ESCALATION, AMERICAN OPTIONS, AND PRESIDENT NIXON'S WAR MOVES - PART II
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CIA-RDP80-01601R000300350058-1
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K
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3
Document Creation Date:
December 9, 2016
Document Release Date:
November 13, 2000
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58
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Publication Date:
May 11, 1972
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STATI NTL STATI NTL
A SECOND LOOK AT THE AUSTRIAN
SITUATION
HON. FRANK J. BRASCO
OF NEW YORK
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, May 11, 1972
Mr. BRASCO. Mr. Speaker, very re-
cently a group of young American Jews
were involved in an altercation at the
Austrian Embassy in Washington. It
seems there was sonic physical contact
'involv'ing the Austrian Ambassador to
the United States. In the process, a
swastika flag was hung from the front
of the embassy inI question. A message
was attached to the flag, asking Ameri-
cans to refrain from visiting "Nazi Aus-
tria.".
I certainly deplore the violation of the
grounds of the Austrian Embassy. And
I hold no brief for those who would lay
hands upon any ambassador of a sover-
eign state with.. which the United States
maintains correct relations. But this in-
cident deserves a little more research,
particularly into reasons for such an
outburst by young people who are law-
breakers in a very different sense of the
word than is ordinarily understood by
our general public.
Austria is the spiritual home of
nazism. Hitler was a native of Linz, Aus-
tria. Adolph Eichmann was also a citi-
zen of that country. Austria's very name
in the old European lexicon was "Oester.,
reich," which really means an eastern
extension of the "Reich."
The Nazi movement was exceptionally
strong from the start in this nation.
When. "Anschluss" arrived with Ger-
many, cheering mobs of Hitler's sym-
pathizers lined her roads to welcome his
armies ,first, and himself later.
Antisemitism has deep roots in the
Austrian consciousness, even, as some
inight say, in the soul of this small na-
tion. Large numbers of native Austrians
not only fought for and served Hitler
ardently unto death, but also were in-
volved in many stupefying crimes of the
Nazi regime.
Hundreds of thousands of Austrians
had more than a nodding acquaintance
with the eastern portions of Europe
which fell swiftly under Nazi domination
at the start of the Second World War.
These ivere sin-led out, although thou-
sands voluhteercd cheerily, to administer
conquered territories, all of which coIl-
tained large numbers of Jews.
Austria was a Nazi nation to its last
corpuscle, participating in a thousand
ways in what the Hitler regime planned
and carried forth across the face of Eu-
rope. Many of those tried and executed
or imprisoned as a result of the Nurem-
berg trials were Austrian nationals.
As Nazi hordes spilled over and took
control of Eastern Europe, an adminis-
trative Infrastructure -was created every-
where across these conquered territories.
Gauleiters, or area governors, were set
up, with a complete power, structure be-
neath them, charged with exploitation of
lands and extermination of undesirables.
They were in charge of enforcing laws,
producing slave labor in massive quanti-
ties and running a variety of activities.
Among these were extermination camps,
where upward of 6 million innocent
Jewys were murdered methodically, and
toward the close of the war, on an as-
sembly-line basis. Many of the people
who staffed scores of death camps were
Austrians. Many of those who dealt with
the daily administration of mass murder
were Austrians. -
Hundreds and hundreds of death trains
weekly crisscrossed Europe. Many car-
ried Jews to their doom. Others carried
loot from across Europe to feed and
clothe Nazi Germany and Austria.
Tens of millions of non-Jewish Euro-
peans were exploited and murdered by
this administrative infrastructure, which
cooperated fully on a daily basis with the
German Army, Gestapo, and SS.
Einsatzgruppen roamed areas behind
frontlines, their sole purpose to round up
and exterminate Jews, gypsies, and other
so-called "undesirables." Many assassins
in ? their ranks were Austrians. In fact,
sonic of the most unspeakable crimes
committed on a daily basis in the Second
World War upon noncombatants were
committed by Austrians.
