June 20, 2025

A New Israel Before A New Middle East

 

"Bring me my bow of burning gold!

Bring me my arrows of desire!

Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!

Bring me my charriot of fire!" - 

William Blake, "The New Jerusalem"


I have to admit that I was never interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to any great degree. Of all the Middle East wars that one has been the least interesting, though most influential and long-running.

I've always been ambiguous about the outcome of the war, favouring neither side because of their extremist positions. 

And the nature of the conflict still remains a question.

Is it a land war? An ethnic war? A religious war? It smells and feels like an eternal war. 

What happened to wars that start and end? 

Also, I don't like people who champion their victimhood status every chance they get, which both the Israelis and Palestinians do. 

I don't like victims. I don't like the "oppressed." I don't like people who cry.

Victimhood is a weapon of the weak. Hitler and his weird cadre saw themselves as victims after WWI and look where that attitude got them at the end. Coffins, graves, and body bags. 

Israel's victimhood narrative started immediately upon its founding after WWII. It's the victim in every war, every episode of violence, every international controversy. It was the victim during the Biblical Flood, and it will be the victim upon the Second Coming. Always the victim.

Well, to hell with the "victim." Didn't Satan also always cry victim and how he was oppressed by God? 

Everyone is a victim in their own story. And that's the problem.

Since October 7 Israel has become unhinged. It saw itself as the victim of a surprise attack, giving itself the free conscience to go on a genocidal campaign that hasn't ceased for a day.

Victim or not, the merciless mass killing of Palestinians, most of them unarmed and not on the battlefield, has gone beyond the limits of human reason. How can any human defend this? 

I'm solely on the anti-Israel side in its current manifestation. Its arrogance needs to be checked. It needs to be defanged and its ability to wage war on its neighbours ended for good. 

That means grabbing its nukes, shutting down the Mossad, and placing Western, international, and Muslim troops on Israeli territory. 

Israel in a new form, as the homeland and sanctuary for Jewish people, has to be defended. But not this violent beast that calls itself Israel. Not an Israel that kills American presidents and pulls off false flags to start wars.

With Hamas and Hezbollah curtailed and their reputations damaged, Israel has little to fear from radical Muslim groups in the future. And with Mossad out of the picture, the likes of Al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups in the region will also be gone.

I don't see peace in West Asia emerging any other way. A new Middle East is not possible without first a new Israel at peace with itself and its neighbours.

Simply put, Israel has to be humbled.

Thus far the Muslims have treated Israel too tamely. And the Americans have been neutered politically. They've become mere mercenaries for them. 

Europe, apart from a few countries, cannot even muster up the courage to condemn the killing of babies. And the Russians and Chinese are too emotionally aloof and geographically distant to be bothered. 

Maybe collectively they will get their act together and put an international peacekeeping force in Israel to secure a nuclear free Middle East.

June 19, 2025

On the Philosophical and Religious Underpinnings of William Blake’s Cosmogony

 


An excerpt from, "“As all men are alike (tho’ infinitely various) So all Religions” On the Philosophical and Religious Underpinnings of William Blake’s Cosmogony" By Arianna Antonielli, University of Florence, Firenze University Press, 2017:

Blake’s religious, philosophical, mythical, and esoteric syncretism is encompassed within a vast system of symbols and themes, from Christianity through the Occultist tradition. This article aims to analyse how this dual philosophical-religious tradition affected the ideas and work of William Blake, and the extent to which it could be said that there was a symbolic transmigration from Christian doctrine and Kabbalistic tradition to Blake’s “system."

