interesting 1960s article
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1960/11/first-wave-at-omaha-beach/303365/
First Wave at Omaha Beach
2020-06-22
S L A Marshall
<div><article><header><div><div><p>An account of the “epic human tragedy” that unfolded when Allied troops landed on the shores of Normandy on D-Day</p></div><div><figure><div></div><figcaption>Photograph of American troops approaching Omaha Beach, Normandy, on D-Day (Universal History Archive / UIG via Getty)</figcaption></figure></div></div></header><section><p><small><em>Updated at 12:06 p.m. ET on June 22, 2020.</em></small></p><p>Unlike what happens to other great battles, the passing of the years and the retelling of the story have softened the horror of Omaha Beach on D Day.</p><p>This fluke of history is doubly ironic since no other decisive battle has ever been so thoroughly reported for the official record. While the troops were still fighting in Normandy, what had happened to each unit in the landing had become known through the eyewitness testimony of all survivors. It was this research by the field historians which first determined where each company had hit the beach and by what route it had moved inland. Owing to the fact that every unit save one had been mislanded, it took this work to show the troops where they had fought.</p><p>How they fought and what they suffered were also determined in detail during the field research. As published today, the map data showing where the troops came ashore check exactly with the work done in the field; but the accompanying narrative describing their ordeal is a sanitized version of the original field notes.</p><p>This happened because the Army historians who wrote the first official book about Omaha Beach, basing it on the field notes, did a calculated job of sifting and weighting the material. So saying does not imply that their judgment was wrong. Normandy was an American victory; it was their duty to trace the twists and turns of fortune by which success was won. But to follow that rule slights the story of Omaha as an epic human tragedy which in the early hours bordered on total disaster. On this two-division front landing, only six rifle companies were relatively effective as units. They did better than others mainly because they had the luck to touch down on a less deadly section of the beach. Three times that number were shattered or foundered before they could start to fight. Several contributed not a man or bullet to the battle for the high ground. But their ordeal has gone unmarked because its detail was largely ignored by history in the first place. The worst-fated companies were overlooked, the more wretched personal experiences were toned down, and disproportionate attention was paid to the little element of courageous success in a situation which was largely characterized by tragic failure.</p><p>The official accounts which came later took their cue from this secondary source instead of searching the original documents. Even such an otherwise splendid and popular book on the great adventure as Cornelius Ryan’s <i>The Longest Day</i> misses the essence of the Omaha story.</p><p>In everything that has been written about Omaha until now, there is less blood and iron than in the original field notes covering any battalion landing in the first wave. Doubt it? Then let’s follow along with Able and Baker companies, 116th Infantry, 29th Division. Their story is lifted from my fading Normandy notebook, which covers the landing of every Omaha company.</p><hr /><p>Able Company riding the tide in seven Higgins boats is still five thousand yards from the beach when first taken under artillery fire. The shells fall short. At one thousand yards, Boat No. 5 is hit dead on and foundered. Six men drown before help arrives. Second Lieutenant Edward Gearing and twenty others paddle around until picked up by naval craft, thereby missing the fight at the shore line. It’s their lucky day. The other six boats ride unscathed to within one hundred yards of the shore, where a shell into Boat No. 3 kills two men. Another dozen drown, taking to the water as the boat sinks. That leaves five boats.</p><p>Lieutenant Edward Tidrick in Boat No. 2 cries out: “My God, we’re coming in at the right spot, but look at it! No shingle, no wall, no shell holes, no cover. Nothing!”</p><p>His men are at the sides of the boat, straining for a view of the target. They stare but say nothing. At exactly 6:36 A.M. ramps are dropped along the boat line and the men jump off in water anywhere from waist deep to higher than a man’s head. This is the signal awaited by the Germans atop the bluff. Already pounded by mortars, the floundering line is instantly swept by crossing machine-gun fires from both ends of the beach.</p><p>Able Company has planned to wade ashore in three files from each boat, center file going first, then flank files peeling off to right and left. The first men out try to do it but are ripped apart before they can make five yards. Even the lightly wounded die by drowning, doomed by the waterlogging of their overloaded packs. From Boat No. 1, all hands jump off in water over their heads. Most of them are carried down. Ten or so survivors get around the boat and clutch at its sides in an attempt to stay afloat. The same thing happens to the section in Boat No. 4. Half of its people are lost to the fire or tide before anyone gets ashore. All order has vanished from Able Company before it has fired a shot.</p><p>Already the sea runs red. Even among some of the lightly wounded who jumped into shallow water the hits prove fatal. Knocked down by a bullet in the arm or weakened by fear and shock, they are unable to rise again and are drowned by the onrushing tide. Other wounded men drag themselves ashore and, on finding the sands, lie quiet from total exhaustion, only to be overtaken and killed by the water. A few move safely through the bullet swarm to the beach, then find that they cannot hold there. They return to the water to use it for body cover. Faces turned upward, so that their nostrils are out of water, they creep toward the land at the same rate as the tide. That is how most of the survivors make it. The less rugged or less clever seek the cover of enemy obstacles moored along the upper half of the beach and are knocked off by machine-gun fire.</p><p>Within seven minutes after the ramps drop, Able Company is inert and leaderless. At Boat No. 2, Lieutenant Tidrick takes a bullet through the throat as he jumps from the ramp into the water. He staggers onto the sand and flops down ten feet from Private First Class Leo J. Nash. Nash sees the blood spurting and hears the strangled words gasped by Tidrick: “Advance with the wire cutters!” It’s futile; Nash has no cutters. To give the order, Tidrick has raised himself up on his hands and made himself a target for an instant. Nash, burrowing into the sand, sees machine gun bullets rip Tidrick from crown to pelvis. From the cliff above, the German gunners are shooting into the survivors as from a roof top.</p><p><a></a>Captain Taylor N. Fellers and Lieutenant Benjamin R. Kearfott never make it.<a href="#Note">*</a> They had loaded with a section of thirty men in Boat No. 6 (Landing Craft, Assault, No. 1015). But exactly what happened to this boat and its human cargo was never to be known. No one saw the craft go down. How each man aboard it met death remains unreported. Half of the drowned bodies were later found along the beach. It is supposed that the others were claimed by the sea.</p><p>Along the beach, only one Able Company officer still lives—Lieutenant Elijah Nance, who is hit in the heel as he quits the boat and hit in the belly by a second bullet as he makes the sand. By the end of ten minutes, every sergeant is either dead or wounded. To the eyes of such men as Private Howard I. Grosser and Private First Class Gilbert G. Murdock, this clean sweep suggests that the Germans on the high ground have spotted all leaders and concentrated fire their way. Among the men who are still moving in with the tide, rifles, packs, and helmets have already been cast away in the interests of survival.</p><p>To the right of where Tidrick’s boat is drifting with the tide, its coxswain lying dead next to the shell-shattered wheel, the seventh craft, carrying a medical section with one officer and sixteen men, noses toward the beach. The ramp drops. In that instant, two machine guns concentrate their fire on the opening. Not a man is given time to jump. All aboard are cut down where they stand.</p><p>By the end of fifteen minutes, Able Company has still not fired a weapon. No orders are being given by anyone. No words are spoken. The few able-bodied survivors move or not as they see fit. Merely to stay alive is a full-time job. The fight has become a rescue operation in which nothing counts but the force of a strong example.</p><p>Above all others stands out the first-aid man, Thomas Breedin. Reaching the sands, he strips off pack, blouse, helmet, and boots. For a moment he stands there so that others on the strand will see him and get the same idea. Then he crawls into the water to pull in wounded men about to be overlapped by the tide. The deeper water is still spotted with tide walkers advancing at the same pace as the rising water. But now, owing to Breedin’s example, the strongest among them become more conspicuous targets. Coming along, they pick up wounded comrades and float them to the shore raftwise. Machine-gun fire still rakes the water. Burst after burst spoils the rescue act, shooting the floating man from the hands of the walker or killing both together. But Breedin for this hour leads a charmed life and stays with his work indomitably.</p><p>By the end of one half hour, approximately two thirds of the company is forever gone. There is no precise casualty figure for that moment. There is for the Normandy landing as a whole no accurate figure for the first hour or first day. The circumstances precluded it. Whether more Able Company riflemen died from water than from fire is known only to heaven. All earthly evidence so indicates, but cannot prove it.</p><p>By the end of one hour, the survivors from the main body have crawled across the sand to the foot of the bluff, where there is a narrow sanctuary of defiladed space. There they lie all day, clean spent, unarmed, too shocked to feel hunger, incapable even of talking to one another. No one happens by to succor them, ask what has happened, provide water, or offer unwanted pity. D Day at Omaha afforded no time or space for such missions. Every landing company was overloaded by its own assault problems.</p><p>By the end of one hour and forty-five minutes, six survivors from the boat section on the extreme right shake loose and work their way to a shelf a few rods up the cliff. Four fall exhausted from the short climb and advance no farther. They stay there through the day, seeing no one else from the company. The other two, Privates Jake Shefer and Thomas Lovejoy, join a group from the Second Ranger Battalion, which is assaulting Pointe du Hoc to the right of the company sector, and fight on with the Rangers through the day. Two men. Two rifles. Except for these, Able Company’s contribution to the D Day fire fight is a cipher.</p><div><hr /><p>Baker Company which is scheduled to land twenty-six minutes after Able and right on top of it, supporting and reinforcing, has had its full load of trouble on the way in. So rough is the sea during the journey that the men have to bail furiously with their helmets to keep the six boats from swamping. Thus preoccupied, they do not see the disaster which is overtaking Able until they are almost atop it. Then, what their eyes behold is either so limited or so staggering to the senses that control withers, the assault wave begins to dissolve, and disunity induced by fear virtually cancels the mission. A great cloud of smoke and dust raised by the mortar and machine-gun fire has almost closed a curtain around Able Company’s ordeal. Outside the pall, nothing is to be seen but a line of corpses adrift, a few heads bobbing in the water and the crimson-running tide. But this is enough for the British coxswains. They raise the cry: “We can’t go in there. We can’t see the landmarks. We must pull off.”</p></div><p>In the command boat, Captain Ettore V. Zappacosta pulls a Colt .45 and says: “By God, you’ll take this boat straight in.” His display of courage wins obedience, but it’s still a fool’s order. Such of Baker’s boats as try to go straight in suffer Able’s fate without helping the other company whatever. Thrice during the approach mortar shells break right next to Zappacosta’s boat but by an irony leave it unscathed, thereby sparing the riders a few more moments of life. At seventy-five yards from the sand Zappacosta yells: “Drop the ramp !” The end goes down, and a storm of bullet fire comes in.</p><p>Zappacosta jumps first from the boat, reels ten yards through the elbow-high tide, and yells back: “I’m hit.” He staggers on a few more steps. The aid man, Thomas Kenser, sees him bleeding from hip and shoulder. Kenser yells: “Try to make it in; I’m coming.” But the captain falls face forward into the wave, and the weight of his equipment and soaked pack pin him to the bottom. Kenser jumps toward him and is shot dead while in the air. Lieutenant Tom Dallas of Charley Company, who has come along to make a reconnaissance, is the third man. He makes it to the edge of the sand. There a machine-gun burst blows his head apart before he can flatten.</p><p>Private First Class Robert L. Sales, who is lugging Zappacosta’s radio (an SCR 300), is the fourth man to leave the boat, having waited long enough to see the others die. His boot heel catches on the edge of the ramp and he falls sprawling into the tide, losing the radio but saving his life. Every man who tries to follow him is either killed or wounded before reaching dry land. Sales alone gets to the beach unhit. To travel those few yards takes him two hours. First he crouches in the water, and waddling forward on his haunches just a few paces, collides with a floating log—driftwood. In that moment, a mortar shell explodes just above his head, knocking him groggy. He hugs the log to keep from going down, and somehow the effort seems to clear his head a little. Next thing he knows, one of Able Company’s tide walkers hoists him aboard the log and, using his sheath knife, cuts away Sales’s pack, boots, and assault jacket.</p><p>Feeling stronger, Sales returns to the water, and from behind the log, using it as cover, pushes toward the sand. Private Mack L. Smith of Baker Company, hit three times through the face, joins him there. An Able Company rifleman named Kemper, hit thrice in the right leg, also comes alongside. Together they follow the log until at last they roll it to the farthest reach of high tide. Then they flatten themselves behind it, staying there for hours after the flow has turned to ebb. The dead of both companies wash up to where they lie, and then wash back out to sea again. As a body drifts in close to them, Sales and companions, disregarding the fire, crawl from behind the log to take a look. If any one of them recognizes the face of a comrade, they join in dragging the body up onto the dry sand beyond the water’s reach. The unfamiliar dead are left to the sea. So long as the tide is full, they stay with this unique task. Later, an unidentified first-aid man who comes wiggling along the beach dresses the wounds of Smith. Sales, as he finds strength, bandages Kemper. The three remain behind the log until night falls. There is nothing else to be reported of any member of Zappacosta’s boat team.</p><p>Only one other Baker Company boat tries to come straight in to the beach. Somehow the boat founders. Somehow all of its people are killed—one British coxswain and about thirty American infantrymen. Where they fall, there is no one to take note of and report.</p><hr /><p>Frightened coxswains in the other four craft take one quick look, instinctively draw back, and then veer right and left away from the Able Company shambles. So doing, they dodge their duty while giving a break to their passengers. Such is the shock to the boat team leaders, and such their feeling of relief at the turning movement, that not one utters a protest. Lieutenant Leo A. Pingenot’s coxswain swings the boat far rightward toward Pointe du Hoc; then, spying a small and deceptively peaceful-looking cove, heads directly for the land. Fifty yards out, Pingenot yells: “Drop the ramp!” The coxswain freezes on the rope, refusing to lower. Staff Sergeant Odell L. Padgett jumps him, throttles him, and bears him to the floor. Padgett’s men lower the rope and jump for the water. In two minutes, they are all in up to their necks and struggling to avoid drowning. That quickly, Pingenot is already far out ahead of them. Padgett comes even with him, and together they cross onto dry land. The beach of the cove is heavily strewn with giant boulders. Bullets seem to be pinging off every rock.</p><p>Pingenot and Padgett dive behind the same rock. Then they glance back, but to their horror see not one person. Quite suddenly smoke has half blanked out the scene beyond the water’s edge. Pingenot moans: “My God, the whole boat team is dead.” Padgett sings out: “Hey, are you hit?” Back come many voices from beyond the smoke. “What’s the rush?” “Take it easy!” “We’ll get there.” “Where’s the fire?” “Who wants to know?” The men are still moving along, using the water as cover. Padgett’s yell is their first information that anyone else has moved up front. They all make it to the shore, and they are twenty-eight strong at first. Pingenot and Padgett manage to stay ahead of them, coaxing and encouraging. Padgett keeps yelling: “Come on, goddam it, things are better up here!” But still they lose two men killed and three wounded in crossing the beach.</p><p>In the cove, the platoon latches on to a company of Rangers, fights all day as part of that company, and helps destroy the enemy entrenchments atop Pointe du Hoc. By sundown that mop-up is completed. The platoon bivouacs at the first hedgerow beyond the cliff.</p><p>The other Baker Company boat, which turns to the right, has far less luck. Staff Sergeant Robert M. Campbell, who leads the section, is the first man to jump out when the ramp goes down. He drops in drowning water, and his load of two bangalore torpedoes takes him straight to the bottom. So he jettisons the bangalores and then, surfacing, cuts away all equipment for good measure. Machine-gun fire brackets him, and he submerges again briefly. Never a strong swimmer, he heads back out to sea. For two hours he paddles around, two hundred or so yards from the shore. Though he hears and sees nothing of the battle, he somehow gets the impression that the invasion has failed and that all other Americans are dead, wounded, or have been taken prisoner. Strength fast going, in despair he moves ashore rather than drown. Beyond the smoke he quickly finds the fire. So he grabs a helmet from a dead man’s head, crawls on hands and knees to the sea wall, and there finds five of his men, two of them unwounded.</p><p>Like Campbell, Private First Class Jan J. Budziszewski is carried to the bottom by his load of two bangalores. He hugs them half a minute before realizing that he will either let loose or drown. Next, he shucks off his helmet and pack and drops his rifle. Then he surfaces. After swimming two hundred yards, he sees that he is moving in exactly the wrong direction. So he turns about and heads for the beach, where he crawls ashore “under a rain of bullets.” In his path lies a dead Ranger. Budziszewski takes the dead man’s helmet, rifle, and canteen and crawls on to the sea wall. The only survivor from Campbell’s boat section to get off the beach, he spends his day walking to and fro along the foot of the bluff, looking for a friendly face. But he meets only strangers, and none shows any interest in him.</p><hr /><p>In Lieutenant William B. Williams’ boat, the coxswain steers sharp left and away from Zappacosta’s sector. Not seeing the captain die, Williams doesn’t know that command has now passed to him. Guiding on his own instinct, the coxswain moves along the coast six hundred yards, then puts the boat straight in. It’s a good guess; he has found a little vacuum in the battle. The ramp drops on dry sand and the boat team jumps ashore. Yet it’s a close thing. Mortar fire has dogged them all the way; and as the last rifleman clears the ramp, one shell lands dead center of the boat, blows it apart, and kills the coxswain. Momentarily, the beach is free of fire, but the men cannot cross it at a bound. Weak from seasickness and fear, they move at a crawl, dragging their equipment. By the end of twenty minutes, Williams and ten men are over the sand and resting in the lee of the sea wall. Five others are hit by machine-gun fire crossing the beach; six men, last seen while taking cover in a tidal pocket, are never heard from again. More mortar fire lands around the party as Williams leads it across the road beyond the sea wall. The men scatter. When the shelling lifts, three of them do not return. Williams leads the seven survivors up a trail toward the fortified village of Les Moulins atop the bluff. He recognizes the ground and knows that he is taking on a tough target. Les Moulins is perched above a draw, up which winds a dirt road from the beach, designated on the invasion maps as Exit No. 3.</p><p>Williams and his crew of seven are the first Americans to approach it D Day morning. Machine-gun fire from a concrete pillbox sweeps over them as they near the brow of the hill, moving now at a crawl through thick grass. Williams says to the others: “Stay here; we’re too big a target!” They hug earth, and he crawls forward alone, moving via a shallow gully. Without being detected, he gets to within twenty yards of the gun, obliquely downslope from it. He heaves a grenade; but he has held it just a bit too long and it explodes in air, just outside the embrasure. His second grenade hits the concrete wall and bounces right back on him. Three of its slugs hit him in the shoulders. Then, from out of the pillbox, a German potato masher sails down on him and explodes just a few feet away; five more fragments cut into him. He starts crawling back to his men; en route, three bullets from the machine gun rip his rump and right leg.</p><p>The seven are still there. Williams hands his map and compass to Staff Sergeant Frank M. Price, saying: “It’s your job now. But go the other way—toward Vierville.” Price starts to look at Williams’ wounds, but Williams shakes him off, saying: “No, get moving.” He then settles himself in a hole in the embankment, stays there all day, and at last gets medical attention just before midnight.</p><p>On leaving Williams, Price’s first act is to hand map and compass (the symbols of leadership) to Technical Sergeant William Pearce, whose seniority the lieutenant has overlooked. They cross the draw, one man at a time, and some distance beyond come to a ravine; on the far side, they bump their first hedgerow, and as they look for an entrance, fire comes against them. Behind a second hedgerow, not more than thirty yards away, are seven Germans, five rides and two burp guns. On exactly even terms, these two forces engage for the better part of an hour, apparently with no one’s getting hit. Then Pearce settles the fight by crawling along a drainage ditch to the enemy flank. He kills the seven Germans with a Browning Automatic Rifle.</p><p>For Pearce and his friends, it is a first taste of battle; its success is giddying. Heads up, they walk along the road straight into Vierville, disregarding all precautions. They get away with it only because that village is already firmly in the hands of Lieutenant Walter Taylor of Baker Company and twenty men from his boat team.</p><p>Taylor is a luminous figure in the story of D Day, one of the forty-seven immortals of Omaha who, by their dauntless initiative at widely separated points along the beach, saved the landing from total stagnation and disaster. Courage and luck are his in extraordinary measure.</p><p>When Baker Company’s assault wave breaks up just short of the surf where Able Company is in ordeal, Taylor’s coxswain swings his boat sharp left, then heads toward the shore about halfway between Zappacosta’s boat and Williams’. Until a few seconds after the ramp drops, this bit of beach next to the village called Hamel-au-Prêtre is blessedly clear of fire. No mortar shells crown the start. Taylor leads his section crawling across the beach and over the sea wall, losing four men killed and two wounded (machine-gun fire) in this brief movement. Some yards off to his right, Taylor has seen Lieutenants Harold Donaldson and Emil Winkler shot dead. But there is no halt for reflection; Taylor leads the section by trail straight up the bluff and into Vierville, where his luck continues. In a two-hour fight he whips a German platoon without losing a man.</p><p>The village is quiet when Pearce joins him. Pearce says: “Williams is shot up back there and can’t move.”</p><p>Says Taylor: “I guess that makes me company commander.”</p><p>Answers Pearce: “This is probably all of Baker Company.” Pearce takes a head count; they number twenty-eight, including Taylor.</p><p>Says Taylor: “That ought to be enough. Follow me!”</p><p>Inland from Vierville about five hundred yards lies the Château de Vaumicel, imposing in its rock-walled massiveness, its hedgerow-bordered fields all entrenched and interconnected with artilleryproof tunnels. To every man but Taylor the target looks prohibitive. Still, they follow him. Fire stops them one hundred yards short of the château. The Germans are behind a hedgerow at mid-distance. Still feeling their way, Taylor’s men flatten, open fire with rifles, and toss a few grenades, though the distance seems too great. By sheer chance, one grenade glances off the helmet of a German squatting in a foxhole. He jumps up, shouting: “<i>Kamerad! Kamerad!</i>” Thereupon twenty-four of the enemy walk from behind the hedgerow with their hands in the air. Taylor pares off one of his riflemen to march the prisoners back to the beach. The brief fight costs him three wounded. Within the château, he takes two more prisoners, a German doctor and his first-aid man. Taylor puts them on a “kind of a parole,” leaving his three wounded in their keeping while moving his platoon to the first crossroads beyond the château.</p><p>Here he is stopped by the sudden arrival of three truckloads of German infantry, who deploy into the fields on both flanks of his position and start an envelopment. The manpower odds, about three to one against him, are too heavy. In the first trade of fire, lasting not more than two minutes, a rifleman lying beside Taylor is killed, three others are wounded, and the BAR is shot from Pearce’s hands. That leaves but twenty men and no automatic weapons.</p><p>Taylor yells: “Back to the château!” They go out, crawling as far as the first hedgerow; then they rise and trot along, supporting their wounded. Taylor is the last man out, having stayed behind to cover the withdrawal with his carbine until the hedgerows interdict fire against the others. So far, this small group has had no contact with any other part of the expedition, and for all its members know, the invasion may have failed.</p><p>They make it to the château. The enemy comes on and moves in close. The attacking fire builds up. But the stone walls are fire-slotted, and through the midday and early afternoon these ports well serve the American riflemen. The question is whether the ammunition will outlast the Germans. It is answered at sundown, just as the supply runs out, by the arrival of fifteen Rangers who join their fire with Taylor’s, and the Germans fade back.</p><p>Already Taylor and his force are farther south than any element of the right flank in the Omaha expedition. But Taylor isn’t satisfied. The battalion objective, as specified for the close of D Day, is still more than one half mile to the westward. He says to the others: “We’ve got to make it.”</p><p>So he leads them forth, once again serving as first scout, eighteen of his own riflemen and fifteen Rangers following in column. One man is killed by a bullet getting away from Vaumicel. Dark closes over them. They prepare to bivouac. Having got almost to the village of Louvières, they are by this time almost one half mile in front of anything else in the United States Army. There a runner reaches them with the message that the remnants of the battalion are assembling seven hundred yards closer to the sea; Taylor and party are directed to fall back on them. It is done.</p><p>Later, still under the spell, Price paid the perfect tribute to Taylor. He said: “We saw no sign of fear in him. Watching him made men of us. Marching or fighting, he was leading. We followed him because there was nothing else to do.”</p><p>Thousands of Americans were spilled onto Omaha Beach. The high ground was won by a handful of men like Taylor who on that day burned with a flame bright beyond common understanding.</p><hr /><p><a></a><small><em><a href="#Kearfott">*</a> This article originally misspelled Lieutenant Benjamin R. Kearfott’s last name. The spelling was corrected on June 22, 2020.</em></small></p></section></article>||||I|||| Skip to content

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 November 1960 Issue
 Explore
 This magazine has been fully digitized as a part of The Atlantic's archive. Each article originally printed in this magazine is available here, complete and unedited from the historical print. Read more from this magazine, or explore the full archive.
 * First Wave at Omaha Beach
 S. L. A. Marshall
 * India and Pakistan
 * Charles de Gaulle: The Last Romantic
 Curtis Cate
 * For the Union Dead
 Robert Lowell
 * In the Garden of the Hurricane's Eye
 John Ciardi
 * My Older Brother
 Lewis Perry

 First Wave at Omaha Beach

 An account of the “epic human tragedy” that unfolded when Allied troops landed on the shores of Normandy on D-Day

 By S. L. A. Marshall

 Photograph of American troops approaching Omaha Beach, Normandy, on D-Day (Universal History Archive / UIG via Getty)

 November 1960 Issue
 Share

 Updated at 12:06 p.m. ET on June 22, 2020.

 Unlike what happens to other great battles, the passing of the years and the retelling of the story have softened the horror of Omaha Beach on D Day.

 This fluke of history is doubly ironic since no other decisive battle has ever been so thoroughly reported for the official record. While the troops were still fighting in Normandy, what had happened to each unit in the landing had become known through the eyewitness testimony of all survivors. It was this research by the field historians which first determined where each company had hit the beach and by what route it had moved inland. Owing to the fact that every unit save one had been mislanded, it took this work to show the troops where they had fought.

 How they fought and what they suffered were also determined in detail during the field research. As published today, the map data showing where the troops came ashore check exactly with the work done in the field; but the accompanying narrative describing their ordeal is a sanitized version of the original field notes.

 This happened because the Army historians who wrote the first official book about Omaha Beach, basing it on the field notes, did a calculated job of sifting and weighting the material. So saying does not imply that their judgment was wrong. Normandy was an American victory; it was their duty to trace the twists and turns of fortune by which success was won. But to follow that rule slights the story of Omaha as an epic human tragedy which in the early hours bordered on total disaster. On this two-division front landing, only six rifle companies were relatively effective as units. They did better than others mainly because they had the luck to touch down on a less deadly section of the beach. Three times that number were shattered or foundered before they could start to fight. Several contributed not a man or bullet to the battle for the high ground. But their ordeal has gone unmarked because its detail was largely ignored by history in the first place. The worst-fated companies were overlooked, the more wretched personal experiences were toned down, and disproportionate attention was paid to the little element of courageous success in a situation which was largely characterized by tragic failure.

 The official accounts which came later took their cue from this secondary source instead of searching the original documents. Even such an otherwise splendid and popular book on the great adventure as Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day misses the essence of the Omaha story.

 In everything that has been written about Omaha until now, there is less blood and iron than in the original field notes covering any battalion landing in the first wave. Doubt it? Then let’s follow along with Able and Baker companies, 116th Infantry, 29th Division. Their story is lifted from my fading Normandy notebook, which covers the landing of every Omaha company.

 Able Company riding the tide in seven Higgins boats is still five thousand yards from the beach when first taken under artillery fire. The shells fall short. At one thousand yards, Boat No. 5 is hit dead on and foundered. Six men drown before help arrives. Second Lieutenant Edward Gearing and twenty others paddle around until picked up by naval craft, thereby missing the fight at the shore line. It’s their lucky day. The other six boats ride unscathed to within one hundred yards of the shore, where a shell into Boat No. 3 kills two men. Another dozen drown, taking to the water as the boat sinks. That leaves five boats.

 Lieutenant Edward Tidrick in Boat No. 2 cries out: “My God, we’re coming in at the right spot, but look at it! No shingle, no wall, no shell holes, no cover. Nothing!”

 His men are at the sides of the boat, straining for a view of the target. They stare but say nothing. At exactly 6:36 A.M. ramps are dropped along the boat line and the men jump off in water anywhere from waist deep to higher than a man’s head. This is the signal awaited by the Germans atop the bluff. Already pounded by mortars, the floundering line is instantly swept by crossing machine-gun fires from both ends of the beach.

 Able Company has planned to wade ashore in three files from each boat, center file going first, then flank files peeling off to right and left. The first men out try to do it but are ripped apart before they can make five yards. Even the lightly wounded die by drowning, doomed by the waterlogging of their overloaded packs. From Boat No. 1, all hands jump off in water over their heads. Most of them are carried down. Ten or so survivors get around the boat and clutch at its sides in an attempt to stay afloat. The same thing happens to the section in Boat No. 4. Half of its people are lost to the fire or tide before anyone gets ashore. All order has vanished from Able Company before it has fired a shot.

 Already the sea runs red. Even among some of the lightly wounded who jumped into shallow water the hits prove fatal. Knocked down by a bullet in the arm or weakened by fear and shock, they are unable to rise again and are drowned by the onrushing tide. Other wounded men drag themselves ashore and, on finding the sands, lie quiet from total exhaustion, only to be overtaken and killed by the water. A few move safely through the bullet swarm to the beach, then find that they cannot hold there. They return to the water to use it for body cover. Faces turned upward, so that their nostrils are out of water, they creep toward the land at the same rate as the tide. That is how most of the survivors make it. The less rugged or less clever seek the cover of enemy obstacles moored along the upper half of the beach and are knocked off by machine-gun fire.

 Within seven minutes after the ramps drop, Able Company is inert and leaderless. At Boat No. 2, Lieutenant Tidrick takes a bullet through the throat as he jumps from the ramp into the water. He staggers onto the sand and flops down ten feet from Private First Class Leo J. Nash. Nash sees the blood spurting and hears the strangled words gasped by Tidrick: “Advance with the wire cutters!” It’s futile; Nash has no cutters. To give the order, Tidrick has raised himself up on his hands and made himself a target for an instant. Nash, burrowing into the sand, sees machine gun bullets rip Tidrick from crown to pelvis. From the cliff above, the German gunners are shooting into the survivors as from a roof top.

 Captain Taylor N. Fellers and Lieutenant Benjamin R. Kearfott never make it.* They had loaded with a section of thirty men in Boat No. 6 (Landing Craft, Assault, No. 1015). But exactly what happened to this boat and its human cargo was never to be known. No one saw the craft go down. How each man aboard it met death remains unreported. Half of the drowned bodies were later found along the beach. It is supposed that the others were claimed by the sea.

 Along the beach, only one Able Company officer still lives—Lieutenant Elijah Nance, who is hit in the heel as he quits the boat and hit in the belly by a second bullet as he makes the sand. By the end of ten minutes, every sergeant is either dead or wounded. To the eyes of such men as Private Howard I. Grosser and Private First Class Gilbert G. Murdock, this clean sweep suggests that the Germans on the high ground have spotted all leaders and concentrated fire their way. Among the men who are still moving in with the tide, rifles, packs, and helmets have already been cast away in the interests of survival.

 To the right of where Tidrick’s boat is drifting with the tide, its coxswain lying dead next to the shell-shattered wheel, the seventh craft, carrying a medical section with one officer and sixteen men, noses toward the beach. The ramp drops. In that instant, two machine guns concentrate their fire on the opening. Not a man is given time to jump. All aboard are cut down where they stand.

 By the end of fifteen minutes, Able Company has still not fired a weapon. No orders are being given by anyone. No words are spoken. The few able-bodied survivors move or not as they see fit. Merely to stay alive is a full-time job. The fight has become a rescue operation in which nothing counts but the force of a strong example.

 Above all others stands out the first-aid man, Thomas Breedin. Reaching the sands, he strips off pack, blouse, helmet, and boots. For a moment he stands there so that others on the strand will see him and get the same idea. Then he crawls into the water to pull in wounded men about to be overlapped by the tide. The deeper water is still spotted with tide walkers advancing at the same pace as the rising water. But now, owing to Breedin’s example, the strongest among them become more conspicuous targets. Coming along, they pick up wounded comrades and float them to the shore raftwise. Machine-gun fire still rakes the water. Burst after burst spoils the rescue act, shooting the floating man from the hands of the walker or killing both together. But Breedin for this hour leads a charmed life and stays with his work indomitably.

 By the end of one half hour, approximately two thirds of the company is forever gone. There is no precise casualty figure for that moment. There is for the Normandy landing as a whole no accurate figure for the first hour or first day. The circumstances precluded it. Whether more Able Company riflemen died from water than from fire is known only to heaven. All earthly evidence so indicates, but cannot prove it.

 By the end of one hour, the survivors from the main body have crawled across the sand to the foot of the bluff, where there is a narrow sanctuary of defiladed space. There they lie all day, clean spent, unarmed, too shocked to feel hunger, incapable even of talking to one another. No one happens by to succor them, ask what has happened, provide water, or offer unwanted pity. D Day at Omaha afforded no time or space for such missions. Every landing company was overloaded by its own assault problems.

 By the end of one hour and forty-five minutes, six survivors from the boat section on the extreme right shake loose and work their way to a shelf a few rods up the cliff. Four fall exhausted from the short climb and advance no farther. They stay there through the day, seeing no one else from the company. The other two, Privates Jake Shefer and Thomas Lovejoy, join a group from the Second Ranger Battalion, which is assaulting Pointe du Hoc to the right of the company sector, and fight on with the Rangers through the day. Two men. Two rifles. Except for these, Able Company’s contribution to the D Day fire fight is a cipher.

 Baker Company which is scheduled to land twenty-six minutes after Able and right on top of it, supporting and reinforcing, has had its full load of trouble on the way in. So rough is the sea during the journey that the men have to bail furiously with their helmets to keep the six boats from swamping. Thus preoccupied, they do not see the disaster which is overtaking Able until they are almost atop it. Then, what their eyes behold is either so limited or so staggering to the senses that control withers, the assault wave begins to dissolve, and disunity induced by fear virtually cancels the mission. A great cloud of smoke and dust raised by the mortar and machine-gun fire has almost closed a curtain around Able Company’s ordeal. Outside the pall, nothing is to be seen but a line of corpses adrift, a few heads bobbing in the water and the crimson-running tide. But this is enough for the British coxswains. They raise the cry: “We can’t go in there. We can’t see the landmarks. We must pull off.”

 In the command boat, Captain Ettore V. Zappacosta pulls a Colt .45 and says: “By God, you’ll take this boat straight in.” His display of courage wins obedience, but it’s still a fool’s order. Such of Baker’s boats as try to go straight in suffer Able’s fate without helping the other company whatever. Thrice during the approach mortar shells break right next to Zappacosta’s boat but by an irony leave it unscathed, thereby sparing the riders a few more moments of life. At seventy-five yards from the sand Zappacosta yells: “Drop the ramp !” The end goes down, and a storm of bullet fire comes in.

 Zappacosta jumps first from the boat, reels ten yards through the elbow-high tide, and yells back: “I’m hit.” He staggers on a few more steps. The aid man, Thomas Kenser, sees him bleeding from hip and shoulder. Kenser yells: “Try to make it in; I’m coming.” But the captain falls face forward into the wave, and the weight of his equipment and soaked pack pin him to the bottom. Kenser jumps toward him and is shot dead while in the air. Lieutenant Tom Dallas of Charley Company, who has come along to make a reconnaissance, is the third man. He makes it to the edge of the sand. There a machine-gun burst blows his head apart before he can flatten.

 Private First Class Robert L. Sales, who is lugging Zappacosta’s radio (an SCR 300), is the fourth man to leave the boat, having waited long enough to see the others die. His boot heel catches on the edge of the ramp and he falls sprawling into the tide, losing the radio but saving his life. Every man who tries to follow him is either killed or wounded before reaching dry land. Sales alone gets to the beach unhit. To travel those few yards takes him two hours. First he crouches in the water, and waddling forward on his haunches just a few paces, collides with a floating log—driftwood. In that moment, a mortar shell explodes just above his head, knocking him groggy. He hugs the log to keep from going down, and somehow the effort seems to clear his head a little. Next thing he knows, one of Able Company’s tide walkers hoists him aboard the log and, using his sheath knife, cuts away Sales’s pack, boots, and assault jacket.

 Feeling stronger, Sales returns to the water, and from behind the log, using it as cover, pushes toward the sand. Private Mack L. Smith of Baker Company, hit three times through the face, joins him there. An Able Company rifleman named Kemper, hit thrice in the right leg, also comes alongside. Together they follow the log until at last they roll it to the farthest reach of high tide. Then they flatten themselves behind it, staying there for hours after the flow has turned to ebb. The dead of both companies wash up to where they lie, and then wash back out to sea again. As a body drifts in close to them, Sales and companions, disregarding the fire, crawl from behind the log to take a look. If any one of them recognizes the face of a comrade, they join in dragging the body up onto the dry sand beyond the water’s reach. The unfamiliar dead are left to the sea. So long as the tide is full, they stay with this unique task. Later, an unidentified first-aid man who comes wiggling along the beach dresses the wounds of Smith. Sales, as he finds strength, bandages Kemper. The three remain behind the log until night falls. There is nothing else to be reported of any member of Zappacosta’s boat team.

 Only one other Baker Company boat tries to come straight in to the beach. Somehow the boat founders. Somehow all of its people are killed—one British coxswain and about thirty American infantrymen. Where they fall, there is no one to take note of and report.

 Frightened coxswains in the other four craft take one quick look, instinctively draw back, and then veer right and left away from the Able Company shambles. So doing, they dodge their duty while giving a break to their passengers. Such is the shock to the boat team leaders, and such their feeling of relief at the turning movement, that not one utters a protest. Lieutenant Leo A. Pingenot’s coxswain swings the boat far rightward toward Pointe du Hoc; then, spying a small and deceptively peaceful-looking cove, heads directly for the land. Fifty yards out, Pingenot yells: “Drop the ramp!” The coxswain freezes on the rope, refusing to lower. Staff Sergeant Odell L. Padgett jumps him, throttles him, and bears him to the floor. Padgett’s men lower the rope and jump for the water. In two minutes, they are all in up to their necks and struggling to avoid drowning. That quickly, Pingenot is already far out ahead of them. Padgett comes even with him, and together they cross onto dry land. The beach of the cove is heavily strewn with giant boulders. Bullets seem to be pinging off every rock.

 Pingenot and Padgett dive behind the same rock. Then they glance back, but to their horror see not one person. Quite suddenly smoke has half blanked out the scene beyond the water’s edge. Pingenot moans: “My God, the whole boat team is dead.” Padgett sings out: “Hey, are you hit?” Back come many voices from beyond the smoke. “What’s the rush?” “Take it easy!” “We’ll get there.” “Where’s the fire?” “Who wants to know?” The men are still moving along, using the water as cover. Padgett’s yell is their first information that anyone else has moved up front. They all make it to the shore, and they are twenty-eight strong at first. Pingenot and Padgett manage to stay ahead of them, coaxing and encouraging. Padgett keeps yelling: “Come on, goddam it, things are better up here!” But still they lose two men killed and three wounded in crossing the beach.

 In the cove, the platoon latches on to a company of Rangers, fights all day as part of that company, and helps destroy the enemy entrenchments atop Pointe du Hoc. By sundown that mop-up is completed. The platoon bivouacs at the first hedgerow beyond the cliff.

 The other Baker Company boat, which turns to the right, has far less luck. Staff Sergeant Robert M. Campbell, who leads the section, is the first man to jump out when the ramp goes down. He drops in drowning water, and his load of two bangalore torpedoes takes him straight to the bottom. So he jettisons the bangalores and then, surfacing, cuts away all equipment for good measure. Machine-gun fire brackets him, and he submerges again briefly. Never a strong swimmer, he heads back out to sea. For two hours he paddles around, two hundred or so yards from the shore. Though he hears and sees nothing of the battle, he somehow gets the impression that the invasion has failed and that all other Americans are dead, wounded, or have been taken prisoner. Strength fast going, in despair he moves ashore rather than drown. Beyond the smoke he quickly finds the fire. So he grabs a helmet from a dead man’s head, crawls on hands and knees to the sea wall, and there finds five of his men, two of them unwounded.

 Like Campbell, Private First Class Jan J. Budziszewski is carried to the bottom by his load of two bangalores. He hugs them half a minute before realizing that he will either let loose or drown. Next, he shucks off his helmet and pack and drops his rifle. Then he surfaces. After swimming two hundred yards, he sees that he is moving in exactly the wrong direction. So he turns about and heads for the beach, where he crawls ashore “under a rain of bullets.” In his path lies a dead Ranger. Budziszewski takes the dead man’s helmet, rifle, and canteen and crawls on to the sea wall. The only survivor from Campbell’s boat section to get off the beach, he spends his day walking to and fro along the foot of the bluff, looking for a friendly face. But he meets only strangers, and none shows any interest in him.

 In Lieutenant William B. Williams’ boat, the coxswain steers sharp left and away from Zappacosta’s sector. Not seeing the captain die, Williams doesn’t know that command has now passed to him. Guiding on his own instinct, the coxswain moves along the coast six hundred yards, then puts the boat straight in. It’s a good guess; he has found a little vacuum in the battle. The ramp drops on dry sand and the boat team jumps ashore. Yet it’s a close thing. Mortar fire has dogged them all the way; and as the last rifleman clears the ramp, one shell lands dead center of the boat, blows it apart, and kills the coxswain. Momentarily, the beach is free of fire, but the men cannot cross it at a bound. Weak from seasickness and fear, they move at a crawl, dragging their equipment. By the end of twenty minutes, Williams and ten men are over the sand and resting in the lee of the sea wall. Five others are hit by machine-gun fire crossing the beach; six men, last seen while taking cover in a tidal pocket, are never heard from again. More mortar fire lands around the party as Williams leads it across the road beyond the sea wall. The men scatter. When the shelling lifts, three of them do not return. Williams leads the seven survivors up a trail toward the fortified village of Les Moulins atop the bluff. He recognizes the ground and knows that he is taking on a tough target. Les Moulins is perched above a draw, up which winds a dirt road from the beach, designated on the invasion maps as Exit No. 3.

 Williams and his crew of seven are the first Americans to approach it D Day morning. Machine-gun fire from a concrete pillbox sweeps over them as they near the brow of the hill, moving now at a crawl through thick grass. Williams says to the others: “Stay here; we’re too big a target!” They hug earth, and he crawls forward alone, moving via a shallow gully. Without being detected, he gets to within twenty yards of the gun, obliquely downslope from it. He heaves a grenade; but he has held it just a bit too long and it explodes in air, just outside the embrasure. His second grenade hits the concrete wall and bounces right back on him. Three of its slugs hit him in the shoulders. Then, from out of the pillbox, a German potato masher sails down on him and explodes just a few feet away; five more fragments cut into him. He starts crawling back to his men; en route, three bullets from the machine gun rip his rump and right leg.

