whim. The Thirty Years' War left German land reduced to mounts of ruins on which stray humans fought stray wolves for scraps of food. Eventually Prussia took the lead and gave unity to German purpose; yet as late as 1866 German again fought German in battle.

The proclamation of the Second Reich was another triumph of unity. When Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, became German Emperor on January day of 1871, the way was open for a breath-taking phase of German influence. The Nazis, looking back, see the Second Reich forging the arms with which to force its way to a higher place in the sun. They see it acquiring colonies and spheres of influence, challenging for supremacy of the world.

"Crime" of Weimar Republic

The Second Reich is too near the present, however, to receive the unqualified endorsement of the Nazis; too fulsome praise might inspire the Germans to seek the return of the Hohenzollerns. Nor can the Nazis afford to extol too much of the giant of the Second Reich, Prince Bismarck, without inviting comparison with Adolf Hitler, their own idol. Yet it is the policy of the Nazis to give a friendly picture of the Second Reich, so that the "crime" of the Weimar Republic in "stabbing it in the back" may be emphasized. The Nazis do not forget they were aided in their upward climb by the assertions that the republicans had dug the grave of German greatness.

The Hitlerites see the Third Reich as cultivating the best virtues of the First and Second Reichs plus their own. They insist on even more complete obedience to authority than did Frederick Barbarossa or Wilhelm II. They believe that their Fuehrer is to be viewed not only as a leader but also as an oracle and seer. The Third Reich is expected to become a sovereign power in the most pronounced sense of the word.

There are some aspects of the First and Second Reichs that the Nazis do not wish to emulate. They do not want, for the time being at least, to mix their blood with that of other races, as Frederick II did. They are satisfied with ruling over the 100,000,000 people of German blood.

The Nazis have criticized the Second Reich for opening its Parliament to "destructive" Socialists and liberals. They have chosen an opposite course; they have not only driven dissenting parties out of the Reichstag but have also outlawed all political party organizations except their own. Starting with the Communists and following with the Socialists, they have driven underground one group after another that has dared to dispute their power.