Studies dealing with the influence of different religious creeds on Blake’s vision and works as well as the religious contexts in which he lived and worked, with a specific focus on the Christian religion, are numerous and illuminating, from Erdman’s Blake: Prophet Against Empire (1954), and Tannenbaum’s Biblical Tradition in Blake’s Early Prophecies (1982), through Erdman’s Blake and his Bibles (1990) and Thompson’s Witness Against the Beast (1993), until the more recent “Blake and Religion” (Ryan 2006) and William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity (Rix 2007). As these volumes contribute to investigating and confirming Christian resonances in Blake’s works, mostly focusing on his biblical allusions, the influence of Kabbalah remains a widely debated subject among Blake scholars. In 1920 Bernhard Fehr admitted that Blake had probably been introduced to Kabbalah by his reading the Kabbalah Denudata (Sulzbach 1677-1684) by Knorr von Rosenroth, which constituted in Blake’s times the first and most comprehensive Latin compendium of Kabbalistic works, available in a language which was not Hebrew or Aramaic. Almost twenty years later, in 1938, Percival admitted that Blake’s background was not properly that of “Christian orthodoxy”. Rather it was, in his own opinion, a religious and philosophical syncretism ranging from Orphic and Pythagorean traditions to Neo-Platonism, from the Hermetic to Kabbalah, Gnosticism and Alchemy, up to Erigena, Paracelsus, Boehme, and Swedenborg. Scholars would later claim that Kabbalistic elements in Blake’s cosmogony were not to be considered a direct influence (Adams 1955), but a possible intermediation through Swedenborg (Percival 1938; Blau 1944). An interpretation that was not so distant from that advanced by Harold Bloom when he openly remarked that “the actual cabalists would have been outraged at the humanistic ‘impieties’ of Blake’s myth” (1935, 935), admitting the possibility of an indirect and filtered influence of (incorrect) Kabbalistic paradigms on Blake. In 1969 Kathreen Raine acknowledged Blake’s readings of Christian cabalists such as Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Fludd (Raine 1969, 13-15), but she added that Blake could nonetheless have learnt Kabbalah by talking with rabbis living in London. “[This] myth, though originating with Jewish mystics, had been adapted by Christian Kabbalists to conform with their – and, in fact, with Blake’s – own brand of Christianity”, that is not the brand of Pico della Mirandola, Johannes Reuchlin, Francesco Giorgi, and Henry Cornelius Agrippa in Sheila Spector’s view (2001, 25). The adaptation to which Spector refers is rather the Christian interpretation of Lurianic kabbalah, that may have been at the base of Blake’s entanglement in Kabbalistic theories, models and symbols.

An excerpt from, "The Theme and Structure of William Blake's Jerusalem" By Karl Kiralis, ELH, June 1956:

Though Jerusalem is generally considered to be one of the most enigmatic if not chaotic works produced by a major figure in English literature, actually William Blake explains its theme and structure within the work itself. The very nature of the structure, one of interfolded growth as described on plate 98, seems to have caused critics to shy away from a sufficient consideration of the basic form of the work.

June 18, 2025

Israel's Grip On Washington Must End

Left: A statesman. Right: a buffoon.


Related: 

Washington Appeases A Deranged Netanyahu At Its Own Peril.

A State of Psychological Siege, Countries Stuck In Time, And The Limits of Repressive Terror.

Mossad, An Enemy of World Peace.

The Neocon Experiment In Iraq Twenty Years Later.

A War of Evil Against Evil.

The 60th Anniversary of Israel's Assassination of JFK.

The Long Charade of U.S.-Iran Nuclear Negotiations Continues.

After The Ayatollahs: A Middle East Without Hezbollah, The Taliban And Islamic Republics.

A Vision For A New Middle East.

The Halloween Massacre And The CIA's Revenge.

Genocidal U.S. And Israeli Leaders Want A Bloody Stalemate In Syria, Or, Better Yet, A Total ISIS Victory.

An Excerpt From President Obama's Speech On The P5+1-Iran Nuclear Deal At American University + Shah of Iran on Nuclear Weapons.


The inevitable attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran by Israel and the United States has been long in the making. It became even more predictable when Assad's government in Syria fell and was replaced by an Al Qaeda offshoot group. 

The Western and Israeli-backed Islamist insurgents who took power in Damascus had revenge against Shiites on their immediate mind, not local governance, and certainly not the ongoing Palestinian genocide. 

Netanyahu was salivating, having secured Syria's fate as a launching pad and dumping ground.