After the war, an international outcry
sought and obtained trial of the worst of
these war criminals. Many trials were
hold across Europe for years, as these
men and women were sought out,. se-
cured, brought to the bar, and con-
demned to death or long prison terms.
One nation was an exception to this rule
of law: Austria.
Her population harbored a massive
ratio of niefnbers of the Nazi Party. Tens.
of thousands of war criminals found
their way back to Austria, quietly melt-
ing back into the mass of the population,
secure in the knowledge that few neigh-
bors, if any, would betray them to
authorities. Their confidence was well
placed, for most such neighbors were in
fact sympathizers, if not actual partici-
pants in the worst of these deeds. The
same was true of the police authorities.
The man who arrested Anne Frank and
sent her to Belseni was recently discov-
ered as an Austrian policeman.
Over the years a few stout hearts who
have never forgotten clamored for Aus-
tria to bring some of these butchers to
trial. I speak of concentration camp com-
mandants, camp guards, and the like.
Some were openly living under their own
,names, even though they were widely
known to be guilty of unspeakable
crimes. '
At last, in the past year, a few token
trials were put on by Austrian authori-
ties. And the entire Western World
looked on in disbelief and shock at the
result.
At Auschwitz, 3 million Jews were ex-
terminated on an orderly assembly-line
basis. Some men who designed and built
these extermination facilities were
brought to trial and found innocent of
any criminal activity.
Austria did not blanch at that. She put
on a second trial. The defendant was typ-
ical of a certain class of Nazi war crim-
inal, of which there are thousands alive
and well. today in Austria. This beast
was a former Nazi SS officer in the Mau-
thausen Concentration Camp, a mass
murder facility. His name is Johann Goal,
and he acknowledged in open court that
in 1944 he commanded a. section at this
camp called the "Stairway of Death."
According to witness testimony, pris-
oners were forced to drag 110-pound
stones lip 186 steep steps of a stone
quarry. Those who did not perish on the
steps were thrown into an electric fence
when they reached the top. Gogl's name,
according to testimony, was on the death
orders.
Gogi, like the rest of his kind, said he
did not knpw what was being done; that
his name was forged. His attorneys pro-
duced a petition signed by 268 persons,
virtually the entire adult population of
his home village of Ottnang, declaring he
could not be guilty because he dedicated
his life to saving life, a reference to his
membership In a mountain rescue unit.
How touching.
This, then, is what Austria conceals
beneath her smiling facade of mountains,
skiing, snow an'_ "gemtitlichkeit," Come
to happy Austria and vacations with all
the jolly old butchers of noncombatants.
For they are everywhere in that accursed
nation, and the entire world knows it.
Austria sees fit to infuriate civilization
by staging nonsense trials of the scum
of the earth, and then acquits them.
We all know the real story., None of
these people. will ever be punished for
their unspeakable deeds. After all, who
were those they murdered? Who cares?
And it was so long- ago, wasn't it?
Where are the great voices of consci-
ence who plead for even-hatncledness in
the Middle East? I hear them not. I see
them not.
I say, let Austria claim her own and
hug them to her national bosom. She de-
serves them. And they deserve her. These
young demonstrators who perpetrated
the action against the Austrian Embassy
did not do a nice thing. They did not do a
legal thing. But they certainly did an
understandable one.
ESCALATION, AMERICAN OPTIONS,
AND PRESIDENT NIXON'S WAR
MOVES-PART II
HON. RONALD V. BELLUMS
OF CALIFORNIA
IN THE HOUSE OF EEPRESENTATIVFS
Thursday; May 11, 1972
Mr. DELLUMS. Mr. Speaker, follow-
ing is the continuation of study materials
on American involvement in Indochina
which were first put into the RECORD on
May 10, 1972, and which the Government
Printing Office did not have room to
print fully.
