Very few conservatives have been willing to approve Senator Joseph McCarthy’s criticisms of General George Marshall. Some of McCarthy’s strongest defenders did not dare revisit McCarthy’s book, Retreat From Victory. Better leave that one alone, they figured. It is widely assumed that McCarthy made a mistake about Marshall; for it has been admitted, even by McCarthy’s supporters, that the senator from Wisconsin had gone too far; that George Marshall, as Chief of the Army Staff, was an exemplary figure — beyond reproach.

But was Marshall exemplary? Or was he simply too iconic to attack head-on?

History often mixes settled fact and mythology. Napoleon pointed to this when he said, “History is fable agreed upon.” Gustave Le Bon said that the masses crave fiction. They have no liking for the truth. Especially when it comes to wars and national sacrifice, there is something obscene in suggesting that our soldiers died in vain — or died because of a stupid or treacherous general. We want to believe our leaders did their best, that they were wise in their choices, and loyal to the men under them.

On the surface General George Catlett Marshall impressed people with his dignity and good manners; but others saw Marshall as militarily incompetent, a poor strategist, a political hack. General Douglas MacArthur resisted promoting Marshall because the latter took command of the best regiment in the U.S. Army and turned it into the worst. Churchill liked Marshall personally, but thought him to be strategically incompetent. Biographers Debi and Irwin Unger depict Marshall as intellectually mediocre, indecisive and unwilling to put in long hours. Of course, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin preferred Marshall above all other American generals, and asked Roosevelt (at Tehran) to put Marshall in charge of the invasion of France — even though Marshall had never commanded troops in the field. (Stalin liked the idea of the Germans and Western Allies battering each other indecisively in France. He would not have welcomed an able American general in the West, lest the Allied armies reach Berlin, Vienna and Prague ahead of the Red Army.)

Marshall got onto Senator McCarthy’s radar in the following fashion: “a deeply disturbed Senator from the Russell Committee” came to McCarthy’s office. He explained, “I always have considered Marshall as one of our great heroes and I am sure that he would knowingly do no wrong.” Then the unnamed senator posed a series of questions:

‘McCarthy,’ he said, ‘tell me who prejudiced the thinking of … [Marshall]? Why, for example, did he keep from Roosevelt the complete and correct intelligence reports at Yalta? Why did he, as Roosevelt’s military advisor, approve that Yalta agreement which was drafted by Hiss [a Soviet spy], Gromyko [a Soviet diplomat], and Jebb? Who persuaded him to disregard the intelligence report of 50 of his own officers, all with the rank of colonel or above — an intelligence report which urged a course directly contra to what was done at Yalta and confirmed at Potsdam?’

For those who don’t know, Yalta and Potsdam were summit meetings that resulted in Soviet control of Eastern Europe. These meetings also facilitated the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and — thanks to the “Marshall mission” to China — led to the victory of the communists in the Chinese Civil War. It was through these events, supplemented by further decades of “retreat from victory” under Marshall’s successors (Walt Rostow, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, et al.) that so many countries fell to our enemies (e.g., much of Africa, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, etc.). But then a funny thing happened: we claimed victory over communism in the Cold War. Think of it this way: We lose, we retreat, and after four decades we somehow win. Or, rather, the communists tell us we won. And the very next thing that happens? Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton go to the White House. Years later, Obama goes to the White House. And now, when we dare to elect a anticommunist to the presidency, there is this outpouring of fury and rage, followed by accusations of treason, by investigations into bribery and extortion and obstruction, etc.

Do we understand what happened here? — do we understand what is still unfolding?

At the beginning of it all was George Marshall, handpicked by Harry Hopkins. Everything that came after Pearl Harbor had this same, fraudulent, foundation: a “great man” who was not a great man; who delayed the Allied armies from crossing the Rhine in autumn 1944, who cut the replacements going to Eisenhower on the eve of Hitler’s Ardenne offensive, who urged the necessity of invading Japan — a calamitous project which might well have crippled America’s will to defend Europe from Stalin.