 The seven are still there. Williams hands his map and compass to Staff Sergeant Frank M. Price, saying: “It’s your job now. But go the other way—toward Vierville.” Price starts to look at Williams’ wounds, but Williams shakes him off, saying: “No, get moving.” He then settles himself in a hole in the embankment, stays there all day, and at last gets medical attention just before midnight.

 On leaving Williams, Price’s first act is to hand map and compass (the symbols of leadership) to Technical Sergeant William Pearce, whose seniority the lieutenant has overlooked. They cross the draw, one man at a time, and some distance beyond come to a ravine; on the far side, they bump their first hedgerow, and as they look for an entrance, fire comes against them. Behind a second hedgerow, not more than thirty yards away, are seven Germans, five rides and two burp guns. On exactly even terms, these two forces engage for the better part of an hour, apparently with no one’s getting hit. Then Pearce settles the fight by crawling along a drainage ditch to the enemy flank. He kills the seven Germans with a Browning Automatic Rifle.

 For Pearce and his friends, it is a first taste of battle; its success is giddying. Heads up, they walk along the road straight into Vierville, disregarding all precautions. They get away with it only because that village is already firmly in the hands of Lieutenant Walter Taylor of Baker Company and twenty men from his boat team.

 Taylor is a luminous figure in the story of D Day, one of the forty-seven immortals of Omaha who, by their dauntless initiative at widely separated points along the beach, saved the landing from total stagnation and disaster. Courage and luck are his in extraordinary measure.

 When Baker Company’s assault wave breaks up just short of the surf where Able Company is in ordeal, Taylor’s coxswain swings his boat sharp left, then heads toward the shore about halfway between Zappacosta’s boat and Williams’. Until a few seconds after the ramp drops, this bit of beach next to the village called Hamel-au-Prêtre is blessedly clear of fire. No mortar shells crown the start. Taylor leads his section crawling across the beach and over the sea wall, losing four men killed and two wounded (machine-gun fire) in this brief movement. Some yards off to his right, Taylor has seen Lieutenants Harold Donaldson and Emil Winkler shot dead. But there is no halt for reflection; Taylor leads the section by trail straight up the bluff and into Vierville, where his luck continues. In a two-hour fight he whips a German platoon without losing a man.

 The village is quiet when Pearce joins him. Pearce says: “Williams is shot up back there and can’t move.”

 Says Taylor: “I guess that makes me company commander.”

 Answers Pearce: “This is probably all of Baker Company.” Pearce takes a head count; they number twenty-eight, including Taylor.

 Says Taylor: “That ought to be enough. Follow me!”

 Inland from Vierville about five hundred yards lies the Château de Vaumicel, imposing in its rock-walled massiveness, its hedgerow-bordered fields all entrenched and interconnected with artilleryproof tunnels. To every man but Taylor the target looks prohibitive. Still, they follow him. Fire stops them one hundred yards short of the château. The Germans are behind a hedgerow at mid-distance. Still feeling their way, Taylor’s men flatten, open fire with rifles, and toss a few grenades, though the distance seems too great. By sheer chance, one grenade glances off the helmet of a German squatting in a foxhole. He jumps up, shouting: “Kamerad! Kamerad!” Thereupon twenty-four of the enemy walk from behind the hedgerow with their hands in the air. Taylor pares off one of his riflemen to march the prisoners back to the beach. The brief fight costs him three wounded. Within the château, he takes two more prisoners, a German doctor and his first-aid man. Taylor puts them on a “kind of a parole,” leaving his three wounded in their keeping while moving his platoon to the first crossroads beyond the château.

 Here he is stopped by the sudden arrival of three truckloads of German infantry, who deploy into the fields on both flanks of his position and start an envelopment. The manpower odds, about three to one against him, are too heavy. In the first trade of fire, lasting not more than two minutes, a rifleman lying beside Taylor is killed, three others are wounded, and the BAR is shot from Pearce’s hands. That leaves but twenty men and no automatic weapons.

 Taylor yells: “Back to the château!” They go out, crawling as far as the first hedgerow; then they rise and trot along, supporting their wounded. Taylor is the last man out, having stayed behind to cover the withdrawal with his carbine until the hedgerows interdict fire against the others. So far, this small group has had no contact with any other part of the expedition, and for all its members know, the invasion may have failed.

 They make it to the château. The enemy comes on and moves in close. The attacking fire builds up. But the stone walls are fire-slotted, and through the midday and early afternoon these ports well serve the American riflemen. The question is whether the ammunition will outlast the Germans. It is answered at sundown, just as the supply runs out, by the arrival of fifteen Rangers who join their fire with Taylor’s, and the Germans fade back.

 Already Taylor and his force are farther south than any element of the right flank in the Omaha expedition. But Taylor isn’t satisfied. The battalion objective, as specified for the close of D Day, is still more than one half mile to the westward. He says to the others: “We’ve got to make it.”

 So he leads them forth, once again serving as first scout, eighteen of his own riflemen and fifteen Rangers following in column. One man is killed by a bullet getting away from Vaumicel. Dark closes over them. They prepare to bivouac. Having got almost to the village of Louvières, they are by this time almost one half mile in front of anything else in the United States Army. There a runner reaches them with the message that the remnants of the battalion are assembling seven hundred yards closer to the sea; Taylor and party are directed to fall back on them. It is done.

 Later, still under the spell, Price paid the perfect tribute to Taylor. He said: “We saw no sign of fear in him. Watching him made men of us. Marching or fighting, he was leading. We followed him because there was nothing else to do.”

 Thousands of Americans were spilled onto Omaha Beach. The high ground was won by a handful of men like Taylor who on that day burned with a flame bright beyond common understanding.

 * This article originally misspelled Lieutenant Benjamin R. Kearfott’s last name. The spelling was corrected on June 22, 2020.

An account of the “epic human tragedy” that unfolded when Allied troops landed on the shores of Normandy on D-Day      Photograph of American troops approaching Omaha Beach, Normandy, on D-Day (Universal History Archive / UIG via Getty)        Updated at 12:06 p.m. ET on June 22, 2020.   Unlike what happens to other great battles, the passing of the years and the retelling of the story have softened the horror of Omaha Beach on D Day. This fluke of history is doubly ironic since no other decisive battle has ever been so thoroughly reported for the official record. While the troops were still fighting in Normandy, what had happened to each unit in the landing had become known through the eyewitness testimony of all survivors. It was this research by the field historians which first determined where each company had hit the beach and by what route it had moved inland. Owing to the fact that every unit save one had been mislanded, it took this work to show the troops where they had fought. How they fought and what they suffered were also determined in detail during the field research. As published today, the map data showing where the troops came ashore check exactly with the work done in the field; but the accompanying narrative describing their ordeal is a sanitized version of the original field notes. This happened because the Army historians who wrote the first official book about Omaha Beach, basing it on the field notes, did a calculated job of sifting and weighting the material. So saying does not imply that their judgment was wrong. Normandy was an American victory; it was their duty to trace the twists and turns of fortune by which success was won. But to follow that rule slights the story of Omaha as an epic human tragedy which in the early hours bordered on total disaster. On this two-division front landing, only six rifle companies were relatively effective as units. They did better than others mainly because they had the luck to touch down on a less deadly section of the beach. Three times that number were shattered or foundered before they could start to fight. Several contributed not a man or bullet to the battle for the high ground. But their ordeal has gone unmarked because its detail was largely ignored by history in the first place. The worst-fated companies were overlooked, the more wretched personal experiences were toned down, and disproportionate attention was paid to the little element of courageous success in a situation which was largely characterized by tragic failure. The official accounts which came later took their cue from this secondary source instead of searching the original documents. Even such an otherwise splendid and popular book on the great adventure as Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day misses the essence of the Omaha story. In everything that has been written about Omaha until now, there is less blood and iron than in the original field notes covering any battalion landing in the first wave. Doubt it? Then let’s follow along with Able and Baker companies, 116th Infantry, 29th Division. Their story is lifted from my fading Normandy notebook, which covers the landing of every Omaha company.  Able Company riding the tide in seven Higgins boats is still five thousand yards from the beach when first taken under artillery fire. The shells fall short. At one thousand yards, Boat No. 5 is hit dead on and foundered. Six men drown before help arrives. Second Lieutenant Edward Gearing and twenty others paddle around until picked up by naval craft, thereby missing the fight at the shore line. It’s their lucky day. The other six boats ride unscathed to within one hundred yards of the shore, where a shell into Boat No. 3 kills two men. Another dozen drown, taking to the water as the boat sinks. That leaves five boats. Lieutenant Edward Tidrick in Boat No. 2 cries out: “My God, we’re coming in at the right spot, but look at it! No shingle, no wall, no shell holes, no cover. Nothing!” His men are at the sides of the boat, straining for a view of the target. They stare but say nothing. At exactly 6:36 A.M. ramps are dropped along the boat line and the men jump off in water anywhere from waist deep to higher than a man’s head. This is the signal awaited by the Germans atop the bluff. Already pounded by mortars, the floundering line is instantly swept by crossing machine-gun fires from both ends of the beach. Able Company has planned to wade ashore in three files from each boat, center file going first, then flank files peeling off to right and left. The first men out try to do it but are ripped apart before they can make five yards. Even the lightly wounded die by drowning, doomed by the waterlogging of their overloaded packs. From Boat No. 1, all hands jump off in water over their heads. Most of them are carried down. Ten or so survivors get around the boat and clutch at its sides in an attempt to stay afloat. The same thing happens to the section in Boat No. 4. Half of its people are lost to the fire or tide before anyone gets ashore. All order has vanished from Able Company before it has fired a shot. Already the sea runs red. Even among some of the lightly wounded who jumped into shallow water the hits prove fatal. Knocked down by a bullet in the arm or weakened by fear and shock, they are unable to rise again and are drowned by the onrushing tide. Other wounded men drag themselves ashore and, on finding the sands, lie quiet from total exhaustion, only to be overtaken and killed by the water. A few move safely through the bullet swarm to the beach, then find that they cannot hold there. They return to the water to use it for body cover. Faces turned upward, so that their nostrils are out of water, they creep toward the land at the same rate as the tide. That is how most of the survivors make it. The less rugged or less clever seek the cover of enemy obstacles moored along the upper half of the beach and are knocked off by machine-gun fire. Within seven minutes after the ramps drop, Able Company is inert and leaderless. At Boat No. 2, Lieutenant Tidrick takes a bullet through the throat as he jumps from the ramp into the water. He staggers onto the sand and flops down ten feet from Private First Class Leo J. Nash. Nash sees the blood spurting and hears the strangled words gasped by Tidrick: “Advance with the wire cutters!” It’s futile; Nash has no cutters. To give the order, Tidrick has raised himself up on his hands and made himself a target for an instant. Nash, burrowing into the sand, sees machine gun bullets rip Tidrick from crown to pelvis. From the cliff above, the German gunners are shooting into the survivors as from a roof top.   Captain Taylor N. Fellers and Lieutenant Benjamin R. Kearfott never make it.* They had loaded with a section of thirty men in Boat No. 6 (Landing Craft, Assault, No. 1015). But exactly what happened to this boat and its human cargo was never to be known. No one saw the craft go down. How each man aboard it met death remains unreported. Half of the drowned bodies were later found along the beach. It is supposed that the others were claimed by the sea. Along the beach, only one Able Company officer still lives—Lieutenant Elijah Nance, who is hit in the heel as he quits the boat and hit in the belly by a second bullet as he makes the sand. By the end of ten minutes, every sergeant is either dead or wounded. To the eyes of such men as Private Howard I. Grosser and Private First Class Gilbert G. Murdock, this clean sweep suggests that the Germans on the high ground have spotted all leaders and concentrated fire their way. Among the men who are still moving in with the tide, rifles, packs, and helmets have already been cast away in the interests of survival. To the right of where Tidrick’s boat is drifting with the tide, its coxswain lying dead next to the shell-shattered wheel, the seventh craft, carrying a medical section with one officer and sixteen men, noses toward the beach. The ramp drops. In that instant, two machine guns concentrate their fire on the opening. Not a man is given time to jump. All aboard are cut down where they stand. By the end of fifteen minutes, Able Company has still not fired a weapon. No orders are being given by anyone. No words are spoken. The few able-bodied survivors move or not as they see fit. Merely to stay alive is a full-time job. The fight has become a rescue operation in which nothing counts but the force of a strong example. Above all others stands out the first-aid man, Thomas Breedin. Reaching the sands, he strips off pack, blouse, helmet, and boots. For a moment he stands there so that others on the strand will see him and get the same idea. Then he crawls into the water to pull in wounded men about to be overlapped by the tide. The deeper water is still spotted with tide walkers advancing at the same pace as the rising water. But now, owing to Breedin’s example, the strongest among them become more conspicuous targets. Coming along, they pick up wounded comrades and float them to the shore raftwise. Machine-gun fire still rakes the water. Burst after burst spoils the rescue act, shooting the floating man from the hands of the walker or killing both together. But Breedin for this hour leads a charmed life and stays with his work indomitably. By the end of one half hour, approximately two thirds of the company is forever gone. There is no precise casualty figure for that moment. There is for the Normandy landing as a whole no accurate figure for the first hour or first day. The circumstances precluded it. Whether more Able Company riflemen died from water than from fire is known only to heaven. All earthly evidence so indicates, but cannot prove it. By the end of one hour, the survivors from the main body have crawled across the sand to the foot of the bluff, where there is a narrow sanctuary of defiladed space. There they lie all day, clean spent, unarmed, too shocked to feel hunger, incapable even of talking to one another. No one happens by to succor them, ask what has happened, provide water, or offer unwanted pity. D Day at Omaha afforded no time or space for such missions. Every landing company was overloaded by its own assault problems. By the end of one hour and forty-five minutes, six survivors from the boat section on the extreme right shake loose and work their way to a shelf a few rods up the cliff. Four fall exhausted from the short climb and advance no farther. They stay there through the day, seeing no one else from the company. The other two, Privates Jake Shefer and Thomas Lovejoy, join a group from the Second Ranger Battalion, which is assaulting Pointe du Hoc to the right of the company sector, and fight on with the Rangers through the day. Two men. Two rifles. Except for these, Able Company’s contribution to the D Day fire fight is a cipher.   Baker Company which is scheduled to land twenty-six minutes after Able and right on top of it, supporting and reinforcing, has had its full load of trouble on the way in. So rough is the sea during the journey that the men have to bail furiously with their helmets to keep the six boats from swamping. Thus preoccupied, they do not see the disaster which is overtaking Able until they are almost atop it. Then, what their eyes behold is either so limited or so staggering to the senses that control withers, the assault wave begins to dissolve, and disunity induced by fear virtually cancels the mission. A great cloud of smoke and dust raised by the mortar and machine-gun fire has almost closed a curtain around Able Company’s ordeal. Outside the pall, nothing is to be seen but a line of corpses adrift, a few heads bobbing in the water and the crimson-running tide. But this is enough for the British coxswains. They raise the cry: “We can’t go in there. We can’t see the landmarks. We must pull off.”  In the command boat, Captain Ettore V. Zappacosta pulls a Colt .45 and says: “By God, you’ll take this boat straight in.” His display of courage wins obedience, but it’s still a fool’s order. Such of Baker’s boats as try to go straight in suffer Able’s fate without helping the other company whatever. Thrice during the approach mortar shells break right next to Zappacosta’s boat but by an irony leave it unscathed, thereby sparing the riders a few more moments of life. At seventy-five yards from the sand Zappacosta yells: “Drop the ramp !” The end goes down, and a storm of bullet fire comes in. Zappacosta jumps first from the boat, reels ten yards through the elbow-high tide, and yells back: “I’m hit.” He staggers on a few more steps. The aid man, Thomas Kenser, sees him bleeding from hip and shoulder. Kenser yells: “Try to make it in; I’m coming.” But the captain falls face forward into the wave, and the weight of his equipment and soaked pack pin him to the bottom. Kenser jumps toward him and is shot dead while in the air. Lieutenant Tom Dallas of Charley Company, who has come along to make a reconnaissance, is the third man. He makes it to the edge of the sand. There a machine-gun burst blows his head apart before he can flatten. Private First Class Robert L. Sales, who is lugging Zappacosta’s radio (an SCR 300), is the fourth man to leave the boat, having waited long enough to see the others die. His boot heel catches on the edge of the ramp and he falls sprawling into the tide, losing the radio but saving his life. Every man who tries to follow him is either killed or wounded before reaching dry land. Sales alone gets to the beach unhit. To travel those few yards takes him two hours. First he crouches in the water, and waddling forward on his haunches just a few paces, collides with a floating log—driftwood. In that moment, a mortar shell explodes just above his head, knocking him groggy. He hugs the log to keep from going down, and somehow the effort seems to clear his head a little. Next thing he knows, one of Able Company’s tide walkers hoists him aboard the log and, using his sheath knife, cuts away Sales’s pack, boots, and assault jacket. Feeling stronger, Sales returns to the water, and from behind the log, using it as cover, pushes toward the sand. Private Mack L. Smith of Baker Company, hit three times through the face, joins him there. An Able Company rifleman named Kemper, hit thrice in the right leg, also comes alongside. Together they follow the log until at last they roll it to the farthest reach of high tide. Then they flatten themselves behind it, staying there for hours after the flow has turned to ebb. The dead of both companies wash up to where they lie, and then wash back out to sea again. As a body drifts in close to them, Sales and companions, disregarding the fire, crawl from behind the log to take a look. If any one of them recognizes the face of a comrade, they join in dragging the body up onto the dry sand beyond the water’s reach. The unfamiliar dead are left to the sea. So long as the tide is full, they stay with this unique task. Later, an unidentified first-aid man who comes wiggling along the beach dresses the wounds of Smith. Sales, as he finds strength, bandages Kemper. The three remain behind the log until night falls. There is nothing else to be reported of any member of Zappacosta’s boat team. Only one other Baker Company boat tries to come straight in to the beach. Somehow the boat founders. Somehow all of its people are killed—one British coxswain and about thirty American infantrymen. Where they fall, there is no one to take note of and report.  Frightened coxswains in the other four craft take one quick look, instinctively draw back, and then veer right and left away from the Able Company shambles. So doing, they dodge their duty while giving a break to their passengers. Such is the shock to the boat team leaders, and such their feeling of relief at the turning movement, that not one utters a protest. Lieutenant Leo A. Pingenot’s coxswain swings the boat far rightward toward Pointe du Hoc; then, spying a small and deceptively peaceful-looking cove, heads directly for the land. Fifty yards out, Pingenot yells: “Drop the ramp!” The coxswain freezes on the rope, refusing to lower. Staff Sergeant Odell L. Padgett jumps him, throttles him, and bears him to the floor. Padgett’s men lower the rope and jump for the water. In two minutes, they are all in up to their necks and struggling to avoid drowning. That quickly, Pingenot is already far out ahead of them. Padgett comes even with him, and together they cross onto dry land. The beach of the cove is heavily strewn with giant boulders. Bullets seem to be pinging off every rock. Pingenot and Padgett dive behind the same rock. Then they glance back, but to their horror see not one person. Quite suddenly smoke has half blanked out the scene beyond the water’s edge. Pingenot moans: “My God, the whole boat team is dead.” Padgett sings out: “Hey, are you hit?” Back come many voices from beyond the smoke. “What’s the rush?” “Take it easy!” “We’ll get there.” “Where’s the fire?” “Who wants to know?” The men are still moving along, using the water as cover. Padgett’s yell is their first information that anyone else has moved up front. They all make it to the shore, and they are twenty-eight strong at first. Pingenot and Padgett manage to stay ahead of them, coaxing and encouraging. Padgett keeps yelling: “Come on, goddam it, things are better up here!” But still they lose two men killed and three wounded in crossing the beach. In the cove, the platoon latches on to a company of Rangers, fights all day as part of that company, and helps destroy the enemy entrenchments atop Pointe du Hoc. By sundown that mop-up is completed. The platoon bivouacs at the first hedgerow beyond the cliff. The other Baker Company boat, which turns to the right, has far less luck. Staff Sergeant Robert M. Campbell, who leads the section, is the first man to jump out when the ramp goes down. He drops in drowning water, and his load of two bangalore torpedoes takes him straight to the bottom. So he jettisons the bangalores and then, surfacing, cuts away all equipment for good measure. Machine-gun fire brackets him, and he submerges again briefly. Never a strong swimmer, he heads back out to sea. For two hours he paddles around, two hundred or so yards from the shore. Though he hears and sees nothing of the battle, he somehow gets the impression that the invasion has failed and that all other Americans are dead, wounded, or have been taken prisoner. Strength fast going, in despair he moves ashore rather than drown. Beyond the smoke he quickly finds the fire. So he grabs a helmet from a dead man’s head, crawls on hands and knees to the sea wall, and there finds five of his men, two of them unwounded. Like Campbell, Private First Class Jan J. Budziszewski is carried to the bottom by his load of two bangalores. He hugs them half a minute before realizing that he will either let loose or drown. Next, he shucks off his helmet and pack and drops his rifle. Then he surfaces. After swimming two hundred yards, he sees that he is moving in exactly the wrong direction. So he turns about and heads for the beach, where he crawls ashore “under a rain of bullets.” In his path lies a dead Ranger. Budziszewski takes the dead man’s helmet, rifle, and canteen and crawls on to the sea wall. The only survivor from Campbell’s boat section to get off the beach, he spends his day walking to and fro along the foot of the bluff, looking for a friendly face. But he meets only strangers, and none shows any interest in him.  In Lieutenant William B. Williams’ boat, the coxswain steers sharp left and away from Zappacosta’s sector. Not seeing the captain die, Williams doesn’t know that command has now passed to him. Guiding on his own instinct, the coxswain moves along the coast six hundred yards, then puts the boat straight in. It’s a good guess; he has found a little vacuum in the battle. The ramp drops on dry sand and the boat team jumps ashore. Yet it’s a close thing. Mortar fire has dogged them all the way; and as the last rifleman clears the ramp, one shell lands dead center of the boat, blows it apart, and kills the coxswain. Momentarily, the beach is free of fire, but the men cannot cross it at a bound. Weak from seasickness and fear, they move at a crawl, dragging their equipment. By the end of twenty minutes, Williams and ten men are over the sand and resting in the lee of the sea wall. Five others are hit by machine-gun fire crossing the beach; six men, last seen while taking cover in a tidal pocket, are never heard from again. More mortar fire lands around the party as Williams leads it across the road beyond the sea wall. The men scatter. When the shelling lifts, three of them do not return. Williams leads the seven survivors up a trail toward the fortified village of Les Moulins atop the bluff. He recognizes the ground and knows that he is taking on a tough target. Les Moulins is perched above a draw, up which winds a dirt road from the beach, designated on the invasion maps as Exit No. 3. Williams and his crew of seven are the first Americans to approach it D Day morning. Machine-gun fire from a concrete pillbox sweeps over them as they near the brow of the hill, moving now at a crawl through thick grass. Williams says to the others: “Stay here; we’re too big a target!” They hug earth, and he crawls forward alone, moving via a shallow gully. Without being detected, he gets to within twenty yards of the gun, obliquely downslope from it. He heaves a grenade; but he has held it just a bit too long and it explodes in air, just outside the embrasure. His second grenade hits the concrete wall and bounces right back on him. Three of its slugs hit him in the shoulders. Then, from out of the pillbox, a German potato masher sails down on him and explodes just a few feet away; five more fragments cut into him. He starts crawling back to his men; en route, three bullets from the machine gun rip his rump and right leg. The seven are still there. Williams hands his map and compass to Staff Sergeant Frank M. Price, saying: “It’s your job now. But go the other way—toward Vierville.” Price starts to look at Williams’ wounds, but Williams shakes him off, saying: “No, get moving.” He then settles himself in a hole in the embankment, stays there all day, and at last gets medical attention just before midnight. On leaving Williams, Price’s first act is to hand map and compass (the symbols of leadership) to Technical Sergeant William Pearce, whose seniority the lieutenant has overlooked. They cross the draw, one man at a time, and some distance beyond come to a ravine; on the far side, they bump their first hedgerow, and as they look for an entrance, fire comes against them. Behind a second hedgerow, not more than thirty yards away, are seven Germans, five rides and two burp guns. On exactly even terms, these two forces engage for the better part of an hour, apparently with no one’s getting hit. Then Pearce settles the fight by crawling along a drainage ditch to the enemy flank. He kills the seven Germans with a Browning Automatic Rifle. For Pearce and his friends, it is a first taste of battle; its success is giddying. Heads up, they walk along the road straight into Vierville, disregarding all precautions. They get away with it only because that village is already firmly in the hands of Lieutenant Walter Taylor of Baker Company and twenty men from his boat team. Taylor is a luminous figure in the story of D Day, one of the forty-seven immortals of Omaha who, by their dauntless initiative at widely separated points along the beach, saved the landing from total stagnation and disaster. Courage and luck are his in extraordinary measure. When Baker Company’s assault wave breaks up just short of the surf where Able Company is in ordeal, Taylor’s coxswain swings his boat sharp left, then heads toward the shore about halfway between Zappacosta’s boat and Williams’. Until a few seconds after the ramp drops, this bit of beach next to the village called Hamel-au-Prêtre is blessedly clear of fire. No mortar shells crown the start. Taylor leads his section crawling across the beach and over the sea wall, losing four men killed and two wounded (machine-gun fire) in this brief movement. Some yards off to his right, Taylor has seen Lieutenants Harold Donaldson and Emil Winkler shot dead. But there is no halt for reflection; Taylor leads the section by trail straight up the bluff and into Vierville, where his luck continues. In a two-hour fight he whips a German platoon without losing a man. The village is quiet when Pearce joins him. Pearce says: “Williams is shot up back there and can’t move.” Says Taylor: “I guess that makes me company commander.” Answers Pearce: “This is probably all of Baker Company.” Pearce takes a head count; they number twenty-eight, including Taylor. Says Taylor: “That ought to be enough. Follow me!” Inland from Vierville about five hundred yards lies the Château de Vaumicel, imposing in its rock-walled massiveness, its hedgerow-bordered fields all entrenched and interconnected with artilleryproof tunnels. To every man but Taylor the target looks prohibitive. Still, they follow him. Fire stops them one hundred yards short of the château. The Germans are behind a hedgerow at mid-distance. Still feeling their way, Taylor’s men flatten, open fire with rifles, and toss a few grenades, though the distance seems too great. By sheer chance, one grenade glances off the helmet of a German squatting in a foxhole. He jumps up, shouting: “Kamerad! Kamerad!” Thereupon twenty-four of the enemy walk from behind the hedgerow with their hands in the air. Taylor pares off one of his riflemen to march the prisoners back to the beach. The brief fight costs him three wounded. Within the château, he takes two more prisoners, a German doctor and his first-aid man. Taylor puts them on a “kind of a parole,” leaving his three wounded in their keeping while moving his platoon to the first crossroads beyond the château. Here he is stopped by the sudden arrival of three truckloads of German infantry, who deploy into the fields on both flanks of his position and start an envelopment. The manpower odds, about three to one against him, are too heavy. In the first trade of fire, lasting not more than two minutes, a rifleman lying beside Taylor is killed, three others are wounded, and the BAR is shot from Pearce’s hands. That leaves but twenty men and no automatic weapons. Taylor yells: “Back to the château!” They go out, crawling as far as the first hedgerow; then they rise and trot along, supporting their wounded. Taylor is the last man out, having stayed behind to cover the withdrawal with his carbine until the hedgerows interdict fire against the others. So far, this small group has had no contact with any other part of the expedition, and for all its members know, the invasion may have failed. They make it to the château. The enemy comes on and moves in close. The attacking fire builds up. But the stone walls are fire-slotted, and through the midday and early afternoon these ports well serve the American riflemen. The question is whether the ammunition will outlast the Germans. It is answered at sundown, just as the supply runs out, by the arrival of fifteen Rangers who join their fire with Taylor’s, and the Germans fade back. Already Taylor and his force are farther south than any element of the right flank in the Omaha expedition. But Taylor isn’t satisfied. The battalion objective, as specified for the close of D Day, is still more than one half mile to the westward. He says to the others: “We’ve got to make it.” So he leads them forth, once again serving as first scout, eighteen of his own riflemen and fifteen Rangers following in column. One man is killed by a bullet getting away from Vaumicel. Dark closes over them. They prepare to bivouac. Having got almost to the village of Louvières, they are by this time almost one half mile in front of anything else in the United States Army. There a runner reaches them with the message that the remnants of the battalion are assembling seven hundred yards closer to the sea; Taylor and party are directed to fall back on them. It is done. Later, still under the spell, Price paid the perfect tribute to Taylor. He said: “We saw no sign of fear in him. Watching him made men of us. Marching or fighting, he was leading. We followed him because there was nothing else to do.” Thousands of Americans were spilled onto Omaha Beach. The high ground was won by a handful of men like Taylor who on that day burned with a flame bright beyond common understanding.       * This article originally misspelled Lieutenant Benjamin R. Kearfott’s last name. The spelling was corrected on June 22, 2020.
First Wave at Omaha Beach
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1960/11/first-wave-at-omaha-beach/303365/
https://web.archive.org/web/20131003065136/http://www.kenrahn.com:80/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html
The Paranoid Style in American Politics
1996-01-01
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<p>The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20131003065136/http://www.kenrahn.com:80/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html</p>
<p><b></b></p>
<p>By Richard
Hofstadter<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131003065136/http://www.kenrahn.com/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html#_ftn1"></a><i><br/>
Harper’s Magazine</i>, November 1964, pp. 7786.</p>
<p><i>It had been around a long time before the Radical
Right discovered it—and its targets have ranged from “the international
bankers” to Masons, Jesuits, and munitions makers.</i></p>
<p>    American politics has often been an arena for angry minds.
In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme
right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much
political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small
minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from
new and that is not necessarily right-wind. I call it the paranoid style simply
because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration,
suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the
expression “paranoid style” I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but
borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor
the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable
lunatics., In fact, the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would
have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only
to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of
expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.<br/>
    Of course this term is pejorative, and it is meant to be;
the paranoid style has a greater affinity for bad causes than good. But nothing
really prevents a sound program or demand from being advocated in the paranoid
style. Style has more to do with the way in which ideas are believed than with
the truth or falsity of their content. I am interested here in getting at our
political psychology through our political rhetoric. The paranoid style is an
old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life which has been frequently linked
with movements of suspicious discontent.</p>
<p>Here is Senator McCarthy, speaking in June 1951 about the
parlous situation of the United States:</p>
<blockquote>
<p></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now turn back fifty years to a manifesto signed in 1895 by
a number of leaders of the Populist party:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As early as 186566
 a conspiracy was entered into between the gold gamblers of Europe and
 America.…For nearly thirty years these conspirators have kept the people
 quarreling over less important matters while they have pursued with
 unrelenting zeal their one central purpose.…Every device of treachery, every
 resource of statecraft, and every artifice known to the secret cabals of the
 international gold ring are being used to deal a blow to the prosperity of the
 people and the financial and commercial independence of the country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Next, a Texas newspaper article of 1855:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…It is a notorious fact that the Monarchs of Europe and the
 Pope of Rome are at this very moment plotting our destruction and threatening
 the extinction of our political, civil, and religious institutions. We have
 the best reasons for believing that corruption has found its way into our
 Executive Chamber, and that our Executive head is tainted with the infectious
 venom of Catholicism.…The Pope has recently sent his ambassador of state to
 this country on a secret commission, the effect of which is an extraordinary
 boldness of the Catholic church throughout the United States.…These minions
 of the Pope are boldly insulting our Senators; reprimanding our Statesmen;
 propagating the adulterous union of Church and State; abusing with foul
 calumny all governments but Catholic, and spewing out the bitterest
 execrations on all Protestantism. The Catholics in the United States receive
 from abroad more than $200,000 annually for the propagation of their creed.
 Add to this the vast revenues collected here.…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These quotations give the keynote of the style. In the
history of the United States one find it, for example, in the anti-Masonic
movement, the nativist and anti-Catholic movement, in certain spokesmen of
abolitionism who regarded the United States as being in the grip of a
slaveholders’ conspiracy, in many alarmists about the Mormons, in some
Greenback and Populist writers who constructed a great conspiracy of
international bankers, in the exposure of a munitions makers’ conspiracy of
World War I, in the popular left-wing press, in the contemporary American right
wing, and on both sides of the race controversy today, among White Citizens’
Councils and Black Muslims. I do not propose to try to trace the variations of
the paranoid style that can be found in all these movements, but will confine
myself to a few leading episodes in our past history in which the style emerged
in full and archetypal splendor.</p>
<h2>Illuminism and Masonry</h2>
<p>    I begin with a particularly revealing episode—the panic
that broke out in some quarters at the end of the eighteenth century over the
allegedly subversive activities of the Bavarian Illuminati. This panic was a
part of the general reaction to the French Revolution. In the United States it
was heightened by the response of certain men, mostly in New England and among
the established clergy, to the rise of Jeffersonian democracy. Illuminism had
been started in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, a professor of law at the University of
Ingolstadt. Its teachings today seem to be no more than another version of
Enlightenment rationalism, spiced with the anticlerical atmosphere of
eighteenth-century Bavaria. It was a somewhat naïve and utopian movement which
aspired ultimately to bring the human race under the rules of reason. Its
humanitarian rationalism appears to have acquired a fairly wide influence in
Masonic lodges.<br/>
    Americans first learned of Illumism in 1797, from a volume
published in Edinburgh (later reprinted in New York) under the title, <i>Proofs
of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried on
in the Secret Meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies</i>.
Its author was a well-known Scottish scientist, John Robison, who had himself
been a somewhat casual adherent of Masonry in Britain, but whose imagination had
been inflamed by what he considered to be the far less innocent Masonic movement
on the Continent. Robison seems to have made his work as factual as he could,
but when he came to estimating the moral character and the political influence
of Illuminism, he made the characteristic paranoid leap into fantasy. The
association, he thought, was formed “for the express purpose of .” It had become “one great and wicked project fermenting
and working all over Europe.” And to it he attributed a central role in
bringing about the French Revolution. He saw it as a libertine, anti-Christian
movement, given to the corruption of women, the cultivation of sensual
pleasures, and the violation of property rights. Its members had plans for
making a tea that caused abortion—a secret substance that “blinds or kills
when spurted in the face,” and a device that sounds like a stench bomb—a
“method for filling a bedchamber with pestilential vapours.”<br/>
    These notions were quick to make themselves felt in
America. In May 1798, a minister of the Massachusetts Congregational
establishment in Boston, Jedidiah Morse, delivered a timely sermon to the young
country, which was then sharply divided between Jeffersonians and Federalists,
Francophiles and Anglomen. Having read Robison, Morse was convinced of a
Jacobinical plot touched off by Illuminism, and that the country should be
rallied to defend itself. His warnings were heeded throughout New England
wherever Federalists brooded about the rising tide of religious infidelity or
Jeffersonian democracy. Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale, followed
Morse’s sermon with a Fourth-of-July discourse on <i>The
Duty of Americans in the Present Crisis</i>, in which he held forth against the
Antichrist in his own glowing rhetoric. Soon the pulpits of New England were
ringing with denunciations of the Illuminati, as though the country were
swarming with them.<br/>
    The anti-Masonic movement of the late 1820s and the 1830s
took up and extended the obsession with conspiracy. At first, this movement may
seem to be no more than an extension or repetition of the anti-Masonic theme
sounded in the outcry against the Bavarian Illuminati. But whereas the panic of
the 1790s was confined mainly to New England and linked to an ultraconservative
point of view, the later anti-Masonic movement affected many parts of the
northern United States, and was intimately linked with popular democracy and
rural egalitarianism. Although anti-Masonry happened to be anti-Jacksonian
(Jackson was a Mason), it manifested the same animus against the closure of
opportunity for the common man and against aristocratic institutions that one
finds in the Jacksonian crusade against the Bank of the United States.<br/>
    The anti-Masonic movement was a product not merely of
natural enthusiasm but also of the vicissitudes of party politics. It was joined
and used by a great many men who did not fully share its original anti-Masonic
feelings. It attracted the support of several reputable statement who had only
mild sympathy with its fundamental bias, but who as politicians could not afford
to ignore it. Still, it was a folk movement of considerable power, and the rural
enthusiasts who provided its real impetus believed in it wholeheartedly.<br/>
    As a secret society, Masonry was considered to be a
standing conspiracy against republican government. It was held to be
particularly liable to treason—for example, Aaron Burr’s famous conspiracy
was alleged to have been conducted by Masons. Masonry was accused of
constituting a separate system of loyalty, a separate imperium within the
framework of federal and state governments, which was inconsistent with loyalty
to them. Quite plausibly it was argued that the Masons had set up a jurisdiction
of their own, with their own obligations and punishments, liable to enforcement
even by the penalty of death. So basic was the conflict felt to be between
secrecy and democracy that other, more innocent societies such as Phi Beta Kappa
came under attack.<br/>
    Since Masons were pledged to come to each other’s aid
under circumstances of distress, and to extend fraternal indulgence at all
times, is was held that the order nullified the enforcement of regular law.
Masonic constables, sheriffs, juries, and judges must all be in league with
Masonic criminals and fugitives. The press was believed to have been so
“muzzled” by Masonic editors and proprietors that news of Masonic
malfeasance could be suppressed. At a moment when almost every alleged citadel
of privilege in America was under democratic assault, Masonry was attacked as a
fraternity of the privileged, closing business opportunities and nearly
monopolizing political offices.<br/>
    Certain elements of truth and reality there may have been
in these views of Masonry. What must be emphasized here, however, is the
apocalyptic and absolutistic framework in which this hostility was commonly
expressed. Anti-Masons were not content simply to say that secret societies were
rather a bad idea. The author of the standard exposition of anti-Masonry
declared that Freemasonry was “not only the most abominable but also the most
dangerous institution that ever was imposed on man.…It may truly be said to be
.”</p>
<h2>The Jesuit Threat</h2>
<p>    Fear of a Masonic plot had hardly been quieted when the
rumors arose of a Catholic plot against American values. One meets here again
the same frame of mind, but a different villain. The anti-Catholic movement
converged with a growing nativism, and while they were not identical, together
they cut such a wide swath in American life that they were bound to embrace many
moderates to whom the paranoid style, in its full glory, did not appeal.
Moreover, we need not dismiss out of hand as totally parochial or mean-spirited
the desire of Yankee Americans to maintain an ethnically and religiously
homogeneous society nor the particular Protestant commitments to individualism
and freedom that were brought into play. But the movement had a large paranoid
infusion, and the most influential anti-Catholic militants certainly had a
strong affinity for the paranoid style.<br/>
    Two books which appeared in 1835 described the new danger
to the ?American way of life and may be taken as expressions of the
anti-Catholic mentality. One, <i>Foreign
Conspiracies against the Liberties of the United States</i>, was from the hand
of the celebrated painter and inventor of the telegraph, S.F.B. Morse. “A
conspiracy exists,” Morse proclaimed , and “its plans are already in
operation…we are attacked in a vulnerable quarter which cannot be defended by
our ships, our forts, or our armies.” The main source of the conspiracy Morse
found in Metternich’s government: “<i>Austria
is now acting in this country</i>. She has devised a grand scheme. She has
organized a great plan for doing something here.…She has her Jesuit
missionaries traveling through the land; she has supplied them with money, and
has furnished a fountain for a regular supply.” Were the plot successful,
Morse said, some scion of the House of Hapsburg would soon be installed as
Emperor of the United States.</p>
<p>“It is an ascertained fact,” wrote another Protestant
militant,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>that Jesuits are prowling about all parts of the United
 States in every possible disguise, expressly to ascertain the advantageous
 situations and modes to disseminate Popery. A minister of the Gospel from Ohio
 has informed us that he discovered one carrying on his devices in his
 congregation; and he says that the western country swarms with them under the
 name of puppet show men, dancing masters, music teachers, peddlers of images
 and ornaments, barrel organ players, and similar practitioners.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lyman Beecher, the elder of a famous family and the father
of Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote in the same year his <i>Plea
for the West</i>, in which he considered the possibility that the Christian
millennium might come in the American states. Everything depended, in his
judgment, upon what influences dominated the great West, where the future of the
country lay. There Protestantism was engaged in a life-or-death struggle with
Catholicism. “Whatever we do, it must be done quickly.…” A great tide of
immigration, hostile to free institutions, was sweeping in upon the country,
subsidized and sent by “the potentates of Europe,” multiplying tumult and
violence, filling jails, crowding poorhouses, quadrupling taxation, and sending
increasing thousands of voters to “lay their inexperienced hand upon the helm
of our power.”</p>
<p>****************</p>
<h3>The Paranoid Style in Action</h3>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>****************</p>
<p>    Anti-Catholicism has always been the pornography of the
Puritan. Whereas the anti-Masons had envisaged drinking bouts and had
entertained themselves with sado-masochistic fantasies about the actual
enforcement of grisly Masonic oaths,<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131003065136/http://www.kenrahn.com/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html#_ftn2"></a>
the anti-Catholics invented an immense lore about libertine priests, the
confessional as an opportunity for seduction, licentious convents and
monasteries. Probably the most widely read contemporary book in the United
States before <i>Uncle Tom’s Cabin</i> was
a work supposedly written by one Maria Monk, entitled <i>Awful
Disclosures</i>, which appeared in 1836. The author, who purported to have
escaped from the Hotel Dieu nunnery in Montreal after five years there as novice
and nun, reported her convent life in elaborate and circumstantial detail. She
reported having been told by the Mother Superior that she must “obey the
priests in all things”; to her “utter astonishment and horror,” she soon
found what the nature of such obedience was. Infants born of convent liaisons
were baptized and then killed, she said, so that they might ascend at once to
heaven. Her book, hotly attacked and defended , continued to be read and
believed even after her mother gave testimony that Maria had been somewhat
addled ever since childhood after she had rammed a pencil into her head. Maria
died in prison in 1849, after having been arrested in a brothel as a pickpocket.<br/>
    Anti-Catholicism, like anti-Masonry, mixed its fortunes
with American party politics, and it became an enduring factor in American
politics. The American Protective Association of the 1890s revived it with
ideological variations more suitable to the times—the depression of 1893, for
example, was alleged to be an international creation of the Catholics who began
it by starting a run on the banks. Some spokesmen of the movement circulated a
bogus encyclical attributed to Leo XIII instructing American Catholics on a
certain date in 1893 to exterminate all heretics, and a great many
anti-Catholics daily expected a nationwide uprising. The myth of an impending
Catholic war of mutilation and extermination of heretics persisted into the
twentieth century.</p>
<h2>Why They Feel Dispossessed</h2>
<p>    If, after our historically discontinuous examples of the
paranoid style, we now take the long jump to the contemporary right wing, we
find some rather important differences from the nineteenth-century movements.
The spokesmen of those earlier movements felt that they stood for causes and
personal types that were still in possession of their country—that they were
fending off threats to a still established way of life. But the modern right
wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely
taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to
repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old
American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and
intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by
socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence
have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents
not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the
very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies;
the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.<br/>
    Important changes may also be traced to the effects of the
mass media. The villains of the modern right are much more vivid than those of
their paranoid predecessors, much better known to the public; the literature of
the paranoid style is by the same token richer and more circumstantial in
personal description and personal invective. For the vaguely delineated villains
of the anti-Masons, for the obscure and disguised Jesuit agents, the
little-known papal delegates of the anti-Catholics, for the shadowy
international bankers of the monetary conspiracies, we may now substitute
eminent public figures like Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower.,
secretaries of State like Marshall, Acheson, and Dulles, Justices of the Supreme
Court like Frankfurter and Warren, and the whole battery of lesser but still
famous and vivid alleged conspirators headed by Alger Hiss.<br/>
    Events since 1939 have given the contemporary right-wing
paranoid a vast theatre for his imagination, full of rich and proliferating
detail, replete with realistic cues and undeniable proofs of the validity of his
suspicions. The theatre of action is now the entire world, and he can draw not
only on the events of World War II, but also on those of the Korean War and the
Cold War. Any historian of warfare knows it is in good part a comedy of errors
and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of
incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating
interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. In the end, the real
mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how
the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it
has managed to survive at all.<br/>
    The basic elements of contemporary right-wing thought can
be reduced to three: First, there has been the now-familiar sustained
conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in
Roosevelt’s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under
the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or
communism. A great many right-wingers would agree with Frank Chodorov, the
author of <i>The Income Tax: The Root of All Evil</i>, that this campaign began with
the passage of the income-tax amendment to the Constitution in 1913.<br/>
    The second contention is that top government officialdom
has been so infiltrated by Communists that American policy, at least since the
days leading up to Pearl Harbor, has been dominated by men who were shrewdly and
consistently selling out American national interests.<br/>
    Finally, the country is infused with a network of Communist
agents, just as in the old days it was infiltrated by Jesuit agents, so that the
whole apparatus of education, religion, the press, and the mass media is engaged
in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of loyal Americans.<br/>
    Perhaps the most representative document of the McCarthyist
phase was a long indictment of Secretary of State George C. Marshall, delivered
in 1951 in the Senate by senator McCarthy, and later published in a somewhat
different form. McCarthy pictured Marshall was the focal figure in a betrayal of
American interests stretching in time from the strategic plans for World War II
to the formulation of the Marshall Plan. Marshal was associated with practically
every American failure or defeat, McCarthy insisted, and none of this was either
accident or incompetence. There was a “baffling pattern” of Marshall’s
interventions in the war, which always conduced to the well-being of the
Kremlin. The sharp decline in America’s relative strength from 1945 to 1951
did not “just happen”; it was “brought about, step by step, by will and
intention,” the consequence not of mistakes but of a treasonous conspiracy,
“a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in
the history of man.”<br/>
    Today, the mantle of McCarthy has fallen on a retired candy
manufacturer, Robert H. Welch, Jr., who is less strategically placed and has a
much smaller but better organized following than the Senator. A few years ago
Welch proclaimed that “Communist influences are now in almost complete control
of our government”—note the care and scrupulousness of that “almost.” He
has offered a full scale interpretation of our recent history n which Communists
figure at every turn: They started a run on American banks in 1933 that forced
their closure; they contrived the recognition of the Soviet Union by the United
States in the same year, just in time to save the Soviets from economic
collapse; they have stirred up the fuss over segregation in the South; they have
taken over the Supreme Court and made it “one of the most important agencies
of Communism.”<br/>
    Close attention to history wins for Mr. Welch an insight
into affairs that is given to few of us. “For many reasons and after a lot of
study,” he wrote some years ago, “I personally believe [John Foster] Dulles
to be a Communist agent.” The job of Professor Arthur F. Burns as head of
Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisors was “merely a cover-up for
Burns’s liaison work between Eisenhower and some of his Communist bosses.”
Eisenhower’s brother Milton was “actually [his] superior and boss within the
Communist party.” As for Eisenhower himself, Welch characterized him, in words
that have made the candy manufacturer famous, as “a dedicated, conscious agent
of the Communist conspiracy”—a conclusion, he added, “based on an
accumulation of detailed evidence so extensive and so palpable that it seems to
put this conviction beyond any reasonable doubt.”</p>
<h2>Emulating the Enemy</h2>
<p>    The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in
apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole
political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the
barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like
religious millenialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through
the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date fort the apocalypse.
(“Time is running out,” said Welch in 1951. “Evidence is piling up on many
sides and from many sources that October 1952 is the fatal month when Stalin
will attack.”)<br/>
    As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving
the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the
paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to
be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what
is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what
is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish.
Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he
must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theatre of
operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total
triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since
these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the
paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same
feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens
his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.<br/>
    The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of
malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel,
sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the
toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his
desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of
history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He
makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters,
and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s
interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken
as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will.
Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of
power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for
influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction
(the Catholic confessional).<br/>
    It is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is on
many counts the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable
aspects of the self are attributed to him. The enemy may be the cosmopolitan
intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship,
even of pedantry. Secret organizations set up to combat secret organizations
give the same flattery. The Ku Klux Klan imitated Catholicism to the point of
donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate ritual and an equally
elaborate hierarchy. The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and
quasi-secret operation through “front” groups, and preaches a ruthless
prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in
the Communist enemy.<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131003065136/http://www.kenrahn.com/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html#_ftn3"></a>
Spokesmen of the various fundamentalist anti-Communist “crusades” openly
express their admiration for the dedication and discipline the Communist cause
calls forth.<br/>
    On the other hand, the sexual freedom often attributed to
the enemy, his lack of moral inhibition, his possession of especially effective
techniques for fulfilling his desires, give exponents of the paranoid style an
opportunity to project and express unacknowledgeable aspects of their own
psychological concerns. Catholics and Mormons—later, Negroes and Jews—have
lent themselves to a preoccupation with illicit sex. Very often the fantasies of
true believers reveal strong sadomasochistic outlets, vividly expressed, for
example, in the delight of anti-Masons with the cruelty of Masonic punishments.</p>
<h2>Renegades and Pedants</h2>
<p>    A special significance attaches to the figure of the
renegade from the enemy cause. The anti-Masonic movement seemed at times to be
the creation of ex-Masons; certainly the highest significance was attributed to
their revelations, and every word they said was believed. Anti-Catholicism used
the runaway nun and the apostate priest; the place of ex-Communists in the
avant-garde anti-Communist movements of our time is well known. In some part,
the special authority accorded the renegade derives from the obsession with
secrecy so characteristics of such movements: the renegade is the man or woman
who has been in the Arcanum, and brings forth with him or her the final
verification of suspicions which might otherwise have been doubted by a
skeptical world. But I think there is a deeper eschatological significance that
attaches to the person of the renegade: in the spiritual wrestling match between
good and evil which is the paranoid’s archetypal model of the world, the
renegade is living proof that all the conversions are not made by the wrong
side. He brings with him the promise of redemption and victory.<br/>
    A final characteristic of the paranoid style is related to
the quality of its pedantry. One of the impressive things about paranoid
literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost
touching concern with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic
strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can
be believed. Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids,
as there are likely to be in any political tendency. But respectable paranoid
literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can indeed be
justified but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates :evidence.”
The difference between this “evidence” and that commonly employed by others
is that it seems less a means of entering into normal political controversy than
a means of warding off the profane intrusion of the secular political world. The
paranoid seems to have little expectation of actually convincing a hostile
world, but he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his cherished
convictions from it.<br/>
    Paranoid writing begins with certain broad defensible
judgments. There <i>was</i> something to be said for the anti-Masons. After all, a secret
society composed of influential men bound by special obligations could
conceivable pose some kind of threat to the civil order in which they were
suspended. There was also something to be said for the Protestant principles of
individuality and freedom, as well as for the nativist desire to develop in
North America a homogeneous civilization. Again, in our time an actual laxity in
security allowed some Communists to find a place in governmental circles, and
innumerable decisions of World War II and the Cold War could be faulted.<br/>
    The higher paranoid scholarship is nothing if not
coherent—in fact the paranoid mind is far more coherent than the real world.
It is nothing if not scholarly in technique. McCarthy’s 96-page pamphlet, <i>McCarthyism</i>,
contains no less than 313 footnote references, and Mr. Welch’s incredible
assault on Eisenhower, <i>The Politician</i>,
has one hundred pages of bibliography and notes. The entire right-wing movement
of our time is a parade of experts, study groups, monographs, footnotes, and
bibliographies. Sometimes the right-wing striving for scholarly depth and an
inclusive world view has startling consequences: Mr. Welch, for example, has
charged that the popularity of Arnold Toynbee’s historical work is the
consequence of a plot on the part of Fabians, “Labour party bosses in
England,” and various members of the Anglo-American “liberal
establishment” to overshadow the much more truthful and illuminating work of
Oswald Spengler.</p>
<h2>The Double Sufferer</h2>
<p>    The paranoid style is not confined to our own country and
time; it is an international phenomenon. Studying the millennial sects of Europe
from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, Norman Cohn believed he found a
persistent psychic complex that corresponds broadly with what I have been
considering—a style made up of certain preoccupations and fantasies: “the
megalomaniac view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted,
yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers
to the adversary; the refusal to accept the ineluctable limitations and
imperfections of human existence, such as transience, dissention, conflict,
fallibility whether intellectual or moral; the obsession with inerrable
prophecies…systematized misinterpretations, always gross and often
grotesque.”<br/>
    This glimpse across a long span of time emboldens me to
make the conjecture—it is no more than that—that a mentality disposed to see
the world in this way may be a persistent psychic phenomenon, more or less
constantly affecting a modest minority of the population. But certain religious
traditions, certain social structures and national inheritances, certain
historical catastrophes or frustrations may be conducive to the release of such
psychic energies, and to situations in which they can more readily be built into
mass movements or political parties. In American experience ethnic and religious
conflict have plainly been a major focus for militant and suspicious minds of
this sort, but class conflicts also can mobilize such energies. Perhaps the
central situation conducive to the diffusion of the paranoid tendency is a
confrontation of opposed interests which are (or are felt to be) totally
irreconcilable, and thus by nature not susceptible to the normal political
processes of bargain and compromise. The situation becomes worse when the
representatives of a particular social interest—perhaps because of the very
unrealistic and unrealizable nature of its demands—are shut out of the
political process. Having no access to political bargaining or the making of
decisions, they find their original conception that the world of power is
sinister and malicious fully confirmed. They see only the consequences of
power—and this through distorting lenses—and have no chance to observe its
actual machinery. A distinguished historian has said that one of the most
valuable things about history is that it teaches us how things do <i>not</i>
happen. It is precisely this kind of awareness that the paranoid fails to
develop. He has a special resistance of his own, of course, to developing such
awareness, but circumstances often deprive him of exposure to events that might
enlighten him—and in any case he resists enlightenment.<br/>
    We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a
double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest
of us, but by his fantasies as well.</p>
<div>
<hr/>
<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131003065136/http://www.kenrahn.com/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html#_ftnref1"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131003065136/http://www.kenrahn.com/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html#_ftnref2"></a>
 Many anti-Masons had been fascinated by the penalties involved if Masons
 failed to live up to their obligations. My own favorite is the oath
 attributed to a royal archmason who invited “having my skull smote off and
 my brains exposed to the scorching rays of the sun.”</p>
<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131003065136/http://www.kenrahn.com/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html#_ftnref3"></a>
 In his recent book, <i>How to Win an
 Election</i>, Stephen C. Shadegg cites a statement attributed to Mao
 Tse-tung: “Give me just two or three men in a village and I will take the
 village.” Shadegg comments: “ In the Goldwater campaigns of 1952 and
 1958 and in all other campaigns where I have served as consultant I have
 followed the advice of Mao Tse-tung.” “I would suggest,” writes
 senator Goldwater in <i>Why Not Victory?</i>
 “that we analyze and copy the strategy of the enemy; theirs has worked and
 ours has not.</p>
</div>
<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131003065136/http://www.kenrahn.com/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/Paranoid_mentality.html">Back to The Paranoid Mentality</a></p>
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The Paranoid Style in American Politics