The rest of the materials follow:
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STATIN,TL
,pprgred Fctrd0htmiMAL03Wd
May 1A
sionable and the less-gifted even more
so. It is therefore imperative that this
particular group have teachers with great
-expertise, patience, and warm, reassuring
personalities. Mrs. Degason exemplifies
these qualities to the finest degree.
Her city, State, and the children she
has helped all owe her a great debt of
gratitude.
HON. CARL ALBERT
If the goal of better llealtli for all
Americans Is to be achieved in our day,
or in our children's day, then the Con-
gress will have to show more concern for
Federal health programs In the coming
fiscal year than the Nixon administration
has shown. It is a duty that cannot be
ignored by the Members'of the House. It
is our responsibility to the health and
well-being of our people.
PLEA .1 OR NATIONAL REPENTANCE
HON. BELLA S. ABZUG
OF OKLAIIO.MA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Wednesday, May 10, 1972
Mr. ALBERT. Mr. Speaker, the people
of the United States surely rank their
personal health of utmost importance
among their many needs.
This, is true in every corner of the
country, from our smallest rural coniniu-
nities to our largest industrial cities. It
is true of rich Americans as well as poor
Americans. It is true among all ages of
our people. It is even true of Democrats
and Republicans alike.
'I;ogetlher, we beets to achieve the goal
of better health throughout the lives of
all the people of this Nation.
Is there a national health crisis? There
is indeed. ,
What do we need to do about it?
We need to work toward preventive
health care for all 'Americans. We need
to train young men and women in the
many health professions-and we need
to train them now, before the already
serious shortages iii health personnel be-
come critical.-We need'to advance the
knowledge of medicine through research
that is simultaneously broad and specific.
We need to make more health services
available to more people. We need to re-
duce the high costs of curing illness. We
need to give extra support to those
health-care institutions and training fa-
-eilities that are in financial distress.
On the part of the Federal Govern-
ment, these needs can be met only
through the authorized programs of the
Department of. Health, Education, and
Welfare. Yet with its proposed budget for
fiscal .year 1973, the Nixon administra-
tion would let all too many of these needs
go unmet.
President Nixon may have acknowl-
edged a national health crisis in his pub-
lic speeches, but he has not taken it into
full account in his budget recommenda-
tions. There is too little evidence in this
budget that the President ranks concern
for health as highly as the general public
does.
in the proposed 1973 budget, health
manpower programs are severely cur-
tailed. Grants for building or moderniz-
ing hospitals, community clinics, and
health schools are all but eliminated.
Worthy programs to combat mental ill-
ness and alcoholism are not allowed to
grow. Important health services, de-
signed to deliver adequate care to all
Americans, are held in place or actually
reduced, considering increased operat-
ing costs and Federal pay raises. Most of
the research institutes are given In-
creases that amount to only half the an-
nual inflation rate for health research.
OF NEW YORIC
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, May 11, 1972
Mrs. ABZUG. Mr. Speaker, this morn-
ing, I was privileged to receive a most elo-
quent "Plea for National Repentance"
over the inhuman terror we have wrought
in Southeast Asia, This statement is
being circulated in petition form and
will be presented to Congress at a later
(late. I include the item in the RECORD at
the conclusion of these remarks,
I am also including "War is Peace," a
paper on the President's latest escalation
by Fred Branfnian. Mr. Branfinan, who
is director of Project Air War, is one of
the foremost experts on our. air tactic's
and weaponry in Indochina, and I coin-
mend his paper to you.
