Communism- How did it happen?

Author: Richard R. Tryon

A review of the William D. Pawley book

“Why the Communists are Winning” as of 1976
and How They Lost in 1990

by Richard R. Tryon, Jr. 1997

Ambassador William D. Pawley is undoubtably one of the American stalwarts of a period of history that was steeped in the tradition of such as Theodore Roosevelt, a man involved with Cuba, as was Pawley. He was acquainted with most of the strong willed leaders of his time from Winston Churchill, F.D. Roosevelt, Chiang Kai Shek, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur, and many others including leaders of S.America, India, and Central America. His success in business made him a leader with personal wealth- a resource he used even to help his government when time was of the essence! He must have been a very personable man! History seems to have put him frequently in the right place at the right time as if Divine intervention was at work.

His early life in Cuba led to a multi-faceted career that included aircraft construction in China where he made his first discovery of the duplicity of communism and the infiltration work of spies in China from both Russia and Germany. But, even before this he had observed the beginnings of the failure of his America to recognize the danger of trying to co-exist with fascism and communism. If Chamberlain is to be blamed for ‘Peace in our time” in his thinking that he could trust Hitler, then FDR needs to be blamed for recognizing in 1933 the regime in Moscow with diplomatic status. It was the one of the first steps in the destruction of America’s freedom of the individual and the loss of a position of global political leadership.

To Pawley, giving respectability to a regime that professed atheism and the perfectibility of the human through communism should not have happened. Free men should have helped Russia escape the calamity of the stolen revolution. Instead, far too many aided and abetted the great socialist experiment. The Russian leaders sent many forth in the world to spread their gospel. Their failures were hidden by ‘thought control’ and endless manipulations of facts for over 80 years. Millions died or were forced into wars by the twin maladies of fascism and communism. Slavery and famine were common.

Although Pawley witnessed revolutionary activity in Cuba as early as 1933, the first evidence of the Pawley ability to contribute to the cause of democracy, came in China where he witnessed both the battle against the Japanese and the Russian influence via Mao Tse Tung. He initiated the idea of the “Flying Tigers” and facilitated Claire Chennault and literally caused it all to happen by obtaining Roosevelt’s permission to ‘go-around’ the U.S. non-intervention policy. His ‘connections’ were imperative to getting the planes, the supplies, and the pilots! This story alone is legendary yet it occupies only a minor footnote status in the writings of Pawley and less in the words of Chennault.

Before that the Chinese legendary figure of Sun Yat Sen had sent Chiang Kai- Shek to Moscow to learn how the tenets of Lenin could help China. Chiang saw through the monstrous set of lies and came home convinced that International communism was a new name for Tsarism and dictatorship but in the name of the people. It is not surprising therefore that he and Pawley became good friends or that Pawley understood why Chiang had to be a strong and undemocratic leader in a country of unschooled peasants by the millions.

His knowledge of what happened to General.’Vinegar Joe’ Stillwell and Capt. Evans Carlson of “Carlson’s raiders” fame, at the hands of the spy named Agnes Smedley served to convince Pawley that international politics is a dangerous game. Many lives were lost because of what she learned or inspired in the minds of her male friends.


Within the first 42 pages the reader is lead to the point that Pawley reveals his strong convictions about Chinese and Indian intrigue with communists in key bad guy roles- all true, and they are significant. Incidentally, Pawley warned the leaders of Pearl Harbor a year before the Japanese attack that he had learned of the secret plan to bomb it to stop the U.S. navy from interfering with the Japanese expansion into most of Asia. His ideas were counter-mandered in Hawaii by orders from Washington’s Admiral “Bulldog” Turner, who ran both the Naval Planning and Intelligence Departments. A future Vice admiral Leyton, who had been running the intelligence section during the time that cryptographers broke the Japanese diplomatic code, was sent to Pearl Harbor to be intelligence chief for Admiral Kimmel. His book “And I was there” tells how the orders came to assemble aircraft and ships to be easily guarded against sabotage, not aerial attack. Turner was certain that the Japanese would attack Russia from the East at the same time that Hitler broke his non-aggression pact with Stalin. So Pawley’s advice was over-ruled by Washington and the commanders who knew better were reassigned to leave Admiral Kimmel and General Short to be the future ‘fall guys’ while Turner moved on to fame and glory sending marines ashore to fight. Only MacArthur managed to move with minimal bloodshed by ‘leapfrogging’ the enemy.