The Islamic rulers of Iran made a critical mistake letting Assad fall after pouring resources, money, political capital, and military energy into preventing that outcome for the decade prior. They should have mobilized as if their own survival depended on it.

They should have known that weakness invites aggression.

But the Mullahs have always been slow and stupid except when it comes to the oppression of their own people. Then they move quickly and energetically.

A similar dynamic is at work in Washington. U.S. politicians are very quick to please Israel, groveling on their knees, but slow to act to fix their country's numerous problems. 

I don't think it's historically accurate to even speak of an "America" or an "Iran." Neither country exists politically. They are both occupied territories. Just nicer Gazas.

Israel has Washington by the balls, and Iran came under the shadow of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Originally the Mullahs just wanted to call it the Islamic Republic, but after popular pressure they reluctantly added the "of Iran" part in their official titles.

So America and Iran are not going to war. This conflict is not about preventing Iran from having nuclear weapons or fighting against American imperialism. It's not even about Palestine and stopping Israel's hegemonic ambitions.

It's much more than that. It's an apocalyptic war between Israel and Islam. There are elitist end-times cults on both sides of this conflict who don't care about the fates of these countries, the lives of innocent civilians, regional stability, or the world economy. And they've been itching for a big war for a long time.

June 17, 2025

Hans von Seeckt

 

"The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform" By James Corum, 1992, University Press of Kansas.

Career highlights: laid the foundations for the Nazi war machine in 1920, gave the Communist Chinese their biggest defeat in 1934, defended the Ottoman Empire's genocide of the Armenians during WWI. He won battles, but not wars, always on the losing side. Still, his brilliance and insights can't be denied. The losers of war provide the best lessons. Always study the losers, not the winners.


Wikipedia:

Johannes "Hans" Friedrich Leopold von Seeckt (22 April 1866 – 27 December 1936) was a German military officer who served as Chief of Staff to August von Mackensen and was a central figure in planning the victories Mackensen achieved for Germany in the east during the First World War.

. . .Seeckt served as a member of parliament from 1930 to 1932. From 1933 to 1935 he was repeatedly in China as a military consultant to Chiang Kai-shek in his war against the Chinese Communists and was directly responsible for devising the encirclement campaigns, that resulted in a string of victories against the Chinese Red Army and forced Mao Zedong into a 9,000 km retreat, also known as the Long March.

. . .At the outbreak of the First World War, Seeckt held the rank of lieutenant colonel and served as chief of staff for Ewald von Lochow in the German III Corps. On mobilisation, the III Corps was assigned to the 1st Army on the right wing of the forces for the Schlieffen Plan offensive in August 1914 on the Western Front. Early in 1915, after they were attacked by the French near Soissons, Seeckt devised a counterattack that took thousands of prisoners and dozens of guns. He was promoted to colonel on 27 January 1915. In March 1915, he was transferred to the Eastern front to serve as chief of staff to General August von Mackensen of the German 11th Army. He played a major role in the planning and executing of Mackensen's highly successful campaigns.

In 1917, Seeckt was sent to the Ottoman Empire, a Central Powers ally, to replace Colonel von Schellendorff as Chief of Staff of the Ottoman Army. In choosing Seeckt, Germany was sending a first rate staff officer, but this made little impression on the Turks. The alliance between the Ottoman Empire and Germany was weak. The crumbling Ottoman Empire was enticed to join in the conflict with the promise that a victory would yield them the return of recently lost territories, while Germany hoped the involvement of the Turks would tie down forces of the Entente far from Western Europe. Since the start of the conflict German efforts to influence Ottoman strategy met with limited success. Neither Bronsart nor Seeckt were able to get much consideration for a grand strategy in the Ottoman Empire. Though Enver Pasha would take counsel from the German officers, he would disregard their opinion if it differed from his own. Seeckt wrote that "I... meditate, telegraph, speak, write and calculate in the Turkish service and in Germany's interest".