The articles follow:
A PLEA rOR NATIONAL' REPENTANCE AND A
PETITION TO THE CONGRESS OF TILE UNITED
STATES
Whereas, millions of Vietnamese, Cam-
bodians and Laotians have been maimed and
uprooted from their holies and more Ulan
one-half inil'ion killed;
Whereas, more than 50.000 Americans have
been killed in Indo-China and 300,000 have
suffered casualties;
Whereas, the lands alid cities of Vietnam,
.Cambodia, and Laos have been devastated by
napalm, defoliants, bombs and all the vast
arsenal of the automated air war;
Whereas, the lives of United States prison-
ers held by the North Vietnamese are now
threatened by the further escalation of the
tear;
Whereas, the War waged by the United
States in Inclo-China wastes our human and
material resources and weakens our security
rather than insuring it;
Whereas, the United States armed forces
continue to impose upon the people of Viet-
nam the Thiess government dictatorship,
thus depriving the Vietnamese people the in-
alienable right of freedom;
Whereas, the peace of the whole world is
threatened by the recent escalation of the war
by the United States, including the mining of
Vietnam harbors, thus risking the beginning
of World War III;
We, the undersigned citizens of the United
States repent of our own complicity in this
sin against the Providence of God and this
crime against humanity; and we call for a
national time of mourning and repentance,
We petition the Congress of the United
States to take its proper responsibility for
ending participation by the United States in
the war in Indo-China by cutting off funds
used for the prosecution of the war, that
sanity and justice may be restored in the
foreign relations of the United States gov-
ernment.
rently direcV, 6f Project Air War, a research
group in Washington, D.C. He is editor of
Voices From The Plain o1 Jars, to be pub-
lished this month by Harper and Row.)
"All entrances to the North Vietnamese
ports will be mined . United States
forces have been directed to take appropriate
pleasures within the internal and claimed
territorial waters of North Vietnam to in-
terdict the delivery of any supplies. Rail and
all other cO111I11UIlicatiOllS will be cut off to
the maximum extent possible. Air and naval
strikes against military targets in North
Vietnam will continue . . . You want peace.
I want peace . . . and that is why, my fel-
low Americans, tonight I ask you for your
support of this decision-a decision which
has only one purpose-not to expand the
war, not to escalate the war, but to end this.
war and to win the kind of peace that will
last, With God's help, with your support, we
will accomplish that great goal."-Richard
Nixon, May 8, 1972.
George Orwell predicted that the leaders
of major powers would come to wage war
by machine and call it peace; that they would
annihilate distant and unseen societies from
the air even as they constantly reiterated
their earnest desires for peace at home.
On May 8,'1072, Richard Nixon announced
the most serious and dramatic set of esca-
lations in the Indochina war, removing the
last remaining restraints on automated war
observed by his predecessor; at the sane
time, he used the terms "peace" or "ending
the war" on 19 separate occasions in a 17-
minute talk.
He didn't quite claim that "-war is peace."
But then he did not have to.
His speech was one of the most striking
attempts to rewrite. history in recent mem-
ory. Virtually every sentence in It contra-
dicted the written record, ranging from the
writings of Lacouturc and Fall, to the Pell-
tagon and Kissinger papers, to today's news-
papers,
Two tons of bombs were exploding every
60 seconds as lie solemnly declared "I, too,
want to end this war;" mines were being
laid in and around Soviet vessels as he called
upon the Soviet Union not to "slide back into
the dark shadows of a previous age."
It is as much in wonderment as dismay
that one turns to an analysis of some of the
more striking.distortions and outright false-
hoods of this remarkable speech:
1. INVASION--FIVE tVEEKS AGO, ON EASTER
WEEKEND, THE COMMUNIST ARMIES OF NORTII
VIETNAIII LAUNCHED A MASSIVE INVASION OF
SOUTH VIETNAM"
The very basis of the 1954 Geneva Settle
ment on Vietnam is that Viet Nam is one.
country. 'rhere is no reference to a "South
Vietnam." The 17th parallel, far from being
an "international border" as the President
claimed in his April 26 speech, was merely a
temporary military demarcation line. Point
8 of the Joint Declaration by the 9 powers
guaranteeing the settlement specifically
states that: "the military demarcation line
is provisional and should not in any way be
interpreted as constituting a political or
territorial boundary." This 'line was only in
force for 300 days following July 21, 1954,
and was meant merely to mark time until
r, 1956 election which would unite Viet Nam.
