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From The New International, Vol. XXIV No. 2–3, Spring–Summer 1958, pp. 144–146.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Going through some back issues of the New Yorker I came across one of the most fascinating studies to have appeared in recent American magazines. Appearing in the October 26, 1957 issue, The Study of Something New in History, is a report on the U.S. Army analysis of the experiences of prisoners of war in North Korean camps. The piece is lengthy and well documented, and it would be impossible to detail all the evidence here. But take a few of the major points:
“One out of very three American prisoners in Korea was guilty of some sort of collaboration with the enemy ...”; “... the prisoners, as far as Army psychiatrists have been able to discover, were not subjected to anything that could properly be called brainwashing ...”; the breakdown of Army discipline – in the early days of the war involving attacks by enlisted men upon officers – resulted in an extraordinary high death-rate among Americans. Where the Turks, for example, maintained a morale, espirit de corps and group solidarity and made the tending of the wounded a collective responsibility, there was a tremendous tendency on the part of the Americans to become isolated, anti-social individuals. The consequence was, often enough, death. How explain all of this?
The Army’s conclusion is that the American soldier was not “prepared” to become a prisoner. For one thing, the sudden transition from Western to Oriental living standards was a profound shock. For another, the Americans were not prepared to deal with the carefully worked-out campaign of demoralization and indoctrination employed by the Communists. This does not mean that the disintegration of American morale was a consequence of “brainwashing,” i.e., of the use of drugs, hypnotic technique, torture, so as to change the personality of the subject in a fundamental way. On the contrary, the Chinese did not normally employ these techniques. Rather, they relied upon more simple techniques of the stick and carrot, of humiliation and favors, of atomizing the American units and setting soldier against soldier.
But then, the Army, as least as its views are reported in the New Yorker piece, could not (publicly) face up to more underlying causes of the crack-up in the Korean war camps. For these involve a recognition of the massive, world-historical transformation that is taking place in Asia and throughout the globe – a knowledge which is apparently denied to American statesmen and generals today.
The Korean War was the first time in history that an Oriental army met a first-class Occidental army and gained a stalemate. True, there were all kinds of mitigating factors. MacArthur was not allowed to bomb China itself; there were political limitations placed upon the conflict, etc. But when all the proper qualifications are made, an enormous fact remains: the myth of “white superiority,” of the Chinese as the slightly comic corner laundryman was shattered. That this was done by a Chinese Army which fought in the interests of a totalitarian and imperialist world-system does not alter the reality. In World War II, there was never a defeatist mood in America – it was always known that the power of the United States would prevail over the “Japs.” But the Korean War was different.
It would seem quite difficult to underestimate the psychological impact of this change. One point from the New Yorker is illuminating in this regard. In the first stage of the War (from June to late November), the battle was primarily between the North Koreans and the Americans. MacArthur’s insane policy of pursuit across the Thirty-Eighth Parallel (a policy blessed by Washington and revelatory of the more basic aims of American participation in the war) resulted in the sudden appearance of the Chinese Army late in 1950. The North Koreans had often shot prisoners, and the rumour among the American soldiers was that this was the expected fate of the captured. But the Chinese changed that policy. Sometimes, they even shook hands with the man they had just taken prisoner. The North Korean practice conformed to stereotypes of “Oriental” cruelty; but the Chinese shattered this conception. The result was that many a captive was thrown off balance at the instant of his capture. Or so the Army reports.
But secondly, there is the whole question of the role of politics in an Army. From the French Revolutionary Army, through the Red Army of Trotsky and in the streets of Budapest in 1956, it has been demonstrated time and again that a conscious, aware army – an armed movement of the people – has tremendous qualities of resourcefulness, bravery and the like. In a sense, the American Army in Korea in 1950–53 was the exact reverse of this image of the revolutionary Army. More than at any time in history there was a fuzziness as to precisely what the war was about; there was the frustrating fact that it could not be decisively ended; and there was the general lack of a political consciousness of participation, on the part of soldiers, on the part of people back home.
World War II had the minimal virtue of being fought under a progressive mythology; the Whitmanesque nothings of a Henry Wallace could provide it with the sound, if not the substance, of a liberal crusade against fascism. But the Korean War was fought against a progressive mythology, i.e. against a vicious system which, however, masks itself in the rhetoric of socialist humanism. And on the American side, there was no consensus as to what it all meant, no rhetorician to dress imperialism up in the armor of a crusade. It is impossible to read the New Yorker discussion without realizing that this factor – so pervasive in all of our national life today – was one of the elements in the incredible breakdown of the Army in the camps.
And what is the Army’s answer? In part, it is Eisenhower’s grim little statement, “I am an American fighting man” which is based on the assumption that what the Army knows happened did not happen, i.e. business at normal. In part, it will be, according to the New Yorker, a campaign to better acquaint soldiers with the conditions they will face upon capture. And, in part, it will be a program of political indoctrination. The only problem with the last point is that America today doesn’t even possess a good bogus political rationale for its policy. Once the platitudes about the “Free World” are over, there is nothing there. And so long as this persists, the terrible results of the Korean PW camps will be a very real possibility.
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