A common view in the German high command was that internal division in a nation undermines a nation's ability to successfully conduct a military campaign. Seeckt held this view, even to the point of supporting the leadership of the Ottoman Empire as it conducted the genocide of Armenians along its eastern border in 1915. The brutal slaughter met with an outcry from German civilians, churchmen and statesmen. When Seeckt arrived in Turkey two years later he argued such actions were a necessary measure to save Turkey from "internal decay". In a July 1918 message Seeckt replied to inquiries from Berlin by stating "It is an impossible state of affairs to be allied with the Turks and to stand up for the Armenians. In my view, any consideration, Christian, sentimental or political, must be eclipsed by its clear necessity for the war effort." Seeckt also supported the Committee of Union and Progress, a group of army officers who had taken power in Turkey and were attempting to modernize the Ottoman state and society to better support the Ottoman army's effort to win the war.

. . .In the spring of 1919 he was sent to represent the German General Staff at the peace conference in Paris. He tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Allies to limit their demands for the disarmament of Germany. Seeckt sought to keep a force of 200,000 men, which was denied.

. . .The Treaty of Versailles limited the Army to 100,000 men, only 4,000 of whom could be officers. As the commander in chief of the new Reichswehr, Seeckt wanted to ensure that the best officers were retained. The Reichswehr was designed as a cadre force that could be expanded if need be. Officers and NCOs were trained to be able to command at least at the next higher unit level. At the beginning of World War Two suitable NCOs were commissioned, as the NCOs trained by Seeckt were seen as easily suitable to command much larger units. Almost all of the leaders of the Wehrmacht in World War II were men that Seeckt had retained in 1919–20.

. . .Seeckt made the training standards of the Reichswehr the toughest in the world. He trained them in anti-air and anti-tank fighting by creating wooden weapons and staging mock battles under the guise of training the soldiers for reintroduction into civilian life. Seeckt's discipline of this small army was quite different from that of past German armies. For instance, rather than the harsh punishments of the Imperial Army, minor offenders were forced to spend off-hour duties lying under a bed and singing old Lutheran hymns. To make the training appear less military, photographs were published of recruits being taught topics like horse anatomy and beekeeping.

. . .The army that Germany went to war with in 1939 was largely Seeckt's creation. The tactics and operational concepts of the Wehrmacht were the work of Seeckt in the 1920s. In addition, the majority of the senior officers and many of the middle-ranking officers were men that Seeckt had chosen to retain in the Reichswehr. Seeckt created 57 different committees to study the last war to provide lessons learned for the next war. Seeckt stated: "It is absolutely necessary to put the experience of the war in a broad light and collect this experience while the impressions won on the battlefield are still fresh and a major portion of the experienced officers are still in leading positions". The result was the 1921 book Leadership and Battle with Combined Arms that outlined the combined arms tactics and operational ideas that went on to serve as the Wehrmacht's doctrine in the Second World War. Seeckt envisioned Germany winning the next war by a series of highly mobile operations featuring combined arms operations of artillery, infantry, armor, and air power working together to concentrate superior firepower to crush the enemy at crucial points. Seeing a significant role for air power in the next war, Seeckt kept a large number of officers in the Reichswehr who had experience in air combat. These officers formed the future officers corps of the Luftwaffe in the 1930s.

. . .After failing to gain a seat as a candidate for the Centre Party, Seeckt was elected to the Reichstag as a member of the DVP, serving from 1930 through 1932. In October 1931, Seeckt was a featured speaker at a rally at Bad Harzburg which led to the founding of the Harzburg Front.[82] In the presidential election of 1932 he wrote to his sister, urging her to vote for Hitler. From 1933–1935 he served as an adviser to Chiang Kai-shek and helped to establish a new basis for Sino-German cooperation until 1941. In October 1933, Seeckt arrived in China to head the German military mission. At the time of his arrival, Sino-German relations were in a bad state owing to the racial arrogance of the Germans, and Chiang was considering firing the Germans and bringing in a French military mission. In order to save the military mission, Seeckt ordered the German officers to behave with more tact towards the Chinese and to start showing some respect for Chinese sensibilities. In this way, Seeckt saved Germany's position in China.