Leyton’s protegees decoded on Dec. 6 , the message telling the Japanese Embassy of the plan to attack Pearl Harbor on the 7th, but inoperable Naval communication equipment left it to Western Union to warn Admiral Kimmel as the Navy didn’t want to ask the Army for help! The telegram was enroute as the bombs fell! Yes, for ‘want of a nail’’...etc. This phenomena in the career of Pawley repeats itself many times and each one serves as an example of how a great democracy can self destruct! As Lenin said to skeptics in his camp- “Don’t worry, our enemies will give us what we need to beat them”.

He was also aware of and tried to stop the Russian plan to enter WWII against Japan 90 days after VE Day in Europe- an idea agreed to by FDR at Teheran, in exchange for our letting Russia take the spoils of war in China and Manchuria as well as all of Eastern Europe. The A bomb fell two days before the Russians declared war on Japan. What a gift to Russia that was! It included over 30 of the Kurile islands that came to contain a great Soviet Naval base. Japan is still trying to get them back.

Fortunately, Truman did not share Japan with Russia too! He let MacArthur rebuild Japan as no other leader could have done. But, that relationship was ended when a scant five years later MacArthur agreed to help engineer a way to let Congress know how to end the war in Korea. A war that was caused by our State Dept. bungling and our President’s failure to recognize its coming. Pawley predicted it a year in advance when Secretary of State Dean Acheson said that “Korea was outside of the sphere of influence of the U.S.”.

When the end of WWII in Europe was approaching, FDR confided to Pawley that Stalin did not keep his word- in short he had convinced FDR that Russia was not going to lend its effort to the cause of democracy as we understood the term. This caused Pawley to relate his idea to Truman, after FDR died on April 8, 1944, to finish off Germany and continue East to free Russia from the communist tyranny! Truman had to reject this play for several good reasons: 1) Truman had no standing of leadership in the world; 2) All of the U.S. wanted the ‘boys’ and they wanted to come home, not march through Russia; and 3) the world and our Congress would not have accepted it- especially all of the communists and ‘fellow travelers’ in the U.S. However, a significant number of Americans understood Pawley’s point and would have supported such action. If we had been properly informed by the media and the government of the true level of treachery by Stalin, his team, and the number of Americans supportive of the idea that our system of individualism had fewer faults than the Russian collectivism ideas of Lenin and Stalin, we might have met that challenge and achieved world leadership without moving into the ‘cold war’. Unfortunately, the American press and government were already significantly duped into support of Russian ideas.

Russian secrecy left us unaware of the fact that Stalin was dishonest and that he had systematically stolen control from those who stole the revolution in 1917; and that his ideas were to only look like he was concerned for the individual- but only in a collectivism sense. Russian persecution of Christians and Jews was unnoticed for a long time, and the absence of acceptance of a relationship between man and God was not deemed to be important in America where progressives worked excessively and successfully to separate church and state in ways that have nothing to do with ancient church control of the secular world- a goal that our American revolution achieved. The founders, however, did not fail to recognize their allegiance to God.

In the last days of WWII, it was the German propaganda minister Josef Goebbels who coined the phrase “Iron Curtain” when he wrote that if the Western allies let Russian troops occupy Eastern Europe, an “Iron Curtain” will descend to bring this territory into the Soviet system of communism. Churchill used the same term in 1946 at a speech in Fulton, Missouri. Both correctly saw what was coming, as did Pawley. Thus the ‘cold war’ became a factual reality that Pawley, if he had the power to decide, would have avoided.