The historical myth of the legendary George Marshall set the stage for other “men,” and other retreats from victory — like the retreat that delivered Jonas Savimbi’s Angola into the hands of the communists; and other betrayals which delivered other countries — from Venezuela and Nicaragua to Nepal and South Africa. The retreat from victory that Joseph McCarthy warned of has continued long after his warning. Only we do not know this history at all, having replaced it with a lie. And now history has become something that did not happen told by people who were not there. As Diana West would learn after writing American Betrayal, this false history has many defenders — ready to commit any slander, tell any lie. The real history, as McCarthy would also learn to his disappointment, was orphaned and friendless, with no wealthy protector, and no sponsor.

If a great man is not what his public image suggests; if his reputation is the result of dissimulation and his good qualities were merely a pretense — he may nonetheless prevail over his critic as George Marshall has prevailed over Joseph McCarthy. If a villain can be mythologized into a great man, then a great man can be mythologized into a villain. It is no accident that Marshall is lionized while McCarthy is demonized in our high school history books. This process should be familiar to us now as it envelops Donald J. Trump. It follows from the logic of the communist camp that Trump must receive the same treatment today as McCarthy did — so that Joe Biden might now stand in for Marshall; a man as hollow, and venal, and stupid as Marshall. A man as helpful to Moscow and Beijing as Marshall was.

Was Marshall really as bad as Biden? Hardly anyone has noticed that some of the latest errata from World War II bears directly on the questions McCarthy raised — adding weight to the suggestion that Marshall labored discretely for Soviet interests, either because he was originally the creature of Harry Hopkins, or because he had his own deal with the Devil.

Related to this, readers should consult the evidence Mark Riebling published in the 1990s suggesting that Gen. Walter Bedell Smith was a Soviet agent. In his book titled Wedge, Riebling cited FBI investigations which led President-elect Eisenhower to trick Smith into resigning as Director of CIA in January 1953. On Smith’s death there was the issue of classified documents found in his home (a very serious breach of security in itself). Together with McCarthy’s brief, Marshall is implicated once again; for Gen. W.B. Smith was an officer very close to Marshall; he was a Marshall protege with special assignments, tasked to work closely with Eisenhower at SHAEF (Supreme Headquarter Allied Expeditionary Forces); tasked to be our ambassador to Moscow; tasked to head the CIA. Smith was a witness at U.S. Army headquarters during the morning of December 7, 1941 — a morning about which Marshall changed his recollections and his testimony, in December 1945.

Yes, there is a fake history — just as there is fake news. The ancient Greeks and Romans had Thucydides and Tacitus to tell the truth about corrupt politicians and perverted emperors. We have our truth-tellers as well. The parade of liars and fakers may seem to prevail — and the century may yet belong to them. But in the long run history itself will not be theirs. It cannot be. In the long run all panderers will be cursed or laughed at by posterity; especially our current crop of panderers — whose ideological flavor of the month is currently transsexual red.

26 thoughts on “Joseph McCarthy and George Marshall”

  1. I read McCarthy’s book, or speech, on Marshall. It seemed to me well argued, measured, compelling, and copiously sourced. I think McCarthy was right on Marshall.

    1. I am reading his book on Marshall for the second time, having studied his sources and discovering new ones. Yes, McCarthy was on to something.

  3. The military services promote only yes-men to positions of authority—never those that challenge the establishment. In fact, all field grade and general officers must attend various courses at the National War College which is staffed by globalist professors (many from Georgetown University). Those such as McArthur and Patton have been demonized. And of course McCarthy had to be discredited for exposing traitors.

    1. Yes, that is true. Also, we might add, that McCarthy shares much with military history’s great generals, who all possessed the virtue of courage. Consequently great generals are not afraid of what other people think, and were often seen as eccentrics — like Patton, or MacArthur. Every great general either learned courage, like Grant, or naturally possessed it, like Napoleon. Self-control, self-mastery, accepting hard truth — all were necessary elements of acquired character. College professors generally do not have a great share in virtue, and are often afflicted with the vice of cowardice. To comment on military history without possessing some share in the gifts of the great captains is a commentary without understanding.

  4. If General George Marshall wasn’t a Soviet agent, and it is hard to see how he was not, then he was the next worse thing, a damn “useful idiot.”