Seeckt advised Chiang that China would need 60 divisions to form an army, which he proposed to arm with modern weapons and train in the combined arms operations which he had previously used in training the German Army in the 1920s. Seeckt stressed he would need the best Chinese officers to train in modern warfare. His goal was to make the National Revolutionary Army like the army in Germany after the war, a force which could make up for what it lacked in quantity with its high quality of professional soldiers. In addition, Seeckt stressed he wanted an end to regionalism in the Chinese military. The army was to be led by officers who were loyal to Chiang alone, with no regional loyalties. In addition, Seeckt urged Chiang to fortify the lower Yangtze valley, and to adopt policies to industrialize China to gain independence from Western manufacturing. To this end, Seeckt suggested a trade agreement between China and Germany, where Germany would receive minerals needed for weapon manufacture, especially tungsten, and China would be provided with weapons and the industrial machinery needed to make China self-sufficient in producing such weapons. In March 1934, Chiang not only appointed Seeckt as his Chief Military Advisor, but also appointed him as the Deputy Chairman of the Military Affairs Council. In that capacity Seeckt chaired the twice weekly meetings at Nanjing between Chiang and his most senior generals. At a meeting at Mount Lu in 1934, Seeckt's plan for 60 divisions was adopted. To create that army, a 10-year plan was adopted. The officers trained by Seeckt were important later in the Chinese resistance to the Japanese invasion of China.

In early 1934, Seeckt advised Chiang that to defeat the Chinese Communists he needed to employ a scorched earth policy, which required building a series of lines and forts around areas controlled by the Communists in the Jiangxi Soviet in order to force the Communist guerrillas to fight in the open, where the superior firepower of the Nationalists would give them an advantage. Following Seeckt's advice, in the spring and summer of 1934 the Kuomintang built three thousand "turtle shell" forts linked by a series of roads while at the same time pursuing a scorched earth policy around the forts as part of the Fifth Bandit Extermination Campaign in Jiangxi. It was Seeckt's tactics that led to a series of defeats suffered by the Chinese Communists that in October 1934 led to the infamous Long March.

An excerpt from, "Learning from the Germans Part II: The Future" By Marinus, Marine Corps Association, January 13, 2021:

The simplest argument in favor of the continued study of the German tradition of maneuver warfare stems from on the same wealth of sources and resources that enables the study of alternative models. In the years between 1979 and 2019, more than two thousand English-language books about various aspects of the German military experience were published. The same period saw the printing of hundreds of board wargames and the creation of dozens of computer games that attempted to replicate, in various ways, the tactical and operational characteristics of German forces. The existence of this body of work makes possible the detailed reconstruction of a wide variety of campaigns, battles, and engagements. At the same time, it facilitates the placement of such events in the broader context of strategy, politics, and culture.

The availability of so much material about the German military tradition greatly reduces dependence upon the memoirs of general officers that loomed so large in the early days of the maneuver warfare movement within the Marine Corps. Most of these suffered from the sort of defects so often seen in the genre of autobiography. That is, they were self-serving accounts that minimized mistakes made by the authors, omitted information that would have been embarrassing, and placed the blame for fiascos on third parties. The worst offender in this regard was Panzer Leader, in which Heinz Guderian took far too much credit for the creation of German armored forces in the 1930s and, in doing so, painted the man most responsible for that development, Ludwig Beck, as a hidebound reactionary. Thanks, however, to the work of English-speaking historians, present-day Marines are in a position to not only recognize this gross mischaracterization but learn about the troubled relationship between the two officers. (General Beck, who had resigned in protest from the German Army in 1938, had been one of the leaders of the failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. In the aftermath of this event, which took place on 20 July 1944, Gen Guderian took aggressive measures to ensure the loyalty of German military officers to the National Socialist regime.)