When the Diem regime did not allow this
election, the 17th parallel lost any legal,
political, or moral meaning. The cancellation
of the elections threw the Issue of who would
rule in Viet Nam back to the Vietnamese
theniseives.
2. ORIGINS-"WE AMERICANS DID NOT CHOOSE
TO RESORT TO WAR-IT HAS BEEN FORCED UPON
us"
In fact, the United States did indeed uni-
laterally choose this war two decades ago,
WAR IS PEACE when the Truman Administration decided
to pay 3/4 of the costs of the war for the
(By ? Fred Branfnian) French between 1950 and 1954. And the
(NOTE.-Mr. Branfnian spent 4 years in Geneva Accords were barely signed when 11.1
Laos, from 1967 through 1971. He is cur- August 1954, while Mr. Nixon was vice-
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DALLAS, TEX,
NEWS
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242,928
284,097
MAY 11197`x?
r7 Q
By ROBERT E. BASISIN A number of persons were There is no evidence that.
Washington Bureau called in for a last minute re-- Connally had a pre-eminent
view of his speech, which in the final delibera-
House White was made at 9 p.m., Wash- place
House denied Wednesday re- ington time. I tions. A decision of the kind
ports that the advice of two . Nixon spent approximately Nixon announced Monday
men . influenced President 20 minutes with Connally, night involves too many ele-
'Nixon finally on his decision talking in a philosophical
ments of the government, all
to mine North Vietnamese manner about the decision, of which must be taken into
ports and otherwise interdict which had already been
traffic into the Communist niade and 'was not subject to account. --ilu it must be recog.
change at that point. Connal
"I think it would be a mis- ly's advice on the long-range
take," press secretary Ron- economic effects of the ac-
aid Ziegler said,. "to assume tion was sought.
that Connally and Kissinger Nixon had asked Connally
were the only ones with to attend the meeting of the
whom the President consult- National Security Council, of
ed." which. Connally is not a
The New York Times and member, because he was
? CBS implied that Nixon's de- aware of the domestic and
cislon was reached only after political connotations of the
he had ,talked with Treasury action that he contemplated:
Secretary John B. Connally The former Texas governor,
and' his national security ad- whose role in foreign finan-
vi~e'r, Dr. Henry Kissinger. cial affairs is significant,
A New York Times dis- was considered an appropri-
patch spoke of "final, sober ate official to be included in
private talks with the two the NSC's discussion,
men who were closest to him There were ?? others who
during his deliberations." conferred with Nixon Mon-
The facts of the situation day afternoon, but none of
are somewhat different, ac- them influenced a decision
cording to White House that had already been made
ized, has been in favor of
strong military action in
Vietnam ever since the Unit-
ed States involvement start-
ed there. He supported Pres-
dent Johnson in all of his ac-
tions in Vietnam. Undoubted-
ly, if called upon for advice,
he would have advised Nixon
to take just theaction he-did
on the mining of the North-
Vietnamese harbor.
But administration sourdeg
make it clear that Connally-
was' not the man who madg;,
the decision. It was the Pres?
ident of the United States.-,
sources. and could only be made by,
Nixon apparently made his the President.
decision within the last week, The 'President consulted
but he wished to consult as with Kissinger, of course, at
many people as possible be- some length because he had-
fore announcing it. been to Moscow and Paris
Monday morning he called recently. But he also con-
`the National Security Council ferred with Secretary of
into session. There was a State William P. Rogers, who
,general discussion of Viet- had been summoned home
namese policy, -and Nixon from Europe, Defense-Secre-
outlined his plans. tary Meluiaird, CIA direc-
Later he Richard Helms an&mem-
wettt to the execs- bers of-thejoint chiefs of
live e office building, across staff.
the, street from the White Nixon had deliberated over
House, where he has a se- his action for about a week.
eluded office. His final decision was made
during last weekend while he
was at Camp David.
I
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