By Richard Hofstadter †
Harper’s Magazine, November 1964, pp. 77 - 86.

It had been around a long time before the Radical Right discovered it—and its targets have ranged from “the international bankers” to Masons, Jesuits, and munitions makers.

American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wind. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the expression “paranoid style” I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable lunatics., In fact, the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.
Of course this term is pejorative, and it is meant to be; the paranoid style has a greater affinity for bad causes than good. But nothing really prevents a sound program or demand from being advocated in the paranoid style. Style has more to do with the way in which ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of their content. I am interested here in getting at our political psychology through our political rhetoric. The paranoid style is an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life which has been frequently linked with movements of suspicious discontent.

Here is Senator McCarthy, speaking in June 1951 about the parlous situation of the United States:

How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, which it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.…What can be made of this unbroken series of decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed to incompetence.…The laws of probability would dictate that part of…[the] decisions would serve the country’s interest.

Now turn back fifty years to a manifesto signed in 1895 by a number of leaders of the Populist party:

As early as 1865 - 66 a conspiracy was entered into between the gold gamblers of Europe and America.…For nearly thirty years these conspirators have kept the people quarreling over less important matters while they have pursued with unrelenting zeal their one central purpose.…Every device of treachery, every resource of statecraft, and every artifice known to the secret cabals of the international gold ring are being used to deal a blow to the prosperity of the people and the financial and commercial independence of the country.

Next, a Texas newspaper article of 1855:

…It is a notorious fact that the Monarchs of Europe and the Pope of Rome are at this very moment plotting our destruction and threatening the extinction of our political, civil, and religious institutions. We have the best reasons for believing that corruption has found its way into our Executive Chamber, and that our Executive head is tainted with the infectious venom of Catholicism.…The Pope has recently sent his ambassador of state to this country on a secret commission, the effect of which is an extraordinary boldness of the Catholic church throughout the United States.…These minions of the Pope are boldly insulting our Senators; reprimanding our Statesmen; propagating the adulterous union of Church and State; abusing with foul calumny all governments but Catholic, and spewing out the bitterest execrations on all Protestantism. The Catholics in the United States receive from abroad more than $200,000 annually for the propagation of their creed. Add to this the vast revenues collected here.…

These quotations give the keynote of the style. In the history of the United States one find it, for example, in the anti-Masonic movement, the nativist and anti-Catholic movement, in certain spokesmen of abolitionism who regarded the United States as being in the grip of a slaveholders’ conspiracy, in many alarmists about the Mormons, in some Greenback and Populist writers who constructed a great conspiracy of international bankers, in the exposure of a munitions makers’ conspiracy of World War I, in the popular left-wing press, in the contemporary American right wing, and on both sides of the race controversy today, among White Citizens’ Councils and Black Muslims. I do not propose to try to trace the variations of the paranoid style that can be found in all these movements, but will confine myself to a few leading episodes in our past history in which the style emerged in full and archetypal splendor.

Illuminism and Masonry

I begin with a particularly revealing episode—the panic that broke out in some quarters at the end of the eighteenth century over the allegedly subversive activities of the Bavarian Illuminati. This panic was a part of the general reaction to the French Revolution. In the United States it was heightened by the response of certain men, mostly in New England and among the established clergy, to the rise of Jeffersonian democracy. Illuminism had been started in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, a professor of law at the University of Ingolstadt. Its teachings today seem to be no more than another version of Enlightenment rationalism, spiced with the anticlerical atmosphere of eighteenth-century Bavaria. It was a somewhat naïve and utopian movement which aspired ultimately to bring the human race under the rules of reason. Its humanitarian rationalism appears to have acquired a fairly wide influence in Masonic lodges.
Americans first learned of Illumism in 1797, from a volume published in Edinburgh (later reprinted in New York) under the title, Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies. Its author was a well-known Scottish scientist, John Robison, who had himself been a somewhat casual adherent of Masonry in Britain, but whose imagination had been inflamed by what he considered to be the far less innocent Masonic movement on the Continent. Robison seems to have made his work as factual as he could, but when he came to estimating the moral character and the political influence of Illuminism, he made the characteristic paranoid leap into fantasy. The association, he thought, was formed “for the express purpose of rooting out all religious establishments, and overturning all the existing governments of europe .” It had become “one great and wicked project fermenting and working all over Europe.” And to it he attributed a central role in bringing about the French Revolution. He saw it as a libertine, anti-Christian movement, given to the corruption of women, the cultivation of sensual pleasures, and the violation of property rights. Its members had plans for making a tea that caused abortion—a secret substance that “blinds or kills when spurted in the face,” and a device that sounds like a stench bomb—a “method for filling a bedchamber with pestilential vapours.”
These notions were quick to make themselves felt in America. In May 1798, a minister of the Massachusetts Congregational establishment in Boston, Jedidiah Morse, delivered a timely sermon to the young country, which was then sharply divided between Jeffersonians and Federalists, Francophiles and Anglomen. Having read Robison, Morse was convinced of a Jacobinical plot touched off by Illuminism, and that the country should be rallied to defend itself. His warnings were heeded throughout New England wherever Federalists brooded about the rising tide of religious infidelity or Jeffersonian democracy. Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale, followed Morse’s sermon with a Fourth-of-July discourse on The Duty of Americans in the Present Crisis, in which he held forth against the Antichrist in his own glowing rhetoric. Soon the pulpits of New England were ringing with denunciations of the Illuminati, as though the country were swarming with them.
The anti-Masonic movement of the late 1820s and the 1830s took up and extended the obsession with conspiracy. At first, this movement may seem to be no more than an extension or repetition of the anti-Masonic theme sounded in the outcry against the Bavarian Illuminati. But whereas the panic of the 1790s was confined mainly to New England and linked to an ultraconservative point of view, the later anti-Masonic movement affected many parts of the northern United States, and was intimately linked with popular democracy and rural egalitarianism. Although anti-Masonry happened to be anti-Jacksonian (Jackson was a Mason), it manifested the same animus against the closure of opportunity for the common man and against aristocratic institutions that one finds in the Jacksonian crusade against the Bank of the United States.
The anti-Masonic movement was a product not merely of natural enthusiasm but also of the vicissitudes of party politics. It was joined and used by a great many men who did not fully share its original anti-Masonic feelings. It attracted the support of several reputable statement who had only mild sympathy with its fundamental bias, but who as politicians could not afford to ignore it. Still, it was a folk movement of considerable power, and the rural enthusiasts who provided its real impetus believed in it wholeheartedly.
As a secret society, Masonry was considered to be a standing conspiracy against republican government. It was held to be particularly liable to treason—for example, Aaron Burr’s famous conspiracy was alleged to have been conducted by Masons. Masonry was accused of constituting a separate system of loyalty, a separate imperium within the framework of federal and state governments, which was inconsistent with loyalty to them. Quite plausibly it was argued that the Masons had set up a jurisdiction of their own, with their own obligations and punishments, liable to enforcement even by the penalty of death. So basic was the conflict felt to be between secrecy and democracy that other, more innocent societies such as Phi Beta Kappa came under attack.
Since Masons were pledged to come to each other’s aid under circumstances of distress, and to extend fraternal indulgence at all times, is was held that the order nullified the enforcement of regular law. Masonic constables, sheriffs, juries, and judges must all be in league with Masonic criminals and fugitives. The press was believed to have been so “muzzled” by Masonic editors and proprietors that news of Masonic malfeasance could be suppressed. At a moment when almost every alleged citadel of privilege in America was under democratic assault, Masonry was attacked as a fraternity of the privileged, closing business opportunities and nearly monopolizing political offices.
Certain elements of truth and reality there may have been in these views of Masonry. What must be emphasized here, however, is the apocalyptic and absolutistic framework in which this hostility was commonly expressed. Anti-Masons were not content simply to say that secret societies were rather a bad idea. The author of the standard exposition of anti-Masonry declared that Freemasonry was “not only the most abominable but also the most dangerous institution that ever was imposed on man.…It may truly be said to be hell’s master piece .”

The Jesuit Threat

Fear of a Masonic plot had hardly been quieted when the rumors arose of a Catholic plot against American values. One meets here again the same frame of mind, but a different villain. The anti-Catholic movement converged with a growing nativism, and while they were not identical, together they cut such a wide swath in American life that they were bound to embrace many moderates to whom the paranoid style, in its full glory, did not appeal. Moreover, we need not dismiss out of hand as totally parochial or mean-spirited the desire of Yankee Americans to maintain an ethnically and religiously homogeneous society nor the particular Protestant commitments to individualism and freedom that were brought into play. But the movement had a large paranoid infusion, and the most influential anti-Catholic militants certainly had a strong affinity for the paranoid style.
Two books which appeared in 1835 described the new danger to the ?American way of life and may be taken as expressions of the anti-Catholic mentality. One, Foreign Conspiracies against the Liberties of the United States, was from the hand of the celebrated painter and inventor of the telegraph, S.F.B. Morse. “A conspiracy exists,” Morse proclaimed , and “its plans are already in operation…we are attacked in a vulnerable quarter which cannot be defended by our ships, our forts, or our armies.” The main source of the conspiracy Morse found in Metternich’s government: “Austria is now acting in this country. She has devised a grand scheme. She has organized a great plan for doing something here.…She has her Jesuit missionaries traveling through the land; she has supplied them with money, and has furnished a fountain for a regular supply.” Were the plot successful, Morse said, some scion of the House of Hapsburg would soon be installed as Emperor of the United States.

“It is an ascertained fact,” wrote another Protestant militant,

that Jesuits are prowling about all parts of the United States in every possible disguise, expressly to ascertain the advantageous situations and modes to disseminate Popery. A minister of the Gospel from Ohio has informed us that he discovered one carrying on his devices in his congregation; and he says that the western country swarms with them under the name of puppet show men, dancing masters, music teachers, peddlers of images and ornaments, barrel organ players, and similar practitioners.

Lyman Beecher, the elder of a famous family and the father of Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote in the same year his Plea for the West, in which he considered the possibility that the Christian millennium might come in the American states. Everything depended, in his judgment, upon what influences dominated the great West, where the future of the country lay. There Protestantism was engaged in a life-or-death struggle with Catholicism. “Whatever we do, it must be done quickly.…” A great tide of immigration, hostile to free institutions, was sweeping in upon the country, subsidized and sent by “the potentates of Europe,” multiplying tumult and violence, filling jails, crowding poorhouses, quadrupling taxation, and sending increasing thousands of voters to “lay their inexperienced hand upon the helm of our power.”

****************

The Paranoid Style in Action

The John Birch Society is attempting to suppress a television series about the United Nations by means of a mass letter-writing campaign to the sponsor,…The Xerox Corporation. The corporation, however, intends to go ahead with the programs.…

The July issue of the John Birch Society Bulletin…said an “avalanche of mail ought to convince them of the unwisdom of their proposed action—just as United Air Lines was persuaded to back down and take the U.N. insignia off their planes.” (A United Air Lines spokesman confirmed that the U.N. emblem was removed from its planes, following “considerable public reaction against it.”)

Birch official John Rousselot said, ”We hate to see a corporation of this country promote the U.N. when we know that it is an instrument of the Soviet Communist conspiracy.”

—San Francisco Chronicle , July 31, 1964

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Anti-Catholicism has always been the pornography of the Puritan. Whereas the anti-Masons had envisaged drinking bouts and had entertained themselves with sado-masochistic fantasies about the actual enforcement of grisly Masonic oaths, * the anti-Catholics invented an immense lore about libertine priests, the confessional as an opportunity for seduction, licentious convents and monasteries. Probably the most widely read contemporary book in the United States before Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a work supposedly written by one Maria Monk, entitled Awful Disclosures, which appeared in 1836. The author, who purported to have escaped from the Hotel Dieu nunnery in Montreal after five years there as novice and nun, reported her convent life in elaborate and circumstantial detail. She reported having been told by the Mother Superior that she must “obey the priests in all things”; to her “utter astonishment and horror,” she soon found what the nature of such obedience was. Infants born of convent liaisons were baptized and then killed, she said, so that they might ascend at once to heaven. Her book, hotly attacked and defended , continued to be read and believed even after her mother gave testimony that Maria had been somewhat addled ever since childhood after she had rammed a pencil into her head. Maria died in prison in 1849, after having been arrested in a brothel as a pickpocket.
Anti-Catholicism, like anti-Masonry, mixed its fortunes with American party politics, and it became an enduring factor in American politics. The American Protective Association of the 1890s revived it with ideological variations more suitable to the times—the depression of 1893, for example, was alleged to be an international creation of the Catholics who began it by starting a run on the banks. Some spokesmen of the movement circulated a bogus encyclical attributed to Leo XIII instructing American Catholics on a certain date in 1893 to exterminate all heretics, and a great many anti-Catholics daily expected a nationwide uprising. The myth of an impending Catholic war of mutilation and extermination of heretics persisted into the twentieth century.

Why They Feel Dispossessed

If, after our historically discontinuous examples of the paranoid style, we now take the long jump to the contemporary right wing, we find some rather important differences from the nineteenth-century movements. The spokesmen of those earlier movements felt that they stood for causes and personal types that were still in possession of their country—that they were fending off threats to a still established way of life. But the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.
Important changes may also be traced to the effects of the mass media. The villains of the modern right are much more vivid than those of their paranoid predecessors, much better known to the public; the literature of the paranoid style is by the same token richer and more circumstantial in personal description and personal invective. For the vaguely delineated villains of the anti-Masons, for the obscure and disguised Jesuit agents, the little-known papal delegates of the anti-Catholics, for the shadowy international bankers of the monetary conspiracies, we may now substitute eminent public figures like Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower., secretaries of State like Marshall, Acheson, and Dulles, Justices of the Supreme Court like Frankfurter and Warren, and the whole battery of lesser but still famous and vivid alleged conspirators headed by Alger Hiss.
Events since 1939 have given the contemporary right-wing paranoid a vast theatre for his imagination, full of rich and proliferating detail, replete with realistic cues and undeniable proofs of the validity of his suspicions. The theatre of action is now the entire world, and he can draw not only on the events of World War II, but also on those of the Korean War and the Cold War. Any historian of warfare knows it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it has managed to survive at all.
The basic elements of contemporary right-wing thought can be reduced to three: First, there has been the now-familiar sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt’s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism. A great many right-wingers would agree with Frank Chodorov, the author of The Income Tax: The Root of All Evil, that this campaign began with the passage of the income-tax amendment to the Constitution in 1913.
The second contention is that top government officialdom has been so infiltrated by Communists that American policy, at least since the days leading up to Pearl Harbor, has been dominated by men who were shrewdly and consistently selling out American national interests.
Finally, the country is infused with a network of Communist agents, just as in the old days it was infiltrated by Jesuit agents, so that the whole apparatus of education, religion, the press, and the mass media is engaged in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of loyal Americans.
Perhaps the most representative document of the McCarthyist phase was a long indictment of Secretary of State George C. Marshall, delivered in 1951 in the Senate by senator McCarthy, and later published in a somewhat different form. McCarthy pictured Marshall was the focal figure in a betrayal of American interests stretching in time from the strategic plans for World War II to the formulation of the Marshall Plan. Marshal was associated with practically every American failure or defeat, McCarthy insisted, and none of this was either accident or incompetence. There was a “baffling pattern” of Marshall’s interventions in the war, which always conduced to the well-being of the Kremlin. The sharp decline in America’s relative strength from 1945 to 1951 did not “just happen”; it was “brought about, step by step, by will and intention,” the consequence not of mistakes but of a treasonous conspiracy, “a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man.”
Today, the mantle of McCarthy has fallen on a retired candy manufacturer, Robert H. Welch, Jr., who is less strategically placed and has a much smaller but better organized following than the Senator. A few years ago Welch proclaimed that “Communist influences are now in almost complete control of our government”—note the care and scrupulousness of that “almost.” He has offered a full scale interpretation of our recent history n which Communists figure at every turn: They started a run on American banks in 1933 that forced their closure; they contrived the recognition of the Soviet Union by the United States in the same year, just in time to save the Soviets from economic collapse; they have stirred up the fuss over segregation in the South; they have taken over the Supreme Court and made it “one of the most important agencies of Communism.”
Close attention to history wins for Mr. Welch an insight into affairs that is given to few of us. “For many reasons and after a lot of study,” he wrote some years ago, “I personally believe [John Foster] Dulles to be a Communist agent.” The job of Professor Arthur F. Burns as head of Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisors was “merely a cover-up for Burns’s liaison work between Eisenhower and some of his Communist bosses.” Eisenhower’s brother Milton was “actually [his] superior and boss within the Communist party.” As for Eisenhower himself, Welch characterized him, in words that have made the candy manufacturer famous, as “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy”—a conclusion, he added, “based on an accumulation of detailed evidence so extensive and so palpable that it seems to put this conviction beyond any reasonable doubt.”

Emulating the Enemy

The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millenialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date fort the apocalypse. (“Time is running out,” said Welch in 1951. “Evidence is piling up on many sides and from many sources that October 1952 is the fatal month when Stalin will attack.”)
As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.
The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will. Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction (the Catholic confessional).
It is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is on many counts the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable aspects of the self are attributed to him. The enemy may be the cosmopolitan intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship, even of pedantry. Secret organizations set up to combat secret organizations give the same flattery. The Ku Klux Klan imitated Catholicism to the point of donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate ritual and an equally elaborate hierarchy. The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through “front” groups, and preaches a ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy. * Spokesmen of the various fundamentalist anti-Communist “crusades” openly express their admiration for the dedication and discipline the Communist cause calls forth.
On the other hand, the sexual freedom often attributed to the enemy, his lack of moral inhibition, his possession of especially effective techniques for fulfilling his desires, give exponents of the paranoid style an opportunity to project and express unacknowledgeable aspects of their own psychological concerns. Catholics and Mormons—later, Negroes and Jews—have lent themselves to a preoccupation with illicit sex. Very often the fantasies of true believers reveal strong sadomasochistic outlets, vividly expressed, for example, in the delight of anti-Masons with the cruelty of Masonic punishments.

Renegades and Pedants

A special significance attaches to the figure of the renegade from the enemy cause. The anti-Masonic movement seemed at times to be the creation of ex-Masons; certainly the highest significance was attributed to their revelations, and every word they said was believed. Anti-Catholicism used the runaway nun and the apostate priest; the place of ex-Communists in the avant-garde anti-Communist movements of our time is well known. In some part, the special authority accorded the renegade derives from the obsession with secrecy so characteristics of such movements: the renegade is the man or woman who has been in the Arcanum, and brings forth with him or her the final verification of suspicions which might otherwise have been doubted by a skeptical world. But I think there is a deeper eschatological significance that attaches to the person of the renegade: in the spiritual wrestling match between good and evil which is the paranoid’s archetypal model of the world, the renegade is living proof that all the conversions are not made by the wrong side. He brings with him the promise of redemption and victory.
A final characteristic of the paranoid style is related to the quality of its pedantry. One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed. Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency. But respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can indeed be justified but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates :evidence.” The difference between this “evidence” and that commonly employed by others is that it seems less a means of entering into normal political controversy than a means of warding off the profane intrusion of the secular political world. The paranoid seems to have little expectation of actually convincing a hostile world, but he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his cherished convictions from it.
Paranoid writing begins with certain broad defensible judgments. There was something to be said for the anti-Masons. After all, a secret society composed of influential men bound by special obligations could conceivable pose some kind of threat to the civil order in which they were suspended. There was also something to be said for the Protestant principles of individuality and freedom, as well as for the nativist desire to develop in North America a homogeneous civilization. Again, in our time an actual laxity in security allowed some Communists to find a place in governmental circles, and innumerable decisions of World War II and the Cold War could be faulted.
The higher paranoid scholarship is nothing if not coherent—in fact the paranoid mind is far more coherent than the real world. It is nothing if not scholarly in technique. McCarthy’s 96-page pamphlet, McCarthyism, contains no less than 313 footnote references, and Mr. Welch’s incredible assault on Eisenhower, The Politician, has one hundred pages of bibliography and notes. The entire right-wing movement of our time is a parade of experts, study groups, monographs, footnotes, and bibliographies. Sometimes the right-wing striving for scholarly depth and an inclusive world view has startling consequences: Mr. Welch, for example, has charged that the popularity of Arnold Toynbee’s historical work is the consequence of a plot on the part of Fabians, “Labour party bosses in England,” and various members of the Anglo-American “liberal establishment” to overshadow the much more truthful and illuminating work of Oswald Spengler.

The Double Sufferer

The paranoid style is not confined to our own country and time; it is an international phenomenon. Studying the millennial sects of Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, Norman Cohn believed he found a persistent psychic complex that corresponds broadly with what I have been considering—a style made up of certain preoccupations and fantasies: “the megalomaniac view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted, yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers to the adversary; the refusal to accept the ineluctable limitations and imperfections of human existence, such as transience, dissention, conflict, fallibility whether intellectual or moral; the obsession with inerrable prophecies…systematized misinterpretations, always gross and often grotesque.”
This glimpse across a long span of time emboldens me to make the conjecture—it is no more than that—that a mentality disposed to see the world in this way may be a persistent psychic phenomenon, more or less constantly affecting a modest minority of the population. But certain religious traditions, certain social structures and national inheritances, certain historical catastrophes or frustrations may be conducive to the release of such psychic energies, and to situations in which they can more readily be built into mass movements or political parties. In American experience ethnic and religious conflict have plainly been a major focus for militant and suspicious minds of this sort, but class conflicts also can mobilize such energies. Perhaps the central situation conducive to the diffusion of the paranoid tendency is a confrontation of opposed interests which are (or are felt to be) totally irreconcilable, and thus by nature not susceptible to the normal political processes of bargain and compromise. The situation becomes worse when the representatives of a particular social interest—perhaps because of the very unrealistic and unrealizable nature of its demands—are shut out of the political process. Having no access to political bargaining or the making of decisions, they find their original conception that the world of power is sinister and malicious fully confirmed. They see only the consequences of power—and this through distorting lenses—and have no chance to observe its actual machinery. A distinguished historian has said that one of the most valuable things about history is that it teaches us how things do not happen. It is precisely this kind of awareness that the paranoid fails to develop. He has a special resistance of his own, of course, to developing such awareness, but circumstances often deprive him of exposure to events that might enlighten him—and in any case he resists enlightenment.
We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.

 † Richard Hofstadter is DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. His latest book, “Anti-intellectualism in American Life,” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction earlier this year. This essay is adapted from the Herbert Spencer Lecture delivered at Oxford University in November 1963.

 * Many anti-Masons had been fascinated by the penalties involved if Masons failed to live up to their obligations. My own favorite is the oath attributed to a royal archmason who invited “having my skull smote off and my brains exposed to the scorching rays of the sun.”

 * In his recent book, How to Win an Election, Stephen C. Shadegg cites a statement attributed to Mao Tse-tung: “Give me just two or three men in a village and I will take the village.” Shadegg comments: “ In the Goldwater campaigns of 1952 and 1958 and in all other campaigns where I have served as consultant I have followed the advice of Mao Tse-tung.” “I would suggest,” writes senator Goldwater in Why Not Victory? “that we analyze and copy the strategy of the enemy; theirs has worked and ours has not.

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By Richard
Hofstadter   
Harper’s Magazine, November 1964, pp. 7786.
 It had been around a long time before the Radical
Right discovered it—and its targets have ranged from “the international
bankers” to Masons, Jesuits, and munitions makers. 
    American politics has often been an arena for angry minds.
In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme
right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much
political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small
minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from
new and that is not necessarily right-wind. I call it the paranoid style simply
because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration,
suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the
expression “paranoid style” I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but
borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor
the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable
lunatics., In fact, the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would
have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only
to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of
expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.
    Of course this term is pejorative, and it is meant to be;
the paranoid style has a greater affinity for bad causes than good. But nothing
really prevents a sound program or demand from being advocated in the paranoid
style. Style has more to do with the way in which ideas are believed than with
the truth or falsity of their content. I am interested here in getting at our
political psychology through our political rhetoric. The paranoid style is an
old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life which has been frequently linked
with movements of suspicious discontent.
Here is Senator McCarthy, speaking in June 1951 about the
parlous situation of the United States:
 
Now turn back fifty years to a manifesto signed in 1895 by
a number of leaders of the Populist party:
As early as 186566
 a conspiracy was entered into between the gold gamblers of Europe and
 America.…For nearly thirty years these conspirators have kept the people
 quarreling over less important matters while they have pursued with
 unrelenting zeal their one central purpose.…Every device of treachery, every
 resource of statecraft, and every artifice known to the secret cabals of the
 international gold ring are being used to deal a blow to the prosperity of the
 people and the financial and commercial independence of the country.
Next, a Texas newspaper article of 1855:
…It is a notorious fact that the Monarchs of Europe and the
 Pope of Rome are at this very moment plotting our destruction and threatening
 the extinction of our political, civil, and religious institutions. We have
 the best reasons for believing that corruption has found its way into our
 Executive Chamber, and that our Executive head is tainted with the infectious
 venom of Catholicism.…The Pope has recently sent his ambassador of state to
 this country on a secret commission, the effect of which is an extraordinary
 boldness of the Catholic church throughout the United States.…These minions
 of the Pope are boldly insulting our Senators; reprimanding our Statesmen;
 propagating the adulterous union of Church and State; abusing with foul
 calumny all governments but Catholic, and spewing out the bitterest
 execrations on all Protestantism. The Catholics in the United States receive
 from abroad more than $200,000 annually for the propagation of their creed.
 Add to this the vast revenues collected here.…
These quotations give the keynote of the style. In the
history of the United States one find it, for example, in the anti-Masonic
movement, the nativist and anti-Catholic movement, in certain spokesmen of
abolitionism who regarded the United States as being in the grip of a
slaveholders’ conspiracy, in many alarmists about the Mormons, in some
Greenback and Populist writers who constructed a great conspiracy of
international bankers, in the exposure of a munitions makers’ conspiracy of
World War I, in the popular left-wing press, in the contemporary American right
wing, and on both sides of the race controversy today, among White Citizens’
Councils and Black Muslims. I do not propose to try to trace the variations of
the paranoid style that can be found in all these movements, but will confine
myself to a few leading episodes in our past history in which the style emerged
in full and archetypal splendor.
Illuminism and Masonry
    I begin with a particularly revealing episode—the panic
that broke out in some quarters at the end of the eighteenth century over the
allegedly subversive activities of the Bavarian Illuminati. This panic was a
part of the general reaction to the French Revolution. In the United States it
was heightened by the response of certain men, mostly in New England and among
the established clergy, to the rise of Jeffersonian democracy. Illuminism had
been started in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, a professor of law at the University of
Ingolstadt. Its teachings today seem to be no more than another version of
Enlightenment rationalism, spiced with the anticlerical atmosphere of
eighteenth-century Bavaria. It was a somewhat naïve and utopian movement which
aspired ultimately to bring the human race under the rules of reason. Its
humanitarian rationalism appears to have acquired a fairly wide influence in
Masonic lodges.
    Americans first learned of Illumism in 1797, from a volume
published in Edinburgh (later reprinted in New York) under the title, Proofs
of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried on
in the Secret Meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies.
Its author was a well-known Scottish scientist, John Robison, who had himself
been a somewhat casual adherent of Masonry in Britain, but whose imagination had
been inflamed by what he considered to be the far less innocent Masonic movement
on the Continent. Robison seems to have made his work as factual as he could,
but when he came to estimating the moral character and the political influence
of Illuminism, he made the characteristic paranoid leap into fantasy. The
association, he thought, was formed “for the express purpose of .” It had become “one great and wicked project fermenting
and working all over Europe.” And to it he attributed a central role in
bringing about the French Revolution. He saw it as a libertine, anti-Christian
movement, given to the corruption of women, the cultivation of sensual
pleasures, and the violation of property rights. Its members had plans for
making a tea that caused abortion—a secret substance that “blinds or kills
when spurted in the face,” and a device that sounds like a stench bomb—a
“method for filling a bedchamber with pestilential vapours.”
    These notions were quick to make themselves felt in
America. In May 1798, a minister of the Massachusetts Congregational
establishment in Boston, Jedidiah Morse, delivered a timely sermon to the young
country, which was then sharply divided between Jeffersonians and Federalists,
Francophiles and Anglomen. Having read Robison, Morse was convinced of a
Jacobinical plot touched off by Illuminism, and that the country should be
rallied to defend itself. His warnings were heeded throughout New England
wherever Federalists brooded about the rising tide of religious infidelity or
Jeffersonian democracy. Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale, followed
Morse’s sermon with a Fourth-of-July discourse on The
Duty of Americans in the Present Crisis, in which he held forth against the
Antichrist in his own glowing rhetoric. Soon the pulpits of New England were
ringing with denunciations of the Illuminati, as though the country were
swarming with them.
    The anti-Masonic movement of the late 1820s and the 1830s
took up and extended the obsession with conspiracy. At first, this movement may
seem to be no more than an extension or repetition of the anti-Masonic theme
sounded in the outcry against the Bavarian Illuminati. But whereas the panic of
the 1790s was confined mainly to New England and linked to an ultraconservative
point of view, the later anti-Masonic movement affected many parts of the
northern United States, and was intimately linked with popular democracy and
rural egalitarianism. Although anti-Masonry happened to be anti-Jacksonian
(Jackson was a Mason), it manifested the same animus against the closure of
opportunity for the common man and against aristocratic institutions that one
finds in the Jacksonian crusade against the Bank of the United States.
    The anti-Masonic movement was a product not merely of
natural enthusiasm but also of the vicissitudes of party politics. It was joined
and used by a great many men who did not fully share its original anti-Masonic
feelings. It attracted the support of several reputable statement who had only
mild sympathy with its fundamental bias, but who as politicians could not afford
to ignore it. Still, it was a folk movement of considerable power, and the rural
enthusiasts who provided its real impetus believed in it wholeheartedly.
    As a secret society, Masonry was considered to be a
standing conspiracy against republican government. It was held to be
particularly liable to treason—for example, Aaron Burr’s famous conspiracy
was alleged to have been conducted by Masons. Masonry was accused of
constituting a separate system of loyalty, a separate imperium within the
framework of federal and state governments, which was inconsistent with loyalty
to them. Quite plausibly it was argued that the Masons had set up a jurisdiction
of their own, with their own obligations and punishments, liable to enforcement
even by the penalty of death. So basic was the conflict felt to be between
secrecy and democracy that other, more innocent societies such as Phi Beta Kappa
came under attack.
    Since Masons were pledged to come to each other’s aid
under circumstances of distress, and to extend fraternal indulgence at all
times, is was held that the order nullified the enforcement of regular law.
Masonic constables, sheriffs, juries, and judges must all be in league with
Masonic criminals and fugitives. The press was believed to have been so
“muzzled” by Masonic editors and proprietors that news of Masonic
malfeasance could be suppressed. At a moment when almost every alleged citadel
of privilege in America was under democratic assault, Masonry was attacked as a
fraternity of the privileged, closing business opportunities and nearly
monopolizing political offices.
    Certain elements of truth and reality there may have been
in these views of Masonry. What must be emphasized here, however, is the
apocalyptic and absolutistic framework in which this hostility was commonly
expressed. Anti-Masons were not content simply to say that secret societies were
rather a bad idea. The author of the standard exposition of anti-Masonry
declared that Freemasonry was “not only the most abominable but also the most
dangerous institution that ever was imposed on man.…It may truly be said to be
.”
The Jesuit Threat
    Fear of a Masonic plot had hardly been quieted when the
rumors arose of a Catholic plot against American values. One meets here again
the same frame of mind, but a different villain. The anti-Catholic movement
converged with a growing nativism, and while they were not identical, together
they cut such a wide swath in American life that they were bound to embrace many
moderates to whom the paranoid style, in its full glory, did not appeal.
Moreover, we need not dismiss out of hand as totally parochial or mean-spirited
the desire of Yankee Americans to maintain an ethnically and religiously
homogeneous society nor the particular Protestant commitments to individualism
and freedom that were brought into play. But the movement had a large paranoid
infusion, and the most influential anti-Catholic militants certainly had a
strong affinity for the paranoid style.
    Two books which appeared in 1835 described the new danger
to the ?American way of life and may be taken as expressions of the
anti-Catholic mentality. One, Foreign
Conspiracies against the Liberties of the United States, was from the hand
of the celebrated painter and inventor of the telegraph, S.F.B. Morse. “A
conspiracy exists,” Morse proclaimed , and “its plans are already in
operation…we are attacked in a vulnerable quarter which cannot be defended by
our ships, our forts, or our armies.” The main source of the conspiracy Morse
found in Metternich’s government: “Austria
is now acting in this country. She has devised a grand scheme. She has
organized a great plan for doing something here.…She has her Jesuit
missionaries traveling through the land; she has supplied them with money, and
has furnished a fountain for a regular supply.” Were the plot successful,
Morse said, some scion of the House of Hapsburg would soon be installed as
Emperor of the United States.
“It is an ascertained fact,” wrote another Protestant
militant,
that Jesuits are prowling about all parts of the United
 States in every possible disguise, expressly to ascertain the advantageous
 situations and modes to disseminate Popery. A minister of the Gospel from Ohio
 has informed us that he discovered one carrying on his devices in his
 congregation; and he says that the western country swarms with them under the
 name of puppet show men, dancing masters, music teachers, peddlers of images
 and ornaments, barrel organ players, and similar practitioners.
Lyman Beecher, the elder of a famous family and the father
of Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote in the same year his Plea
for the West, in which he considered the possibility that the Christian
millennium might come in the American states. Everything depended, in his
judgment, upon what influences dominated the great West, where the future of the
country lay. There Protestantism was engaged in a life-or-death struggle with
Catholicism. “Whatever we do, it must be done quickly.…” A great tide of
immigration, hostile to free institutions, was sweeping in upon the country,
subsidized and sent by “the potentates of Europe,” multiplying tumult and
violence, filling jails, crowding poorhouses, quadrupling taxation, and sending
increasing thousands of voters to “lay their inexperienced hand upon the helm
of our power.”
****************
The Paranoid Style in Action
 