A more nuanced case for frequent recourse to the wellspring of German military history rests upon the continuous, consistent, and increasingly central role played by many of the fundamental precepts of maneuver warfare in German military culture. That is, while there were many instances where German military professionals violated one or more of these tenets, a deep appreciation for such things as the inherently chaotic nature of war and the importance of a rapid decision cycle permeated the way that German soldiers fought, thought, and taught for more than a hundred years. Thus, while the American, British, and French practitioners of maneuver warfare often waged war in ways that put them at odds with the cultures of the forces in which they served, German maneuverists could reasonably assume that they were cooperating with superiors, subordinates, and peers who shared their beliefs and biases. Because of this, Marines attempting to imagine a force in which the practice of maneuver warfare is the norm will find more positive examples of such organizational orthodoxy in the annals of German military history than in the tales of mavericks, eccentrics, and doctrinal apostates.

A more powerful justification for the retention of the link between maneuver warfare in the Marine Corps and the German military tradition begins, paradoxically, with the two most common arguments offered by the opponents of that enterprise. The first reminds us of the large number of war crimes committed by members of the German armed forces during those conflicts. The second rests firmly upon the incontrovertible fact that Germany lost both world wars.

There is no doubt that, during both world wars, members of the German armed forces, acting in their official capacities, violated laws of war that were then in force in a large number of ways. These crimes included the invasion of neutral countries, the aerial bombardment of cities, the sinking of civilian ships, and the collective punishment of civilians. (Outrages of the last types usually took place in the course of attempts to enforce one of the central tenets of the law of war of that era, the rule that civilians may not, under any circumstances, participate in combat.) In the Second World War, moreover, German soldiers, sailors, and airmen served a regime that engaged in the persecution of political dissidents, the maltreatment of prisoners of war, and a gargantuan, frequently murderous, campaign of ethnic cleansing.

As horrible as they were, the war crimes committed by German servicemen in the course of the world wars were far from unique. The armed forces of the victors of the Second World War invaded neutral countries, bombarded cities from the air, sunk civilian ships, maltreated prisoners of war, and engaged in the collective punishment of civilian communities. In addition to these things, they conducted campaigns of mass rape, looting, and indiscriminate murder against civilians they were obliged to protect. In addition to this, they ensured the survival and, indeed, enabled the expansion of the communist regime of the Soviet Union, the crimes of which surpassed in quality, and greatly exceeded in quantity, those of National Socialist Germany.

The war crimes of the armed forces of the alliance that won the Second World War does not, in any way, excuse those of their German counterpart. They do, however, present serious students of the art of war with a conundrum. If German violations of the laws of war prevent us from studying German military history, then the war crimes committed by members of the Allied armed forces during the Second World War should prevent us from making use of the American, British, and Soviet experience of that conflict. Similarly, if connection to a reprehensible regime prevents a military tradition, institution, or personality from offering anything of value to present-day Marines, then we may study neither Soviet military theory nor the campaigns of the Red Army, let alone the memoirs of Georgi Zhukov.

What is true for the question of war crimes also applies to the issue of ultimate defeat. If we limit ourselves to the study of the winners of various wars, then we deprive ourselves of the lessons that we might learn from the study of the achievements of Hannibal, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Robert E. Lee—let alone the strategic contests that we ourselves have lost. What is worse, a one-sided study of history leads easily to the false assumption that everything done by the victors contributed to their eventual triumph and every act on the part of the losers drove another nail into their collective coffin. In other words, it replaces attempts to make sense of the complex interplay of multiple forces with the unthinking embrace of all things, whether help or hindrance, associated with the side that achieved strategic success.

Done well, the study of German military history necessarily produces a great deal of discomfort. Even if a Marine begins with a quest to learn about techniques, tactics, or campaigning, he cannot spend much time with the relevant sources without being reminded of fatal mistakes made in the realms of strategy, policy, and morality. Indeed, it is this “elephant in the room” that makes the study of the German military tradition so valuable to Marines of the 21st century. In the course of helping us learn the nuts-and-bolts of maneuver warfare, it draws our attention towards the higher arts of war.