    “What can be made of this unbroken series of decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed to incompetence. If Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part of his decisions would serve this country’s interest.”
    Senator Joseph McCarthy

    1. McCarthy was the only one brave enough to say what many others were privately thinking at the time. The left made an example of him on account of it.

  5. Your trans/homophobia lead the charge in why you view 85% of the world as your enemy. It might do you well to try, just try and see people who are different than you as actual people. Your staunch anti-sex viewpoint turns everyone with a libido into a Communist. You disguise your hatred and fear of sexual freedom as that of a “Secret Communist Cabal Which Threatens All of Society”, because it allows you to sound like a scholar rather than an old coot ranting about how men should only have sex with women.

    If you want more intelligent readers you should work harder to disguise your bigotry, or better yet, just try to be less of one.

    1. Don’t you think the politically correct imperatives of the day are beside the point? Why this fixation on something that is so unimportant to our political life? Isn’t national security a concern we all share? — regardless of sexual orientation? Isn’t defending the country a good thing for transsexuals, too? In fact, if I hated such people as you claim, wouldn’t I be uninterested in defending a country where such people are protected? (I bet you never thought of that.) As it happens, my concern is national security. These other subjects arise, when they do, only as they bear on security. Yet I must ask: Why do you change the subject of my discourse from national security to the left’s diversionary flavor of the day? Why do you do that? Because you cannot win an argument on fact and logic? Or because you are an enemy of the country? I said nothing about transsexuals except to note the left’s fixation on them; and please, I do not fall for the claim that the left actually cares about such people. It is all cynical tactics, as you undoubtedly know. And so, in this same cynical spirit, you assail me for something I did not write or say. But also, in the spirit of grand hypocrisy, are you not taking up the cause of transsexuals because you can use it to denounce Christians as bigots? But then, aren’t you a bigot? — an anti-Christian bigot!? Isn’t that your hobby horse? Isn’t your secret dream to exterminate all Christians? Be honest! You really don’t think the country (along with its transsexuals) should be defended, do you? You think everyone here should perish together in the left’s equivalent of Divine Retribution — don’t you? Let’s have an honest answer: Should the country be defended from its domestic and foreign enemies or not? Are you for or against America?

  6. I’ll go point by point for clarity.

    Don’t you think the politically correct imperatives of the day are beside the point?
    – Absolutely not. What you see as politically correct imperatives are actually the simplest requests of dignity by a vast population of historically subjugated human beings who have finally made themselves visible and heard. This is the point.

    Why this fixation on something that is so unimportant to our political life? Isn’t national security a concern we all share? — regardless of sexual orientation?
    – Prioritizing national security over respecting the existence of your fellow American is a straw man if I’ve ever seen one. “Our nation is in danger! Who cares what the gays want!” This mentality makes continual subjugation of any particular group you choose very easy, and leads to Fascism. A nation’s citizens isolated from and pitted against each other weaken that nation immeasurably. From where I sit, treating each other with respect and dignity is vital to our national security. Otherwise, what are we really protecting?

    Isn’t defending the country a good thing for transsexuals, too? In fact, if I hated such people as you claim, wouldn’t I be uninterested in defending a country where such people are protected? (I bet you never thought of that.)
    – I have in fact thought of this many times. People tolerate things they hate all day long in order to retain their own comfort and safety. Letting your country destroy itself simply because you hate a minority of its citizens would be extremely self-sabotaging, so you have exactly zero motivation to do that. This is not a profound thought.

    Why do you change the subject of my discourse from national security to the left’s diversionary flavor of the day? Why do you do that? Because you cannot win an argument on fact and logic? Or because you are an enemy of the country?
    – You ask if I’m an enemy of the country because I believe personal sexual independence is something to be defended. It is this simple. You would rather live in a country that crushes sexual freedom, and remains “safe” in doing so. You see transexuals and gays as threats to your security simply because they exist! What an awful perspective! By feeding your hatred of the other, you in fact weaken national security by doing so. What value does a secure nation really have if its citizens hate each other? Gay people do not hate you because you’re straight – because of who you are. Can you say the same about them?