 
 
 
****************
    Anti-Catholicism has always been the pornography of the
Puritan. Whereas the anti-Masons had envisaged drinking bouts and had
entertained themselves with sado-masochistic fantasies about the actual
enforcement of grisly Masonic oaths, 
the anti-Catholics invented an immense lore about libertine priests, the
confessional as an opportunity for seduction, licentious convents and
monasteries. Probably the most widely read contemporary book in the United
States before Uncle Tom’s Cabin was
a work supposedly written by one Maria Monk, entitled Awful
Disclosures, which appeared in 1836. The author, who purported to have
escaped from the Hotel Dieu nunnery in Montreal after five years there as novice
and nun, reported her convent life in elaborate and circumstantial detail. She
reported having been told by the Mother Superior that she must “obey the
priests in all things”; to her “utter astonishment and horror,” she soon
found what the nature of such obedience was. Infants born of convent liaisons
were baptized and then killed, she said, so that they might ascend at once to
heaven. Her book, hotly attacked and defended , continued to be read and
believed even after her mother gave testimony that Maria had been somewhat
addled ever since childhood after she had rammed a pencil into her head. Maria
died in prison in 1849, after having been arrested in a brothel as a pickpocket.
    Anti-Catholicism, like anti-Masonry, mixed its fortunes
with American party politics, and it became an enduring factor in American
politics. The American Protective Association of the 1890s revived it with
ideological variations more suitable to the times—the depression of 1893, for
example, was alleged to be an international creation of the Catholics who began
it by starting a run on the banks. Some spokesmen of the movement circulated a
bogus encyclical attributed to Leo XIII instructing American Catholics on a
certain date in 1893 to exterminate all heretics, and a great many
anti-Catholics daily expected a nationwide uprising. The myth of an impending
Catholic war of mutilation and extermination of heretics persisted into the
twentieth century.
Why They Feel Dispossessed
    If, after our historically discontinuous examples of the
paranoid style, we now take the long jump to the contemporary right wing, we
find some rather important differences from the nineteenth-century movements.
The spokesmen of those earlier movements felt that they stood for causes and
personal types that were still in possession of their country—that they were
fending off threats to a still established way of life. But the modern right
wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely
taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to
repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old
American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and
intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by
socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence
have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents
not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the
very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies;
the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.
    Important changes may also be traced to the effects of the
mass media. The villains of the modern right are much more vivid than those of
their paranoid predecessors, much better known to the public; the literature of
the paranoid style is by the same token richer and more circumstantial in
personal description and personal invective. For the vaguely delineated villains
of the anti-Masons, for the obscure and disguised Jesuit agents, the
little-known papal delegates of the anti-Catholics, for the shadowy
international bankers of the monetary conspiracies, we may now substitute
eminent public figures like Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower.,
secretaries of State like Marshall, Acheson, and Dulles, Justices of the Supreme
Court like Frankfurter and Warren, and the whole battery of lesser but still
famous and vivid alleged conspirators headed by Alger Hiss.
    Events since 1939 have given the contemporary right-wing
paranoid a vast theatre for his imagination, full of rich and proliferating
detail, replete with realistic cues and undeniable proofs of the validity of his
suspicions. The theatre of action is now the entire world, and he can draw not
only on the events of World War II, but also on those of the Korean War and the
Cold War. Any historian of warfare knows it is in good part a comedy of errors
and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of
incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating
interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. In the end, the real
mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how
the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it
has managed to survive at all.
    The basic elements of contemporary right-wing thought can
be reduced to three: First, there has been the now-familiar sustained
conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in
Roosevelt’s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under
the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or
communism. A great many right-wingers would agree with Frank Chodorov, the
author of The Income Tax: The Root of All Evil, that this campaign began with
the passage of the income-tax amendment to the Constitution in 1913.
    The second contention is that top government officialdom
has been so infiltrated by Communists that American policy, at least since the
days leading up to Pearl Harbor, has been dominated by men who were shrewdly and
consistently selling out American national interests.
    Finally, the country is infused with a network of Communist
agents, just as in the old days it was infiltrated by Jesuit agents, so that the
whole apparatus of education, religion, the press, and the mass media is engaged
in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of loyal Americans.
    Perhaps the most representative document of the McCarthyist
phase was a long indictment of Secretary of State George C. Marshall, delivered
in 1951 in the Senate by senator McCarthy, and later published in a somewhat
different form. McCarthy pictured Marshall was the focal figure in a betrayal of
American interests stretching in time from the strategic plans for World War II
to the formulation of the Marshall Plan. Marshal was associated with practically
every American failure or defeat, McCarthy insisted, and none of this was either
accident or incompetence. There was a “baffling pattern” of Marshall’s
interventions in the war, which always conduced to the well-being of the
Kremlin. The sharp decline in America’s relative strength from 1945 to 1951
did not “just happen”; it was “brought about, step by step, by will and
intention,” the consequence not of mistakes but of a treasonous conspiracy,
“a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in
the history of man.”
    Today, the mantle of McCarthy has fallen on a retired candy
manufacturer, Robert H. Welch, Jr., who is less strategically placed and has a
much smaller but better organized following than the Senator. A few years ago
Welch proclaimed that “Communist influences are now in almost complete control
of our government”—note the care and scrupulousness of that “almost.” He
has offered a full scale interpretation of our recent history n which Communists
figure at every turn: They started a run on American banks in 1933 that forced
their closure; they contrived the recognition of the Soviet Union by the United
States in the same year, just in time to save the Soviets from economic
collapse; they have stirred up the fuss over segregation in the South; they have
taken over the Supreme Court and made it “one of the most important agencies
of Communism.”
    Close attention to history wins for Mr. Welch an insight
into affairs that is given to few of us. “For many reasons and after a lot of
study,” he wrote some years ago, “I personally believe [John Foster] Dulles
to be a Communist agent.” The job of Professor Arthur F. Burns as head of
Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisors was “merely a cover-up for
Burns’s liaison work between Eisenhower and some of his Communist bosses.”
Eisenhower’s brother Milton was “actually [his] superior and boss within the
Communist party.” As for Eisenhower himself, Welch characterized him, in words
that have made the candy manufacturer famous, as “a dedicated, conscious agent
of the Communist conspiracy”—a conclusion, he added, “based on an
accumulation of detailed evidence so extensive and so palpable that it seems to
put this conviction beyond any reasonable doubt.”
Emulating the Enemy
    The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in
apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole
political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the
barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like
religious millenialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through
the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date fort the apocalypse.
(“Time is running out,” said Welch in 1951. “Evidence is piling up on many
sides and from many sources that October 1952 is the fatal month when Stalin
will attack.”)
    As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving
the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the
paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to
be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what
is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what
is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish.
Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he
must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theatre of
operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total
triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since
these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the
paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same
feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens
his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.
    The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of
malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel,
sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the
toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his
desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of
history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He
makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters,
and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s
interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken
as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will.
Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of
power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for
influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction
(the Catholic confessional).
    It is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is on
many counts the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable
aspects of the self are attributed to him. The enemy may be the cosmopolitan
intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship,
even of pedantry. Secret organizations set up to combat secret organizations
give the same flattery. The Ku Klux Klan imitated Catholicism to the point of
donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate ritual and an equally
elaborate hierarchy. The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and
quasi-secret operation through “front” groups, and preaches a ruthless
prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in
the Communist enemy. 
Spokesmen of the various fundamentalist anti-Communist “crusades” openly
express their admiration for the dedication and discipline the Communist cause
calls forth.
    On the other hand, the sexual freedom often attributed to
the enemy, his lack of moral inhibition, his possession of especially effective
techniques for fulfilling his desires, give exponents of the paranoid style an
opportunity to project and express unacknowledgeable aspects of their own
psychological concerns. Catholics and Mormons—later, Negroes and Jews—have
lent themselves to a preoccupation with illicit sex. Very often the fantasies of
true believers reveal strong sadomasochistic outlets, vividly expressed, for
example, in the delight of anti-Masons with the cruelty of Masonic punishments.
Renegades and Pedants
    A special significance attaches to the figure of the
renegade from the enemy cause. The anti-Masonic movement seemed at times to be
the creation of ex-Masons; certainly the highest significance was attributed to
their revelations, and every word they said was believed. Anti-Catholicism used
the runaway nun and the apostate priest; the place of ex-Communists in the
avant-garde anti-Communist movements of our time is well known. In some part,
the special authority accorded the renegade derives from the obsession with
secrecy so characteristics of such movements: the renegade is the man or woman
who has been in the Arcanum, and brings forth with him or her the final
verification of suspicions which might otherwise have been doubted by a
skeptical world. But I think there is a deeper eschatological significance that
attaches to the person of the renegade: in the spiritual wrestling match between
good and evil which is the paranoid’s archetypal model of the world, the
renegade is living proof that all the conversions are not made by the wrong
side. He brings with him the promise of redemption and victory.
    A final characteristic of the paranoid style is related to
the quality of its pedantry. One of the impressive things about paranoid
literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost
touching concern with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic
strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can
be believed. Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids,
as there are likely to be in any political tendency. But respectable paranoid
literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can indeed be
justified but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates :evidence.”
The difference between this “evidence” and that commonly employed by others
is that it seems less a means of entering into normal political controversy than
a means of warding off the profane intrusion of the secular political world. The
paranoid seems to have little expectation of actually convincing a hostile
world, but he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his cherished
convictions from it.
    Paranoid writing begins with certain broad defensible
judgments. There was something to be said for the anti-Masons. After all, a secret
society composed of influential men bound by special obligations could
conceivable pose some kind of threat to the civil order in which they were
suspended. There was also something to be said for the Protestant principles of
individuality and freedom, as well as for the nativist desire to develop in
North America a homogeneous civilization. Again, in our time an actual laxity in
security allowed some Communists to find a place in governmental circles, and
innumerable decisions of World War II and the Cold War could be faulted.
    The higher paranoid scholarship is nothing if not
coherent—in fact the paranoid mind is far more coherent than the real world.
It is nothing if not scholarly in technique. McCarthy’s 96-page pamphlet, McCarthyism,
contains no less than 313 footnote references, and Mr. Welch’s incredible
assault on Eisenhower, The Politician,
has one hundred pages of bibliography and notes. The entire right-wing movement
of our time is a parade of experts, study groups, monographs, footnotes, and
bibliographies. Sometimes the right-wing striving for scholarly depth and an
inclusive world view has startling consequences: Mr. Welch, for example, has
charged that the popularity of Arnold Toynbee’s historical work is the
consequence of a plot on the part of Fabians, “Labour party bosses in
England,” and various members of the Anglo-American “liberal
establishment” to overshadow the much more truthful and illuminating work of
Oswald Spengler.
The Double Sufferer
    The paranoid style is not confined to our own country and
time; it is an international phenomenon. Studying the millennial sects of Europe
from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, Norman Cohn believed he found a
persistent psychic complex that corresponds broadly with what I have been
considering—a style made up of certain preoccupations and fantasies: “the
megalomaniac view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted,
yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers
to the adversary; the refusal to accept the ineluctable limitations and
imperfections of human existence, such as transience, dissention, conflict,
fallibility whether intellectual or moral; the obsession with inerrable
prophecies…systematized misinterpretations, always gross and often
grotesque.”
    This glimpse across a long span of time emboldens me to
make the conjecture—it is no more than that—that a mentality disposed to see
the world in this way may be a persistent psychic phenomenon, more or less
constantly affecting a modest minority of the population. But certain religious
traditions, certain social structures and national inheritances, certain
historical catastrophes or frustrations may be conducive to the release of such
psychic energies, and to situations in which they can more readily be built into
mass movements or political parties. In American experience ethnic and religious
conflict have plainly been a major focus for militant and suspicious minds of
this sort, but class conflicts also can mobilize such energies. Perhaps the
central situation conducive to the diffusion of the paranoid tendency is a
confrontation of opposed interests which are (or are felt to be) totally
irreconcilable, and thus by nature not susceptible to the normal political
processes of bargain and compromise. The situation becomes worse when the
representatives of a particular social interest—perhaps because of the very
unrealistic and unrealizable nature of its demands—are shut out of the
political process. Having no access to political bargaining or the making of
decisions, they find their original conception that the world of power is
sinister and malicious fully confirmed. They see only the consequences of
power—and this through distorting lenses—and have no chance to observe its
actual machinery. A distinguished historian has said that one of the most
valuable things about history is that it teaches us how things do not
happen. It is precisely this kind of awareness that the paranoid fails to
develop. He has a special resistance of his own, of course, to developing such
awareness, but circumstances often deprive him of exposure to events that might
enlighten him—and in any case he resists enlightenment.
    We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a
double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest
of us, but by his fantasies as well.
   
  
 Many anti-Masons had been fascinated by the penalties involved if Masons
 failed to live up to their obligations. My own favorite is the oath
 attributed to a royal archmason who invited “having my skull smote off and
 my brains exposed to the scorching rays of the sun.”
  
 In his recent book, How to Win an
 Election, Stephen C. Shadegg cites a statement attributed to Mao
 Tse-tung: “Give me just two or three men in a village and I will take the
 village.” Shadegg comments: “ In the Goldwater campaigns of 1952 and
 1958 and in all other campaigns where I have served as consultant I have
 followed the advice of Mao Tse-tung.” “I would suggest,” writes
 senator Goldwater in Why Not Victory?
 “that we analyze and copy the strategy of the enemy; theirs has worked and
 ours has not.
 Back to The Paranoid Mentality
The Paranoid Style in American Politics
https://web.archive.org/web/20131003065136/http://www.kenrahn.com:80/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html
https://www.interferenza.net/bcs/interw/66-jan.htm
PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: BOB DYLAN
None
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<div><div>
<i>As a versatile musicologist and trenchant social commentator, Nat Hentoff
brings uniquely pertinent credentials to his dual tasks in this month's
issue - as the author of "We're Happening All Over, Baby!" (on page 82) an
insightful anatomizing of America's youthful new generation of
anti-establishment social activists, and as interviewer of this month's
controversial subject, about whom he writes:<p>
"Less than five years ago, Bob Dylan was scuffling in New York - sleeping in
friends' apartments on the Lower East Side and getting very occasional
singing work at Gerde's Folk City, an unprepossessing bar for citybillies in
the Village. With his leather cap, blue jeans and battered desert boots -
his unvarying costume in those days - Dylan looked like an updated,
undernourished Huck Finn. And like Huck, he had come out of the Midwest; he
would have said 'escaped.' The son of Abraham Zimmerman, an appliance
dealer, he was raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, a bleak mining town near the
Canadian border. Though he ran away from home regularly between the ages of
10 and 18, young Zimmerman did manage to finish high school, and went on to
spend about six months at the University of Minnesota in 1960. By then, he
called himself Bob Dylan - in tribute to Dylan Thomas, according to legend;
but actually after a gambling uncle whose last name was similar to Dylan. </p><p>
"In the fall of that year, he came East to visit his idol, Woody Guthrie, in
the New Jersey hospital where the Okie folk-singing bard was wasting away
with a progressive disease of the nervous syste1m. Dylan stayed and tried to
scrape together a singing career. According to those who knew him then, he
was shy and stubborn but basically friendly and, beneath the hipster stance,
uncommonly gentle. But they argued about his voice. Some found its flat
Midwestern tones gratingly mesmeric; others agreed with a Missouri folk
singer who had likened the Dylan sound to that of 'a dog with his leg caught
in barbed wire.' All agreed, however, that his songs were strangely personal
and often disturbing, a pungent mixture of loneliness and defiance laced
with traces of Guthrie, echoes of the Negro blues singers and more than a
suggestion of country-and-western; but essentially Dylan was developing his
own penetratingly distinctive style. Yet the voice was so harsh and the
songs so bitterly scornful of conformity, race prejudice and the mythology
of the Cold War that most of his friends couldn't conceive of Dylan making
it big even though folk music was already on the, rise. </p><p>
"They were wrong. In September of 1961, a music critic for The New York
Times caught his act at Gerde's and hailed the scruffy l9-year-old
Minnesotan as a significant new voice on the folk horizon. Around the same
time, he was signed by Columbia Records, and his first album was released
early the next year. Though it was far from a smash hit, concerts and club
engagements gradually multiplied; and then Dylan scored his storied triumph
at the Newport Folk Festival in 1962. His next LP began to move, and in the
spring of 1963 came his first big single: 'Blowin' in the Wind.' That same
spring he turned down a lucrative guest shot on 'The Ed Sullivan Show'
because CBS wouldn't permit him to sing a mordant parody he'd written about
the John Birch Society. For the nation's young, the Dylan image began to
form: kind of a singing James Dean with over tones of Holden Caulfeld; he
was making it, but he wasn't selling out. His concerts began to attract
overflow crowds, and his songs - in performances by him and other folk
singers - were rushing onto the hit charts. One of them, 'The Times They Are
A-Changin',' became an anthem for the rebellious young, who savored its
message that adults don't know where it's at and can't tell their children
what to do. </p><p>
"By 1965 he had become a major phenomenon on the music scene. More and more
folk performers, from Joan Baez to the Byrds, considered it mandatory to
have an ample supply of Dylan songs in their repertoires; in one frantically
appreciative month - last August - 18 different recordings of Dylan ballads
were pressed by singers other than the composer himself. More and more
aspiring folk singers - and folk-song writers - have begun to sound like
Dylan. The current surge of 'protest' songs by such long-haired, post-beat
rock-'n'-rollers as Barry McGuire and Sonny and Cher is credited to Dylan.
And the newest commercial boom, 'folk-rock,' a fusion of fold-like lyrics
with an r-'n'-r beat and background, is an outgrowth in large part, of
Dylan's recent decision - decried as a 'sellout' by folknik purists - to
perform with a roch-'n'-roll combo rather than continue to accompany himself
alone on the guitar. Backed by the big beat of the new group, Dylan tours
England with as much tumultuous success as he does America, and the air play
for his single records in both countries is rivaled only by that of the
Beatles, Herman's Hermits and the Rolling Stones on the Top 40 deejay shows.
In the next 18 months, his income - from personal appearances, records and
composer's royalties - is expected to exceed $1,000,000. </p><p>
"Withal, Dylan seems outwardly much the same as he did during the lean years
in Greenwich Village. His dress is still casual to the point of exoticism;
his hair is still long and frizzy, and he is still no more likely to be seen
wearing a necktie than a cutaway. But there have been changes. No longer
protesting polemically against the bomb, race prejudice and conformity, his
songs have become increasingly personal - a surrealistic amalgam of
kafkaesque menace corrosive satire and opaque sensuality. His lyrics are
more crowded than t!ver with tumbling words and restless images, and they
read more like free-verse poems than conventional lines. Adults still have
difficulty digging his offbeat language - and its message of alienation -
but the young continue to tune in and turn on. </p><p>
"But there are other changes. Dylan has become elusive. He is no longer seen
in his old haunts in the Village and on the Lower East Side. With few
exceptions, he avoids interviewers, and in public, he is usually seen from
afar at the epicenter of a protective coterie of tousle-topped young men
dressed like him, and lissome, straight-haired young ladies who also seem to
be dressed like him. His home base, if it can be called that, is a house his
manager owns near Woodstock, a fashionable artists' colony in New York
State, and he also enjoys the run of his manager's apartment on dignified
Gramercy Park in New York City. There are tales told of Dylan the
motorcyclist, the novelist, the maker of high-camp home movies; but except
among his small circle of intimates, the 24-year-old folk hero is
inscrutably aloof. </p></i><p><i>
"It was only after a long period of evasion and hesitation that Dylan
finally agreed to grant this 'Playboy Interview' - the longest he's ever
given. We met him on the 10th floor of the new CBS and Columbia Records
building in mid-Manhattan. The room was antiseptic: white walls with black
trim, contemporary furniture with severe lines, avantgarde art chosen by
committee, everything in order, neat desks, neat personnel. In this sterile
setting, slouched in a chair across from us, Dylan struck a refreshingly
discordant note - with his untamed brownish-blond mane brushing the collar
of his tieless blue plaid shirt, in his black jacket, gray
vaudevillian-striped pipestem pants and well-worn blue-suede shoes. Sitting
nearby - also long-haired, tieless and blackjacketed, but wearing faded
jeans - was a stringy young man whom the singer identified only as Taco
Pronto. As Dylan spoke - in a soft drawl, smiling only rarely and
fleetingly, sipping tea and chainsmoking cigarettes - his unspeaking friend
chuckled and nodded appreciatively from the side lines. Tense and guarded at
first Dylan gradually began to loosen up, then to open up, as he tried to
tell us - albeit a bit surrealistically - just where he's been and where
he's going. Under the circumstances, we chose to play straight man in our
questions, believing that to have done othervise would have stemmed the
freewheeling flow of Dylan's responses."</i> </p><hr /><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> 'Popular songs," you told a reporter last year, "are the only art
form that describes the temper of the times. The only place where it's
happening is on the radio and records. That's where the people hang out.
It's not in books; it's not on the stage; it's not in the galleries. All
this art thev've been talking about, it just remains on the shelI. It
doesn't make anyone happier." In view of the fact that more people than ever
before are reading books and going to plays and art galleries, do you think
that statement is borne out by the facts? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Statistics measure quantity, not quality. The people in the
statistics are people who are very bored. Art, if there is such a thing, is
in the bathrooms; everybody knows that. To go to an art gallery thing where
you get free milk and doughnuts and where there is a rock-'n'-roll band
playing: That's just a status affair. I'm not putting it down, mind you; but
I spend a lot of time in the bathroom. I think museums are vulgar. They're
all against sex. Anyhow, I didn't say that people "hang out" on the radio, I
said they get "hung <i>up</i>" on the radio. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Why do you think rock 'n' roll has become such an international
phenomenon? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I can't really think that there <i>is</i> any rock 'n' roll. Actually,
when you think about it, anything that has no real existence is bound to
become an international phenomenon. Anyway, what does it mean, rock 'n'
roll? Does it mean Beatles, does it mean John Lee Hooker, Bobby Vinton,
Jerry Lewis' kid? What about Lawrence Welk? He must play a few rock-'n'-roll
songs. Are all these people the same? Is Ricky Nelson like Otis Redding? Is
Mick Jagger really Ma Rainey? I can tell by the way people hold their
cigarettes if they like Ricky Nelson. I think it's fine to like Ricky
Nelson: I couldn't care <i>less</i> if somebody likes Ricky Nelson. But I think
we're getting off the track here. There isn't any Ricky Nelson. There isn't
any Beatles; oh, I take that back: there are a lot of beetles. But there
isn't any Bobby Vinton. Anyway, the word is not "international phenomenon";
the word is "parental nightmare." </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> In recent years, according to some critics, jazz has lost much of
its appeal to the younger generation. Do you agree? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I don't think jazz has ever appealed to the younger generation.
Anyway, I don't really know who this younger generation is. I don't think
they could get into a jazz club anyway. But jazz is hard to follow; I mean
you actually have to <i>like</i> jazz to follow it: and my motto is, never follow
<i>anything</i>. I don't know what the motto of the younger generation is, but I
would think they'd have to follow their parents. I mean, what would some
parent say to his kid if the kid came home with a glass eye, a Charlie
Mingus record and a pocketful of feathers? He'd say, "Who are you
following?" And the poor kid would have to stand there with water in his
shoes, a bow tie on his ear and soot pouring out of his belly button and
say, "Jazz, Father, I've been following jazz." And his father would probably
say, "Get a broom and clean up all that soot before you go to sleep." Then
the kid's mother would tell her friends, "Oh yes, our little Donald, he's
part of the younger generation, you know." </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> You used to say that you wanted to perform as little as possible,
that you wanted to keep most of your time to yourself. Yet you're doing more
concerts and cutting more records every year. Why? Is it the money? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Everything is changed now from before. Last spring. I guess I was
going to quit singing. I was very drained, and the way things were going, it
was a very draggy situation - I mean, when you do "Everybody Loves You for
Your Black Eye," and meanwhile the back of your head is caving in. Anyway, I
was playing a lot of songs I didn't want to play. I was singing words I
didn't really want to sing. I don't mean words like "God" and "mother" and
"President" and "suicide" and "meat cleaver." I mean simple little words
like "if" and "hope" and "you." But "Like a Rolling Stone" changed it all: I
didn't care anymore after that about writing books or poems or whatever. I
mean it was some thing that I myself could dig. It's very tiring having
other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don't dig you.
It's also very deadly entertainment wise. Contrary to what some scary people
think, I don't play with a band now for any kind of propaganda-type or
commercial-type reasons. It's just that my songs are pictures and the band
makes the sound of the pictures. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Do you feel that acquiring a combo and switching from folk to
folkrock has improved you as a performer? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I'm not interested in myself as a performer. Performers are people
who perform for other people. Unlike actors, I know what I'm saying. It's
very simple in my mind. It doesn't matter what kind of audience reaction
this whole thing gets. What happens on the stage is straight. It doesn't
expect any rewards or fines from any kind of outside agitators. It's
ultra-simple, and would exist whether anybody was looking or not. </p><p>
As far as folk and folk-rock are concerned, it doesn't matter what kind of
nasty names people invent for the music. It could be called arsenic music,
or perhaps Phaedra music. I don't think that such a word as folk-rock has
anything to do with it. And folk music is a word I can't use. Folk music is
a bunch of fat people. I have to think of all this as traditional music.
Traditional music is based on hexagrams. It comes about from legends,
Bibles, plagues, and it revolves around vegetables and death. There's nobody
that's going to kill traditional music. All these songs about roses growing
out of people's brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn
into angels - they're not going to die. It's all those paranoid people who
think that someone's going to come and take away their toilet paper -
<i>they're</i> going to die. Songs like "Which Side Are You On?" and "I Love You,
Porgy" - they're not folk-music songs; they're political songs. They're
<i>already</i> dead. Obviously, death is not very universally accepted. I mean,
you'd think that the traditional-music people could gather from their songs
that mystery - just plain simple mystery - is a fact, a traditional fact. I
listen to the old ballads; but I wouldn't go to a <i>party</i> and listen to the
old ballads. I could give you descriptive detail of what they do to me, but
some people would probably think my imagination had gone mad. It strikes me
funny that people actually have the gall to think that I have some kind of
fantastic imagination. It gets very lonesome. But anyway, traditional music
is too unreal to die. It doesn't need to be protected. Nobody's going to
hurt it. In that music is the only true, valid death you can feel today off
a record player. But like anything else in great demand, people try to own
it. It has to do with a purity thing. I think its meaninglessness is holy.
Everybody knows that I'm not a folk singer. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Some of your old fans would agree with you - and not in a
complimentary vein - since your debut with the rock-'n'-roll combo at last
year's Newport Folk Festival, where many of them booed you loudly for
"selling out" to commercial pop tastes. The early Bob Dylan, they felt, was
the "pure" Bob Dylan. How do you feel about it? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I was kind of stunned. But I can't put anybody down for coming and
booing: after all, they paid to get in. They could have been maybe a little
guieter and not so persistent, though. There were a lot of old people there,
too; lots of whole families had driven down from Vermont, lots of nurses and
their parents, and well, like they just came to hear some relaxing hoedowns,
you know, maybe an Indian polka or two. And just when everything's going all
right, here I come on, and the whole place turns into a beer factory. There
were a lot of people there who were very pleased that I got booed. I saw
them afterward. I do resent somewhat, though, that everybody that booed said
they did it because they were old fans. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> What about their charge that you vulgarized your natural gifts? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> What can I say? I'd like to <i>see</i> one of these so-called fans. I'd
like to have him blindfolded and brought to me. It's like going out to the
desert and screaming and then having little kids throw their sandbox at you.
I'm only 24. These people that said this - were they Americans? </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Americans or not, there were a lot of people who didn't like your
new sound. In view of tbis widespread negative reaction, do you think you
may have made a mistake in changing your style? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding. There could be no such
thing, anyway, as this action. Either people understand or they <i>pretend</i> to
understand - or else they really <i>don't</i> understand. What you're speaking of
here is doing wrong things for selfish reasons. I don't know the word for
that, unless it's suicide. In any case, it has nothing to do with my music. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Mistake or not, what made you decide to go the rock-'n'-roll route? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first
thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a
pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to
Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up
in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and
move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from
Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a
job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a
delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this
13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery
boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know
I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles
and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a
carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a
high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't
much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can
turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy
shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down,
and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to
be a star. What could I say? </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> And that's how you became a rock-'n'-roll singer? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> No, that's how I got tuberculosis. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Let's turn the question around: Why have you stopped composing and
singing protest songs? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I've stopped composing and singing anything that has either a reason
to be written or a motive to be sung. Don't get me wrong, now. "Protest" is
not my word. I've never thought of myself as such. The word "protest," I
think, was made up for people undergoing surgery. It's an amusement-park
word. A normal person in his righteous mind would have to have the hiccups
to pronounce it honestly. The word "message" strikes me as having a
hernia-like sound It's just like the word "delicious." Also the word
"marvelous." You know, the English can say "marvelous" pretty good. They
can't say "raunchy" so good, though. Well, we each have our thing. Anyway,
message songs, as everybody knows, are a drag. It's only college newspaper
editors and single girls under 14 that could possibly have time for them. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> You've said you think message songs are vulgar. Why? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Well, first of all, anybody that's got a message is going to learn
from experience that they can't put it into a song. I mean it's just not
going to come out the same message. After one or two of these unsuccessful
attempts, one realizes that his resultant message, which is not even the
same message he thought up and began with, he's now got to stick by it;
because, after all, a song leaves your mouth just as soon as it leaves your
hands. Are you following me? </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Oh, perfectly. </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Well, anyway, second of all, you've got to respect other people's
right to also have a message themselves. Myself, what I'm going to do is
rent Town Hall and put about 30 Western Union boys on the bill. I mean, then
there'll <i>really</i> be some messages. People will be able to come and hear
more messages than they've ever heard before in their life. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> But your early ballads have been called "songs of passionate
protest." Wouldn't that make them "message" music? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> This is unimportant. Don't you understand? I've been writing since I
was eight years old. I've been playing the guitar since I was ten. I was
raised playing and writing whatever it was I had to play and write. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Would it be unfair to say, then, as some have, that you were
motivated commercially rather than creatively in writing the kind of songs
that made you popular? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> All right, now, look. It's not all that deep. It's not a complicated
thing. My motives, or whatever they are, were never commercial in the money
sense of the word. It was more in the don't die-by-the-hacksaw sense of the
word. I never did it for money. It happened, and I let it happen to me.
There was no reason <i>not</i> to let it happen to me. I couldn't have written
before what I write now, anyway. The songs used to be about what I felt and
saw. Nothing of my own rhythmic vomit ever entered into it. Vomit is not
romantic. I used to think songs are supposed to be romantic. And I didn't
want to sing anything that was unspecific. Unspecific things have no sense
of time. All of us people have no sense of time; it's a dimensional hangup.
Anybody can be specific and obvious. That's always been the easy way. The
leaders of the world take the easy way. It's not that it's so difficult to
be unspecific and less obvious; it's just that there's nothing, absolutely
nothing, to be specific and obvious <i>about</i>. My older songs, to say the
least, were about nothing. The newer ones are about the same nothing - only
as seen inside a bigger thing, perhaps called the nowhere. But this is all
very constipated. I <i>do</i> know what my songs are about. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> And what's that? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Oh, some are about four minutes; some are about five, and some,
believe it or not, are about eleven or twelve. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Can't you be a bit more informative? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Nope. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> All right. Let's change the subject. As you know, it's the age
group from about 16 to 25 that listens to your songs. Why, in your opinion? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I don't see what's so strange about an age group like that listening
to my songs. I'm hip enough to know that it ain't going to be the
85-to-90-yearolds. If the 85-to-90-year-olds <i>were</i> listening to me, they'd
know that I can't tell them anything. The 16-to-25-year-olds, they probably
know that I can't tell <i>them</i> anything either - and they know that <i>I</i> know
it. It's a funny business. Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than
I'm an ashtray. I mean it's obvious to anyone who's ever slept in the back
seat of a car that I'm just not a schoolteacher. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Even though you're not a schoolteacher, wouldn't you like to help
the young people who dig you from turning into what some of their parents
have become? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Well, I must say that I really don't know their parents. I really
don't know if <i>anybody's</i> parents are so bad. Now, I hate to come on like a
weakling or a coward, and I realize it might seem kind of irreligious, but
I'm really not the right person to tramp around the country saving souls. I
wouldn't run over anybody that was laying in the street, and I certainly
wouldn't become a hangman. I wouldn't think twice about giving a starving
man a cigarette. But I'm not a shepherd. And I'm not about to save anybody
from fate, which I know nothing about. "Parents" is not the key word here.
The key word is "destiny." I can't save them from that. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Still, thousands of young people look up to you as a kind of folk
hero. Do you feel some sense of responsibility toward them? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I don't feel I have any responsibility, no. Whoever it is that
listens to my songs owes <i>me</i> nothing. How could I possibly have any
responsibility to any kind of thousands? What could possibly make me think
that I owe anybody anything who just happens to be there? I've never written
any song that begins with the words "I've gathered you here tonight . . ."
I'm not about to tell anybody to be a good boy or a good girl and they'll go
to heaven. I really don't know what the people who are on the receiving end
of these songs think of me, anyway. It's horrible. I'll bet Tony Bennett
doesn't have to go through this kind of thing. I wonder what Billy the Kid
would have answered to such a question. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> In their admiration for you, many young people have begun to
imitate the way you dress - which one adult commentator has called
"selfconsciously oddball and defiantly sloppy." What's your reaction to that
kind of put-down? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Bullshit. Oh, such bullshit. I know the fellow that said that. He
used to come around here and get beat up all the time. He better watch it;
some people are after him. They're going to strip him naked and stick him in
Times Square. They're going to tie him up, and also put a thermometer in his
mouth. Those kind of morbid ideas and remarks are so petty - I mean there's
a <i>war</i> going on. People got rickets; everybody wants to start a riot;
40-year-old women are eating spinach by the carload; the doctors haven't got
a cure for cancer - and here's some hillbilly talking about how he doesn't
like somebody's clothes. Worse than hat, it gets printed and innocent people
have to read it. This is a terrible thing. And he's a terrible man.
Obviously, he's just living off the fat of himself, and he's expecting his
kids to take care of him. His kids probably listen to my records. Just
because my clothes are too long, does that mean I'm unqualified for what I
do? </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> No, but there are those who think it does - and many of them seem
to feel the same way about your long hair. But compared with the
shoulder-length coiffures worn by some of the male singing groups these
days, your tonsorial tastes are on the conservative side. How do you feel
about these far-out hair styles? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> The thing that most people don't realize is that it's <i>warmer</i> to
have long hair. Everybody wants to be warm. People with short hair freeze
easily. Then they try to hide their coldness, and they get jealous of
everybody that's warm. Then they become either barbers or Congressmen. A lot
of prison wardens have short hair. Have you ever noticed that Abraham
Lincoln's hair was much longer than John Wilkes Booth's? </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Do you think Lincoln wore his hair long to keep his head warm? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Actually, I think it was for medical reasons, which are none of my
business. But I guess if you figure it out, you realize that all of one's
hair surrounds and lays on the brain inside your head. Mathematically
speaking, the more of it you can get out of your head, the better. People
who want free minds sometimes overlook the fact that you have to have an
uncluttered brain. Obviously, if you get your hair on the outside of your
head, your brain will be a little more freer. But all this talk about long
hair is just a trick. It's been thought up by men and women who look like
cigars - the anti-happiness committee. They're all freeloaders and cops. You
can tell who they are: They're always carrying calendars, guns or scissors.
They're all trying to get into your quicksand. They think you've got
something. I don't know why Abe Lincoln had long hair. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Until your abandonment of "message" songs, you were considered not
only a major voice in the student protest movement but a militant champion
of the civil rights struggle. According to friends, you seemed to feel a
special bond of kinship with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
which you actively supported both as a performer and as a worker. Why have
you withdrawn from participation in all these causes? Have you lost interest
in protest as well as in protest songs? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> As far as SNCC is concerned, I knew some of the people in it, but I
only knew them as people, not as of any part of something that was bigger or
better than themselves. I didn't even know what civil rights <i>was</i> before I
met some of them. I mean, I knew there were Negroes, and I knew there were a
lot of people who don't <i>like</i> Negroes. But I got to admit that if I didn't
know some of the SNCC people, I would have gone on thinking that Martin
Luther King was really nothing more than some underprivileged war hero. I
haven't lost any interest in protest since then. I just didn't have any
interest in protest to begin with - any more than I did in war heroes. You
can't lose what you've never had. Anyway, when you don't like your
situation, you either leave it or else you overthrow it. You can't just
stand around and whine about it. People just get aware of your noise; they
really don't get aware of <i>you</i>. Even if they give you what you want, it's
only because you're making too much noise. First thing you know, you want
something else, and then you want something else, and then you want
something else, until finally it isn't a joke anymore, and whoever you're
protesting against finally gets all fed up and stomps on everybody. Sure,
you can go around trying to bring up people who are lesser than you, but
then don't forget, you're messing around with gravity. I don't fight
gravity. I do believe in equality, but I also believe in distance. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Do you mean people keeping their racial distance? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I believe in people keeping everything they've got. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Some people might feel that you're trying to cop out of fighting
for the things you believe in. </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Those would be people who think I have some sort of responsibility
toward <i>them</i>. They probably want me to help them make friends. I don't
know. They probably either want to set me in their house and have me come
out every hour and tell them what time it is, or else they just want to
stick me in between the mattress. How could they possibly understand what I
believe in? </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Well, what <i>do</i> you believe in? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I already told you. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> All right. Many of your folksinging colleagues remain actively
involved in the fight for civil rights, free speech and withdrawal from
Vietnam. Do you think they're wrong? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I don't think they're wrong, if that's what they see themselves
doing. But don't think that what you've got out there is a bunch of little
Buddhas all parading up and down. People that use God as a weapon should be
amputated upon. You see it around here all the time: "Be good or God won't
like you, and you'll go to hell." Things like that. People that march with
slogans and things tend to take themselves a little too holy. It would be a
drag if they, too, started using God as a weapon. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Do you think it's pointless to dedicate yourself to the cause of
peace and racial equality? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Not pointless to dedicate yourself to peace and racial equality, but
rather, it's pointless to dedicate yourself to the <i>cause</i>; that's <i>really</i>
pointless. That's very unknowing. To say "cause of peace" is just like
saying "hunk of butter." I mean, how can you listen to anybody who wants you
to believe he's dedicated to the hunk and not to the butter? People who
can't conceive of how others hurt, they're trying to change the world.
They're all afraid to admit that they don't really know each other. They'll
all probably be here long after we've gone, and we'll give birth to new
ones. But they themselves - I don't think <i>they'll</i> give birth to
<i>anything</i>.</p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> You sound a bit fatalistic. </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I'm not fatalistic. Bank tellers are fatalistic; clerks are
fatalistic. I'm a farmer. Who ever heard of a fatalistic farmer? I'm not
fatalistic. I smoke a lot of cigarettes, but that doesn't make me
fatalistic. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> You were quoted recently as saying that "songs can't save the
world. I've gone through all that." We take it you don't share Pete Seeger's
belief that songs can change people, that they can help build international
understanding. </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> On the international understanding part, that's OK. But you have a
translation problem there. Anybody with this kind of a level of thinking has
to also think about this translation thing. But I don't believe songs can
change people anyway. I'm not Pinocchio. I consider that an insult. I'm not
part of that. I don't blame anybody for thinking that way. But I just don't
donate any money to them. I don't consider them anything like unhip; they're
more in the rubber-band category. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> How do you feel about those who have risked imprisonment by burning
their draft cards to signify their opposition to U. S. involvement in
Vietnam, and by refusing - as your friend Joan Baez has done - to pay their
income taxes as a protest against the Covernment's expenditures on war and 
weaponry? Do you think they're wasting their time? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Burning draft cards isn't going to end any war. It's not even going
to save any lives. If someone can &amp;el more honest with himself by burning
his draft card, then that's great; but if he's just going to feel more
important because he does it, then that's a drag. I really don't know too
much about Joan Baez and her income-tax problems. The only thing I can tell
you about Joan Baez is that she's not Belle Starr. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Writing about "beard-wearing draft-card burners and pacifist
income-tax evaders," one columnist called such protesters "no less outside
society than the junkie, the homosexual or the mass murderer." What's your
reaction? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I don't believe in those terms. They're too hysterical. They don't
describe anything. Most people think that homosexual, gay, queer, queen,
faggot are all the same words. Everybody thinks that a junkie is a dope
freak. As far as I'm concerned, I don't consider myself outside of anything.
I just consider myself <i>not around</i>.</p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Joan Baez recently opened a school in northern California for
training civil rights workers in the philosophy and techniques of
nonviolence. Are you in sympathy with that concept? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> If you mean do I agree with it or not, I really don't see anything to
be in agreement <i>with</i>. If you mean has it got my approval, I guess it does,
but my approval really isn't going to do it any good. I don't know about
other people's sympathy, but my sympathy runs to the lame and crippled and
beautiful things. I have a feeling of loss of power - something like a
reincarnation feeling; I don't feel that for mechanical things like cars or
schools. I'm sure it's a nice school, but if you're asking me would I go to
it, I would have to say no. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> As a college dropout in your freshman year, you seem to take a dim
view of schooling in general, whatever the subject. </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I really don't think about it. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Well, have you ever had any regrets about not completing college? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> That would be ridiculous. Colleges are like old-age homes; except for
the fact that more people die in colleges than in old-age homes, there's
really no difference. People have one great blessing - obscurity - and not
really too many people are thankful for it. Everybody is always taught to be
thankful for their food and clothes and things like that, but not to be
thankful for their obscurity. Schools don't teach that; they teach people to
be rebels and lawyers. I'm not going to put down the teaching system; that
would be too silly. It's just that it really doesn't have too much to teach.
Colleges are part of the American institution; everybody respects them.
They're very rich and influential, but they have nothing to do with
survival. Everybody knows that. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Would you advise young people to skip college, then? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I wouldn't advise anybody to do anything. I certainly wouldn't
advise somebody not to go to college; I just wouldn't pay his <i>way</i> through
college. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Don't you think the things one learns in college can help enrich
one's life? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I don't think anything like that is going to enrich my life, no - not
my life, anyway. Things are going to happen whether I know why they happen
or not. It just gets more complicated when you stick <i>yourself</i> into it. You
don't find out why things move. You <i>let</i> them move; you <i>watch</i> them move;
you stop them from moving: you start them moving. But you don't sit around
and try to figure out <i>why</i> there's movement - unless, of course, you're
just an innocent moron, or some wise old Japanese man. Out of all the people
who just lay around and ask "Why?", how many do you figure really want to
know? </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Can you suggest a better use for the four years that would
otherwise be spent in college? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Well, you could hang around in Italy; you could go to Mexico; you
could become a dishwasher; you could even go to Arkansas. I don't know;
there are thousands of things to do and places to go. Everybody thinks that
you have to bang your head against the wall, but it's silly when you really
think about it. I mean, here you have fantastic scientists working on ways
to prolong human living, and then you have other people who take it for
granted that you have to beat your head against the wall in order to be
happy. You can't take everything you don't like as a personal insult. I
guess you should go where your wants are bare, where you're invisible and
not needed. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Would you classify sex among your wants, wherever you go? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Sex is a temporary thing; sex isn't love. You can get sex anywhere.
If you're looking for someone to <i>love</i> you, now that's different. I guess
you have to stay in college for that. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Since you didn't stay in college, does that mean you haven't found
someone to love you? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Let's go on to the next question. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Do you have any difficulty relating to people - or vice versa? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Well, sometimes I have the feeling that other people want my <i>soul</i>.
If I say to them, "I don't <i>have</i> a soul," they say, "I know that. You don't
have to tell me that. Not me. How dumb do you think I am? I'm your
<i>friend</i>." What can I say except that I'm sorry and I feel bad? I guess
maybe feeling bad and paranoia are the same thing. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Paranoia is said to be one of the mental states sometimes induced
by such hallucinogenic drugs as peyote and LSD. Considering the risks
involved, do you think that experimentation with such drugs should be part
of the growing up experience for a young person? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I wouldn't advise anybody to use drugs - certainly not the hard
drugs; drugs are medicine. But opium and hash and pot - now, those things
aren't drugs; they just bend your mind a little. I think <i>everybody's</i> mind
should be bent once in a while. Not by LSD, though. LSD is medicine - a
different kind of medicine. It makes you aware of the universe, so to speak;
you realize how foolish <i>objects</i> are. But LSD is not for groovy people;
it's for mad, hateful people who want revenge. It's for people who usually
have heart attacks. They ought to use it at the Geneva Convention. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Are you concerned, as you approach 30, that you may begin to "go
square," lose some of your openness to experience, become leery of change
and new experiment? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> No. But if it happens, then it happens. What can I say? There doesn't
seem to <i>be</i> any tomorrow. Every time I wake up, no matter in what position,
it's always been today. To look ahead and start worrying about trivial
little things I can't really say has any more importance than looking back
and <i>remembering</i> trivial little things. I'm not going to become any poetry
instructor at any girls' school; I know <i>that</i> for sure. But that's about
<i>all</i> I know for sure. I'll just keep doing these different things, I guess. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Such as? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Waking up in different positions. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> What else? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I'm just like anybody else; I'll try anything once. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Including theft and murder? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I can't really say I <i>wouldn't</i> commit theft or murder and expect
anybody to really believe me. I wouldn't believe anybody if they told <i>me</i>
that. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> By their mid-20s, most people have begun to settle into their
niche, to find a place in society. But you've managed to remain
inner-directed and uncommitted. What was it that spurred you to run away
from home six times between the ages of ten and eighteen and finally to
leave for good? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> It was nothing; it was just an accident of geography. Like if I was
born and raised in New York or Kansas City, I'm sure everything would have
turned out different. But Hibbing, Minnesota, was just not the right place
for me to stay and live. There really was nothing there. The only thing you
could do there was be a miner, and even that kind of thing was getting less
and less. The people that lived there - they're nice people; I've been all
over the world since I left there, and they still stand out as being the
least hung-up. The mines were just dying, that's all; but that's not their
fault. <i>Everybody</i> about my age left there. It was no great romantic thing.
It didn't take any great amount of thinking or individual genius, and there
certainly wasn't any pride in it. I didn't run away from it; I just turned
my back on it. It couldn't give me anything. It was very void-like. So
leaving wasn't hard at all; it would have been much harder to stay. I didn't
want to die there. As I think about it now, though, it wouldn't be such a
bad place to go back to and die in. There's no place I feel closer to now,
or get the feeling that I'm part of, except maybe New York; but I'm not a
New Yorker. I'm North Dakota-Minnesota-Midwestern. I'm <i>that</i> color. I speak
that way. I'm from someplace called Iron Range. My brains and feeling have
come from there. I wouldn't amputate on a drowning man; <i>nobody</i> from out
there would. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Today, you're on your way to becoming a millionaire. Do you feel in
any danger of being trapped by all this affluence - by the things it can
buy? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> No, my world is very small. Money can't really improve it any; money
can just keep it from being smothered. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Most big stars find it difficult to avoid getting involved, and
sometimes entangled, in managing the business end of their careers. As a man
with three thriving careers - as a concert performer, recording star and
songwriter - do you ever feel boxed in by such noncreative responsibilities? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> No, I've got other people to do that for me. They watch my money;
they guard it. They keep their eyes on it at all times; they're supposed to
be very smart when it comes to money. They know just what to do with my
money. I pay them a lot of it. I don't really speak to them much, and they
don't really speak to me at all, so I guess everything is all right. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> If fortune hasn't trapped you, how about fame? Do you find that
your celebrity makes it difficult to keep your private life intact? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> My private life has been dangerous from the beginning. All this does
is add a little atmosphere. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> You used to enjoy wandering across the country - taking off on
openend trips, roughing it from town to town, with no particular destination
in mind. But you seem to be doing much less of that these days. Why? Is it
because you're too well known? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> It's mainly because I have to be in Cincinnati Friday night, and the
next night I got to be in Atlanta, and then the next night after that, I
have to be in Buffalo. Then I have to write some more songs for a record
album. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Do you get the chance to ride your motorcycle much anymore? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I'm still very patriotic to the highway, but I don't ride my
motorcycle too much anymore, no. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> How do you get your kicks these days, then? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I hire people to look into my eyes, and then I have them kick me. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> And that's the way you get your kicks? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> No. Then I <i>forgive</i> them; that's where my kicks come in. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> You told an interviewer last year, "I've done everything I ever
wanted to." If that's true, what do you have to look forward to? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Salvation. Just plain salvation. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Anything else? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Praying. I'd also like to start a cookbook magazine. And I've always
wanted to be a boxing referee. I want to referee a heavyweight championship
fight. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine any fighter in his right mind
recognizing <i>me</i>?</p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> If your popularity were to wane, would you welcome being anonymous
again? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> You mean welcome it, like I'd welcome some poor pilgrim coming in
from the rain? No, I wouldn't welcome it; I'd accept it, though. Someday,
obviously, I'm going to <i>have</i> to accept it. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Do you ever think about marrying, settling down, having a home,
maybe living abroad? Are there any luxuries you'd like to have, say, a yacht
or a Rolls-Royce? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> No, I don't think about those things. If I felt like buying anything,
I'd buy it. What you're asking me about is the future, <i>my</i> future. I'm the
last person in the world to ask about my future. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Are you saying you're going to be passive and just let things
happen to you? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Well, that's being very philosophical about it, but I guess it's
true. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> You once planned to write a novel. Do you still? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> I don't think so. All my writing goes into the songs now. Other forms
don't interest me anymore. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Do you have any unfulfilled ambitions? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Well, I guess I've always wanted to be Anthony Quinn in "La Strada".
Not always - only for about six years now; it's not one of those
childhood-dream things. Oh, and come to think of it, I guess I've always
wanted to be Brigitte Bardot, too; but I don't really want to think about
<i>that</i> too much. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Did you ever have the standard boyhood dream of growing up to be
President? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> No. When I was a boy, Harry Truman was President; who'd want to be
Harry Truman? </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> Well, let's suppose that you were the President. What would you
accomplish during your first thousand days? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> Well, just for laughs, so long as you insist, the first thing I'd do
is probably move the White House. Instead of being in Texas, it'd be on the
East Side in New York. McGeorge Bundy would definitely have to change his
name, and General McNamara would be forced to wear a coonskin cap and
shades. I would immediately rewrite "The Star-Spangled Banner," and little
school children, instead of memorizing "America the Beautiful," would have
to memorize "Desolation Row" [one of Dylan's latest songs]. And I would
immediately call for a showdown with Mao Tse-tung; I would fight him
<i>personally</i> - and I'd get somebody to film it. </p><p>
<b>PLAYBOY:</b> One final question: Even though you've more or less retired from
political and social protest, can you conceive of any circumstance that
might persuade you to reinvolve yourself? </p><p>
<b>DYLAN:</b> No, not unless all the people in the world disappeared. </p></div>||||I||||PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: BOB DYLAN