An excerpt from, "The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform" By James Corum:

In January 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, he inherited the best-led, best-trained, and arguably the most-modern army in the world. The process of creating the tactical doctrine of this army and the incorporation of this doctrine into the army's weapons, organization, and war plans are the primary concern of this work. In the immediate aftermath of World War I, German Army leaders, on their own initiative, began to analyze the lessons of that war carefully, and they set out to create a military system that would be a great improvement on the admittedly impressive one of the old Imperial Army. 

June 16, 2025

General Lucian King Truscott Jr.

 


Wikipedia:

General Lucian King Truscott Jr. (9 January 1895 – 12 September 1965) was a highly decorated senior United States Army officer, who saw distinguished active service during World War II. Between 1943–1945, he successively commanded the 3rd Infantry Division, VI Corps, Fifteenth Army and Fifth Army, serving mainly in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MTO) during his wartime service. He and Alexander Patch were the only U.S. Army officers to command a division, a corps, and a field army in combat during the war.

. . .In 1951, Walter Bedell Smith, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), appointed Truscott as "Special Consultant to the United States Commissioner" in Frankfurt, Germany. However, this was simply a cover for his real assignment as senior CIA representative in Germany. Truscott had been placed in charge of cloak-and-dagger operations in a vital part of Europe. This only came to light after declassification of a secret memorandum in 1994.

In 1953, President Eisenhower approved CIA Director Allen Dulles' recommendation that Truscott be appointed the CIA's Deputy Director for Coordination. This appointment meant that Truscott was now controlling the agency's rapidly expanding network of agents worldwide. His responsibilities included facilitating the overthrow of governments in Iran and Guatemala. Truscott was involved in planning Operation PBSuccess, the CIA mission to overthrow Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz. According to Harry Jeffers' biography, Truscott was instrumental in convincing Eisenhower to support PBSuccess with air power. However, another biography by William Heefner suggests that specifics of Truscott's involvement cannot be substantiated.

Truscott left the CIA in 1958. He wrote nothing about his service in the CIA in Command Missions, and there is nothing about his CIA activities in his papers at the George C. Marshall Library.

An excerpt from, "Lucian K. Truscott: The Soldier’s General" by Nathan N. Prefer, Warfare History Network, August 2019:
In his Maxims of War, Napoleon Bonaparte wrote, “It is exceptional and difficult to find in one man all the qualities necessary for a great general. What is most desirable, and which instantly sets a man apart, is that his intelligence or talent are balanced by his character or courage.” In North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France, Lucian King Truscott, Jr., proved himself just such a man.

The future general began simply enough when he arrived on January 9, 1895, in Chatfield, Texas. Although the family soon moved to Oklahoma, he would always claim to be a Texan at heart. The grandson of an immigrant from Cornwall, England, he nearly died at a young age when he was playing in his father’s office. His father, Lucian King Truscott, Sr., was a physician in Chatfield and was busy in another room when his son decided to taste something that looked good in his father’s office. His choice was a poor one, however, and he swallowed some carbolic acid. His father heard his screams and saved his life, but that day he earned one of his trademarks, a raspy, gruff voice that one observer called “a rock-crusher.”

. . .Once again, Truscott’s outstanding performance earned him a new job, this time commanding the 3rd Infantry Division. The division had an outstanding World War I record and had been stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, in the interwar years, where both Eisenhower and Truscott had served with it. The division had participated in the North African invasion under Maj. Gen. Jonathan W. Anderson. When the latter was promoted to command of X Corps, Eisenhower gave the division to Truscott in April 1943.  

Truscott’s first steps were to improve the training and physical endurance of his new command. As he remembered, “I had long felt that our standards for marching and fighting in the infantry were too low, not up to those of the Roman legions nor countless examples from our own frontier history, not even to those of Stonewall Jackson’s ‘Foot Cavalry’ of Civil War fame,” he wrote. Adopting a tactic of the rangers and commandos, he ordered his men to march at the rate of four miles per hour.  Despite initial skepticism, the new rate, soon dubbed “The Truscott Trot,” was achieved by all units of the 3rd Infantry Division and helped make it one of the best combat units of the war.