By this time many U.S. university campuses were full of young idealists anxious to see us move into a “One World” concept with a central government to care for everyone within the context of a Godless set of humanistic jargon that was known as communism in Russia and democratic humanism elsewhere. Not Pawley, he was too perceptive for his time and Americans were too overjoyed with victory to want to bother with trying to assert world leadership in ideology. Senator Joe McCarthy tried to exploit the subversive issue for his own personal ends and he only helped convince many that America was not full of card carrying communists out to destroy the greatest nation on earth- one that had just won a world war. So we ignored endless dirty deeds!

Pawley was made ambassador to Peru and then Brazil and this gave him opportunity to see communist subversion at work in a number of instances. The culminating event was the Bogota revolt led by a group of ten revolutionaries bent on taking over Columbia with encouragement from Venezuela and a Cuban student named Fidel Castro. The revolution failed partly because Pawley for one, was able to help the locals win in spite of U.S. State Dept. efforts to prevent it. Yes, our government was convinced that the history of ‘banana Republics’ led by dictators should be replaced by communist style democracy! Even some parts of the Catholic Church in Central America agreed with this ‘liberation theology’ thinking. Even today, the latest computer Grolier encyclopedia still prints that Castro was not a communist long before the Cuban revolution started. The entry on the OAS makes no notice of the revolution that failed at the same time as the modern OAS was born. The entry for Bogota notes that in modern times this April 9, 1948 uprising following the assassination of a liberal leader lasted just 24 hours, and it makes no mention of foreign intervention or the record of young Fidel Castro. No wonder Americans do not know what happens or why!

Pawley was sent to France to build airfields for the emerging NATO in 1946. Spain was excluded from the U.N. because Franco was a dictator! But, Pawley was sent by his friend, General George Marshall to assess Spain and Pawley found that Spain would be a more reliable partner than France. But, the State Dept. managed to keep the French in place even though the French used us to get millions of dollars to support their war in Vietnam and to overcharge for building air bases that we never got to use, as France withdrew from active participation and NATO moved from Paris to Brussels. The encyclopedia reports that Eisenhower made his headquarters in Brussels as commander of SHAPE, but no mention of why it moved from Paris.

Eventually, Pawley ‘scored’ with air bases in Spain- an advantage that was profound in containing Russia, but it was never loudly played in the U.S. press. For the press could not forgive Spain for beating the communists in its civil war in the thirties. A war that was supported by the Nazis. More than a few idealistic Americans died there too.

The Russian influence was denied in much of western Europe because of NATO, but eastern Europe paid a terrible price everywhere. But in such places as Hungary, which lost in the 1956 uprising, the price was even higher. Meanwhile, the Russian influence flourished in Cuba and briefly in several other Central American spots- Nicaragua, but was stamped out in Guatemala with help from the CIA and Pawley, and in Grenada with help from Pres. Reagan. Angola, and several other African adventures were in the period of history that paralleled the communist developments in Korea and Vietnam. Again the encyclopedia records the events in Guatemala but fails to show any dangerous links to communism in 1954, noting only that the party took on the local labor party as its ‘modus-operendi’, while pointing out that the American United Fruit company may have supported the CIA effort in order to keep democratic freedom, ala what happened to Nicaragua, from happening. Some ugly ‘strong-arm’ tactics were used and such can’t be avoided when you fight a war! Of course, the ‘Sandanistas’ did finally destroy by revolution the lives of thousands of the citizens of Nicaragua in later years until it collapsed of its own failures.

The Korean ‘police action’ should never have happened as Pawley tried to get the U.S. to recognize its invitation- accidental or by design of the State Department. It is hard to know, but certain key players there did encourage it. Both the Korean conflict and the Viet Nam war were fought in a strange manner- one which guaranteed a ‘no win’ for us and by default therefore a ‘win’ for the locals who just happened to be communists! The American position showed a sense of fear of major reprisals. Pawley found such a spineless positioning to be treasonable. Unfortunately, he did not live to see the collapse of the ‘evil empire’ from its own failure.