February 1966.
A candid conversation with the iconoclastic idol of the folk-rock set.

As a versatile musicologist and trenchant social commentator, Nat Hentoff brings uniquely pertinent credentials to his dual tasks in this month's issue - as the author of "We're Happening All Over, Baby!" (on page 82) an insightful anatomizing of America's youthful new generation of anti-establishment social activists, and as interviewer of this month's controversial subject, about whom he writes:

"Less than five years ago, Bob Dylan was scuffling in New York - sleeping in friends' apartments on the Lower East Side and getting very occasional singing work at Gerde's Folk City, an unprepossessing bar for citybillies in the Village. With his leather cap, blue jeans and battered desert boots - his unvarying costume in those days - Dylan looked like an updated, undernourished Huck Finn. And like Huck, he had come out of the Midwest; he would have said 'escaped.' The son of Abraham Zimmerman, an appliance dealer, he was raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, a bleak mining town near the Canadian border. Though he ran away from home regularly between the ages of 10 and 18, young Zimmerman did manage to finish high school, and went on to spend about six months at the University of Minnesota in 1960. By then, he called himself Bob Dylan - in tribute to Dylan Thomas, according to legend; but actually after a gambling uncle whose last name was similar to Dylan.

"In the fall of that year, he came East to visit his idol, Woody Guthrie, in the New Jersey hospital where the Okie folk-singing bard was wasting away with a progressive disease of the nervous syste1m. Dylan stayed and tried to scrape together a singing career. According to those who knew him then, he was shy and stubborn but basically friendly and, beneath the hipster stance, uncommonly gentle. But they argued about his voice. Some found its flat Midwestern tones gratingly mesmeric; others agreed with a Missouri folk singer who had likened the Dylan sound to that of 'a dog with his leg caught in barbed wire.' All agreed, however, that his songs were strangely personal and often disturbing, a pungent mixture of loneliness and defiance laced with traces of Guthrie, echoes of the Negro blues singers and more than a suggestion of country-and-western; but essentially Dylan was developing his own penetratingly distinctive style. Yet the voice was so harsh and the songs so bitterly scornful of conformity, race prejudice and the mythology of the Cold War that most of his friends couldn't conceive of Dylan making it big even though folk music was already on the, rise.

"They were wrong. In September of 1961, a music critic for The New York Times caught his act at Gerde's and hailed the scruffy l9-year-old Minnesotan as a significant new voice on the folk horizon. Around the same time, he was signed by Columbia Records, and his first album was released early the next year. Though it was far from a smash hit, concerts and club engagements gradually multiplied; and then Dylan scored his storied triumph at the Newport Folk Festival in 1962. His next LP began to move, and in the spring of 1963 came his first big single: 'Blowin' in the Wind.' That same spring he turned down a lucrative guest shot on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' because CBS wouldn't permit him to sing a mordant parody he'd written about the John Birch Society. For the nation's young, the Dylan image began to form: kind of a singing James Dean with over tones of Holden Caulfeld; he was making it, but he wasn't selling out. His concerts began to attract overflow crowds, and his songs - in performances by him and other folk singers - were rushing onto the hit charts. One of them, 'The Times They Are A-Changin',' became an anthem for the rebellious young, who savored its message that adults don't know where it's at and can't tell their children what to do.

"By 1965 he had become a major phenomenon on the music scene. More and more folk performers, from Joan Baez to the Byrds, considered it mandatory to have an ample supply of Dylan songs in their repertoires; in one frantically appreciative month - last August - 18 different recordings of Dylan ballads were pressed by singers other than the composer himself. More and more aspiring folk singers - and folk-song writers - have begun to sound like Dylan. The current surge of 'protest' songs by such long-haired, post-beat rock-'n'-rollers as Barry McGuire and Sonny and Cher is credited to Dylan. And the newest commercial boom, 'folk-rock,' a fusion of fold-like lyrics with an r-'n'-r beat and background, is an outgrowth in large part, of Dylan's recent decision - decried as a 'sellout' by folknik purists - to perform with a roch-'n'-roll combo rather than continue to accompany himself alone on the guitar. Backed by the big beat of the new group, Dylan tours England with as much tumultuous success as he does America, and the air play for his single records in both countries is rivaled only by that of the Beatles, Herman's Hermits and the Rolling Stones on the Top 40 deejay shows. In the next 18 months, his income - from personal appearances, records and composer's royalties - is expected to exceed $1,000,000.

"Withal, Dylan seems outwardly much the same as he did during the lean years in Greenwich Village. His dress is still casual to the point of exoticism; his hair is still long and frizzy, and he is still no more likely to be seen wearing a necktie than a cutaway. But there have been changes. No longer protesting polemically against the bomb, race prejudice and conformity, his songs have become increasingly personal - a surrealistic amalgam of kafkaesque menace corrosive satire and opaque sensuality. His lyrics are more crowded than t!ver with tumbling words and restless images, and they read more like free-verse poems than conventional lines. Adults still have difficulty digging his offbeat language - and its message of alienation - but the young continue to tune in and turn on.

"But there are other changes. Dylan has become elusive. He is no longer seen in his old haunts in the Village and on the Lower East Side. With few exceptions, he avoids interviewers, and in public, he is usually seen from afar at the epicenter of a protective coterie of tousle-topped young men dressed like him, and lissome, straight-haired young ladies who also seem to be dressed like him. His home base, if it can be called that, is a house his manager owns near Woodstock, a fashionable artists' colony in New York State, and he also enjoys the run of his manager's apartment on dignified Gramercy Park in New York City. There are tales told of Dylan the motorcyclist, the novelist, the maker of high-camp home movies; but except among his small circle of intimates, the 24-year-old folk hero is inscrutably aloof.

"It was only after a long period of evasion and hesitation that Dylan finally agreed to grant this 'Playboy Interview' - the longest he's ever given. We met him on the 10th floor of the new CBS and Columbia Records building in mid-Manhattan. The room was antiseptic: white walls with black trim, contemporary furniture with severe lines, avantgarde art chosen by committee, everything in order, neat desks, neat personnel. In this sterile setting, slouched in a chair across from us, Dylan struck a refreshingly discordant note - with his untamed brownish-blond mane brushing the collar of his tieless blue plaid shirt, in his black jacket, gray vaudevillian-striped pipestem pants and well-worn blue-suede shoes. Sitting nearby - also long-haired, tieless and blackjacketed, but wearing faded jeans - was a stringy young man whom the singer identified only as Taco Pronto. As Dylan spoke - in a soft drawl, smiling only rarely and fleetingly, sipping tea and chainsmoking cigarettes - his unspeaking friend chuckled and nodded appreciatively from the side lines. Tense and guarded at first Dylan gradually began to loosen up, then to open up, as he tried to tell us - albeit a bit surrealistically - just where he's been and where he's going. Under the circumstances, we chose to play straight man in our questions, believing that to have done othervise would have stemmed the freewheeling flow of Dylan's responses."

PLAYBOY: 'Popular songs," you told a reporter last year, "are the only art form that describes the temper of the times. The only place where it's happening is on the radio and records. That's where the people hang out. It's not in books; it's not on the stage; it's not in the galleries. All this art thev've been talking about, it just remains on the shelI. It doesn't make anyone happier." In view of the fact that more people than ever before are reading books and going to plays and art galleries, do you think that statement is borne out by the facts?

DYLAN: Statistics measure quantity, not quality. The people in the statistics are people who are very bored. Art, if there is such a thing, is in the bathrooms; everybody knows that. To go to an art gallery thing where you get free milk and doughnuts and where there is a rock-'n'-roll band playing: That's just a status affair. I'm not putting it down, mind you; but I spend a lot of time in the bathroom. I think museums are vulgar. They're all against sex. Anyhow, I didn't say that people "hang out" on the radio, I said they get "hung up" on the radio.

PLAYBOY: Why do you think rock 'n' roll has become such an international phenomenon?

DYLAN: I can't really think that there is any rock 'n' roll. Actually, when you think about it, anything that has no real existence is bound to become an international phenomenon. Anyway, what does it mean, rock 'n' roll? Does it mean Beatles, does it mean John Lee Hooker, Bobby Vinton, Jerry Lewis' kid? What about Lawrence Welk? He must play a few rock-'n'-roll songs. Are all these people the same? Is Ricky Nelson like Otis Redding? Is Mick Jagger really Ma Rainey? I can tell by the way people hold their cigarettes if they like Ricky Nelson. I think it's fine to like Ricky Nelson: I couldn't care less if somebody likes Ricky Nelson. But I think we're getting off the track here. There isn't any Ricky Nelson. There isn't any Beatles; oh, I take that back: there are a lot of beetles. But there isn't any Bobby Vinton. Anyway, the word is not "international phenomenon"; the word is "parental nightmare."

PLAYBOY: In recent years, according to some critics, jazz has lost much of its appeal to the younger generation. Do you agree?

DYLAN: I don't think jazz has ever appealed to the younger generation. Anyway, I don't really know who this younger generation is. I don't think they could get into a jazz club anyway. But jazz is hard to follow; I mean you actually have to like jazz to follow it: and my motto is, never follow anything. I don't know what the motto of the younger generation is, but I would think they'd have to follow their parents. I mean, what would some parent say to his kid if the kid came home with a glass eye, a Charlie Mingus record and a pocketful of feathers? He'd say, "Who are you following?" And the poor kid would have to stand there with water in his shoes, a bow tie on his ear and soot pouring out of his belly button and say, "Jazz, Father, I've been following jazz." And his father would probably say, "Get a broom and clean up all that soot before you go to sleep." Then the kid's mother would tell her friends, "Oh yes, our little Donald, he's part of the younger generation, you know."

PLAYBOY: You used to say that you wanted to perform as little as possible, that you wanted to keep most of your time to yourself. Yet you're doing more concerts and cutting more records every year. Why? Is it the money?

DYLAN: Everything is changed now from before. Last spring. I guess I was going to quit singing. I was very drained, and the way things were going, it was a very draggy situation - I mean, when you do "Everybody Loves You for Your Black Eye," and meanwhile the back of your head is caving in. Anyway, I was playing a lot of songs I didn't want to play. I was singing words I didn't really want to sing. I don't mean words like "God" and "mother" and "President" and "suicide" and "meat cleaver." I mean simple little words like "if" and "hope" and "you." But "Like a Rolling Stone" changed it all: I didn't care anymore after that about writing books or poems or whatever. I mean it was some thing that I myself could dig. It's very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don't dig you. It's also very deadly entertainment wise. Contrary to what some scary people think, I don't play with a band now for any kind of propaganda-type or commercial-type reasons. It's just that my songs are pictures and the band makes the sound of the pictures.

PLAYBOY: Do you feel that acquiring a combo and switching from folk to folkrock has improved you as a performer?

DYLAN: I'm not interested in myself as a performer. Performers are people who perform for other people. Unlike actors, I know what I'm saying. It's very simple in my mind. It doesn't matter what kind of audience reaction this whole thing gets. What happens on the stage is straight. It doesn't expect any rewards or fines from any kind of outside agitators. It's ultra-simple, and would exist whether anybody was looking or not.

As far as folk and folk-rock are concerned, it doesn't matter what kind of nasty names people invent for the music. It could be called arsenic music, or perhaps Phaedra music. I don't think that such a word as folk-rock has anything to do with it. And folk music is a word I can't use. Folk music is a bunch of fat people. I have to think of all this as traditional music. Traditional music is based on hexagrams. It comes about from legends, Bibles, plagues, and it revolves around vegetables and death. There's nobody that's going to kill traditional music. All these songs about roses growing out of people's brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels - they're not going to die. It's all those paranoid people who think that someone's going to come and take away their toilet paper - they're going to die. Songs like "Which Side Are You On?" and "I Love You, Porgy" - they're not folk-music songs; they're political songs. They're already dead. Obviously, death is not very universally accepted. I mean, you'd think that the traditional-music people could gather from their songs that mystery - just plain simple mystery - is a fact, a traditional fact. I listen to the old ballads; but I wouldn't go to a party and listen to the old ballads. I could give you descriptive detail of what they do to me, but some people would probably think my imagination had gone mad. It strikes me funny that people actually have the gall to think that I have some kind of fantastic imagination. It gets very lonesome. But anyway, traditional music is too unreal to die. It doesn't need to be protected. Nobody's going to hurt it. In that music is the only true, valid death you can feel today off a record player. But like anything else in great demand, people try to own it. It has to do with a purity thing. I think its meaninglessness is holy. Everybody knows that I'm not a folk singer.

PLAYBOY: Some of your old fans would agree with you - and not in a complimentary vein - since your debut with the rock-'n'-roll combo at last year's Newport Folk Festival, where many of them booed you loudly for "selling out" to commercial pop tastes. The early Bob Dylan, they felt, was the "pure" Bob Dylan. How do you feel about it?

DYLAN: I was kind of stunned. But I can't put anybody down for coming and booing: after all, they paid to get in. They could have been maybe a little guieter and not so persistent, though. There were a lot of old people there, too; lots of whole families had driven down from Vermont, lots of nurses and their parents, and well, like they just came to hear some relaxing hoedowns, you know, maybe an Indian polka or two. And just when everything's going all right, here I come on, and the whole place turns into a beer factory. There were a lot of people there who were very pleased that I got booed. I saw them afterward. I do resent somewhat, though, that everybody that booed said they did it because they were old fans.

PLAYBOY: What about their charge that you vulgarized your natural gifts?

DYLAN: What can I say? I'd like to see one of these so-called fans. I'd like to have him blindfolded and brought to me. It's like going out to the desert and screaming and then having little kids throw their sandbox at you. I'm only 24. These people that said this - were they Americans?

PLAYBOY: Americans or not, there were a lot of people who didn't like your new sound. In view of tbis widespread negative reaction, do you think you may have made a mistake in changing your style?

DYLAN: A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding. There could be no such thing, anyway, as this action. Either people understand or they pretend to understand - or else they really don't understand. What you're speaking of here is doing wrong things for selfish reasons. I don't know the word for that, unless it's suicide. In any case, it has nothing to do with my music.

PLAYBOY: Mistake or not, what made you decide to go the rock-'n'-roll route?

DYLAN: Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?

PLAYBOY: And that's how you became a rock-'n'-roll singer?

DYLAN: No, that's how I got tuberculosis.

PLAYBOY: Let's turn the question around: Why have you stopped composing and singing protest songs?

DYLAN: I've stopped composing and singing anything that has either a reason to be written or a motive to be sung. Don't get me wrong, now. "Protest" is not my word. I've never thought of myself as such. The word "protest," I think, was made up for people undergoing surgery. It's an amusement-park word. A normal person in his righteous mind would have to have the hiccups to pronounce it honestly. The word "message" strikes me as having a hernia-like sound It's just like the word "delicious." Also the word "marvelous." You know, the English can say "marvelous" pretty good. They can't say "raunchy" so good, though. Well, we each have our thing. Anyway, message songs, as everybody knows, are a drag. It's only college newspaper editors and single girls under 14 that could possibly have time for them.

PLAYBOY: You've said you think message songs are vulgar. Why?

DYLAN: Well, first of all, anybody that's got a message is going to learn from experience that they can't put it into a song. I mean it's just not going to come out the same message. After one or two of these unsuccessful attempts, one realizes that his resultant message, which is not even the same message he thought up and began with, he's now got to stick by it; because, after all, a song leaves your mouth just as soon as it leaves your hands. Are you following me?

PLAYBOY: Oh, perfectly.

DYLAN: Well, anyway, second of all, you've got to respect other people's right to also have a message themselves. Myself, what I'm going to do is rent Town Hall and put about 30 Western Union boys on the bill. I mean, then there'll really be some messages. People will be able to come and hear more messages than they've ever heard before in their life.

PLAYBOY: But your early ballads have been called "songs of passionate protest." Wouldn't that make them "message" music?

DYLAN: This is unimportant. Don't you understand? I've been writing since I was eight years old. I've been playing the guitar since I was ten. I was raised playing and writing whatever it was I had to play and write.

PLAYBOY: Would it be unfair to say, then, as some have, that you were motivated commercially rather than creatively in writing the kind of songs that made you popular?

DYLAN: All right, now, look. It's not all that deep. It's not a complicated thing. My motives, or whatever they are, were never commercial in the money sense of the word. It was more in the don't die-by-the-hacksaw sense of the word. I never did it for money. It happened, and I let it happen to me. There was no reason not to let it happen to me. I couldn't have written before what I write now, anyway. The songs used to be about what I felt and saw. Nothing of my own rhythmic vomit ever entered into it. Vomit is not romantic. I used to think songs are supposed to be romantic. And I didn't want to sing anything that was unspecific. Unspecific things have no sense of time. All of us people have no sense of time; it's a dimensional hangup. Anybody can be specific and obvious. That's always been the easy way. The leaders of the world take the easy way. It's not that it's so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it's just that there's nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about. My older songs, to say the least, were about nothing. The newer ones are about the same nothing - only as seen inside a bigger thing, perhaps called the nowhere. But this is all very constipated. I do know what my songs are about.

PLAYBOY: And what's that?

DYLAN: Oh, some are about four minutes; some are about five, and some, believe it or not, are about eleven or twelve.

PLAYBOY: Can't you be a bit more informative?

DYLAN: Nope.

PLAYBOY: All right. Let's change the subject. As you know, it's the age group from about 16 to 25 that listens to your songs. Why, in your opinion?

DYLAN: I don't see what's so strange about an age group like that listening to my songs. I'm hip enough to know that it ain't going to be the 85-to-90-yearolds. If the 85-to-90-year-olds were listening to me, they'd know that I can't tell them anything. The 16-to-25-year-olds, they probably know that I can't tell them anything either - and they know that I know it. It's a funny business. Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray. I mean it's obvious to anyone who's ever slept in the back seat of a car that I'm just not a schoolteacher.

PLAYBOY: Even though you're not a schoolteacher, wouldn't you like to help the young people who dig you from turning into what some of their parents have become?

DYLAN: Well, I must say that I really don't know their parents. I really don't know if anybody's parents are so bad. Now, I hate to come on like a weakling or a coward, and I realize it might seem kind of irreligious, but I'm really not the right person to tramp around the country saving souls. I wouldn't run over anybody that was laying in the street, and I certainly wouldn't become a hangman. I wouldn't think twice about giving a starving man a cigarette. But I'm not a shepherd. And I'm not about to save anybody from fate, which I know nothing about. "Parents" is not the key word here. The key word is "destiny." I can't save them from that.

PLAYBOY: Still, thousands of young people look up to you as a kind of folk hero. Do you feel some sense of responsibility toward them?

DYLAN: I don't feel I have any responsibility, no. Whoever it is that listens to my songs owes me nothing. How could I possibly have any responsibility to any kind of thousands? What could possibly make me think that I owe anybody anything who just happens to be there? I've never written any song that begins with the words "I've gathered you here tonight . . ." I'm not about to tell anybody to be a good boy or a good girl and they'll go to heaven. I really don't know what the people who are on the receiving end of these songs think of me, anyway. It's horrible. I'll bet Tony Bennett doesn't have to go through this kind of thing. I wonder what Billy the Kid would have answered to such a question.

PLAYBOY: In their admiration for you, many young people have begun to imitate the way you dress - which one adult commentator has called "selfconsciously oddball and defiantly sloppy." What's your reaction to that kind of put-down?

DYLAN: Bullshit. Oh, such bullshit. I know the fellow that said that. He used to come around here and get beat up all the time. He better watch it; some people are after him. They're going to strip him naked and stick him in Times Square. They're going to tie him up, and also put a thermometer in his mouth. Those kind of morbid ideas and remarks are so petty - I mean there's a war going on. People got rickets; everybody wants to start a riot; 40-year-old women are eating spinach by the carload; the doctors haven't got a cure for cancer - and here's some hillbilly talking about how he doesn't like somebody's clothes. Worse than hat, it gets printed and innocent people have to read it. This is a terrible thing. And he's a terrible man. Obviously, he's just living off the fat of himself, and he's expecting his kids to take care of him. His kids probably listen to my records. Just because my clothes are too long, does that mean I'm unqualified for what I do?

PLAYBOY: No, but there are those who think it does - and many of them seem to feel the same way about your long hair. But compared with the shoulder-length coiffures worn by some of the male singing groups these days, your tonsorial tastes are on the conservative side. How do you feel about these far-out hair styles?

DYLAN: The thing that most people don't realize is that it's warmer to have long hair. Everybody wants to be warm. People with short hair freeze easily. Then they try to hide their coldness, and they get jealous of everybody that's warm. Then they become either barbers or Congressmen. A lot of prison wardens have short hair. Have you ever noticed that Abraham Lincoln's hair was much longer than John Wilkes Booth's?

PLAYBOY: Do you think Lincoln wore his hair long to keep his head warm?

DYLAN: Actually, I think it was for medical reasons, which are none of my business. But I guess if you figure it out, you realize that all of one's hair surrounds and lays on the brain inside your head. Mathematically speaking, the more of it you can get out of your head, the better. People who want free minds sometimes overlook the fact that you have to have an uncluttered brain. Obviously, if you get your hair on the outside of your head, your brain will be a little more freer. But all this talk about long hair is just a trick. It's been thought up by men and women who look like cigars - the anti-happiness committee. They're all freeloaders and cops. You can tell who they are: They're always carrying calendars, guns or scissors. They're all trying to get into your quicksand. They think you've got something. I don't know why Abe Lincoln had long hair.

PLAYBOY: Until your abandonment of "message" songs, you were considered not only a major voice in the student protest movement but a militant champion of the civil rights struggle. According to friends, you seemed to feel a special bond of kinship with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which you actively supported both as a performer and as a worker. Why have you withdrawn from participation in all these causes? Have you lost interest in protest as well as in protest songs?

DYLAN: As far as SNCC is concerned, I knew some of the people in it, but I only knew them as people, not as of any part of something that was bigger or better than themselves. I didn't even know what civil rights was before I met some of them. I mean, I knew there were Negroes, and I knew there were a lot of people who don't like Negroes. But I got to admit that if I didn't know some of the SNCC people, I would have gone on thinking that Martin Luther King was really nothing more than some underprivileged war hero. I haven't lost any interest in protest since then. I just didn't have any interest in protest to begin with - any more than I did in war heroes. You can't lose what you've never had. Anyway, when you don't like your situation, you either leave it or else you overthrow it. You can't just stand around and whine about it. People just get aware of your noise; they really don't get aware of you. Even if they give you what you want, it's only because you're making too much noise. First thing you know, you want something else, and then you want something else, and then you want something else, until finally it isn't a joke anymore, and whoever you're protesting against finally gets all fed up and stomps on everybody. Sure, you can go around trying to bring up people who are lesser than you, but then don't forget, you're messing around with gravity. I don't fight gravity. I do believe in equality, but I also believe in distance.

PLAYBOY: Do you mean people keeping their racial distance?

DYLAN: I believe in people keeping everything they've got.

PLAYBOY: Some people might feel that you're trying to cop out of fighting for the things you believe in.

DYLAN: Those would be people who think I have some sort of responsibility toward them. They probably want me to help them make friends. I don't know. They probably either want to set me in their house and have me come out every hour and tell them what time it is, or else they just want to stick me in between the mattress. How could they possibly understand what I believe in?

PLAYBOY: Well, what do you believe in?

DYLAN: I already told you.

PLAYBOY: All right. Many of your folksinging colleagues remain actively involved in the fight for civil rights, free speech and withdrawal from Vietnam. Do you think they're wrong?

DYLAN: I don't think they're wrong, if that's what they see themselves doing. But don't think that what you've got out there is a bunch of little Buddhas all parading up and down. People that use God as a weapon should be amputated upon. You see it around here all the time: "Be good or God won't like you, and you'll go to hell." Things like that. People that march with slogans and things tend to take themselves a little too holy. It would be a drag if they, too, started using God as a weapon.

PLAYBOY: Do you think it's pointless to dedicate yourself to the cause of peace and racial equality?

DYLAN: Not pointless to dedicate yourself to peace and racial equality, but rather, it's pointless to dedicate yourself to the cause; that's really pointless. That's very unknowing. To say "cause of peace" is just like saying "hunk of butter." I mean, how can you listen to anybody who wants you to believe he's dedicated to the hunk and not to the butter? People who can't conceive of how others hurt, they're trying to change the world. They're all afraid to admit that they don't really know each other. They'll all probably be here long after we've gone, and we'll give birth to new ones. But they themselves - I don't think they'll give birth to anything.

PLAYBOY: You sound a bit fatalistic.

DYLAN: I'm not fatalistic. Bank tellers are fatalistic; clerks are fatalistic. I'm a farmer. Who ever heard of a fatalistic farmer? I'm not fatalistic. I smoke a lot of cigarettes, but that doesn't make me fatalistic.

PLAYBOY: You were quoted recently as saying that "songs can't save the world. I've gone through all that." We take it you don't share Pete Seeger's belief that songs can change people, that they can help build international understanding.

DYLAN: On the international understanding part, that's OK. But you have a translation problem there. Anybody with this kind of a level of thinking has to also think about this translation thing. But I don't believe songs can change people anyway. I'm not Pinocchio. I consider that an insult. I'm not part of that. I don't blame anybody for thinking that way. But I just don't donate any money to them. I don't consider them anything like unhip; they're more in the rubber-band category.

PLAYBOY: How do you feel about those who have risked imprisonment by burning their draft cards to signify their opposition to U. S. involvement in Vietnam, and by refusing - as your friend Joan Baez has done - to pay their income taxes as a protest against the Covernment's expenditures on war and weaponry? Do you think they're wasting their time?

DYLAN: Burning draft cards isn't going to end any war. It's not even going to save any lives. If someone can &el more honest with himself by burning his draft card, then that's great; but if he's just going to feel more important because he does it, then that's a drag. I really don't know too much about Joan Baez and her income-tax problems. The only thing I can tell you about Joan Baez is that she's not Belle Starr.

PLAYBOY: Writing about "beard-wearing draft-card burners and pacifist income-tax evaders," one columnist called such protesters "no less outside society than the junkie, the homosexual or the mass murderer." What's your reaction?

DYLAN: I don't believe in those terms. They're too hysterical. They don't describe anything. Most people think that homosexual, gay, queer, queen, faggot are all the same words. Everybody thinks that a junkie is a dope freak. As far as I'm concerned, I don't consider myself outside of anything. I just consider myself not around.

PLAYBOY: Joan Baez recently opened a school in northern California for training civil rights workers in the philosophy and techniques of nonviolence. Are you in sympathy with that concept?

DYLAN: If you mean do I agree with it or not, I really don't see anything to be in agreement with. If you mean has it got my approval, I guess it does, but my approval really isn't going to do it any good. I don't know about other people's sympathy, but my sympathy runs to the lame and crippled and beautiful things. I have a feeling of loss of power - something like a reincarnation feeling; I don't feel that for mechanical things like cars or schools. I'm sure it's a nice school, but if you're asking me would I go to it, I would have to say no.

PLAYBOY: As a college dropout in your freshman year, you seem to take a dim view of schooling in general, whatever the subject.

DYLAN: I really don't think about it.

PLAYBOY: Well, have you ever had any regrets about not completing college?

DYLAN: That would be ridiculous. Colleges are like old-age homes; except for the fact that more people die in colleges than in old-age homes, there's really no difference. People have one great blessing - obscurity - and not really too many people are thankful for it. Everybody is always taught to be thankful for their food and clothes and things like that, but not to be thankful for their obscurity. Schools don't teach that; they teach people to be rebels and lawyers. I'm not going to put down the teaching system; that would be too silly. It's just that it really doesn't have too much to teach. Colleges are part of the American institution; everybody respects them. They're very rich and influential, but they have nothing to do with survival. Everybody knows that.

PLAYBOY: Would you advise young people to skip college, then?

DYLAN: I wouldn't advise anybody to do anything. I certainly wouldn't advise somebody not to go to college; I just wouldn't pay his way through college.

PLAYBOY: Don't you think the things one learns in college can help enrich one's life?

DYLAN: I don't think anything like that is going to enrich my life, no - not my life, anyway. Things are going to happen whether I know why they happen or not. It just gets more complicated when you stick yourself into it. You don't find out why things move. You let them move; you watch them move; you stop them from moving: you start them moving. But you don't sit around and try to figure out why there's movement - unless, of course, you're just an innocent moron, or some wise old Japanese man. Out of all the people who just lay around and ask "Why?", how many do you figure really want to know?

PLAYBOY: Can you suggest a better use for the four years that would otherwise be spent in college?

DYLAN: Well, you could hang around in Italy; you could go to Mexico; you could become a dishwasher; you could even go to Arkansas. I don't know; there are thousands of things to do and places to go. Everybody thinks that you have to bang your head against the wall, but it's silly when you really think about it. I mean, here you have fantastic scientists working on ways to prolong human living, and then you have other people who take it for granted that you have to beat your head against the wall in order to be happy. You can't take everything you don't like as a personal insult. I guess you should go where your wants are bare, where you're invisible and not needed.

PLAYBOY: Would you classify sex among your wants, wherever you go?

DYLAN: Sex is a temporary thing; sex isn't love. You can get sex anywhere. If you're looking for someone to love you, now that's different. I guess you have to stay in college for that.

PLAYBOY: Since you didn't stay in college, does that mean you haven't found someone to love you?

DYLAN: Let's go on to the next question.

PLAYBOY: Do you have any difficulty relating to people - or vice versa?

DYLAN: Well, sometimes I have the feeling that other people want my soul. If I say to them, "I don't have a soul," they say, "I know that. You don't have to tell me that. Not me. How dumb do you think I am? I'm your friend." What can I say except that I'm sorry and I feel bad? I guess maybe feeling bad and paranoia are the same thing.

PLAYBOY: Paranoia is said to be one of the mental states sometimes induced by such hallucinogenic drugs as peyote and LSD. Considering the risks involved, do you think that experimentation with such drugs should be part of the growing up experience for a young person?