    I said nothing about transsexuals except to note the left’s fixation on them; and please, I do not fall for the claim that the left actually cares about such people. It is all cynical tactics, as you undoubtedly know. And so, in this same cynical spirit, you assail me for something I did not write or say.
    – Your anti-sex viewpoint has been fleshed out in depth throughout your writing career. You don’t have to say you hate transexuals in your latest quip because you have painted that portrait of yourself over a lifetime. No amount of mental gymnastics can unpaint the picture. It’s interesting to me how you believe “the left doesn’t care about such people”, when the right has perpetually condemned and ostracized these people throughout history, yet now you claim they’re the only ones who care?! Because you’re so concerned with national security? Because you want to “protect” them. Treat them as equal people? Oh of course not. But “protect” them? Yes. With a sort of “save you from yourself” mentality, I suppose. How noble.

    – As a tolerant person and a Christian myself, I don’t need to explain how ridiculous it is that you’d ask if it’s my secret dream to exterminate all Christians.

    Should the country be defended from its domestic and foreign enemies or not? Are you for or against America?
    – Surely it’s a surprise to you, but I am all about America, my man! I can be proud of the good things about America while also being critical of the bad. I can live in the grey area between perfection and utter failure and find contentment. I can find the value in compatriots who are different than me without worrying that it’s inviting Communist invasion. I can admit that the wrong people are leading this country and have been for a long time, because collectively we let it be this way. You feel threatened by Russia and China and yes, we should defend ourselves from their malevolent actions. I believe as a nation we are aware of this. But the bigger threat I feel is much closer to home: growing paranoia and hostility among my fellow citizens. You and I should be able to agree that without some semblance of ideological harmony throughout its populous, there really is no nation to defend, and our enemies have already won. This is why bigotry of all forms must be addressed and dismantled if we are to ever truly be safe.

    1. My anti-sex viewpoint? My hatred of gays? No, you aren’t getting away with that. You don’t understand my writings at all; or, at least, you pretend not to understand. I don’t hate anyone. And gay people are not “subjugated” in this country. To pretend they are subjugated is dishonest. They have rights under the law and nobody is persecuting them (last I checked). What you have done by focusing on these issues, claiming that gays or transsexuals are oppressed, is to create a legal setting whereby traditional Christian belief can be oppressed, so that believers can be legally punished, and ultimately eliminated from the political equation and replaced by faux-Christians like yourself.

      Socialism is a religion. Its concern for gays and transsexuals, as I said before, is temporary and self-serving. To “save humanity,” the socialists rely on the state as a god. Christianity, in its true aspect, resists this state-centered (man-centered) idolatry. Therefore, traditional Christianity must be eliminated. (But then, you know all this — don’t you?)

      Remember what the communists have said: “The issue is not the issue.” The issue is merely a pretext to advance the revolution. In Christian and Jewish teachings homosexual acts are displeasing to God. The scriptures condemn homosexual coupling along with fornication and adultery. To make a new kind of society, the socialists and communists must break the back of Christian and Jewish tradition — by uplifting homosexuality and thereby demonizing Christianity as bigotry. This is a very clever way of legally eradicating socialism’s main enemy. And this is the real reason you have bored us to tears with this nonsense about oppressed gays. Your propaganda was invented as the grounds to dehumanize millions of Bible-believing Americans. You don’t care about the dignity of Christian and Jewish traditions, or the sanctity of the Christian family. You have postulated an either/or. Either we demonize Christians as haters, or we are depriving gays and transsexuals of their “dignity.” With this rhetoric you hope to intimidate Christians into giving up their beliefs. You want them to embrace socialism — reformatting Christ as a Marxist. The strategists of revolution know that capitalism has no spine — no center from which to resist communism — outside traditional religion. And because socialism/communism is itself a religion, it knows that Christianity must be destroyed or corrupted to accomplish the desired end. As for gay people: you cynically use them as pawns in your larger political game. You pour mind-numbing poison into everyone’s ears, hoping to isolate a shrinking Christian minority in advance of systematic legal persecution.

      To summarize: your entire narrative was invented for the purpose of attacking a rival religion. And you expect people like me to be intimidated. How disappointed you must be that I am not.