. . . With the capture of Rome, the VI Corps stood down for a brief rest. The months of July and August were spent training and planning a new operation, the invasion of southern France. This time Truscott and his VI Corps were under a revived Seventh Army commanded by Lt. Gen. Alexander (“Sandy”) Patch, a veteran of the Pacific War. Allowed to pick his own combat units for the operation, Truscott chose his favorite 3rd Infantry Division and the equally battleworthy 45th Infantry Division, which had fought under his command at Anzio. The third division was the 36th (“Texas”) Infantry Division, which had led the breakout at Anzio. 

Truscott planned and executed Operation Anvil-Dragoon, the invasion of southern France, with little difficulty. The landings were lightly opposed, and the drive inland began quickly. The push toward the Belfort Gap went as planned, and the Germans were too busy withdrawing to make much of a defensive stand. Things continued to go well as the VI Corps entered the Vosges Mountains near the German border. As winter slowed operations, Truscott was visited by Eisenhower, who told him, “Lucian,  I am going to assign you to organize the Fifteenth Army. You won’t like it, because this Army is not going to be operational. It will be an administrative and training command, and you won’t get into the fighting.”

General Edward H. (“Ted”) Brooks would take over VI Corps while Truscott returned to the United States for a well-earned rest before returning to command the new army. After two years of fighting in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and southern France, General Truscott was finally going home.

He thoroughly enjoyed his visit. Besides spending time with his wife, he visited West Point to see his son, Lucian III. As he was preparing to return to Europe, he was suddenly called to Washington. While at the War Department, he learned that the unexpected death of a British senior commander had resulted in a series of promotions and moves that would now affect him. One of the unexpected moves was the promotion of General Clark to command the Fifteenth Army Group in Italy. That left a vacancy in command at Fifth Army. General Marshall asked Truscott, “How do you feel about going back to Italy?” Surprised, Truscott replied, “Sir, I will do the best I can wherever you wish to send me.”

Taking his faithful staff, Truscott assumed command of the Fifth Army in Italy. With 300,000 soldiers under its command, including at various times Britons, South Africans, Polish, New Zealanders, Brazilians, and soldiers of other nationalities, Truscott’s Fifth Army pushed against the new German Winter Line, captured Bologna, broke the back of German resistance at the Gothic Line, and pushed into the Po River Valley, dispersing the German Tenth and Fourteenth Armies. It was a part of the force that accepted the first surrender of a German army group in World War II when Army Group C surrendered to Allied forces in Italy.

With the defeat of Germany, Truscott returned to Texas and then volunteered for the war in the Pacific. He was assigned to a group of high-ranking officers who were directed to visit China and prepare to serve there until the defeat of Japan. But even as the group was conducting inspections, Japan surrendered. The war was over. His assignment to command a group of Chinese armies against Japan was moot.

Returning to Italy, Truscott learned that Fifth Army headquarters was to become inoperative. He said goodbye to his faithful staff and decided to visit his friend Patton, then on occupation duty in Germany. Expecting to be sent home to an unknown assignment, Truscott was suddenly caught up in another of Patton’s indiscretions. As he was making the rounds of farewells, Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, caught up with him. Eisenhower wanted to see him immediately. Truscott reported to Eisenhower and learned that he was to replace Patton as commander of the Third Army. For the final time, Truscott protested, but agreed that for the good of the service Patton had to go.

The exchange between two longtime friends went without rancor. When introducing Truscott to the Third Army, Patton said, “A man of General Truscott’s achievements needs no introduction. His deeds speak for themselves.” And so they did.

As the commander of the Third Army on occupation duty, Truscott was faced with new challenges. Tens of thousands of displaced persons needed caring for. He became involved in Cold War politics when, for reasons of their own, some Americans claimed that the Army was abusing or neglecting these unfortunate people. Alerted to the coming storm, Truscott invited newspaper reporters to visit the camps and report accurately on the conditions. Additionally, he was responsible for the trials of Nazi war criminals. He also was responsible for opening a university program for refugees under the auspices of the United Nations. Many who knew him were surprised at his rapid adjustment from combat leader to government administrator.