DYLAN: I wouldn't advise anybody to use drugs - certainly not the hard drugs; drugs are medicine. But opium and hash and pot - now, those things aren't drugs; they just bend your mind a little. I think everybody's mind should be bent once in a while. Not by LSD, though. LSD is medicine - a different kind of medicine. It makes you aware of the universe, so to speak; you realize how foolish objects are. But LSD is not for groovy people; it's for mad, hateful people who want revenge. It's for people who usually have heart attacks. They ought to use it at the Geneva Convention.

PLAYBOY: Are you concerned, as you approach 30, that you may begin to "go square," lose some of your openness to experience, become leery of change and new experiment?

DYLAN: No. But if it happens, then it happens. What can I say? There doesn't seem to be any tomorrow. Every time I wake up, no matter in what position, it's always been today. To look ahead and start worrying about trivial little things I can't really say has any more importance than looking back and remembering trivial little things. I'm not going to become any poetry instructor at any girls' school; I know that for sure. But that's about all I know for sure. I'll just keep doing these different things, I guess.

PLAYBOY: Such as?

DYLAN: Waking up in different positions.

PLAYBOY: What else?

DYLAN: I'm just like anybody else; I'll try anything once.

PLAYBOY: Including theft and murder?

DYLAN: I can't really say I wouldn't commit theft or murder and expect anybody to really believe me. I wouldn't believe anybody if they told me that.

PLAYBOY: By their mid-20s, most people have begun to settle into their niche, to find a place in society. But you've managed to remain inner-directed and uncommitted. What was it that spurred you to run away from home six times between the ages of ten and eighteen and finally to leave for good?

DYLAN: It was nothing; it was just an accident of geography. Like if I was born and raised in New York or Kansas City, I'm sure everything would have turned out different. But Hibbing, Minnesota, was just not the right place for me to stay and live. There really was nothing there. The only thing you could do there was be a miner, and even that kind of thing was getting less and less. The people that lived there - they're nice people; I've been all over the world since I left there, and they still stand out as being the least hung-up. The mines were just dying, that's all; but that's not their fault. Everybody about my age left there. It was no great romantic thing. It didn't take any great amount of thinking or individual genius, and there certainly wasn't any pride in it. I didn't run away from it; I just turned my back on it. It couldn't give me anything. It was very void-like. So leaving wasn't hard at all; it would have been much harder to stay. I didn't want to die there. As I think about it now, though, it wouldn't be such a bad place to go back to and die in. There's no place I feel closer to now, or get the feeling that I'm part of, except maybe New York; but I'm not a New Yorker. I'm North Dakota-Minnesota-Midwestern. I'm that color. I speak that way. I'm from someplace called Iron Range. My brains and feeling have come from there. I wouldn't amputate on a drowning man; nobody from out there would.

PLAYBOY: Today, you're on your way to becoming a millionaire. Do you feel in any danger of being trapped by all this affluence - by the things it can buy?

DYLAN: No, my world is very small. Money can't really improve it any; money can just keep it from being smothered.

PLAYBOY: Most big stars find it difficult to avoid getting involved, and sometimes entangled, in managing the business end of their careers. As a man with three thriving careers - as a concert performer, recording star and songwriter - do you ever feel boxed in by such noncreative responsibilities?

DYLAN: No, I've got other people to do that for me. They watch my money; they guard it. They keep their eyes on it at all times; they're supposed to be very smart when it comes to money. They know just what to do with my money. I pay them a lot of it. I don't really speak to them much, and they don't really speak to me at all, so I guess everything is all right.

PLAYBOY: If fortune hasn't trapped you, how about fame? Do you find that your celebrity makes it difficult to keep your private life intact?

DYLAN: My private life has been dangerous from the beginning. All this does is add a little atmosphere.

PLAYBOY: You used to enjoy wandering across the country - taking off on openend trips, roughing it from town to town, with no particular destination in mind. But you seem to be doing much less of that these days. Why? Is it because you're too well known?

DYLAN: It's mainly because I have to be in Cincinnati Friday night, and the next night I got to be in Atlanta, and then the next night after that, I have to be in Buffalo. Then I have to write some more songs for a record album.

PLAYBOY: Do you get the chance to ride your motorcycle much anymore?

DYLAN: I'm still very patriotic to the highway, but I don't ride my motorcycle too much anymore, no.

PLAYBOY: How do you get your kicks these days, then?

DYLAN: I hire people to look into my eyes, and then I have them kick me.

PLAYBOY: And that's the way you get your kicks?

DYLAN: No. Then I forgive them; that's where my kicks come in.

PLAYBOY: You told an interviewer last year, "I've done everything I ever wanted to." If that's true, what do you have to look forward to?

DYLAN: Salvation. Just plain salvation.

PLAYBOY: Anything else?

DYLAN: Praying. I'd also like to start a cookbook magazine. And I've always wanted to be a boxing referee. I want to referee a heavyweight championship fight. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine any fighter in his right mind recognizing me?

PLAYBOY: If your popularity were to wane, would you welcome being anonymous again?

DYLAN: You mean welcome it, like I'd welcome some poor pilgrim coming in from the rain? No, I wouldn't welcome it; I'd accept it, though. Someday, obviously, I'm going to have to accept it.

PLAYBOY: Do you ever think about marrying, settling down, having a home, maybe living abroad? Are there any luxuries you'd like to have, say, a yacht or a Rolls-Royce?

DYLAN: No, I don't think about those things. If I felt like buying anything, I'd buy it. What you're asking me about is the future, my future. I'm the last person in the world to ask about my future.

PLAYBOY: Are you saying you're going to be passive and just let things happen to you?

DYLAN: Well, that's being very philosophical about it, but I guess it's true.

PLAYBOY: You once planned to write a novel. Do you still?

DYLAN: I don't think so. All my writing goes into the songs now. Other forms don't interest me anymore.

PLAYBOY: Do you have any unfulfilled ambitions?

DYLAN: Well, I guess I've always wanted to be Anthony Quinn in "La Strada". Not always - only for about six years now; it's not one of those childhood-dream things. Oh, and come to think of it, I guess I've always wanted to be Brigitte Bardot, too; but I don't really want to think about that too much.

PLAYBOY: Did you ever have the standard boyhood dream of growing up to be President?

DYLAN: No. When I was a boy, Harry Truman was President; who'd want to be Harry Truman?

PLAYBOY: Well, let's suppose that you were the President. What would you accomplish during your first thousand days?

DYLAN: Well, just for laughs, so long as you insist, the first thing I'd do is probably move the White House. Instead of being in Texas, it'd be on the East Side in New York. McGeorge Bundy would definitely have to change his name, and General McNamara would be forced to wear a coonskin cap and shades. I would immediately rewrite "The Star-Spangled Banner," and little school children, instead of memorizing "America the Beautiful," would have to memorize "Desolation Row" [one of Dylan's latest songs]. And I would immediately call for a showdown with Mao Tse-tung; I would fight him personally - and I'd get somebody to film it.

PLAYBOY: One final question: Even though you've more or less retired from political and social protest, can you conceive of any circumstance that might persuade you to reinvolve yourself?

DYLAN: No, not unless all the people in the world disappeared.

As a versatile musicologist and trenchant social commentator, Nat Hentoff
brings uniquely pertinent credentials to his dual tasks in this month's
issue - as the author of "We're Happening All Over, Baby!" (on page 82) an
insightful anatomizing of America's youthful new generation of
anti-establishment social activists, and as interviewer of this month's
controversial subject, about whom he writes:
"Less than five years ago, Bob Dylan was scuffling in New York - sleeping in
friends' apartments on the Lower East Side and getting very occasional
singing work at Gerde's Folk City, an unprepossessing bar for citybillies in
the Village. With his leather cap, blue jeans and battered desert boots -
his unvarying costume in those days - Dylan looked like an updated,
undernourished Huck Finn. And like Huck, he had come out of the Midwest; he
would have said 'escaped.' The son of Abraham Zimmerman, an appliance
dealer, he was raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, a bleak mining town near the
Canadian border. Though he ran away from home regularly between the ages of
10 and 18, young Zimmerman did manage to finish high school, and went on to
spend about six months at the University of Minnesota in 1960. By then, he
called himself Bob Dylan - in tribute to Dylan Thomas, according to legend;
but actually after a gambling uncle whose last name was similar to Dylan.  
"In the fall of that year, he came East to visit his idol, Woody Guthrie, in
the New Jersey hospital where the Okie folk-singing bard was wasting away
with a progressive disease of the nervous syste1m. Dylan stayed and tried to
scrape together a singing career. According to those who knew him then, he
was shy and stubborn but basically friendly and, beneath the hipster stance,
uncommonly gentle. But they argued about his voice. Some found its flat
Midwestern tones gratingly mesmeric; others agreed with a Missouri folk
singer who had likened the Dylan sound to that of 'a dog with his leg caught
in barbed wire.' All agreed, however, that his songs were strangely personal
and often disturbing, a pungent mixture of loneliness and defiance laced
with traces of Guthrie, echoes of the Negro blues singers and more than a
suggestion of country-and-western; but essentially Dylan was developing his
own penetratingly distinctive style. Yet the voice was so harsh and the
songs so bitterly scornful of conformity, race prejudice and the mythology
of the Cold War that most of his friends couldn't conceive of Dylan making
it big even though folk music was already on the, rise.  
"They were wrong. In September of 1961, a music critic for The New York
Times caught his act at Gerde's and hailed the scruffy l9-year-old
Minnesotan as a significant new voice on the folk horizon. Around the same
time, he was signed by Columbia Records, and his first album was released
early the next year. Though it was far from a smash hit, concerts and club
engagements gradually multiplied; and then Dylan scored his storied triumph
at the Newport Folk Festival in 1962. His next LP began to move, and in the
spring of 1963 came his first big single: 'Blowin' in the Wind.' That same
spring he turned down a lucrative guest shot on 'The Ed Sullivan Show'
because CBS wouldn't permit him to sing a mordant parody he'd written about
the John Birch Society. For the nation's young, the Dylan image began to
form: kind of a singing James Dean with over tones of Holden Caulfeld; he
was making it, but he wasn't selling out. His concerts began to attract
overflow crowds, and his songs - in performances by him and other folk
singers - were rushing onto the hit charts. One of them, 'The Times They Are
A-Changin',' became an anthem for the rebellious young, who savored its
message that adults don't know where it's at and can't tell their children
what to do.  
"By 1965 he had become a major phenomenon on the music scene. More and more
folk performers, from Joan Baez to the Byrds, considered it mandatory to
have an ample supply of Dylan songs in their repertoires; in one frantically
appreciative month - last August - 18 different recordings of Dylan ballads
were pressed by singers other than the composer himself. More and more
aspiring folk singers - and folk-song writers - have begun to sound like
Dylan. The current surge of 'protest' songs by such long-haired, post-beat
rock-'n'-rollers as Barry McGuire and Sonny and Cher is credited to Dylan.
And the newest commercial boom, 'folk-rock,' a fusion of fold-like lyrics
with an r-'n'-r beat and background, is an outgrowth in large part, of
Dylan's recent decision - decried as a 'sellout' by folknik purists - to
perform with a roch-'n'-roll combo rather than continue to accompany himself
alone on the guitar. Backed by the big beat of the new group, Dylan tours
England with as much tumultuous success as he does America, and the air play
for his single records in both countries is rivaled only by that of the
Beatles, Herman's Hermits and the Rolling Stones on the Top 40 deejay shows.
In the next 18 months, his income - from personal appearances, records and
composer's royalties - is expected to exceed $1,000,000.  
"Withal, Dylan seems outwardly much the same as he did during the lean years
in Greenwich Village. His dress is still casual to the point of exoticism;
his hair is still long and frizzy, and he is still no more likely to be seen
wearing a necktie than a cutaway. But there have been changes. No longer
protesting polemically against the bomb, race prejudice and conformity, his
songs have become increasingly personal - a surrealistic amalgam of
kafkaesque menace corrosive satire and opaque sensuality. His lyrics are
more crowded than t!ver with tumbling words and restless images, and they
read more like free-verse poems than conventional lines. Adults still have
difficulty digging his offbeat language - and its message of alienation -
but the young continue to tune in and turn on.  
"But there are other changes. Dylan has become elusive. He is no longer seen
in his old haunts in the Village and on the Lower East Side. With few
exceptions, he avoids interviewers, and in public, he is usually seen from
afar at the epicenter of a protective coterie of tousle-topped young men
dressed like him, and lissome, straight-haired young ladies who also seem to
be dressed like him. His home base, if it can be called that, is a house his
manager owns near Woodstock, a fashionable artists' colony in New York
State, and he also enjoys the run of his manager's apartment on dignified
Gramercy Park in New York City. There are tales told of Dylan the
motorcyclist, the novelist, the maker of high-camp home movies; but except
among his small circle of intimates, the 24-year-old folk hero is
inscrutably aloof.    
"It was only after a long period of evasion and hesitation that Dylan
finally agreed to grant this 'Playboy Interview' - the longest he's ever
given. We met him on the 10th floor of the new CBS and Columbia Records
building in mid-Manhattan. The room was antiseptic: white walls with black
trim, contemporary furniture with severe lines, avantgarde art chosen by
committee, everything in order, neat desks, neat personnel. In this sterile
setting, slouched in a chair across from us, Dylan struck a refreshingly
discordant note - with his untamed brownish-blond mane brushing the collar
of his tieless blue plaid shirt, in his black jacket, gray
vaudevillian-striped pipestem pants and well-worn blue-suede shoes. Sitting
nearby - also long-haired, tieless and blackjacketed, but wearing faded
jeans - was a stringy young man whom the singer identified only as Taco
Pronto. As Dylan spoke - in a soft drawl, smiling only rarely and
fleetingly, sipping tea and chainsmoking cigarettes - his unspeaking friend
chuckled and nodded appreciatively from the side lines. Tense and guarded at
first Dylan gradually began to loosen up, then to open up, as he tried to
tell us - albeit a bit surrealistically - just where he's been and where
he's going. Under the circumstances, we chose to play straight man in our
questions, believing that to have done othervise would have stemmed the
freewheeling flow of Dylan's responses."   
PLAYBOY: 'Popular songs," you told a reporter last year, "are the only art
form that describes the temper of the times. The only place where it's
happening is on the radio and records. That's where the people hang out.
It's not in books; it's not on the stage; it's not in the galleries. All
this art thev've been talking about, it just remains on the shelI. It
doesn't make anyone happier." In view of the fact that more people than ever
before are reading books and going to plays and art galleries, do you think
that statement is borne out by the facts?  
DYLAN: Statistics measure quantity, not quality. The people in the
statistics are people who are very bored. Art, if there is such a thing, is
in the bathrooms; everybody knows that. To go to an art gallery thing where
you get free milk and doughnuts and where there is a rock-'n'-roll band
playing: That's just a status affair. I'm not putting it down, mind you; but
I spend a lot of time in the bathroom. I think museums are vulgar. They're
all against sex. Anyhow, I didn't say that people "hang out" on the radio, I
said they get "hung up" on the radio.  
PLAYBOY: Why do you think rock 'n' roll has become such an international
phenomenon?  
DYLAN: I can't really think that there is any rock 'n' roll. Actually,
when you think about it, anything that has no real existence is bound to
become an international phenomenon. Anyway, what does it mean, rock 'n'
roll? Does it mean Beatles, does it mean John Lee Hooker, Bobby Vinton,
Jerry Lewis' kid? What about Lawrence Welk? He must play a few rock-'n'-roll
songs. Are all these people the same? Is Ricky Nelson like Otis Redding? Is
Mick Jagger really Ma Rainey? I can tell by the way people hold their
cigarettes if they like Ricky Nelson. I think it's fine to like Ricky
Nelson: I couldn't care less if somebody likes Ricky Nelson. But I think
we're getting off the track here. There isn't any Ricky Nelson. There isn't
any Beatles; oh, I take that back: there are a lot of beetles. But there
isn't any Bobby Vinton. Anyway, the word is not "international phenomenon";
the word is "parental nightmare."  
PLAYBOY: In recent years, according to some critics, jazz has lost much of
its appeal to the younger generation. Do you agree?  
DYLAN: I don't think jazz has ever appealed to the younger generation.
Anyway, I don't really know who this younger generation is. I don't think
they could get into a jazz club anyway. But jazz is hard to follow; I mean
you actually have to like jazz to follow it: and my motto is, never follow
anything. I don't know what the motto of the younger generation is, but I
would think they'd have to follow their parents. I mean, what would some
parent say to his kid if the kid came home with a glass eye, a Charlie
Mingus record and a pocketful of feathers? He'd say, "Who are you
following?" And the poor kid would have to stand there with water in his
shoes, a bow tie on his ear and soot pouring out of his belly button and
say, "Jazz, Father, I've been following jazz." And his father would probably
say, "Get a broom and clean up all that soot before you go to sleep." Then
the kid's mother would tell her friends, "Oh yes, our little Donald, he's
part of the younger generation, you know."  
PLAYBOY: You used to say that you wanted to perform as little as possible,
that you wanted to keep most of your time to yourself. Yet you're doing more
concerts and cutting more records every year. Why? Is it the money?  
DYLAN: Everything is changed now from before. Last spring. I guess I was
going to quit singing. I was very drained, and the way things were going, it
was a very draggy situation - I mean, when you do "Everybody Loves You for
Your Black Eye," and meanwhile the back of your head is caving in. Anyway, I
was playing a lot of songs I didn't want to play. I was singing words I
didn't really want to sing. I don't mean words like "God" and "mother" and
"President" and "suicide" and "meat cleaver." I mean simple little words
like "if" and "hope" and "you." But "Like a Rolling Stone" changed it all: I
didn't care anymore after that about writing books or poems or whatever. I
mean it was some thing that I myself could dig. It's very tiring having
other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don't dig you.
It's also very deadly entertainment wise. Contrary to what some scary people
think, I don't play with a band now for any kind of propaganda-type or
commercial-type reasons. It's just that my songs are pictures and the band
makes the sound of the pictures.  
PLAYBOY: Do you feel that acquiring a combo and switching from folk to
folkrock has improved you as a performer?  
DYLAN: I'm not interested in myself as a performer. Performers are people
who perform for other people. Unlike actors, I know what I'm saying. It's
very simple in my mind. It doesn't matter what kind of audience reaction
this whole thing gets. What happens on the stage is straight. It doesn't
expect any rewards or fines from any kind of outside agitators. It's
ultra-simple, and would exist whether anybody was looking or not.  
As far as folk and folk-rock are concerned, it doesn't matter what kind of
nasty names people invent for the music. It could be called arsenic music,
or perhaps Phaedra music. I don't think that such a word as folk-rock has
anything to do with it. And folk music is a word I can't use. Folk music is
a bunch of fat people. I have to think of all this as traditional music.
Traditional music is based on hexagrams. It comes about from legends,
Bibles, plagues, and it revolves around vegetables and death. There's nobody
that's going to kill traditional music. All these songs about roses growing
out of people's brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn
into angels - they're not going to die. It's all those paranoid people who
think that someone's going to come and take away their toilet paper -
they're going to die. Songs like "Which Side Are You On?" and "I Love You,
Porgy" - they're not folk-music songs; they're political songs. They're
already dead. Obviously, death is not very universally accepted. I mean,
you'd think that the traditional-music people could gather from their songs
that mystery - just plain simple mystery - is a fact, a traditional fact. I
listen to the old ballads; but I wouldn't go to a party and listen to the
old ballads. I could give you descriptive detail of what they do to me, but
some people would probably think my imagination had gone mad. It strikes me
funny that people actually have the gall to think that I have some kind of
fantastic imagination. It gets very lonesome. But anyway, traditional music
is too unreal to die. It doesn't need to be protected. Nobody's going to
hurt it. In that music is the only true, valid death you can feel today off
a record player. But like anything else in great demand, people try to own
it. It has to do with a purity thing. I think its meaninglessness is holy.
Everybody knows that I'm not a folk singer.  
PLAYBOY: Some of your old fans would agree with you - and not in a
complimentary vein - since your debut with the rock-'n'-roll combo at last
year's Newport Folk Festival, where many of them booed you loudly for
"selling out" to commercial pop tastes. The early Bob Dylan, they felt, was
the "pure" Bob Dylan. How do you feel about it?  
DYLAN: I was kind of stunned. But I can't put anybody down for coming and
booing: after all, they paid to get in. They could have been maybe a little
guieter and not so persistent, though. There were a lot of old people there,
too; lots of whole families had driven down from Vermont, lots of nurses and
their parents, and well, like they just came to hear some relaxing hoedowns,
you know, maybe an Indian polka or two. And just when everything's going all
right, here I come on, and the whole place turns into a beer factory. There
were a lot of people there who were very pleased that I got booed. I saw
them afterward. I do resent somewhat, though, that everybody that booed said
they did it because they were old fans.  
PLAYBOY: What about their charge that you vulgarized your natural gifts?  
DYLAN: What can I say? I'd like to see one of these so-called fans. I'd
like to have him blindfolded and brought to me. It's like going out to the
desert and screaming and then having little kids throw their sandbox at you.
I'm only 24. These people that said this - were they Americans?  
PLAYBOY: Americans or not, there were a lot of people who didn't like your
new sound. In view of tbis widespread negative reaction, do you think you
may have made a mistake in changing your style?  
DYLAN: A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding. There could be no such
thing, anyway, as this action. Either people understand or they pretend to
understand - or else they really don't understand. What you're speaking of
here is doing wrong things for selfish reasons. I don't know the word for
that, unless it's suicide. In any case, it has nothing to do with my music.  
PLAYBOY: Mistake or not, what made you decide to go the rock-'n'-roll route?  
DYLAN: Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first
thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a
pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to
Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up
in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and
move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from
Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a
job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a
delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this
13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery
boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know
I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles
and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a
carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a
high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't
much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can
turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy
shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down,
and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to
be a star. What could I say?  
PLAYBOY: And that's how you became a rock-'n'-roll singer?  
DYLAN: No, that's how I got tuberculosis.  
PLAYBOY: Let's turn the question around: Why have you stopped composing and
singing protest songs?  
DYLAN: I've stopped composing and singing anything that has either a reason
to be written or a motive to be sung. Don't get me wrong, now. "Protest" is
not my word. I've never thought of myself as such. The word "protest," I
think, was made up for people undergoing surgery. It's an amusement-park
word. A normal person in his righteous mind would have to have the hiccups
to pronounce it honestly. The word "message" strikes me as having a
hernia-like sound It's just like the word "delicious." Also the word
"marvelous." You know, the English can say "marvelous" pretty good. They
can't say "raunchy" so good, though. Well, we each have our thing. Anyway,
message songs, as everybody knows, are a drag. It's only college newspaper
editors and single girls under 14 that could possibly have time for them.  
PLAYBOY: You've said you think message songs are vulgar. Why?  
DYLAN: Well, first of all, anybody that's got a message is going to learn
from experience that they can't put it into a song. I mean it's just not
going to come out the same message. After one or two of these unsuccessful
attempts, one realizes that his resultant message, which is not even the
same message he thought up and began with, he's now got to stick by it;
because, after all, a song leaves your mouth just as soon as it leaves your
hands. Are you following me?  
PLAYBOY: Oh, perfectly.  
DYLAN: Well, anyway, second of all, you've got to respect other people's
right to also have a message themselves. Myself, what I'm going to do is
rent Town Hall and put about 30 Western Union boys on the bill. I mean, then
there'll really be some messages. People will be able to come and hear
more messages than they've ever heard before in their life.  
PLAYBOY: But your early ballads have been called "songs of passionate
protest." Wouldn't that make them "message" music?  
DYLAN: This is unimportant. Don't you understand? I've been writing since I
was eight years old. I've been playing the guitar since I was ten. I was
raised playing and writing whatever it was I had to play and write.  
PLAYBOY: Would it be unfair to say, then, as some have, that you were
motivated commercially rather than creatively in writing the kind of songs
that made you popular?  
DYLAN: All right, now, look. It's not all that deep. It's not a complicated
thing. My motives, or whatever they are, were never commercial in the money
sense of the word. It was more in the don't die-by-the-hacksaw sense of the
word. I never did it for money. It happened, and I let it happen to me.
There was no reason not to let it happen to me. I couldn't have written
before what I write now, anyway. The songs used to be about what I felt and
saw. Nothing of my own rhythmic vomit ever entered into it. Vomit is not
romantic. I used to think songs are supposed to be romantic. And I didn't
want to sing anything that was unspecific. Unspecific things have no sense
of time. All of us people have no sense of time; it's a dimensional hangup.
Anybody can be specific and obvious. That's always been the easy way. The
leaders of the world take the easy way. It's not that it's so difficult to
be unspecific and less obvious; it's just that there's nothing, absolutely
nothing, to be specific and obvious about. My older songs, to say the
least, were about nothing. The newer ones are about the same nothing - only
as seen inside a bigger thing, perhaps called the nowhere. But this is all
very constipated. I do know what my songs are about.  
PLAYBOY: And what's that?  
DYLAN: Oh, some are about four minutes; some are about five, and some,
believe it or not, are about eleven or twelve.  
PLAYBOY: Can't you be a bit more informative?  
DYLAN: Nope.  
PLAYBOY: All right. Let's change the subject. As you know, it's the age
group from about 16 to 25 that listens to your songs. Why, in your opinion?  
DYLAN: I don't see what's so strange about an age group like that listening
to my songs. I'm hip enough to know that it ain't going to be the
85-to-90-yearolds. If the 85-to-90-year-olds were listening to me, they'd
know that I can't tell them anything. The 16-to-25-year-olds, they probably
know that I can't tell them anything either - and they know that I know
it. It's a funny business. Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than
I'm an ashtray. I mean it's obvious to anyone who's ever slept in the back
seat of a car that I'm just not a schoolteacher.  
PLAYBOY: Even though you're not a schoolteacher, wouldn't you like to help
the young people who dig you from turning into what some of their parents
have become?  
DYLAN: Well, I must say that I really don't know their parents. I really
don't know if anybody's parents are so bad. Now, I hate to come on like a
weakling or a coward, and I realize it might seem kind of irreligious, but
I'm really not the right person to tramp around the country saving souls. I
wouldn't run over anybody that was laying in the street, and I certainly
wouldn't become a hangman. I wouldn't think twice about giving a starving
man a cigarette. But I'm not a shepherd. And I'm not about to save anybody
from fate, which I know nothing about. "Parents" is not the key word here.
The key word is "destiny." I can't save them from that.  
PLAYBOY: Still, thousands of young people look up to you as a kind of folk
hero. Do you feel some sense of responsibility toward them?  
DYLAN: I don't feel I have any responsibility, no. Whoever it is that
listens to my songs owes me nothing. How could I possibly have any
responsibility to any kind of thousands? What could possibly make me think
that I owe anybody anything who just happens to be there? I've never written
any song that begins with the words "I've gathered you here tonight . . ."
I'm not about to tell anybody to be a good boy or a good girl and they'll go
to heaven. I really don't know what the people who are on the receiving end
of these songs think of me, anyway. It's horrible. I'll bet Tony Bennett
doesn't have to go through this kind of thing. I wonder what Billy the Kid
would have answered to such a question.  
PLAYBOY: In their admiration for you, many young people have begun to
imitate the way you dress - which one adult commentator has called
"selfconsciously oddball and defiantly sloppy." What's your reaction to that
kind of put-down?  
DYLAN: Bullshit. Oh, such bullshit. I know the fellow that said that. He
used to come around here and get beat up all the time. He better watch it;
some people are after him. They're going to strip him naked and stick him in
Times Square. They're going to tie him up, and also put a thermometer in his
mouth. Those kind of morbid ideas and remarks are so petty - I mean there's
a war going on. People got rickets; everybody wants to start a riot;
40-year-old women are eating spinach by the carload; the doctors haven't got
a cure for cancer - and here's some hillbilly talking about how he doesn't
like somebody's clothes. Worse than hat, it gets printed and innocent people
have to read it. This is a terrible thing. And he's a terrible man.
Obviously, he's just living off the fat of himself, and he's expecting his
kids to take care of him. His kids probably listen to my records. Just
because my clothes are too long, does that mean I'm unqualified for what I
do?  
PLAYBOY: No, but there are those who think it does - and many of them seem
to feel the same way about your long hair. But compared with the
shoulder-length coiffures worn by some of the male singing groups these
days, your tonsorial tastes are on the conservative side. How do you feel
about these far-out hair styles?  
DYLAN: The thing that most people don't realize is that it's warmer to
have long hair. Everybody wants to be warm. People with short hair freeze
easily. Then they try to hide their coldness, and they get jealous of
everybody that's warm. Then they become either barbers or Congressmen. A lot
of prison wardens have short hair. Have you ever noticed that Abraham
Lincoln's hair was much longer than John Wilkes Booth's?  
PLAYBOY: Do you think Lincoln wore his hair long to keep his head warm?  
DYLAN: Actually, I think it was for medical reasons, which are none of my
business. But I guess if you figure it out, you realize that all of one's
hair surrounds and lays on the brain inside your head. Mathematically
speaking, the more of it you can get out of your head, the better. People
who want free minds sometimes overlook the fact that you have to have an
uncluttered brain. Obviously, if you get your hair on the outside of your
head, your brain will be a little more freer. But all this talk about long
hair is just a trick. It's been thought up by men and women who look like
cigars - the anti-happiness committee. They're all freeloaders and cops. You
can tell who they are: They're always carrying calendars, guns or scissors.
They're all trying to get into your quicksand. They think you've got
something. I don't know why Abe Lincoln had long hair.  
PLAYBOY: Until your abandonment of "message" songs, you were considered not
only a major voice in the student protest movement but a militant champion
of the civil rights struggle. According to friends, you seemed to feel a
special bond of kinship with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
which you actively supported both as a performer and as a worker. Why have
you withdrawn from participation in all these causes? Have you lost interest
in protest as well as in protest songs?  
DYLAN: As far as SNCC is concerned, I knew some of the people in it, but I
only knew them as people, not as of any part of something that was bigger or
better than themselves. I didn't even know what civil rights was before I
met some of them. I mean, I knew there were Negroes, and I knew there were a
lot of people who don't like Negroes. But I got to admit that if I didn't
know some of the SNCC people, I would have gone on thinking that Martin
Luther King was really nothing more than some underprivileged war hero. I
haven't lost any interest in protest since then. I just didn't have any
interest in protest to begin with - any more than I did in war heroes. You
can't lose what you've never had. Anyway, when you don't like your
situation, you either leave it or else you overthrow it. You can't just
stand around and whine about it. People just get aware of your noise; they
really don't get aware of you. Even if they give you what you want, it's
only because you're making too much noise. First thing you know, you want
something else, and then you want something else, and then you want
something else, until finally it isn't a joke anymore, and whoever you're
protesting against finally gets all fed up and stomps on everybody. Sure,
you can go around trying to bring up people who are lesser than you, but
then don't forget, you're messing around with gravity. I don't fight
gravity. I do believe in equality, but I also believe in distance.  
PLAYBOY: Do you mean people keeping their racial distance?  
DYLAN: I believe in people keeping everything they've got.  
PLAYBOY: Some people might feel that you're trying to cop out of fighting
for the things you believe in.  
DYLAN: Those would be people who think I have some sort of responsibility
toward them. They probably want me to help them make friends. I don't
know. They probably either want to set me in their house and have me come
out every hour and tell them what time it is, or else they just want to
stick me in between the mattress. How could they possibly understand what I
believe in?  
PLAYBOY: Well, what do you believe in?  
DYLAN: I already told you.  
PLAYBOY: All right. Many of your folksinging colleagues remain actively
involved in the fight for civil rights, free speech and withdrawal from
Vietnam. Do you think they're wrong?  
DYLAN: I don't think they're wrong, if that's what they see themselves
doing. But don't think that what you've got out there is a bunch of little
Buddhas all parading up and down. People that use God as a weapon should be
amputated upon. You see it around here all the time: "Be good or God won't
like you, and you'll go to hell." Things like that. People that march with
slogans and things tend to take themselves a little too holy. It would be a
drag if they, too, started using God as a weapon.  
PLAYBOY: Do you think it's pointless to dedicate yourself to the cause of
peace and racial equality?  
DYLAN: Not pointless to dedicate yourself to peace and racial equality, but
rather, it's pointless to dedicate yourself to the cause; that's really
pointless. That's very unknowing. To say "cause of peace" is just like
saying "hunk of butter." I mean, how can you listen to anybody who wants you
to believe he's dedicated to the hunk and not to the butter? People who
can't conceive of how others hurt, they're trying to change the world.
They're all afraid to admit that they don't really know each other. They'll
all probably be here long after we've gone, and we'll give birth to new
ones. But they themselves - I don't think they'll give birth to
anything. 
PLAYBOY: You sound a bit fatalistic.  
DYLAN: I'm not fatalistic. Bank tellers are fatalistic; clerks are
fatalistic. I'm a farmer. Who ever heard of a fatalistic farmer? I'm not
fatalistic. I smoke a lot of cigarettes, but that doesn't make me
fatalistic.  
PLAYBOY: You were quoted recently as saying that "songs can't save the
world. I've gone through all that." We take it you don't share Pete Seeger's
belief that songs can change people, that they can help build international
understanding.  
DYLAN: On the international understanding part, that's OK. But you have a
translation problem there. Anybody with this kind of a level of thinking has
to also think about this translation thing. But I don't believe songs can
change people anyway. I'm not Pinocchio. I consider that an insult. I'm not
part of that. I don't blame anybody for thinking that way. But I just don't
donate any money to them. I don't consider them anything like unhip; they're
more in the rubber-band category.  
PLAYBOY: How do you feel about those who have risked imprisonment by burning
their draft cards to signify their opposition to U. S. involvement in
Vietnam, and by refusing - as your friend Joan Baez has done - to pay their
income taxes as a protest against the Covernment's expenditures on war and 
weaponry? Do you think they're wasting their time?  
DYLAN: Burning draft cards isn't going to end any war. It's not even going
to save any lives. If someone can &amp;el more honest with himself by burning
his draft card, then that's great; but if he's just going to feel more
important because he does it, then that's a drag. I really don't know too
much about Joan Baez and her income-tax problems. The only thing I can tell
you about Joan Baez is that she's not Belle Starr.  
PLAYBOY: Writing about "beard-wearing draft-card burners and pacifist
income-tax evaders," one columnist called such protesters "no less outside
society than the junkie, the homosexual or the mass murderer." What's your
reaction?  
DYLAN: I don't believe in those terms. They're too hysterical. They don't
describe anything. Most people think that homosexual, gay, queer, queen,
faggot are all the same words. Everybody thinks that a junkie is a dope
freak. As far as I'm concerned, I don't consider myself outside of anything.
I just consider myself not around. 
PLAYBOY: Joan Baez recently opened a school in northern California for
training civil rights workers in the philosophy and techniques of
nonviolence. Are you in sympathy with that concept?  
DYLAN: If you mean do I agree with it or not, I really don't see anything to
be in agreement with. If you mean has it got my approval, I guess it does,
but my approval really isn't going to do it any good. I don't know about
other people's sympathy, but my sympathy runs to the lame and crippled and
beautiful things. I have a feeling of loss of power - something like a
reincarnation feeling; I don't feel that for mechanical things like cars or
schools. I'm sure it's a nice school, but if you're asking me would I go to
it, I would have to say no.  
PLAYBOY: As a college dropout in your freshman year, you seem to take a dim
view of schooling in general, whatever the subject.  
DYLAN: I really don't think about it.  
PLAYBOY: Well, have you ever had any regrets about not completing college?  
DYLAN: That would be ridiculous. Colleges are like old-age homes; except for
the fact that more people die in colleges than in old-age homes, there's
really no difference. People have one great blessing - obscurity - and not
really too many people are thankful for it. Everybody is always taught to be
thankful for their food and clothes and things like that, but not to be
thankful for their obscurity. Schools don't teach that; they teach people to
be rebels and lawyers. I'm not going to put down the teaching system; that
would be too silly. It's just that it really doesn't have too much to teach.
Colleges are part of the American institution; everybody respects them.
They're very rich and influential, but they have nothing to do with
survival. Everybody knows that.  
PLAYBOY: Would you advise young people to skip college, then?  
DYLAN: I wouldn't advise anybody to do anything. I certainly wouldn't
advise somebody not to go to college; I just wouldn't pay his way through
college.  
PLAYBOY: Don't you think the things one learns in college can help enrich
one's life?  
DYLAN: I don't think anything like that is going to enrich my life, no - not
my life, anyway. Things are going to happen whether I know why they happen
or not. It just gets more complicated when you stick yourself into it. You
don't find out why things move. You let them move; you watch them move;
you stop them from moving: you start them moving. But you don't sit around
and try to figure out why there's movement - unless, of course, you're
just an innocent moron, or some wise old Japanese man. Out of all the people
who just lay around and ask "Why?", how many do you figure really want to
know?  
PLAYBOY: Can you suggest a better use for the four years that would
otherwise be spent in college?  
DYLAN: Well, you could hang around in Italy; you could go to Mexico; you
could become a dishwasher; you could even go to Arkansas. I don't know;
there are thousands of things to do and places to go. Everybody thinks that
you have to bang your head against the wall, but it's silly when you really
think about it. I mean, here you have fantastic scientists working on ways
to prolong human living, and then you have other people who take it for
granted that you have to beat your head against the wall in order to be
happy. You can't take everything you don't like as a personal insult. I
guess you should go where your wants are bare, where you're invisible and
not needed.  
PLAYBOY: Would you classify sex among your wants, wherever you go?  
DYLAN: Sex is a temporary thing; sex isn't love. You can get sex anywhere.
If you're looking for someone to love you, now that's different. I guess
you have to stay in college for that.  
PLAYBOY: Since you didn't stay in college, does that mean you haven't found
someone to love you?  
DYLAN: Let's go on to the next question.  
PLAYBOY: Do you have any difficulty relating to people - or vice versa?  
DYLAN: Well, sometimes I have the feeling that other people want my soul.
If I say to them, "I don't have a soul," they say, "I know that. You don't
have to tell me that. Not me. How dumb do you think I am? I'm your
friend." What can I say except that I'm sorry and I feel bad? I guess
maybe feeling bad and paranoia are the same thing.  
PLAYBOY: Paranoia is said to be one of the mental states sometimes induced
by such hallucinogenic drugs as peyote and LSD. Considering the risks
involved, do you think that experimentation with such drugs should be part
of the growing up experience for a young person?  
DYLAN: I wouldn't advise anybody to use drugs - certainly not the hard
drugs; drugs are medicine. But opium and hash and pot - now, those things
aren't drugs; they just bend your mind a little. I think everybody's mind
should be bent once in a while. Not by LSD, though. LSD is medicine - a
different kind of medicine. It makes you aware of the universe, so to speak;
you realize how foolish objects are. But LSD is not for groovy people;
it's for mad, hateful people who want revenge. It's for people who usually
have heart attacks. They ought to use it at the Geneva Convention.  
PLAYBOY: Are you concerned, as you approach 30, that you may begin to "go
square," lose some of your openness to experience, become leery of change
and new experiment?  
DYLAN: No. But if it happens, then it happens. What can I say? There doesn't
seem to be any tomorrow. Every time I wake up, no matter in what position,
it's always been today. To look ahead and start worrying about trivial
little things I can't really say has any more importance than looking back
and remembering trivial little things. I'm not going to become any poetry
instructor at any girls' school; I know that for sure. But that's about
all I know for sure. I'll just keep doing these different things, I guess.  
PLAYBOY: Such as?  
DYLAN: Waking up in different positions.  
PLAYBOY: What else?  
DYLAN: I'm just like anybody else; I'll try anything once.  
PLAYBOY: Including theft and murder?  
DYLAN: I can't really say I wouldn't commit theft or murder and expect
anybody to really believe me. I wouldn't believe anybody if they told me
that.  
PLAYBOY: By their mid-20s, most people have begun to settle into their
niche, to find a place in society. But you've managed to remain
inner-directed and uncommitted. What was it that spurred you to run away
from home six times between the ages of ten and eighteen and finally to
leave for good?  
DYLAN: It was nothing; it was just an accident of geography. Like if I was
born and raised in New York or Kansas City, I'm sure everything would have
turned out different. But Hibbing, Minnesota, was just not the right place
for me to stay and live. There really was nothing there. The only thing you
could do there was be a miner, and even that kind of thing was getting less
and less. The people that lived there - they're nice people; I've been all
over the world since I left there, and they still stand out as being the
least hung-up. The mines were just dying, that's all; but that's not their
fault. Everybody about my age left there. It was no great romantic thing.
It didn't take any great amount of thinking or individual genius, and there
certainly wasn't any pride in it. I didn't run away from it; I just turned
my back on it. It couldn't give me anything. It was very void-like. So
leaving wasn't hard at all; it would have been much harder to stay. I didn't
want to die there. As I think about it now, though, it wouldn't be such a
bad place to go back to and die in. There's no place I feel closer to now,
or get the feeling that I'm part of, except maybe New York; but I'm not a
New Yorker. I'm North Dakota-Minnesota-Midwestern. I'm that color. I speak
that way. I'm from someplace called Iron Range. My brains and feeling have
come from there. I wouldn't amputate on a drowning man; nobody from out
there would.  
PLAYBOY: Today, you're on your way to becoming a millionaire. Do you feel in
any danger of being trapped by all this affluence - by the things it can
buy?  
DYLAN: No, my world is very small. Money can't really improve it any; money
can just keep it from being smothered.  
PLAYBOY: Most big stars find it difficult to avoid getting involved, and
sometimes entangled, in managing the business end of their careers. As a man
with three thriving careers - as a concert performer, recording star and
songwriter - do you ever feel boxed in by such noncreative responsibilities?  
DYLAN: No, I've got other people to do that for me. They watch my money;
they guard it. They keep their eyes on it at all times; they're supposed to
be very smart when it comes to money. They know just what to do with my
money. I pay them a lot of it. I don't really speak to them much, and they
don't really speak to me at all, so I guess everything is all right.  
PLAYBOY: If fortune hasn't trapped you, how about fame? Do you find that
your celebrity makes it difficult to keep your private life intact?  
DYLAN: My private life has been dangerous from the beginning. All this does
is add a little atmosphere.  
PLAYBOY: You used to enjoy wandering across the country - taking off on
openend trips, roughing it from town to town, with no particular destination
in mind. But you seem to be doing much less of that these days. Why? Is it
because you're too well known?  
DYLAN: It's mainly because I have to be in Cincinnati Friday night, and the
next night I got to be in Atlanta, and then the next night after that, I
have to be in Buffalo. Then I have to write some more songs for a record
album.  
PLAYBOY: Do you get the chance to ride your motorcycle much anymore?  
DYLAN: I'm still very patriotic to the highway, but I don't ride my
motorcycle too much anymore, no.  
PLAYBOY: How do you get your kicks these days, then?  
DYLAN: I hire people to look into my eyes, and then I have them kick me.  
PLAYBOY: And that's the way you get your kicks?  
DYLAN: No. Then I forgive them; that's where my kicks come in.  
PLAYBOY: You told an interviewer last year, "I've done everything I ever
wanted to." If that's true, what do you have to look forward to?  
DYLAN: Salvation. Just plain salvation.  
PLAYBOY: Anything else?  
DYLAN: Praying. I'd also like to start a cookbook magazine. And I've always
wanted to be a boxing referee. I want to referee a heavyweight championship
fight. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine any fighter in his right mind
recognizing me? 
PLAYBOY: If your popularity were to wane, would you welcome being anonymous
again?  
DYLAN: You mean welcome it, like I'd welcome some poor pilgrim coming in
from the rain? No, I wouldn't welcome it; I'd accept it, though. Someday,
obviously, I'm going to have to accept it.  
PLAYBOY: Do you ever think about marrying, settling down, having a home,
maybe living abroad? Are there any luxuries you'd like to have, say, a yacht
or a Rolls-Royce?  
DYLAN: No, I don't think about those things. If I felt like buying anything,
I'd buy it. What you're asking me about is the future, my future. I'm the
last person in the world to ask about my future.  
PLAYBOY: Are you saying you're going to be passive and just let things
happen to you?  
DYLAN: Well, that's being very philosophical about it, but I guess it's
true.  
PLAYBOY: You once planned to write a novel. Do you still?  
DYLAN: I don't think so. All my writing goes into the songs now. Other forms
don't interest me anymore.  
PLAYBOY: Do you have any unfulfilled ambitions?  
DYLAN: Well, I guess I've always wanted to be Anthony Quinn in "La Strada".
Not always - only for about six years now; it's not one of those
childhood-dream things. Oh, and come to think of it, I guess I've always
wanted to be Brigitte Bardot, too; but I don't really want to think about
that too much.  
PLAYBOY: Did you ever have the standard boyhood dream of growing up to be
President?  
DYLAN: No. When I was a boy, Harry Truman was President; who'd want to be
Harry Truman?  
PLAYBOY: Well, let's suppose that you were the President. What would you
accomplish during your first thousand days?  
DYLAN: Well, just for laughs, so long as you insist, the first thing I'd do
is probably move the White House. Instead of being in Texas, it'd be on the
East Side in New York. McGeorge Bundy would definitely have to change his
name, and General McNamara would be forced to wear a coonskin cap and
shades. I would immediately rewrite "The Star-Spangled Banner," and little
school children, instead of memorizing "America the Beautiful," would have
to memorize "Desolation Row" [one of Dylan's latest songs]. And I would
immediately call for a showdown with Mao Tse-tung; I would fight him
personally - and I'd get somebody to film it.  
PLAYBOY: One final question: Even though you've more or less retired from
political and social protest, can you conceive of any circumstance that
might persuade you to reinvolve yourself?  
DYLAN: No, not unless all the people in the world disappeared.
PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: BOB DYLAN
https://www.interferenza.net/bcs/interw/66-jan.htm
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a5374/vietnam-war-m-company-0365/
M by John Sack: 'Oh my God--we hit a little girl.'
2008-11-14
John Sack
<div><div><p><em>John Sack was an associate producer at CBS News in October of 1965 when he hatched the idea of doing a reported story about following a company from basic training through their first mission in Vietnam. Nothing he read in the press about Army life rang true. Ten years earlier, Sack had published a book concerning his motley military experience as a soldier in the Korean War. He soon realized TV News was not the place for what he wanted to do. So he wrote to Harold Hayes, Esquire’s editor, who assigned Sack to cover “M” company, starting in Fort Dix, New Jersey and ending in Vietnam. The resulting piece—weighing in at 33,000 words—captured the low comedy and tedium of military life as well as the brutalities of combat. “OH MY GOD—WE HIT A LITTLE GIRL”—black and white type against a black backdrop, designed by George Lois, made for one of Esquire’s most memorable covers. Sack was not against the war when he wrote the piece but he returned to Vietnam after the story was published and his 1968 follow-up, “When Demirgian Comes Marching Home Again (Hurrah? Hurrah?)” is much darker and offers little relief or prospect for hope.</em></p><p> —Alex Belth, Esquire Contributing Editor</p><p> M is M Company of the 1st Advanced Infantry Training Brigade in the United States Army Training Center, Infantry, at Ft. Dix, New Jersey, the training cycle of December 13, 1965, to February 3, 1966. It was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division at Di An and to A, B, and C Companies of the 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Infantry, in the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, at Lai Khe. Its first operation was Operation Mastiff, the week of February 21, 1966.</p><p>One, two, three at the most weeks and they would give M company its orders—they</p><p> being those dim Olympian entities who reputedly threw cards into an IBM machine or into a hat to determine where each soldier in M would go next, which ones to stay there in the United States, which to live softly in Europe, and which to fight and to die in Vietnam.</p><p> No matter. What agonized M this evening wasn't what was in its cards but what was in the more immediate offing—an inspection! indeed, its very first inspection by its jazzy young Negro captain. So this evening M was in its white Army underwear waxing the floor of its barracks, shining its black combat boots, turning the barrels of its rifles inside out and picking the dust flecks off with tweezers, unscrewing its eardrums—the usual. The air was thick with the smell of floor wax and rifle oil, a moist aroma that now seemed to M to be woven into the very fabric of Army green. Minutes before, the company had heard a do-or-die exhortation by its bantamweight sergeant, Sergeant Milett. Get yourself clean for my sake, Milett had told M. "I've got a wife, three kids at home. I leave in the dark, I come home in the dark. I haven't talked to them in thirty-six hours. I don't know, maybe they're dead," using psychology, leaning against a two decker bed, reaching an arm through the iron bedstead, beseechingly. "Well …" making a joke of it, "I left them enough food, I shouldn't have to worry," and getting to the point, "I got a boss downstairs, he got a couple bars on his collar, he is the boss I work for. Tomorrow afternoon he will inspect us: don't make a jackass out of me!"</p><div><p><a href="//pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a5374/vietnam-war-m-company-0365/&amp;description=&amp;media=https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/legacy-fre-image-placeholder-1649872437.png?resize=1600:*"></a></p><p></p><figcaption>Media Platforms Design Team</figcaption><p></p></div><p>And all you've got to do is follow the chart! and M company, now in its fourth quick month of Army life and last of infantry training at a large and bleak Eastern camp, had known what Milett meant. The chart appeared in the Soldier's Handbook and it bore the enacting signature of the Army's adjutant general, none other. The insides of a guy's green footlocker (the general had commanded) should be like so; and what a proud inspection they'd have if M would just faithfully comply! The general had ordered that Pepsodent or whatever brand of tooth powder a boy enjoyed must go to the rear of the footlocker, left, it mustn't be dirty or dusty, and it must be bottom backwards so the words TOOTH POWDER appeared upside-down, who would have thought it? The general had charged that a fellow's SHAVING CREAM go to the right while his razor, his blade, his toothbrush, and his comb all covered down on his soap dish; and everything must lie on his whitest towel, the general had declared. To this Army-wide order of battle a mere master sergeant in M's training camp had dared add an innovation: he allowed that a Bible might lie in that footlocker in between the handkerchiefs and the shoe polish, rightside-up. This would be optional, a matter of a man's conscience; but other deviations from the archetypical footlocker, the wall locker, the steel combat stuff to be laid on a soldier's bunk, or the soldier himself—would be gigged, Milett had reminded everyone, and gigged would mean no going home Saturday night; no passes.</p><p> "So … try. Follow the chart," he had pleaded and hurried to where his wife and his children, whew, still lived, and M, a body of two hundred and fifty American boys of all shapes and sizes and wild idiosyncrasies, most of them draftees, some of them volunteers—M company was getting its house in order conscientiously, in some cases even willingly. But not in Private Demirgian's. Demirgian thought it was idiotic, all this footlocker, wall locker, fleck-of-fluff-on-your-shoelace stuff—senseless, most of M would agree but Demirgian alone conspired with himself to get discharged; out, a consummation that he tried to effect by exercising his will-o'-the-wisp power. Demirgian built castles in Spain, in Armenia, in any area M wasn't—he dared to have madly escapist flights of imagination because his intuition secretly assured him that they'd come to naught. He had said to himself once, I could walk in front of somebody's rifle. He had thought he could fall downstairs and tell the doctors, "My brain—it's loose, it's rattling around inside my head," he had come a cropper playing football once and that is how Demirgian's brain had felt, he knew the symptoms. As yet, none of his schemes had become a clear and present danger to M's staying at full strength—but Demirgian had a new thought tonight. His fancy had seized on something that a hard-eyed private had said in the course of a ten o'clock whiskey break, a private who'd been an assistant policeman, a meter maid or something, in Youngstown, Ohio, who had said, a blow in precisely the right part of a jaw would break it. Demirgian, his intellect stimulated and his inhibition paralyzed by two J&amp;B's, now replied, "Yaa!" or words to that effect.</p><p> "Twenty dollars!" the former policeman cried, whipping a wallet out of his vast Army fatigue pocket, slapping a bill of that denomination on the windowsill, clenching his other fist. "Twenty dollars says I can do it."</p><div><p><a href="//pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a5374/vietnam-war-m-company-0365/&amp;description=&amp;media=https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/legacy-fre-image-placeholder-1649872437.png?resize=1600:*"></a></p><p></p><figcaption>Media Platforms Design Team</figcaption><p></p></div><p>"Yaa! There was a guy twice as big as you, he hit me right here and he couldn't break it."</p><p> "That's not where I'm going to hit you, Demirgian! Where is your twenty?"</p><p> "I'll owe it," already conceding.</p><p> "Twenty dollars, Demirgian!" said Youngstown's finest, slapping his green gauntlet down again. He had picked up the bill while nobody watched, apparently—he liked its brave sound on the concrete windowsill, smack! the sound of Demirgian's jaw cracking like a chicken's wishbone. He didn't like Demirgian anyhow. Demirgian didn't stand tall, as soldiers should. Demirgian slouched, he carried his head tilted like a damn violinist, and when he talked it rolled like a basketball on a rim, nature imitating Brando's art.</p><p> "I'll give you an IOU!"</p><p> "Shake! Raise up your chin," and Demirgian did. "A little toward the window," and Demirgian did—Demirgian in some dentist chair, his head tilted, jaw slack, eyes resting tensely on the orange NO SMOKING that was stenciled on M's concrete wall. All of M's sleeping quarters were interior decorated like any city apartment house in its cellar, where the washing machines are. The lengthy low building looked from the outside as though people inside might be working at lathes, and over the black door it announced to all humanity, "M" in black paint.</p><p> "Dammit—more to the right."</p><p> "I'm waiting. I'm waiting," Demirgian said while in some buried subconscious area he may have thought, my friends better rescue me—which seconds later they did.</p><p> "Easy! Yesterday at the 45 range he said to shoot him in the toes," his buddy Sullivan said, stepping between them. "All he wants is get discharged."</p><p> "Sure," Demirgian agreed. He had been telling himself, well … either that or I'll make twenty dollars, the Army hadn't paid him in months, something was wrong at the finance office.</p><div><p><a href="//pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a5374/vietnam-war-m-company-0365/&amp;description=&amp;media=https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/legacy-fre-image-placeholder-1649872437.png?resize=1600:*"></a></p><p></p><figcaption>Media Platforms Design Team</figcaption><p></p></div><p>"You won't get out of the Army with a broken jaw," Sullivan talking.</p><p> "Sure—I won't be able to eat. I'll waste away."</p><p> "Crazy. They'll have you wired up in one day. You want to get out of the Army, get him to break your foot."</p><p> "Can you break my foot?" Demirgian asked, but there is a tide in men's affairs. Already the former policeman was telling his friends yes! he had been drinking whiskey but he wasn't drunk, he would straight-line any of them—twenty bucks! but M was back getting ready for that inspection. All of this happened—do understand. Demirgian is real, so is everyone in this narrative, even the Chillicothe milkman: all about him shortly. Names and hometowns [appear at the end of the story], middle initials too, apologies to Ernie Pyle.</p><p> Anyhow. By two in the morning, all of M's fingernails clean, its blankets as tight as a back plaster, its boots luminous, its combat equipment Brillo-bright and displayed on its bunks in harmony with the general's chart, M company fell asleep in its sleeping bags on the only place left to it—the floor, as infinitesimal iotas of dust silently came to rest on its handiwork.</p><p> M was awakened at four o'clock. Today it devolved on the Chaplain to keep it from falling asleep again just after breakfast, for he would be giving M the day's first class. Though his subject—"Courage"—wasn't one notably rich in Benzedrine content, the Chaplain, a Protestant major, intended to say things like, "I suggest to you that it takes a man with courage of conviction to—" and here he would strike the flat of his palm against his wooden podium (his pulpit, he called it), jerking M out of its stupor in time to hear him finish his sentence, the text to this surprising gesture—"—to put your foot down." He had many tricks, this Chaplain; sometimes he made noises but he had silences, too. He intended to say today, "Do you know what takes courage in a foxhole? It is this," and then he would say " … ," he would say nothing, eons of empty time would go by while everyone's eyes popped open to see if the bottom had dropped out of the universe; and then the Chaplain would say, "It isn't the noises that get you, it's the silence." Also the Chaplain would have movies.</p><p> M got to his great concrete classroom at eight o'clock on this piercingly cold winter morning. In the vast reaches above it, sparrows sat on the heating pipes and made their little squeaking sounds. A sergeant shouted, "Seats!" and as M sat down on the cold metal chairs it shouted back in unison, "Blue balls!" or so one thought until one learned that M had shouted "Blue bolts!" the nickname of its brigade. M was a shouting company. It built up morale, its high-stepping Negro captain believed; also it kept M awake. Breakfast, lunch, and supper at M were a real bedlam because as each soldier entered the busy mess hall he had to left face and stand at attention, and bellow at a sergeant the initials signifying whether he had been drafted or had joined the Army voluntarily. "US, Sergeant!" "RA, Sergeant!" After the meals, the sergeants totaled up each category before reporting it to the mess sergeant, who filed it one whole month before throwing it away.</p><p> "Good morning, men," said the Chaplain. He wore his wool winter field clothes with his black scarf, the symbol of the chaplains corps.</p><p> "Good morning, sir! Blue bolts! On guard! Mighty mighty Mike! Aargh!" M shouted back. The expression Blue bolts—we've been through that. The brigade's motto was On guard, and Mike is phonetic alphabet for M; and Mighty it perfunctorily called itself. Aargh was needed for reasons of rhythm, like coming back to the tonic at the close of a song.</p><p> Both hands on his pulpit, the Chaplain now pushed it forward a few inches across the black linoleum. Scree-e-ch! and everyone in M sat blue-bolt upright as the Chaplain began speaking. He said, "Courage. … "</p><div><p><a href="//pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a5374/vietnam-war-m-company-0365/&amp;description=&amp;media=https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/legacy-fre-image-placeholder-1649872437.png?resize=1600:*"></a></p><p></p><figcaption>Media Platforms Design Team</figcaption><p></p></div><p>But at this instant a very important event was happening one hundred miles away. And if M had only known what a fragile vessel all of its hopes reposed in that morning, its thoughts would have leapt from the Chaplain's lecture and fled across the intervening states to settle upon (a fanfare, please) … the Chillicothe milkman! His name was Elmer Pulver. His was the route east of the N&amp;W tracks in Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1950, when the Korean war began. Elmer in his creaky horse-drawn cart, bringing in newspapers from the gate, rapping on the door cheerily, tat-a-tat-tat, closing the gate behind him so the dog couldn't get out, the nicest, most up-and-coming milkman in town, giving little tasty chips of ice to the same Chillicothe children who would be draft eligible when he was a major in the U.S. Army in Washington, in 1966. Pulver was called up in 1951, but he chose to be an officer instead. Having asked for the infantry first, tanks second, artillery third, he was granted none of these, and as a young lieutenant of engineers, having asked for Korea, he was flown away to Germany—ah, the whimsical they! By 1966, Pulver, now a major and still terribly nice, had been given a desk in the Pentagon's windowless inner rings, also an old wooden swivel chair and a new task: every (would you believe it? every) man in the Army, after he was through training would be assigned to a duty station by Major Pulver. Far from being three horrid witches on a heath somewhere dancing around a pot, they would be Elmer Pulver.</p><p> This winter morning he had a stack of those stiff IBM cards the size of an old British pound note, one apiece for every soldier in M. These cards had green edges, and Pulver had a second deck of colorless IBM cards, one apiece for everywhere on earth that the Army had an opening for riflemen. Seated at his swivel chair, Pulver now took a corncob from its round rack, filled it with tobacco, lit it, and started fingering through his IBM's. Doing it the Army way, he would need to take absolutely any green card and white card and fasten them together with a paper clip: rifleman and assignment and on to the next, another day, another dollar. But the Major was a nice person; he knew he had human beings of many kidneys there in his busy fingers and though it meant working overtime—today was a Saturday, the Pentagon was strange and empty—he wanted to put each soldier where he'd be happiest. And on each boy's IBM card there was a code letter signifying where on this varied planet he would truthfully hope to be stationed next.</p><div><p><a href="//pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a5374/vietnam-war-m-company-0365/&amp;description=&amp;media=https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/legacy-fre-image-placeholder-1649872437.png?resize=1600:*"></a></p><p></p><figcaption>Media Platforms Design Team</figcaption><p></p></div><p>Some of M wanted the dolce vita in Europe. Some had opted for sunny Hawaii or the Caribbean's warm waters. A few adventurous souls had elected Japan. Were the IBM cards to be believed, none of M's two hundred and fifty soldiers wanted to go to Vietnam—but this wasn't so, the cards weren't right. Bigalow wanted to go to Vietnam. He wanted this for that stock American reason, making money—for in Vietnam's jungles he would earn $65 a month combat pay, which he figured would add to $780 after his twelve months' tour of duty. This he figured to put into IBM: where, he figured, in a few thrifty years it would appreciate to $1,000, which—but beyond that Bigalow hadn't figured. But thus far in his Army career, Bigalow hadn't made his preference known to the proper authorities, no fault of his. Many nights earlier, a tall PFC from personnel office had gathered M together in its dayroom—a rumpus room, an area whose bright green pool and ping-pong tables a soldier saw whenever he was on detail to shine the linoleum beneath them; otherwise it was kept behind a steel chain, off limits. That night, though, it had been opened extraordinarily to let that PFC give everyone some little grey mimeographed forms. "Awright!" he had said. "Now! Those who would like to go to Europe write down Europe," no promises made. He himself had taken one mimeographed form and curled it around his index finger, and while he spoke he wiggled it like a swizzlestick in a highball glass or a pencil making O's: a gesture by which he might mean the Army's having its people eternally fill in mimeographed forms. In fact, M had filled in forms so habitually that within minutes it would forget forever ever having completed this. "Awright," said PFC Swizzlestick. "Those who want the Caribbean … " and similarly for Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, Korea, Okinawa, and Bigalow's coveted Vietnam. Then he had gathered up the mimeographed papers and cabled them to the Pentagon, but Bigalow was on KP that evening, standing in white clouds of steam and washing pans. So the code letter on his green IBM card was an X, meaning no known preference.</p><div><p><a href="//pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a5374/vietnam-war-m-company-0365/&amp;description=&amp;media=https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/legacy-fre-image-placeholder-1649872437.png?resize=1600:*"></a></p><p></p><figcaption>Media Platforms Design Team</figcaption><p></p></div><p>Puffing his corncob and thumbing through his second deck of cards, Pulver now learned that in one month the Army had vacancies in Germany and in Vietnam—no place else. Now it happened this freezing Saturday that he had brought his blond and eightyear- old son, Douglas, to the Pentagon (in a week it was Lisa's turn) and to satisfy Douglas' curiosity he showed him the IBM cards, explaining that a soldier who wanted to go to Europe would and that a soldier would go to Vietnam who wanted it—though none did. "Supposing he wants to go to Japan?" Douglas alertly asked, and Pulver explained that though there were no openings that month in this pretty land of geisha girls and cherry blossoms, though there were no Japanese slots he would do his level best by that soldier and order him to Vietnam, since he seemed interested in the Orient and could stop in Japan itself, perhaps, going over or coming back. "Supposing he wants Hawaii?" Douglas said, and Pulver replied: the same, he would go to Vietnam. "Daddy! I can do it myself—please," Douglas said, but Daddy chuckled and said no, and as Douglas sat across from him with a set of crayons drawing some colorful jet airplanes his father began to clip cards together, the green and the white. At noon Douglas ate a hamburger at his desk, Pulver had a roast-beef sandwich on white bread at his.</p><p> At noon an apprehensive M waited in its tidy barracks for Captain Amaker's arrival. Amaker, though, was innocently upon the turnpike in his white Triumph convertible gaily driving to New York City. Ha ha! it had been a trick, really the Captain had never been under the walnut shell. Sly old Milett, that cunning sergeant, had simply made M scrub itself harder by invoking Amaker's awesome name—Amaker who really intended to be in Harlem that afternoon digging the jams there with a friend who pulled down $50 an hour sitting in chairs with an Olivetti and looking over his shoulder as though to say, "As long as you're up, get me a Grant's," in the studios of Ebony magazine's photographers. Instead, M would have its adequacy appraised by that fox in sheep's clothing, Sergeant Machiavelli—Milett. He started inspecting the barracks at two o'clock. He wasn't in any very aggravated mood until a moment later, when his fingers moved across the very first soldier's footlocker in order to open it. And then Milett recognized from the almost imperceptible impedance that it gave to his fingertips the presence of that loathsome substance to whose annihilation he had devoted much of his Army career. He cried out "Dust!" and stretching his fingers wide enough to hold a basketball he pushed them at the face of the footlocker's unfortunate owner, whose name was Private Scott. "Goddam! This is a shame," Milett cried, and Scotty looked truly contrite, eyes on the floor. Usually he was a fun-loving guy, a Negro. The day before Swizzlestick's poll he had watched</p><p> Hawaiian Eye, and on the mimeographed questionnaire he had written, "Hawaii," so that he could dance with the lulu girls.</p><div><p><a href="//pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a5374/vietnam-war-m-company-0365/&amp;description=&amp;media=https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/legacy-fre-image-placeholder-1649872437.png?resize=1600:*"></a></p><p></p><figcaption>Media Platforms Design Team</figcaption><p></p></div><p>"Dust! … Dust! … Dust! … All of them!" Milett said, hurling himself from locker to locker and giving each the fingertip test, a furious Pancho Gonzales forehand. "This is a court-martial offense! You aren't ready for inspection!" he screamed—and suddenly his face wasn't purple, his skin wasn't bedsheet tight, the Sergeant was no longer angry. He laughed. He had realized, this whole thing was ridiculous—ridiculous, that a man should present himself for inspection with his footlocker dusty. "You people … you people," laughing, taking his handkerchief out, wiping the filth from his fingers. "You better wake up, you people don't wake up now you'll never wake up. Only with a bad-conduct discharge. And," his head shaking incredulously, "this is just a sergeant's inspection, suppose it had been the Captain himself!" Cap-tain-him-self is how he pronounced it; quick little quarter-notes. Milett was a Puerto Rican. Three times the Caribbean had knocked down the house where he'd grown up; immigrating to Harlem, shining people's shoes so he could take his girl to the movie but worrying what if she should see me shining shoes, washing his hands with Borax but thinking if I touched her maybe she'd smell it—ten years, and then he had found the Army, where a life to be proud of lay within a man's aspirations: even a Puerto Rican's. He said to M now, "I was a PFC," pronouncing it pee-eff-see. "When the officer opened my locker he had to use sunglasses! because I didn't have a towel there, I had aluminum foil all around! And he said to me,</p><p> You're going to make it some day." Milett's eyes shone as he remembered, there was silverfoil behind his irises. What he couldn't reconcile himself to and couldn't forgive was that M didn't have initiative—M didn't really care.]</p><p> His punishment: no passes that Saturday afternoon. With those melancholy words Milett went to his rooms on the Army post, where he told the day's happenings to his shapely, sweater-wearing wife, showing her the tainted handkerchief. Demirgian and most people went to sleep on their brown Army blankets. Pulver finished his work, and after driving Douglas home he took the family's beagle, Socks, to the veterinarian's, who gave it shots against hepatitis, distemper, and other diseases of dogs.</p><p> "I hate to see-e-e, de ev'-nin' sun go down. … " At the enlisted men's club, a baldheaded man picked concernedly on his banjo, bending over it as though to loosen a knot in one string. He seemed to be thinking … almost … almost. On center stage in their spangled dresses the Barnes sisters did their little dance, and Prochaska, one of M's few emissaries on the club's folding seats, sang quietly along, tapping his visored hat against one knee. "Oh, I hate to see-e-e. … " At seven that evening Milett had given M its passes—but Prochaska couldn't leave, he didn't have the money, they hadn't paid him in months. Something was wrong at the finance office.</p><p> This is an excerpt from "M" by John Sack. It appeared in the October 1966 issue of Esquire.</p><p> <a href="http://classic.esquire.com/m-john-sack/?source=email">Read the Entire Piece on Esquire Classic Now</a></p></div>||||I|||| Search
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 Media Platforms Design Team
 1. News
 2. Vietnam War Stories
 3. M by John Sack: 'Oh my God--we hit a little girl.'