      Yes! You have come onto my website to attack, to disrespect, and to intimidate me. So you should understand if I am brutally honest in return. Turnabout is only fair; so I say — Your platitude’s are witless. Your fixation on gays rings hollow. Your humanitarianism is insincere. Your socialism is deceptively hidden (but hardly invisible). Your self-righteous denunciations are predictable. And nobody who reads this blog believes you are a Christian. I wish you were an honest pagan, instead. And please, stop pretending to judge me as a hater and a bigot. You do not know me and you are in no position to form an opinion.

      Please do not post here again.

      1. What an exchange! Everyone in doubt about the true ends and objectives of the forces pretending to be concerned with “gay liberation”: They are the exact same forces that push “women’s liberation”, “people’s liberation” anyway, “Palestinian liberation”, any kind of “liberation”. But liberation, in the upside-down parallel universe of Marxist revolution, isn’t meant to liberate, but to enslave. Their “liberation” is merely a destructive – in fact, diabolical – act of breaking free! Of shedding shame and morals and commandments and everything – in order to enter the yet-uncharted territory of the Great Nothing, the Great nihilistic Black Hole of total exposure to a radically new kind of initiation: the initiation the likes of Barbara Marx-Hubbard, David Spangler or, to name their common root guruma, Helena Petrovna-Blavatsky, have always spoken about…

  7. Seems to me that homosexuals and transsexuals are persecuted in Russia. It’s in the United States that Progressives champion those lobbies. I suspect that the higher echelon Globalists, promote the LGBT (not to be confused with Lettuce, Bacon, and Tomato), agenda, hoping against hope that they can turn straight kids homo, in order to reduce the World’s population, but Communists merely want to destroy the family unit.

    For one thing, Communists believe that the State owns all the children and that they must be indoctrinated in the Communist belief system and learn to do as they are told, by the State. Secondly, to destroy the family unit in the US, is to make Americans more susceptible to the Communist agenda.

    1. In order to destroy traditional society Gramsci-style, you need to hollow it out, destabilise it to the point of virtual collapse. The post-revolutionary part of the world, whence these concerted operations originate, will not allow these movements to get out of control on their own territory – just think of the two members of ‘Pussy Riot’ who have been thrown into labour camps! All enthusiastic “gay” revolutionaries, in the West, should keep Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov’s dire monition of 1984 in mind, where he said:

      “There must be a very strong national effort to educate people in the spirit of real patriotism, number one. Number two, to explain them the real danger of socialist-communist-whatever welfare state, big-brother government. If people will fail to grasp the impending danger of that development, nothing ever can help United States. You may kiss good-bye to your freedom, including freedoms to homosexuals, to prison-inmates, all these freedoms will vanish, will evaporate in five seconds, including your precious lives.”

  8. Believe it or not, there was in 2018 a brief interview on German television ARD with a German-origin Harvard political scientist (born 1982!) by name of Yascha Mounk. Mounk was asked about the 2015 refugee crisis and the overall sense of uncertainty in Germany because of it [my translation]:

    “Where should one see the causes for this development? Why has the fundamental trust in established politics gone down so heavily?”

    Yascha Mounk’s self-assured response:

    “The populists have been on the rise over many years, in many countries. This means one has to also look at things comparatively. And there are three causes that are very important: First, the economic stagnation, where despite the nation’s relatively good position many people feel they aren’t really much better off than their parents once were and their children might not be able to enjoy the same standard of living in the future. Second, that we are daring here a historically unique experiment, namely to transform a mono-ethnic, mono-cultural democracy into a multi-ethnic one. This can work, and I think it will work. But of course this implies a number of [social] dislocations. And third, that this anger, this fury against the political class gets concentrated through the internet, which makes it so much easier to drop hate comments, to engage in propaganda and also to get organised politically on behalf of extremist politicians.

    (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFLY0rcsBGQ)

    1. There is no sense in his reply that society is being disorganized and degraded through this transition to diversity — as it certainly must be. The tendency to point to some kind of dictatorial response from the populist right is to put everything on its head. This is very confused.

