Arnon Goldfinger Quotes

FDR was right about Russia being a major factor in stopping Hitler, but partially wrong about the danger of Russia. The Soviets never did dominate Europe although the tried, but they did dominate Eastern Europe.

The then Attorney General had established a back channel to the Russian agent. There was genuine fear by the Russians and some in America that there were still many Nazis and German nationalists who would try and influence, if not take over, German politics to produce another aggressive German fascist state. The Russians had lost 22 million citizens to the Germans in the war and had faced a defeated Germany where virtually every German over the age of 30 had been cheering for and supporting Hitler a decade ago. Neither the Russians nor we and the other allies had not yet seen the remarkable turn-around that the German nation would make and the intense anti-fascist, non-military ethos that would be brought by the younger German generations. The direction of Germany was then very unpredictable.

When the doubts began to be expressed, the scientists were briefed on the planned invasion of the Japanese mainland and the military medical preparations for treating and caring for ½ million serious wounded casualties. In addition, given the state of war, there was expected about the same number of American Military deaths. On top of that, there would be many more Japanese military casualties plus even more Japanese civilian deaths and wounded. The use of the Atom Bomb would save all those lives but have casualties of its own, but far fewer. At the time, surprising to most people now, the use of the atomic bomb was not an issue of controversy at all. There were no Congressman who questioned it, no newspapers which editorialized against the use of the bomb. There were not even any other counties which protested its use.

The Nazis occupied the cities, but the partisans survived in the mountains. The resistance was ferocious and very effective. From a German Soldier’s point of view, the Yugoslav front was the most dangerous assignment where his odds of being killed was even greater than the Russian front.

The assassination was attempted in 1944 and after its failure, he was shot be a firing squad.

He was a viscious anti-Semite who attracted to his party extreme right wingers, Nazi Sympathers and apologists for the Vichey Franch government. The party was rejected by the majority of French voters, but when his daughter took over the party, she was not an anti Semite but foudn it hard to shake the party's image which was alaysa associated with her name even when she actually kicked her father out of the party.

Dulles had little regard for the immorality of using Nazis as agents including major war criminals—even when it was against U. S. law and policy. The CIA continued to be insensitive and over the years employed some of the worst right wing murders and war criminals, The “precedent” was set after WWII by Dulles. See also {633240}.

This is a noteworthy quotation as it shows the nasty side of American intelligence activity in the aftermath of WWII. Mykola Lebed, 1909-1998 was a Ukrainian Nationalist war criminal working with the Nazis who was responsible for the murder and ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, He was convicted, and imprisoned for the murder, in 1936, of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki but was released when the Nazis occupied Poland. However, he was anti-Russian and our CIA enlisd his “services” to spy on the Soviets in the Ukraine. Then in 1949 he emigrated to the United States. As a war criminal, the law required that he be sent back to Europe, but this letter from the CIA Director “persuaded” the immigration authorities to not only allow him into the country, but the CIA paid him and he lived until in New York City until his death. There was no legal basis for his entry into the United States but the arrangements were made in secret. Polish patriots who had greatly assisted the Allies in fighting the Germans in WWII with great losses, did not even know that the war criminal that had tortured and murdered so many Poles was not only alive and well and living in New York, but was being paid by the United States government. The issue of what criteria are used for American intelligence agencies to use agents and what “rewards” can be given has been in controversy ever since. In one case in the late 20th century, the CIA actually employed an agent in South America who murdered and raped American nuns doing humanitarian work. The argument on the other side is that for espionage one wants terrible people with no moral compunctions as they make good agents. The question has always been at what moral cost and does a sociopath really make a good agent. See {633239}.

She, like her husband and many of the America Firsters, believed that Hitler should be allowed to overrun Europe and Russia. See {613688}. The America First group was a pro-fascist organization who supported the axis powers until they declared war on the United States. Even then, there were some Nazi sympathizers who were anti-immigrant, racist and anti-Semitic in addition to being fascists. Both of the Lindberghs were America Firsters

At first glance, the reader might think that this quotation in a leading university newspaper was from the Vietnam War era. However, it was argument against U. S. involvement in World War II. There was a very negative reaction to Wilson’s visions and claims for the First World War which never did come to pass that stuck with many.

This fact was one of the reasons that McCarthyism and HUAC were able to get traction. The Red Scare paranoids found something to really worry about. They overreacted, sensing the problem not as one of a large number of misguided and naïve people trying to help America do better, but as active spies controlled by the Kremlin who wanted to destroy the American way of life. There were two basic reasons these naïve officials acted that way. Many of them had not forgotten the devastation of the American people in the Great Depression and believed that capitalism had almost failed completely and the rough edge had to be taken off American capitalism by injecting some socialist principles such as stronger labor unions, ending racial and religious discrimination, controlling monopolies, and regulating critical industries. They also were mindful of the fact that the Russians were bearing the brunt of the WWII casualties—military and civilian—while killing more of the Germans and capturing more German occupied territory than the other allies together, yet they were not receiving the same level of assistance—technical, intelligence, economic and political as the British. They saw helping the Russians as saving American lives on the battlefield by making them more effective and keeping German soldiers and weapons away from the Western front and Americans. They also remembered that many in Congress were opposed to our entering WWII in Europe until Germany declared war on America. They had in many cases been apologists for Fascism and passionate enemies of communism. Some American industrialists like Henry Ford were anti-Semitic and overt admirers of Hitler. {586985} So these officials tried to redress the imbalance that existed while at the same time little was really known about Soviet Russia and the Stalin excesses that were as bad as some of Hitler’s. {634969} The only information Americans had were the terrible casualties the Russians were taking and the in kind that they were dishing out to the Germans. The number of Soviet spies in America were few and commensurate with the number of agents we had in Russia. But few Americans realized the difficulty the U. S. and the rest of the democratic world would have with Russia after the war was won.

The potential spies I interviewed after WWII were He was one of the earliest employees of the CIA. He was assigned to interview all the characters from Eastern Europe in including Russia who were offering their services to the Americans to spy on the Russians whose troops and puppet communist governments were controlling most of the area. Unfortunately, most of these volunteers were just trying to save their skins or settle scores and had served the Nazis and often committed murder and other war crimes themselves. None the less, the CIA used many of them. See {635149}.