 M

 Memorable for its famous cover line ("Oh my God--we hit a little girl."), this legendary account of one company of American soldiers in Fort Dix, New Jersey, who trained for war and who found it in South Vietnam fifty days later

 By John SackPublished: Nov 14, 2008

 John Sack was an associate producer at CBS News in October of 1965 when he hatched the idea of doing a reported story about following a company from basic training through their first mission in Vietnam. Nothing he read in the press about Army life rang true. Ten years earlier, Sack had published a book concerning his motley military experience as a soldier in the Korean War. He soon realized TV News was not the place for what he wanted to do. So he wrote to Harold Hayes, Esquire’s editor, who assigned Sack to cover “M” company, starting in Fort Dix, New Jersey and ending in Vietnam. The resulting piece—weighing in at 33,000 words—captured the low comedy and tedium of military life as well as the brutalities of combat. “OH MY GOD—WE HIT A LITTLE GIRL”—black and white type against a black backdrop, designed by George Lois, made for one of Esquire’s most memorable covers. Sack was not against the war when he wrote the piece but he returned to Vietnam after the story was published and his 1968 follow-up, “When Demirgian Comes Marching Home Again (Hurrah? Hurrah?)” is much darker and offers little relief or prospect for hope.

 —Alex Belth, Esquire Contributing Editor

 M is M Company of the 1st Advanced Infantry Training Brigade in the United States Army Training Center, Infantry, at Ft. Dix, New Jersey, the training cycle of December 13, 1965, to February 3, 1966. It was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division at Di An and to A, B, and C Companies of the 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Infantry, in the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, at Lai Khe. Its first operation was Operation Mastiff, the week of February 21, 1966.

 One, two, three at the most weeks and they would give M company its orders—they

 being those dim Olympian entities who reputedly threw cards into an IBM machine or into a hat to determine where each soldier in M would go next, which ones to stay there in the United States, which to live softly in Europe, and which to fight and to die in Vietnam.

 No matter. What agonized M this evening wasn't what was in its cards but what was in the more immediate offing—an inspection! indeed, its very first inspection by its jazzy young Negro captain. So this evening M was in its white Army underwear waxing the floor of its barracks, shining its black combat boots, turning the barrels of its rifles inside out and picking the dust flecks off with tweezers, unscrewing its eardrums—the usual. The air was thick with the smell of floor wax and rifle oil, a moist aroma that now seemed to M to be woven into the very fabric of Army green. Minutes before, the company had heard a do-or-die exhortation by its bantamweight sergeant, Sergeant Milett. Get yourself clean for my sake, Milett had told M. "I've got a wife, three kids at home. I leave in the dark, I come home in the dark. I haven't talked to them in thirty-six hours. I don't know, maybe they're dead," using psychology, leaning against a two decker bed, reaching an arm through the iron bedstead, beseechingly. "Well …" making a joke of it, "I left them enough food, I shouldn't have to worry," and getting to the point, "I got a boss downstairs, he got a couple bars on his collar, he is the boss I work for. Tomorrow afternoon he will inspect us: don't make a jackass out of me!"

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 And all you've got to do is follow the chart! and M company, now in its fourth quick month of Army life and last of infantry training at a large and bleak Eastern camp, had known what Milett meant. The chart appeared in the Soldier's Handbook and it bore the enacting signature of the Army's adjutant general, none other. The insides of a guy's green footlocker (the general had commanded) should be like so; and what a proud inspection they'd have if M would just faithfully comply! The general had ordered that Pepsodent or whatever brand of tooth powder a boy enjoyed must go to the rear of the footlocker, left, it mustn't be dirty or dusty, and it must be bottom backwards so the words TOOTH POWDER appeared upside-down, who would have thought it? The general had charged that a fellow's SHAVING CREAM go to the right while his razor, his blade, his toothbrush, and his comb all covered down on his soap dish; and everything must lie on his whitest towel, the general had declared. To this Army-wide order of battle a mere master sergeant in M's training camp had dared add an innovation: he allowed that a Bible might lie in that footlocker in between the handkerchiefs and the shoe polish, rightside-up. This would be optional, a matter of a man's conscience; but other deviations from the archetypical footlocker, the wall locker, the steel combat stuff to be laid on a soldier's bunk, or the soldier himself—would be gigged, Milett had reminded everyone, and gigged would mean no going home Saturday night; no passes.

 "So … try. Follow the chart," he had pleaded and hurried to where his wife and his children, whew, still lived, and M, a body of two hundred and fifty American boys of all shapes and sizes and wild idiosyncrasies, most of them draftees, some of them volunteers—M company was getting its house in order conscientiously, in some cases even willingly. But not in Private Demirgian's. Demirgian thought it was idiotic, all this footlocker, wall locker, fleck-of-fluff-on-your-shoelace stuff—senseless, most of M would agree but Demirgian alone conspired with himself to get discharged; out, a consummation that he tried to effect by exercising his will-o'-the-wisp power. Demirgian built castles in Spain, in Armenia, in any area M wasn't—he dared to have madly escapist flights of imagination because his intuition secretly assured him that they'd come to naught. He had said to himself once, I could walk in front of somebody's rifle. He had thought he could fall downstairs and tell the doctors, "My brain—it's loose, it's rattling around inside my head," he had come a cropper playing football once and that is how Demirgian's brain had felt, he knew the symptoms. As yet, none of his schemes had become a clear and present danger to M's staying at full strength—but Demirgian had a new thought tonight. His fancy had seized on something that a hard-eyed private had said in the course of a ten o'clock whiskey break, a private who'd been an assistant policeman, a meter maid or something, in Youngstown, Ohio, who had said, a blow in precisely the right part of a jaw would break it. Demirgian, his intellect stimulated and his inhibition paralyzed by two J&B's, now replied, "Yaa!" or words to that effect.

 "Twenty dollars!" the former policeman cried, whipping a wallet out of his vast Army fatigue pocket, slapping a bill of that denomination on the windowsill, clenching his other fist. "Twenty dollars says I can do it."

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 "Yaa! There was a guy twice as big as you, he hit me right here and he couldn't break it."

 "That's not where I'm going to hit you, Demirgian! Where is your twenty?"

 "I'll owe it," already conceding.

 "Twenty dollars, Demirgian!" said Youngstown's finest, slapping his green gauntlet down again. He had picked up the bill while nobody watched, apparently—he liked its brave sound on the concrete windowsill, smack! the sound of Demirgian's jaw cracking like a chicken's wishbone. He didn't like Demirgian anyhow. Demirgian didn't stand tall, as soldiers should. Demirgian slouched, he carried his head tilted like a damn violinist, and when he talked it rolled like a basketball on a rim, nature imitating Brando's art.

 "I'll give you an IOU!"

 "Shake! Raise up your chin," and Demirgian did. "A little toward the window," and Demirgian did—Demirgian in some dentist chair, his head tilted, jaw slack, eyes resting tensely on the orange NO SMOKING that was stenciled on M's concrete wall. All of M's sleeping quarters were interior decorated like any city apartment house in its cellar, where the washing machines are. The lengthy low building looked from the outside as though people inside might be working at lathes, and over the black door it announced to all humanity, "M" in black paint.

 "Dammit—more to the right."

 "I'm waiting. I'm waiting," Demirgian said while in some buried subconscious area he may have thought, my friends better rescue me—which seconds later they did.

 "Easy! Yesterday at the 45 range he said to shoot him in the toes," his buddy Sullivan said, stepping between them. "All he wants is get discharged."

 "Sure," Demirgian agreed. He had been telling himself, well … either that or I'll make twenty dollars, the Army hadn't paid him in months, something was wrong at the finance office.

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 "You won't get out of the Army with a broken jaw," Sullivan talking.

 "Sure—I won't be able to eat. I'll waste away."

 "Crazy. They'll have you wired up in one day. You want to get out of the Army, get him to break your foot."

 "Can you break my foot?" Demirgian asked, but there is a tide in men's affairs. Already the former policeman was telling his friends yes! he had been drinking whiskey but he wasn't drunk, he would straight-line any of them—twenty bucks! but M was back getting ready for that inspection. All of this happened—do understand. Demirgian is real, so is everyone in this narrative, even the Chillicothe milkman: all about him shortly. Names and hometowns [appear at the end of the story], middle initials too, apologies to Ernie Pyle.

 Anyhow. By two in the morning, all of M's fingernails clean, its blankets as tight as a back plaster, its boots luminous, its combat equipment Brillo-bright and displayed on its bunks in harmony with the general's chart, M company fell asleep in its sleeping bags on the only place left to it—the floor, as infinitesimal iotas of dust silently came to rest on its handiwork.

 M was awakened at four o'clock. Today it devolved on the Chaplain to keep it from falling asleep again just after breakfast, for he would be giving M the day's first class. Though his subject—"Courage"—wasn't one notably rich in Benzedrine content, the Chaplain, a Protestant major, intended to say things like, "I suggest to you that it takes a man with courage of conviction to—" and here he would strike the flat of his palm against his wooden podium (his pulpit, he called it), jerking M out of its stupor in time to hear him finish his sentence, the text to this surprising gesture—"—to put your foot down." He had many tricks, this Chaplain; sometimes he made noises but he had silences, too. He intended to say today, "Do you know what takes courage in a foxhole? It is this," and then he would say " … ," he would say nothing, eons of empty time would go by while everyone's eyes popped open to see if the bottom had dropped out of the universe; and then the Chaplain would say, "It isn't the noises that get you, it's the silence." Also the Chaplain would have movies.

 M got to his great concrete classroom at eight o'clock on this piercingly cold winter morning. In the vast reaches above it, sparrows sat on the heating pipes and made their little squeaking sounds. A sergeant shouted, "Seats!" and as M sat down on the cold metal chairs it shouted back in unison, "Blue balls!" or so one thought until one learned that M had shouted "Blue bolts!" the nickname of its brigade. M was a shouting company. It built up morale, its high-stepping Negro captain believed; also it kept M awake. Breakfast, lunch, and supper at M were a real bedlam because as each soldier entered the busy mess hall he had to left face and stand at attention, and bellow at a sergeant the initials signifying whether he had been drafted or had joined the Army voluntarily. "US, Sergeant!" "RA, Sergeant!" After the meals, the sergeants totaled up each category before reporting it to the mess sergeant, who filed it one whole month before throwing it away.

 "Good morning, men," said the Chaplain. He wore his wool winter field clothes with his black scarf, the symbol of the chaplains corps.

 "Good morning, sir! Blue bolts! On guard! Mighty mighty Mike! Aargh!" M shouted back. The expression Blue bolts—we've been through that. The brigade's motto was On guard, and Mike is phonetic alphabet for M; and Mighty it perfunctorily called itself. Aargh was needed for reasons of rhythm, like coming back to the tonic at the close of a song.

 Both hands on his pulpit, the Chaplain now pushed it forward a few inches across the black linoleum. Scree-e-ch! and everyone in M sat blue-bolt upright as the Chaplain began speaking. He said, "Courage. … "

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 But at this instant a very important event was happening one hundred miles away. And if M had only known what a fragile vessel all of its hopes reposed in that morning, its thoughts would have leapt from the Chaplain's lecture and fled across the intervening states to settle upon (a fanfare, please) … the Chillicothe milkman! His name was Elmer Pulver. His was the route east of the N&W tracks in Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1950, when the Korean war began. Elmer in his creaky horse-drawn cart, bringing in newspapers from the gate, rapping on the door cheerily, tat-a-tat-tat, closing the gate behind him so the dog couldn't get out, the nicest, most up-and-coming milkman in town, giving little tasty chips of ice to the same Chillicothe children who would be draft eligible when he was a major in the U.S. Army in Washington, in 1966. Pulver was called up in 1951, but he chose to be an officer instead. Having asked for the infantry first, tanks second, artillery third, he was granted none of these, and as a young lieutenant of engineers, having asked for Korea, he was flown away to Germany—ah, the whimsical they! By 1966, Pulver, now a major and still terribly nice, had been given a desk in the Pentagon's windowless inner rings, also an old wooden swivel chair and a new task: every (would you believe it? every) man in the Army, after he was through training would be assigned to a duty station by Major Pulver. Far from being three horrid witches on a heath somewhere dancing around a pot, they would be Elmer Pulver.

 This winter morning he had a stack of those stiff IBM cards the size of an old British pound note, one apiece for every soldier in M. These cards had green edges, and Pulver had a second deck of colorless IBM cards, one apiece for everywhere on earth that the Army had an opening for riflemen. Seated at his swivel chair, Pulver now took a corncob from its round rack, filled it with tobacco, lit it, and started fingering through his IBM's. Doing it the Army way, he would need to take absolutely any green card and white card and fasten them together with a paper clip: rifleman and assignment and on to the next, another day, another dollar. But the Major was a nice person; he knew he had human beings of many kidneys there in his busy fingers and though it meant working overtime—today was a Saturday, the Pentagon was strange and empty—he wanted to put each soldier where he'd be happiest. And on each boy's IBM card there was a code letter signifying where on this varied planet he would truthfully hope to be stationed next.

 Media Platforms Design Team

 Some of M wanted the dolce vita in Europe. Some had opted for sunny Hawaii or the Caribbean's warm waters. A few adventurous souls had elected Japan. Were the IBM cards to be believed, none of M's two hundred and fifty soldiers wanted to go to Vietnam—but this wasn't so, the cards weren't right. Bigalow wanted to go to Vietnam. He wanted this for that stock American reason, making money—for in Vietnam's jungles he would earn $65 a month combat pay, which he figured would add to $780 after his twelve months' tour of duty. This he figured to put into IBM: where, he figured, in a few thrifty years it would appreciate to $1,000, which—but beyond that Bigalow hadn't figured. But thus far in his Army career, Bigalow hadn't made his preference known to the proper authorities, no fault of his. Many nights earlier, a tall PFC from personnel office had gathered M together in its dayroom—a rumpus room, an area whose bright green pool and ping-pong tables a soldier saw whenever he was on detail to shine the linoleum beneath them; otherwise it was kept behind a steel chain, off limits. That night, though, it had been opened extraordinarily to let that PFC give everyone some little grey mimeographed forms. "Awright!" he had said. "Now! Those who would like to go to Europe write down Europe," no promises made. He himself had taken one mimeographed form and curled it around his index finger, and while he spoke he wiggled it like a swizzlestick in a highball glass or a pencil making O's: a gesture by which he might mean the Army's having its people eternally fill in mimeographed forms. In fact, M had filled in forms so habitually that within minutes it would forget forever ever having completed this. "Awright," said PFC Swizzlestick. "Those who want the Caribbean … " and similarly for Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, Korea, Okinawa, and Bigalow's coveted Vietnam. Then he had gathered up the mimeographed papers and cabled them to the Pentagon, but Bigalow was on KP that evening, standing in white clouds of steam and washing pans. So the code letter on his green IBM card was an X, meaning no known preference.

 Media Platforms Design Team

 Puffing his corncob and thumbing through his second deck of cards, Pulver now learned that in one month the Army had vacancies in Germany and in Vietnam—no place else. Now it happened this freezing Saturday that he had brought his blond and eightyear- old son, Douglas, to the Pentagon (in a week it was Lisa's turn) and to satisfy Douglas' curiosity he showed him the IBM cards, explaining that a soldier who wanted to go to Europe would and that a soldier would go to Vietnam who wanted it—though none did. "Supposing he wants to go to Japan?" Douglas alertly asked, and Pulver explained that though there were no openings that month in this pretty land of geisha girls and cherry blossoms, though there were no Japanese slots he would do his level best by that soldier and order him to Vietnam, since he seemed interested in the Orient and could stop in Japan itself, perhaps, going over or coming back. "Supposing he wants Hawaii?" Douglas said, and Pulver replied: the same, he would go to Vietnam. "Daddy! I can do it myself—please," Douglas said, but Daddy chuckled and said no, and as Douglas sat across from him with a set of crayons drawing some colorful jet airplanes his father began to clip cards together, the green and the white. At noon Douglas ate a hamburger at his desk, Pulver had a roast-beef sandwich on white bread at his.

 At noon an apprehensive M waited in its tidy barracks for Captain Amaker's arrival. Amaker, though, was innocently upon the turnpike in his white Triumph convertible gaily driving to New York City. Ha ha! it had been a trick, really the Captain had never been under the walnut shell. Sly old Milett, that cunning sergeant, had simply made M scrub itself harder by invoking Amaker's awesome name—Amaker who really intended to be in Harlem that afternoon digging the jams there with a friend who pulled down $50 an hour sitting in chairs with an Olivetti and looking over his shoulder as though to say, "As long as you're up, get me a Grant's," in the studios of Ebony magazine's photographers. Instead, M would have its adequacy appraised by that fox in sheep's clothing, Sergeant Machiavelli—Milett. He started inspecting the barracks at two o'clock. He wasn't in any very aggravated mood until a moment later, when his fingers moved across the very first soldier's footlocker in order to open it. And then Milett recognized from the almost imperceptible impedance that it gave to his fingertips the presence of that loathsome substance to whose annihilation he had devoted much of his Army career. He cried out "Dust!" and stretching his fingers wide enough to hold a basketball he pushed them at the face of the footlocker's unfortunate owner, whose name was Private Scott. "Goddam! This is a shame," Milett cried, and Scotty looked truly contrite, eyes on the floor. Usually he was a fun-loving guy, a Negro. The day before Swizzlestick's poll he had watched

 Hawaiian Eye, and on the mimeographed questionnaire he had written, "Hawaii," so that he could dance with the lulu girls.