When Korea was going badly and it took MacArthur’s genius to get us back to a stand-off, under the rules being used, until China entered the fray, Pawley tried to solve the problem by encouraging an invasion of China by Taiwan! It would have been a brilliant military approach, as would also have been the case in Vietnam, if our troops had been allowed to fight to win. But, the political game was played to appease Russia- don’t escalate to WWIII. Rather try to keep the bad guys from capturing S. Korea. We may never know if the State Department leaders were traitors or just ‘spineless’ appeasers.

MacArthur lost his job over support of this plan, but the American public didn’t learn that the reason was not disobedience but upstaging of the President, who wanted to announce a new peace plan give away, by assisting a Congressman willing to go to Taiwan to learn how to bring to Congress the right idea. Again the State Department managed to thwart Pawley! He provides many documents to show how his support in high places was undermined by those in the State Department that either worked for the enemy directly or were duped into support for the wrong reasons.

MacArthur came home a hero, but Truman and Acheson managed to keep the war going without a way to win for three more years before a negotiated ‘cease-fire’ was implemented. War was never declared and an armistice is just coming into view in 1997 as the North Koreans are starving under their communist system. Perhaps this time the U.S. will not try to save the communist regime in N. Korea, but ‘bleeding heart’ liberals will want to save the children and that may save the leaders who will tell the people that the Americans were forced to feed our children.

Yes, we held the line on the Korean conflict albeit with excessive loss and expense that is still causing us to give to the Korean dictators resources that should be withheld. We lost everything in Vietnam because the enemy could afford to wait until we tired of the ‘body count’ that the media compelled us to hear every morning! One wonders who in the media made such a decision? The rules of engagement in Vietnam were a deliberate means of controlling the outcome. Political games put many young men to death, because the enemy knew far too often what was planned and what could be done or not. The same problems as were found in Korea. Twice we had the war all but won in Vietnam only to have the press and the government find ways to lose it. Political micro management of military targeting, among other tactics, assured the enemy that the U.S. would not fight to win- just to make the North suffer, if it persisted in trying to capture the south!

The Bay of Pigs fiasco was another story. Castro was handed a victory by Pres. J.F. Kennedy- a play that he should never have had the chance to make. Eisenhower started the Pawley plan and tried to execute it before he left office. The State Dept. found ways to slow the execution until Kennedy took office. Wanting a new image of not being a Yankee with a big stick, Kennedy pulled out the support of U.S. flyers at the crucial moment, after deliberately letting 2,500 Cuban expatriates march into the ocean at the wrong landing beach- one where the support vessels would run aground on shoals of coral, and where paratroops would land in a swamp!

Kennedy pushed for the political value of a grand “Alliance for Progress” so as to spend millions and achieve little rather than spend a little and achieve the freedom for Cuba. We are still paying the price of that mistake! The problem of the Dominican Republic and General. Trujillo is another event in the series of blunders masterminded by our State Dept. in spite of the Eisenhower support of Pawley’s imaginative solutions. Peter Wyden’s book on “The Bay of Pigs” is objective, but it clearly shows that Castro had a weak force and there was no way for Russia to stop the CIA plan. It might have found retaliation via greater pressure on Berlin, for example, but it would not have been likely to go to war over it.

As noted initially, William Pawley is an unrecognized American hero! He stood for all that we profess to love and worked hard to help us avoid major mistakes in the contest to win WWII and to survive the cold war. His exploits and stories are well documented to show his integrity and virtue. We will never know if his ideas could have been an effective alternative to the anguish and pain of the cold war and the losses of men, material and time chronicled not only through his writing until 1976 but also during the 21 years since.