    2. For completeness’s sake, and so as to not mislead everyone (as I made a mistake with regard to the preceding question), here are news anchor Caren Miosga’s exact words, followed by Yascha Mounk’s full answer (at least, as for the first, relevant part). But of course, post-2015 political Germany has had one central theme anyway: immigration. Also, this was German television ARD’s daily late-night news show “Tagesthemen” of February 20, 2018 (again, my translation):

      Miosga: “Yascha Mounk teaches political theory at Harvard and is concerned about the survival of democracy. Good evening, Mr. Mounk!”

      Mounk: “Good evening!”

      Miosga: “Do you personally wish for Germany that the SPD [social democrat] members would vote for a grand coalition [with Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU platform]?”

      Mounk: “I don’t know the answer to that, frankly speaking, as I think we’ve been leading the discussion way too narrowly in recent months. Since September last year, the overall political situation in Germany has changed much more intensely than the media and the politicians are willing to acknowledge. As meanwhile, two of the populists’ basic premises have essentially materialised: First, that there is no real difference between the establishment parties any longer anyway, as when you have to continuously form coalitions with each other, then there won’t be any major differences eventually. And second, that the only way to really vote the government out is to defect over to the extremists. For right now one can see that whether one votes for the Greens, or CDU/CSU, or FDP [Germany’s liberal democrats], one won’t be able to predict which government one is going to finally support. And this means to me that, whether we have a grand coalition [of CDU/CSU and SPD] or a minority government or whether we would find a way to forming a Jamaica coalition [of CDU/CSU, Greens and FDP], we would still have the same type of problems in the country.”

      Miosga: “Where should one see the causes for this development? Why has the fundamental trust in established politics gone down so heavily?”

      Mounk: “The populists have been on the rise over many years, in many countries. This means one has to also look at things comparatively. And there are three causes that are very important: First, the economic stagnation, where despite the nation’s relatively good position, many people feel they aren’t really much better off than their parents once were and their children might not be able to enjoy the same standard of living in the future. Second, that we are daring here a historically unique experiment, namely to transform a mono-ethnic, mono-cultural democracy into a multi-ethnic one. This can work, and I think it will work. But of course this implies a number of [social] dislocations. And third, that this anger, this fury against the political class gets concentrated through the internet, which makes it so much easier to drop hate comments, to engage in propaganda and also to get organised politically on behalf of extremist politicians.”

      As a final note, as one reads the comments underneath that video, people of course are upset: Who is “We”? What “experiment”? And shouldnt we be asked whether we want such an “experiment”, in the first place?

      The Left (and it’s now an ultra-hard Left) has become overly self-assured, and so, in their arrogance, they make mistakes, whether it’s this frank admission about a societal experiment with regard to Germany or AOC’s wild Green New Deal fantasies in the U.S.

      Never mind that Chancellor Merkel has, by her ruthless immigration policies and according to a number of German constitutional experts, violated Germany’s constitution, as well as her oath of office:

      “I swear that I will dedicate my strength to the well-being of the German people, increase its benefit, avert harm from it, preserve and defend the constitution and federal laws, thoroughly fulfil my duties and exercise justice toward everyone. So help me God.”

      Again, the YouTube clip in question is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFLY0rcsBGQ.

  9. Yascha Mounk’s above statement, omits any supposed reward for taking such an admittedly daring experiment, as if throwing all caution to the wind were ostensibly, a good idea. Then there’s the insinuation that those who might object would be extremists. There is also a more vague implication that the Internet ought to be censored.

    Mounk pits Populism against Democracy, as if so-called, Populists, aren’t the majority, and as if Democracy didn’t nearly destroy France.

  12. (Sorry for opening this parallel avenue that wasn’t precisely on topic.)

    So heart-breaking to see how America – after countless decades of one side only fighting – has been betrayed not just by the world at large, but by her very own. The country’s best were destroyed, while the traitors occupy positions of power and control the narrative, on top of it.

    At the same time, Europe is drifting away, unable to identify Moscow as the architect of her growing misery. Once again “Jewish-American high finance” gets blamed as the villain. History is about to repeat itself, and the unchanged Soviets in the Kremlin must be laughing their heads off as never before…

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