History shows that the years of President Ronald Reagan achieved the kind of turn around that William Pawley would have understood and encouraged. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was partially a direct result of our rebuilding the military and threatening the ‘Star Wars’ concepts to contain the idea of a Soviet preemptive strike. The broader economic failure forced Gorbachev to seek ways to restructure the economy (Perestroika). He wanted to think that he could reform the communist system and to encourage new ideas. He allowed ‘Glasnost’ to permit open discussion of ways to make it happen. He realized too late that he had opened ‘Pandora’s box’ and the flood of criticism made everyone discover the magnitude of the big lie! Yeltsin figured it out. Gorby is still not wanting to admit that perfect communism can’t happen! Man can’t surrender his freedom and personal responsibility and ownership of property and be a ‘slave’ of the Godless state and still expect to live a moral and comfortable life. Or prepare for a hereafter.

The Soviet collapse in 1991 allowed the Persian Gulf War to happen, with Russian approval of the allied response, rather than a jump to support Saddam- something the Russians could not do any longer- even if they had wanted to do so. Their Afghanistan adventure showed all of Russia, as well as the rest of the world, that the Russian army could not beat anyone! President George Bush took direct action upon the Iraqi attack on tiny, defenseless, Kuwait. His response, thanks to his great accumulation of global friends to help, fit the classic Pawley approach. But, it failed to win the main war, when it allowed Saddam Hussein to survive in power in Iraq. But it did show signs of having managed to contain both Iraq and Iran in a way that has not allowed either to do great global mischief since. Each is the mortal enemy of the other and they may yet come back to war again as they did for ten years, while the U.N. inspectors continue to monitor and limit Saddam’s efforts to ignore the agreements that let the cease fire happen. Kuwait is free and a global lesson was learned. Continued vigilance and U.N. support are necessary if renewal of tragic events is to be avoided in this part of the world.

It is still unfortunate that the Iraqis and Iranians (as well as all others that benefit from the oil cartel) sit on so much of the world’s oil and are able to sell it for prices far in excess of cost. We have come to accept that tyranny as one we can pay for. William Pawley would be more inclined, I believe, to have wanted the U.N. forces to have captured all of Iraq and taken Iran while the forces were in the area to do it. How he would have justified it in the name of democracy, I don’t know; how he would have administered justice in a pair of Muslim states that are divided in their own thinking, I don’t know either; and this represents the kind of question that his detractors would pose and shrink from the decision and hope that the problem would ‘go-away’.

The current U.S. administration is not beset with the same set of global problems as have been so common for these past fifty years. We are afforded the seemingly comfortable luxury of having a president ,who lives under a cloud of suspicion, in a land of people who seem not to care- they are eating well, the economy is up. The president, for no apparent reason, gets credit for creating jobs and sounding like he is the champion of the common man.

The ‘bottom line’ of all of this relates well to my father’s writing, which is far more philosophical. In “You Can’t Escape God” or “God and Man in a Modern World”. He builds a model of the ideal world based upon the same sense of individual responsibility that Pawley would endorse. However, his arguments are based upon a a careful study of all religions and political philosophies and they give a set of hints as to how we can scientifically see why God has played a hand in this evolution of mankind. If all could understand and accept God’s direction to encourage individualism as the essential way to prepare for immortality, the world could be a lot more peaceful. To do so, all religions will have to come to understand a new set of Revelations that transcend the established ways which make us so divisive.

It is my conviction that both books deserve to be more widely published. Pawley’s because he documents the perfidy of the U.S. and other political systems; my father’s because he may be able to help some people reach an understanding of God partly through science rather than via simple faith. Both can help us learn to avoid the type of future mistakes that Pawley documents from studies of those of the past.

It is painful to realize that a man of such great stature as Pawley has been ignored by history such a long time. His words may be valuable to historians, but they may still be crucial to those who confront the next global tyrants who encourage us to surrender our freedoms-with us supplying the resources needed to make it happen.

We really don’t need to keep on repeating our mistakes, and that is Pawley’s main point.

This summary brings the Pawley story up to date and reflects the history since his writing and his life ended. I hope that readers will appreciate what a giant was William D. Pawley- a true patriot. While it is always true that 'hindsight is 20-20', American courage has never tried to lead us in any evil way when we truly understand the nature of the enemies of peace and freedom.