 Media Platforms Design Team

 "Dust! … Dust! … Dust! … All of them!" Milett said, hurling himself from locker to locker and giving each the fingertip test, a furious Pancho Gonzales forehand. "This is a court-martial offense! You aren't ready for inspection!" he screamed—and suddenly his face wasn't purple, his skin wasn't bedsheet tight, the Sergeant was no longer angry. He laughed. He had realized, this whole thing was ridiculous—ridiculous, that a man should present himself for inspection with his footlocker dusty. "You people … you people," laughing, taking his handkerchief out, wiping the filth from his fingers. "You better wake up, you people don't wake up now you'll never wake up. Only with a bad-conduct discharge. And," his head shaking incredulously, "this is just a sergeant's inspection, suppose it had been the Captain himself!" Cap-tain-him-self is how he pronounced it; quick little quarter-notes. Milett was a Puerto Rican. Three times the Caribbean had knocked down the house where he'd grown up; immigrating to Harlem, shining people's shoes so he could take his girl to the movie but worrying what if she should see me shining shoes, washing his hands with Borax but thinking if I touched her maybe she'd smell it—ten years, and then he had found the Army, where a life to be proud of lay within a man's aspirations: even a Puerto Rican's. He said to M now, "I was a PFC," pronouncing it pee-eff-see. "When the officer opened my locker he had to use sunglasses! because I didn't have a towel there, I had aluminum foil all around! And he said to me,

 You're going to make it some day." Milett's eyes shone as he remembered, there was silverfoil behind his irises. What he couldn't reconcile himself to and couldn't forgive was that M didn't have initiative—M didn't really care.]

 His punishment: no passes that Saturday afternoon. With those melancholy words Milett went to his rooms on the Army post, where he told the day's happenings to his shapely, sweater-wearing wife, showing her the tainted handkerchief. Demirgian and most people went to sleep on their brown Army blankets. Pulver finished his work, and after driving Douglas home he took the family's beagle, Socks, to the veterinarian's, who gave it shots against hepatitis, distemper, and other diseases of dogs.

 "I hate to see-e-e, de ev'-nin' sun go down. … " At the enlisted men's club, a baldheaded man picked concernedly on his banjo, bending over it as though to loosen a knot in one string. He seemed to be thinking … almost … almost. On center stage in their spangled dresses the Barnes sisters did their little dance, and Prochaska, one of M's few emissaries on the club's folding seats, sang quietly along, tapping his visored hat against one knee. "Oh, I hate to see-e-e. … " At seven that evening Milett had given M its passes—but Prochaska couldn't leave, he didn't have the money, they hadn't paid him in months. Something was wrong at the finance office.

 This is an excerpt from "M" by John Sack. It appeared in the October 1966 issue of Esquire.

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John Sack was an associate producer at CBS News in October of 1965 when he hatched the idea of doing a reported story about following a company from basic training through their first mission in Vietnam. Nothing he read in the press about Army life rang true. Ten years earlier, Sack had published a book concerning his motley military experience as a soldier in the Korean War. He soon realized TV News was not the place for what he wanted to do. So he wrote to Harold Hayes, Esquire’s editor, who assigned Sack to cover “M” company, starting in Fort Dix, New Jersey and ending in Vietnam. The resulting piece—weighing in at 33,000 words—captured the low comedy and tedium of military life as well as the brutalities of combat. “OH MY GOD—WE HIT A LITTLE GIRL”—black and white type against a black backdrop, designed by George Lois, made for one of Esquire’s most memorable covers. Sack was not against the war when he wrote the piece but he returned to Vietnam after the story was published and his 1968 follow-up, “When Demirgian Comes Marching Home Again (Hurrah? Hurrah?)” is much darker and offers little relief or prospect for hope.   —Alex Belth, Esquire Contributing Editor  M is M Company of the 1st Advanced Infantry Training Brigade in the United States Army Training Center, Infantry, at Ft. Dix, New Jersey, the training cycle of December 13, 1965, to February 3, 1966. It was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division at Di An and to A, B, and C Companies of the 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Infantry, in the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, at Lai Khe. Its first operation was Operation Mastiff, the week of February 21, 1966. One, two, three at the most weeks and they would give M company its orders—they  being those dim Olympian entities who reputedly threw cards into an IBM machine or into a hat to determine where each soldier in M would go next, which ones to stay there in the United States, which to live softly in Europe, and which to fight and to die in Vietnam.  No matter. What agonized M this evening wasn't what was in its cards but what was in the more immediate offing—an inspection! indeed, its very first inspection by its jazzy young Negro captain. So this evening M was in its white Army underwear waxing the floor of its barracks, shining its black combat boots, turning the barrels of its rifles inside out and picking the dust flecks off with tweezers, unscrewing its eardrums—the usual. The air was thick with the smell of floor wax and rifle oil, a moist aroma that now seemed to M to be woven into the very fabric of Army green. Minutes before, the company had heard a do-or-die exhortation by its bantamweight sergeant, Sergeant Milett. Get yourself clean for my sake, Milett had told M. "I've got a wife, three kids at home. I leave in the dark, I come home in the dark. I haven't talked to them in thirty-six hours. I don't know, maybe they're dead," using psychology, leaning against a two decker bed, reaching an arm through the iron bedstead, beseechingly. "Well …" making a joke of it, "I left them enough food, I shouldn't have to worry," and getting to the point, "I got a boss downstairs, he got a couple bars on his collar, he is the boss I work for. Tomorrow afternoon he will inspect us: don't make a jackass out of me!"        Media Platforms Design Team    And all you've got to do is follow the chart! and M company, now in its fourth quick month of Army life and last of infantry training at a large and bleak Eastern camp, had known what Milett meant. The chart appeared in the Soldier's Handbook and it bore the enacting signature of the Army's adjutant general, none other. The insides of a guy's green footlocker (the general had commanded) should be like so; and what a proud inspection they'd have if M would just faithfully comply! The general had ordered that Pepsodent or whatever brand of tooth powder a boy enjoyed must go to the rear of the footlocker, left, it mustn't be dirty or dusty, and it must be bottom backwards so the words TOOTH POWDER appeared upside-down, who would have thought it? The general had charged that a fellow's SHAVING CREAM go to the right while his razor, his blade, his toothbrush, and his comb all covered down on his soap dish; and everything must lie on his whitest towel, the general had declared. To this Army-wide order of battle a mere master sergeant in M's training camp had dared add an innovation: he allowed that a Bible might lie in that footlocker in between the handkerchiefs and the shoe polish, rightside-up. This would be optional, a matter of a man's conscience; but other deviations from the archetypical footlocker, the wall locker, the steel combat stuff to be laid on a soldier's bunk, or the soldier himself—would be gigged, Milett had reminded everyone, and gigged would mean no going home Saturday night; no passes.  "So … try. Follow the chart," he had pleaded and hurried to where his wife and his children, whew, still lived, and M, a body of two hundred and fifty American boys of all shapes and sizes and wild idiosyncrasies, most of them draftees, some of them volunteers—M company was getting its house in order conscientiously, in some cases even willingly. But not in Private Demirgian's. Demirgian thought it was idiotic, all this footlocker, wall locker, fleck-of-fluff-on-your-shoelace stuff—senseless, most of M would agree but Demirgian alone conspired with himself to get discharged; out, a consummation that he tried to effect by exercising his will-o'-the-wisp power. Demirgian built castles in Spain, in Armenia, in any area M wasn't—he dared to have madly escapist flights of imagination because his intuition secretly assured him that they'd come to naught. He had said to himself once, I could walk in front of somebody's rifle. He had thought he could fall downstairs and tell the doctors, "My brain—it's loose, it's rattling around inside my head," he had come a cropper playing football once and that is how Demirgian's brain had felt, he knew the symptoms. As yet, none of his schemes had become a clear and present danger to M's staying at full strength—but Demirgian had a new thought tonight. His fancy had seized on something that a hard-eyed private had said in the course of a ten o'clock whiskey break, a private who'd been an assistant policeman, a meter maid or something, in Youngstown, Ohio, who had said, a blow in precisely the right part of a jaw would break it. Demirgian, his intellect stimulated and his inhibition paralyzed by two J&amp;B's, now replied, "Yaa!" or words to that effect.  "Twenty dollars!" the former policeman cried, whipping a wallet out of his vast Army fatigue pocket, slapping a bill of that denomination on the windowsill, clenching his other fist. "Twenty dollars says I can do it."        Media Platforms Design Team    "Yaa! There was a guy twice as big as you, he hit me right here and he couldn't break it."  "That's not where I'm going to hit you, Demirgian! Where is your twenty?"  "I'll owe it," already conceding.  "Twenty dollars, Demirgian!" said Youngstown's finest, slapping his green gauntlet down again. He had picked up the bill while nobody watched, apparently—he liked its brave sound on the concrete windowsill, smack! the sound of Demirgian's jaw cracking like a chicken's wishbone. He didn't like Demirgian anyhow. Demirgian didn't stand tall, as soldiers should. Demirgian slouched, he carried his head tilted like a damn violinist, and when he talked it rolled like a basketball on a rim, nature imitating Brando's art.  "I'll give you an IOU!"  "Shake! Raise up your chin," and Demirgian did. "A little toward the window," and Demirgian did—Demirgian in some dentist chair, his head tilted, jaw slack, eyes resting tensely on the orange NO SMOKING that was stenciled on M's concrete wall. All of M's sleeping quarters were interior decorated like any city apartment house in its cellar, where the washing machines are. The lengthy low building looked from the outside as though people inside might be working at lathes, and over the black door it announced to all humanity, "M" in black paint.  "Dammit—more to the right."  "I'm waiting. I'm waiting," Demirgian said while in some buried subconscious area he may have thought, my friends better rescue me—which seconds later they did.  "Easy! Yesterday at the 45 range he said to shoot him in the toes," his buddy Sullivan said, stepping between them. "All he wants is get discharged."  "Sure," Demirgian agreed. He had been telling himself, well … either that or I'll make twenty dollars, the Army hadn't paid him in months, something was wrong at the finance office.        Media Platforms Design Team    "You won't get out of the Army with a broken jaw," Sullivan talking.  "Sure—I won't be able to eat. I'll waste away."  "Crazy. They'll have you wired up in one day. You want to get out of the Army, get him to break your foot."  "Can you break my foot?" Demirgian asked, but there is a tide in men's affairs. Already the former policeman was telling his friends yes! he had been drinking whiskey but he wasn't drunk, he would straight-line any of them—twenty bucks! but M was back getting ready for that inspection. All of this happened—do understand. Demirgian is real, so is everyone in this narrative, even the Chillicothe milkman: all about him shortly. Names and hometowns [appear at the end of the story], middle initials too, apologies to Ernie Pyle.  Anyhow. By two in the morning, all of M's fingernails clean, its blankets as tight as a back plaster, its boots luminous, its combat equipment Brillo-bright and displayed on its bunks in harmony with the general's chart, M company fell asleep in its sleeping bags on the only place left to it—the floor, as infinitesimal iotas of dust silently came to rest on its handiwork.  M was awakened at four o'clock. Today it devolved on the Chaplain to keep it from falling asleep again just after breakfast, for he would be giving M the day's first class. Though his subject—"Courage"—wasn't one notably rich in Benzedrine content, the Chaplain, a Protestant major, intended to say things like, "I suggest to you that it takes a man with courage of conviction to—" and here he would strike the flat of his palm against his wooden podium (his pulpit, he called it), jerking M out of its stupor in time to hear him finish his sentence, the text to this surprising gesture—"—to put your foot down." He had many tricks, this Chaplain; sometimes he made noises but he had silences, too. He intended to say today, "Do you know what takes courage in a foxhole? It is this," and then he would say " … ," he would say nothing, eons of empty time would go by while everyone's eyes popped open to see if the bottom had dropped out of the universe; and then the Chaplain would say, "It isn't the noises that get you, it's the silence." Also the Chaplain would have movies.  M got to his great concrete classroom at eight o'clock on this piercingly cold winter morning. In the vast reaches above it, sparrows sat on the heating pipes and made their little squeaking sounds. A sergeant shouted, "Seats!" and as M sat down on the cold metal chairs it shouted back in unison, "Blue balls!" or so one thought until one learned that M had shouted "Blue bolts!" the nickname of its brigade. M was a shouting company. It built up morale, its high-stepping Negro captain believed; also it kept M awake. Breakfast, lunch, and supper at M were a real bedlam because as each soldier entered the busy mess hall he had to left face and stand at attention, and bellow at a sergeant the initials signifying whether he had been drafted or had joined the Army voluntarily. "US, Sergeant!" "RA, Sergeant!" After the meals, the sergeants totaled up each category before reporting it to the mess sergeant, who filed it one whole month before throwing it away.  "Good morning, men," said the Chaplain. He wore his wool winter field clothes with his black scarf, the symbol of the chaplains corps.  "Good morning, sir! Blue bolts! On guard! Mighty mighty Mike! Aargh!" M shouted back. The expression Blue bolts—we've been through that. The brigade's motto was On guard, and Mike is phonetic alphabet for M; and Mighty it perfunctorily called itself. Aargh was needed for reasons of rhythm, like coming back to the tonic at the close of a song.  Both hands on his pulpit, the Chaplain now pushed it forward a few inches across the black linoleum. Scree-e-ch! and everyone in M sat blue-bolt upright as the Chaplain began speaking. He said, "Courage. … "        Media Platforms Design Team    But at this instant a very important event was happening one hundred miles away. And if M had only known what a fragile vessel all of its hopes reposed in that morning, its thoughts would have leapt from the Chaplain's lecture and fled across the intervening states to settle upon (a fanfare, please) … the Chillicothe milkman! His name was Elmer Pulver. His was the route east of the N&amp;W tracks in Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1950, when the Korean war began. Elmer in his creaky horse-drawn cart, bringing in newspapers from the gate, rapping on the door cheerily, tat-a-tat-tat, closing the gate behind him so the dog couldn't get out, the nicest, most up-and-coming milkman in town, giving little tasty chips of ice to the same Chillicothe children who would be draft eligible when he was a major in the U.S. Army in Washington, in 1966. Pulver was called up in 1951, but he chose to be an officer instead. Having asked for the infantry first, tanks second, artillery third, he was granted none of these, and as a young lieutenant of engineers, having asked for Korea, he was flown away to Germany—ah, the whimsical they! By 1966, Pulver, now a major and still terribly nice, had been given a desk in the Pentagon's windowless inner rings, also an old wooden swivel chair and a new task: every (would you believe it? every) man in the Army, after he was through training would be assigned to a duty station by Major Pulver. Far from being three horrid witches on a heath somewhere dancing around a pot, they would be Elmer Pulver.  This winter morning he had a stack of those stiff IBM cards the size of an old British pound note, one apiece for every soldier in M. These cards had green edges, and Pulver had a second deck of colorless IBM cards, one apiece for everywhere on earth that the Army had an opening for riflemen. Seated at his swivel chair, Pulver now took a corncob from its round rack, filled it with tobacco, lit it, and started fingering through his IBM's. Doing it the Army way, he would need to take absolutely any green card and white card and fasten them together with a paper clip: rifleman and assignment and on to the next, another day, another dollar. But the Major was a nice person; he knew he had human beings of many kidneys there in his busy fingers and though it meant working overtime—today was a Saturday, the Pentagon was strange and empty—he wanted to put each soldier where he'd be happiest. And on each boy's IBM card there was a code letter signifying where on this varied planet he would truthfully hope to be stationed next.        Media Platforms Design Team    Some of M wanted the dolce vita in Europe. Some had opted for sunny Hawaii or the Caribbean's warm waters. A few adventurous souls had elected Japan. Were the IBM cards to be believed, none of M's two hundred and fifty soldiers wanted to go to Vietnam—but this wasn't so, the cards weren't right. Bigalow wanted to go to Vietnam. He wanted this for that stock American reason, making money—for in Vietnam's jungles he would earn $65 a month combat pay, which he figured would add to $780 after his twelve months' tour of duty. This he figured to put into IBM: where, he figured, in a few thrifty years it would appreciate to $1,000, which—but beyond that Bigalow hadn't figured. But thus far in his Army career, Bigalow hadn't made his preference known to the proper authorities, no fault of his. Many nights earlier, a tall PFC from personnel office had gathered M together in its dayroom—a rumpus room, an area whose bright green pool and ping-pong tables a soldier saw whenever he was on detail to shine the linoleum beneath them; otherwise it was kept behind a steel chain, off limits. That night, though, it had been opened extraordinarily to let that PFC give everyone some little grey mimeographed forms. "Awright!" he had said. "Now! Those who would like to go to Europe write down Europe," no promises made. He himself had taken one mimeographed form and curled it around his index finger, and while he spoke he wiggled it like a swizzlestick in a highball glass or a pencil making O's: a gesture by which he might mean the Army's having its people eternally fill in mimeographed forms. In fact, M had filled in forms so habitually that within minutes it would forget forever ever having completed this. "Awright," said PFC Swizzlestick. "Those who want the Caribbean … " and similarly for Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, Korea, Okinawa, and Bigalow's coveted Vietnam. Then he had gathered up the mimeographed papers and cabled them to the Pentagon, but Bigalow was on KP that evening, standing in white clouds of steam and washing pans. So the code letter on his green IBM card was an X, meaning no known preference.        Media Platforms Design Team    Puffing his corncob and thumbing through his second deck of cards, Pulver now learned that in one month the Army had vacancies in Germany and in Vietnam—no place else. Now it happened this freezing Saturday that he had brought his blond and eightyear- old son, Douglas, to the Pentagon (in a week it was Lisa's turn) and to satisfy Douglas' curiosity he showed him the IBM cards, explaining that a soldier who wanted to go to Europe would and that a soldier would go to Vietnam who wanted it—though none did. "Supposing he wants to go to Japan?" Douglas alertly asked, and Pulver explained that though there were no openings that month in this pretty land of geisha girls and cherry blossoms, though there were no Japanese slots he would do his level best by that soldier and order him to Vietnam, since he seemed interested in the Orient and could stop in Japan itself, perhaps, going over or coming back. "Supposing he wants Hawaii?" Douglas said, and Pulver replied: the same, he would go to Vietnam. "Daddy! I can do it myself—please," Douglas said, but Daddy chuckled and said no, and as Douglas sat across from him with a set of crayons drawing some colorful jet airplanes his father began to clip cards together, the green and the white. At noon Douglas ate a hamburger at his desk, Pulver had a roast-beef sandwich on white bread at his.  At noon an apprehensive M waited in its tidy barracks for Captain Amaker's arrival. Amaker, though, was innocently upon the turnpike in his white Triumph convertible gaily driving to New York City. Ha ha! it had been a trick, really the Captain had never been under the walnut shell. Sly old Milett, that cunning sergeant, had simply made M scrub itself harder by invoking Amaker's awesome name—Amaker who really intended to be in Harlem that afternoon digging the jams there with a friend who pulled down $50 an hour sitting in chairs with an Olivetti and looking over his shoulder as though to say, "As long as you're up, get me a Grant's," in the studios of Ebony magazine's photographers. Instead, M would have its adequacy appraised by that fox in sheep's clothing, Sergeant Machiavelli—Milett. He started inspecting the barracks at two o'clock. He wasn't in any very aggravated mood until a moment later, when his fingers moved across the very first soldier's footlocker in order to open it. And then Milett recognized from the almost imperceptible impedance that it gave to his fingertips the presence of that loathsome substance to whose annihilation he had devoted much of his Army career. He cried out "Dust!" and stretching his fingers wide enough to hold a basketball he pushed them at the face of the footlocker's unfortunate owner, whose name was Private Scott. "Goddam! This is a shame," Milett cried, and Scotty looked truly contrite, eyes on the floor. Usually he was a fun-loving guy, a Negro. The day before Swizzlestick's poll he had watched  Hawaiian Eye, and on the mimeographed questionnaire he had written, "Hawaii," so that he could dance with the lulu girls.        Media Platforms Design Team    "Dust! … Dust! … Dust! … All of them!" Milett said, hurling himself from locker to locker and giving each the fingertip test, a furious Pancho Gonzales forehand. "This is a court-martial offense! You aren't ready for inspection!" he screamed—and suddenly his face wasn't purple, his skin wasn't bedsheet tight, the Sergeant was no longer angry. He laughed. He had realized, this whole thing was ridiculous—ridiculous, that a man should present himself for inspection with his footlocker dusty. "You people … you people," laughing, taking his handkerchief out, wiping the filth from his fingers. "You better wake up, you people don't wake up now you'll never wake up. Only with a bad-conduct discharge. And," his head shaking incredulously, "this is just a sergeant's inspection, suppose it had been the Captain himself!" Cap-tain-him-self is how he pronounced it; quick little quarter-notes. Milett was a Puerto Rican. Three times the Caribbean had knocked down the house where he'd grown up; immigrating to Harlem, shining people's shoes so he could take his girl to the movie but worrying what if she should see me shining shoes, washing his hands with Borax but thinking if I touched her maybe she'd smell it—ten years, and then he had found the Army, where a life to be proud of lay within a man's aspirations: even a Puerto Rican's. He said to M now, "I was a PFC," pronouncing it pee-eff-see. "When the officer opened my locker he had to use sunglasses! because I didn't have a towel there, I had aluminum foil all around! And he said to me,  You're going to make it some day." Milett's eyes shone as he remembered, there was silverfoil behind his irises. What he couldn't reconcile himself to and couldn't forgive was that M didn't have initiative—M didn't really care.]  His punishment: no passes that Saturday afternoon. With those melancholy words Milett went to his rooms on the Army post, where he told the day's happenings to his shapely, sweater-wearing wife, showing her the tainted handkerchief. Demirgian and most people went to sleep on their brown Army blankets. Pulver finished his work, and after driving Douglas home he took the family's beagle, Socks, to the veterinarian's, who gave it shots against hepatitis, distemper, and other diseases of dogs.  "I hate to see-e-e, de ev'-nin' sun go down. … " At the enlisted men's club, a baldheaded man picked concernedly on his banjo, bending over it as though to loosen a knot in one string. He seemed to be thinking … almost … almost. On center stage in their spangled dresses the Barnes sisters did their little dance, and Prochaska, one of M's few emissaries on the club's folding seats, sang quietly along, tapping his visored hat against one knee. "Oh, I hate to see-e-e. … " At seven that evening Milett had given M its passes—but Prochaska couldn't leave, he didn't have the money, they hadn't paid him in months. Something was wrong at the finance office.  This is an excerpt from "M" by John Sack. It appeared in the October 1966 issue of Esquire.  Read the Entire Piece on Esquire Classic Now
M by John Sack: 'Oh my God--we hit a little girl.'
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a5374/vietnam-war-m-company-0365/
https://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/talese/essays/dimaggio.html
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	<em>Esquire</em>, July 1966
	
<p>"I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing," the old man said. "They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand."</p>
<p>--ERNEST HEMINGWAY, <em>The Old Man and the Sea</em> </p><p>
</p><p>IT WAS NOT quite spring, the silent season before the search for salmon, and the old fishermen of San Francisco were either painting their boats or repairing their nets along the pier or sitting in the sun talking quietly among themselves, watching the tourists come and go, and smiling, now, as a pretty girl paused to take their picture. She was about 25, healthy and blue-eyed and wearing a turtleneck sweater, and she had long, flowing blonde hair that she brushed back a few times before clicking her camera. The fishermen, looking at her, made admiring comments, but she did not understand because they spoke a Sicilian dialect; nor did she understand the tall gray-haired man in a dark suit who stood watching her from behind a big bay window on the second floor of DiMaggio's Restaurant that overlooks the pier. </p>
<p>He watched until she left, lost in the crowd of newly arrived tourists that had just come down the hill by cable car. Then he sat down again at the table in the restaurant, finishing his tea and lighting another cigarette, his fifth in the last half hour. It was 11:30 in the morning. None of the other tables was occupied, and the only sounds came from the bar, where a liquor salesman was laughing at something the headwaiter had said. But then the salesman, his briefcase under his arm, headed for the door, stopping briefly to peek into the dining room and call out, "See you later, Joe." Joe DiMaggio turned and waved at the salesman. Then the room was quiet again. </p>
<p>At 51, DiMaggio was a most distinguished-looking man, aging as gracefully as he had played on the ball field, impeccable in his tailoring, his nails manicured, his 6-foot-2 body seeming as lean and capable as when he posed for the portrait that hangs in the restaurant and shows him in Yankee Stadium, swinging from the heels at a pitch thrown 20 years ago. His gray hair was thinning at the crown, but just barely, and his face was lined in the right places, and his expression, once as sad and haunted as a matador's, was more in repose these days, though, as now, tension had returned and he chain-smoked and occasionally paced the floor and looked out the window at the people below. In the crowd was a man he did not wish to see. </p>
<p>The man had met DiMaggio in New York. This week he had come to San Francisco and had telephoned several times, but none of the calls had been returned because DiMaggio suspected that the man, who had said he was doing research on some vague sociological project, really wanted to delve into DiMaggio's private life and that of DiMaggio's former wife, Marilyn Monroe. DiMaggio would never tolerate this. The memory of her death is still very painful to him, and yet, because he keeps it to himself, some people are not sensitive to it. One night in a supper club, a woman who had been drinking approached his table, and when he did not ask her to join him, she snapped: </p>
<p>"All right, I guess I'm <i>not</i> Marilyn Monroe." </p>
<p>He ignored her remark, but when she repeated it, he replied, barely controlling his anger, "No - I wish you were, but you're not" </p>
<p>The tone of his voice softened her, and she asked, "Am I saying something wrong?" </p>
<p>"You already have," he said. "Now will you please leave me alone?" </p>
<p>His friends on the wharf, understanding him as they do, are very careful when discussing him with strangers, knowing that should they inadvertently betray a confidence, he will not denounce them but rather will never speak to them again; this comes from a sense of propriety not inconsistent in the man who also, after Marilyn Monroe's death, directed that fresh flowers be placed on her grave "forever." </p>
<p>Some of the older fishermen who have known DiMaggio all his life remember him as a small boy who helped clean his father's boat, and as a young man who sneaked away and used a broken oar as a bat on the sandlots nearby. His father, a small mustachioed man known as Zio Pepe, would become infuriated and call him <i>lagnuso</i>, lazy, <i>meschino</i>, good-for-nothing, but in 1936 Zio Pepe was among those who cheered when Joe DiMaggio returned to San Francisco after his first season with the New York Yankees and was carried along the wharf on the shoulders of the fishermen. </p>
<p>The fishermen also remember how, after his retirement in 1951, DiMaggio brought his second wife, Marilyn, to live near the wharf, and sometimes they would be seen early in the morning fishing off DiMaggio's boat, the <i>Yankee Clipper</i>, now docked quietly in the marina, and in the evening they would be sitting and talking on the pier. They had arguments, too, the fishermen knew, and one night Marilyn was seen running hysterically, crying, as she ran, along the road away from the pier, with Joe following. But the fishermen pretended they did not see this; it was none of their affair. They knew that Joe wanted her to stay in San Francisco and avoid the sharks in Hollywood, but she was confused and torn then - "She was a child," they said - and even today DiMaggio loathes Los Angeles and many of the people in it. He no longer speaks to his onetime friend, Frank Sinatra, who had befriended Marilyn in her final years, and he also is cool to Dean Martin and Peter Lawford and Lawford's former wife, Pat, who once gave a party at which she introduced Marilyn Monroe to Robert Kennedy, and the two of them danced often that night, Joe heard, and he did not take it well. He was possessive of her that year, his close friends say, because Marilyn and he had planned to remarry; but before they could she was dead, and DiMaggio banned the Lawfords and Sinatra and many Hollywood people from her funeral. When Marilyn Monroe's attorney complained that DiMaggio was keeping her friends away, DiMaggio answered coldly, "If it weren't for those friends persuading her to stay in Hollywood, she would still be alive." </p>
<p>Joe DiMaggio now spends most of the year in San Francisco, and each day tourists, noticing the name on the restaurant, ask the men on the wharf if they ever see him. Oh, yes, the men say, they see him nearly every day; they have not seen him yet this morning, they add, but he should be arriving shortly. So the tourists continue to walk along the piers past the crab vendors, under the circling sea gulls, past the fish-'n'-chip stands, sometimes stopping to watch a large vessel, steaming toward the Golden Gate Bridge, which, to their dismay, is painted red. Then they visit the Wax Museum, where there is a life-size figure of DiMaggio in uniform, and walk across the street and spend a quarter to peer through the silver telescopes focused on the island of Alcatraz, which is no longer a federal prison. Then they return to ask the men if DiMaggio has been seen. Not yet, the men say, although they notice his blue Impala parked in the lot next to the restaurant. Sometimes tourists will walk into the restaurant and have lunch and will see him sitting calmly in a corner signing autographs and being extremely gracious with everyone. At other times, as on this particular morning when the man from New York chose to visit, DiMaggio was tense and suspicious. </p>
<p>When the man entered the restaurant from the side steps leading to the dining room, he saw DiMaggio standing near the window, talking with an elderly maître d' named Charles Friscia. Not wanting to walk in and risk intrusion, the man asked one of DiMaggio's nephews to inform Joe of his presence. When DiMaggio got the message, he quickly turned and left Friscia and disappeared through an exit leading down to the kitchen. </p>
<p>Astonished and confused, the visitor stood in the hall. A moment later Friscia appeared and the man asked, "Did Joe leave?"</p>
<p>"Joe who?" Friscia replied. </p>
<p>"Joe DiMaggio!" </p>
<p>"Haven't seen him" Friscia said. </p>
<p>"You haven't <i>seen</i> him! He was standing right next to you a second ago!" </p>
<p>"It wasn't me," Friscia said. </p>
<p>"You were standing next to him. I saw you. In the dining room." </p>
<p>"You must be mistaken," Friscia said, softly, seriously. "It wasn't me." </p>
<p>"You <i>must</i> be kidding," the man said angrily, turning and leaving the restaurant. Before he could get to his car, however, DiMaggio's nephew came running after him and said, "Joe wants to see you" </p>
<p>He returned, expecting to see DiMaggio waiting for him. Instead, he was handed a telephone. The voice was powerful and deep and so tense that the quick sentences ran together: <i>"You are invading my rights. I did not ask you to come. I assume you have a lawyer. You must have a lawyer, get your lawyer!"</i> </p>
<p>"I came as a friend," the man interrupted. </p>
<p>"That's beside the point," DiMaggio said. "I have my privacy; I do not want it violated; you'd better get a lawyer." Then, pausing, DiMaggio asked, "Is my nephew there?" </p>
<p>He was not. </p>
<p>"Then wait where you are." </p>
<p>A moment later DiMaggio appeared, tall and red-faced, erect and beautifully dressed in his dark suit and white shirt with the gray silk tie and the gleaming silver cuff links. He moved with his big steps toward the man and handed him an airmail envelope unopened that the man had written from New York. </p>
<p>"Here," DiMaggio said. "This is yours" </p>
<p>Then DiMaggio sat down at a small table. He said nothing, just lit a cigarette and waited, legs crossed, his head held high and back so as to reveal the intricate construction of his nose, a fine sharp tip above the big nostrils and tiny bones built out from the bridge, a great nose. </p>
<p>"Look" DiMaggio said, more calmly, "I do not interfere with other people's lives. And I do not expect them to interfere with mine. There are things about my life, personal things, that I refuse to talk about. And even if you asked my brothers, they would be unable to tell you about them because they do not know. There are things about me, so many things, that they simply do not know." </p>
<p>"I don't want to cause trouble," the man said. "I think you're a great man, and ..." </p>
<p>"I'm not great," DiMaggio cut in. "I'm not great," he repeated softly. "I'm just a man trying to get along." </p>
<p>Then DiMaggio, as if realizing that he was intruding upon his own privacy, abruptly stood up. He looked at his watch. </p>
<p>"I'm late," he said, very formal again. "I'm 10 minutes late. You're making me late." </p>
<p>The man left the restaurant. He crossed the street and wandered over to the pier, briefly watching the fishermen hauling their nets and talking in the sun, seemingly very calm and contented. Then, after he turned and was headed back toward the parking lot, a blue Impala stopped in front of him and Joe DiMaggio leaned out the window and asked, "Do you have a car?" His voice was very gentle. </p>
<p>"Yes," the man said. </p>
<p>"Oh" DiMaggio said. "I would have given you a ride." </p><p>Joe DiMaggio was not born in San Francisco but in Martinez, a small fishing village 25 miles northeast of the Golden Gate. Zio Pepe had settled there after leaving Isola delle Femmine, an islet off Palermo where the DiMaggios had been fishermen for generations. But in 1915, hearing of the luckier waters off San Francisco's wharf, Zio Pepe left Martinez, packing his boat with furniture and family, including Joe, who was one year old. </p>
<p>San Francisco was placid and picturesque when the DiMaggios arrived, but there was a competitive undercurrent and struggle for power along the pier. At dawn the boats would sail out to where the bay meets the ocean and the sea is rough, and later the men would race back with their hauls, hoping to beat their fellow fishermen to shore and sell it while they could. Twenty or 30 boats would sometimes be trying to gain the channel shoreward at the same time, and a fisherman had to know every rock in the water, and later know every bargaining trick along the shore, because the dealers and restaurateurs would play one fisherman off against the other, keeping the prices down. Later the fishermen became wiser and organized, predetermining the maximum amount each fisherman would catch, but there were always some men who, like the fish, never learned, and so heads would sometimes be broken, nets slashed, gasoline poured onto their fish, flowers of warning placed outside their doors. </p>
<p>But these days were ending when Zio Pepe arrived, and he expected his five sons to succeed him as fishermen, and the first two, Tom and Michael, did; but a third, Vincent, wanted to sing. He sang with such magnificent power as a young man that he came to the attention of the great banker, A. P. Giannini, and there were plans to send him to Italy for tutoring and the opera. But there was hesitation around the DiMaggio household and Vince never went; instead, he played ball with the San Francisco seals and sports writers misspelled his name. </p>
<p>It was DiMaggio until Joe, at Vince's recommendation, joined the team and became a sensation, being followed later by the youngest brother, Dominic, who was also outstanding. All three later played in the big leagues, and some writers like to say that Joe was the best hitter, Dom the best fielder, Vince the best singer, and Casey Stengel once said: "Vince is the only player I ever saw who could strike out three times in one game and not be embarrassed. He'd walk into the clubhouse whistling. Everybody would be feeling sorry for him, but Vince always thought he was doing good." </p>
<p>After he retired from baseball Vince became a bartender, then a milkman, now a carpenter. He lives 40 miles north of San Francisco in a house he partly built, has been happily married for 34 years, has four grandchildren, has in the closet one of Joe's tailor-made suits that he has never had altered to fit, and when People ask him if he envies Joe he always says, "No, maybe Joe would like to have what I have." The brother Vincent most admired was Michael, "a big earthy man, a dreamer, a fisherman who wanted things but didn't want to take from Joe, or to work in the restaurant. He wanted a bigger boat, but wanted to earn it on his own. He never got it." In 1953, at the age of 44, Michael fell from his boat and drowned. </p>
<p>Since Zio Pepe's death at 77 in 1949, Tom at 62, the oldest brother - two of his four sisters are older - has become nominal head of the family and manages the restaurant that was opened in 1937 as Joe DiMaggio's Grotto. Later Joe sold out his share, and now Tom is the co-owner with Dominic. Of all the brothers, Dominic, who was known as the "Little Professor" when he played with the Boston Red Sox, is the most successful in business. He lives in a fashionable Boston suburb with his wife and three children and is president of a firm that manufactures fiber cushion materials and grossed more than $3.5 million last year. </p>
<p>Joe DiMaggio lives with his widowed sister, Marie, in a tan stone house on a quiet residential street not far from Fisherman's Wharf. He bought the house almost 30 years ago for his parents, and after their deaths he lived there with Marilyn Monroe. Now it is cared for by Marie, a slim and handsome dark-eyed woman who has an apartment on the second floor, Joe on the third. There are some baseball trophies and plaques in the small room off DiMaggio's bedroom, and on his dresser are photographs of Marilyn Monroe, and in the living room downstairs is a small painting of her that DiMaggio likes very much; it reveals only her face and shoulders and she is wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat, and there is a soft, sweet smile on her lips, an innocent curiosity about her that is the way he saw her and the way he wanted her to be seen by others - a simple girl, "a warm, big-hearted girl," he once described her, "that everybody took advantage of." </p>
<p>The publicity photographs emphasizing her sex appeal often offend him, and a memorable moment for Billy Wilder, who directed her in <i>The Seven-Year Itch</i>, occurred when he spotted DiMaggio in a large crowd of people gathered on Lexington Avenue in New York to watch a scene in which Marilyn, standing over a subway grating to cool herself, had her skirts blown high by a sudden wind blow. "What the hell is going on here?" DiMaggio was overheard to have said in the crowd, and Wilder recalled, "I shall never forget the look of death on Joe's face." </p>
<p>He was then 39, she was 27. They had been married in January of that year, 1954, despite disharmony in temperament and time; he was tired of publicity, she was thriving on it; he was intolerant of tardiness, she was always late. During their honeymoon in Tokyo an American general had introduced himself and asked if, as a patriotic gesture, she would visit the troops in Korea. She looked at Joe. "It's your honeymoon," he said, shrugging, "go ahead if you want to." </p>
<p>She appeared on 10 occasions before 100,000 servicemen, and when she returned, she said, "It was so wonderful, Joe. You never heard such cheering." </p>
<p>"Yes, I have," he said. </p><p>Across from her portrait in the living room, on a coffee table in front of a sofa, is a sterling-silver humidor that was presented to him by his Yankee teammates at a time when he was the most talked-about man in America, and when Les Brown's band had recorded a hit that was heard day and night on the radio. </p><br />
<i>From Coast to Coast, that's all you hear</i><br /> 
 <i>Of Joe the One-Man Show</i><br /> 
<i>He's glorified the horsehide sphere,</i><br />
 <i>Jolting Joe DiMaggio...</i><br />
 <i>Joe...Joe...DiMaggio...we</i><br /> 
 <i>want you on our side.</i><p>The year was 1941, and it began for DiMaggio in the middle of May after the Yankees had lost four games in a row, seven of their last nine, and were in fourth place, five and a half games behind the leading Cleveland Indians. On May 15, DiMaggio hit only a first-inning single in a game that New York lost to Chicago 13-1; he was barely hitting .300, and had greatly disappointed the crowds that had seen him finish with a .352 average the year before and .381 in 1939. </p>
<p>He got a hit in the next game, and the next, and the next. On May 24, with the Yankees losing 6-5 to Boston, DiMaggio came up with runners on second and third and singled them home, winning the game, extending his streak to 10 games. But it went largely unnoticed. Even DiMaggio was not conscious of it until it had reached 29 games in mid-June. Then the newspapers began to dramatize it, the public became aroused, they sent him good-luck charms of every description, and DiMaggio kept hitting, and radio announcers would interrupt programs to announce the news, and then the song again: "<i>Joe ... Joe ... DiMaggio ... we want you on our side.</i>" </p>
<p>Sometimes DiMaggio would be hitless his first three times up, the tension would build, it would appear that the game would end without his getting another chance - but he always would, and then he would hit the ball against the left-field wall, or through the pitcher's legs, or between two leaping infielders. In the forty-first game, the first of a doubleheader in Washington, DiMaggio tied an American League record that George Sisler had set in 1922. But before the second game began, a spectator sneaked onto the field and into the Yankees' dugout and stole DiMaggio's favorite bat. In the second game, using another of his bats, DiMaggio lined out twice and flied out. But in the seventh inning, borrowing one of his old bats that a teammate was using, he singled and broke Sisler's record, and he was only three games away from surpassing the major-league record of 44 set in 1897 by Willie Keeler while playing for Baltimore when it was a National League franchise. </p>
<p>An appeal for the missing bat was made through the newspapers. A man from Newark admitted the crime and returned it with regrets. And on July 2 at Yankee Stadium, DiMaggio hit a home run into the left-field stands. The record was broken. </p>
<p>He also got hits on the next 11 games, but on July 17...in Cleveland, at a night game attended by 67,468, he failed against two pitchers, Al Smith and Jim Bagby, Jr., although Cleveland's hero was really its third baseman, Ken Keltner, who in the first inning lunged to his right to make a spectacular backhanded stop of a drive and, from the foul line behind third base, threw DiMaggio out. DiMaggio received a walk in the fourth inning. But in the seventh he again hit a hard shot at Keltner, who again stopped it and threw him out. DiMaggio hit sharply toward the shortstop in the eighth inning, the ball taking a bad hop, but Lou Boudreau speared it off his shoulder and threw to the second baseman to start a double play and DiMaggio's streak was stopped at 56 games. But the New York Yankees were on their way to winning the pennant by 17 games, and the World Series too, and so in August, in a hotel suite in Washington, the players threw a surprise party for DiMaggio and toasted him with champagne and presented him with his Tiffany silver humidor that is now in San Francisco in his living room.</p><p>Marie was in the kitchen making toast and tea when DiMaggio came down for breakfast; his gray hair was uncombed but, since he wears it short, it was not untidy. He said good morning to Marie, sat down, and yawned. He lit a cigarette. He wore a blue wool bathrobe over his pajamas. It was 8:00 A.M. He had many things to do today and he seemed cheerful. He had a conference with the president of Continental Television, Inc., a large retail chain in California of which he is a partner and vice-president; later he had a golf date, and then a big banquet to attend, and, if that did not go on too long and if he were not too tired afterward, he might have a date. </p>
<p>Picking up the morning paper, not rushing to the sports page, DiMaggio read the front-page news, the people problems of 1966; Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown in Ghana, students were burning their draft cards (DiMaggio shook his head), the flu epidemic was spreading through the whole state of California. Then he flipped inside through the gossip columns, thankful they did not have him in there today - they had printed an item about his dating "an electrifying airline hostess" not long ago, and they also spotted him at dinner with Dori Lane, "the frantic frugger" in Whisky à Go Go's glass cage - and then he turned to the sports page and read a story about how the injured Mickey Mantle may never regain his form. </p>
<p>It happened all so quickly, the passing of Mantle, or so it seemed; he had succeeded DiMaggio, who had succeeded Ruth, but now there was no great young power hitter coming up, and the Yankee management, almost desperate, had talked Mantle out of retirement, and on September 18, 1965, they gave him a "day" in New York during which he received several thousand dollars' worth of gifts - an automobile, two quarter horses, free vacation trips to Rome, Nassau, Puerto Rico - and DiMaggio had flown to New York to make the introduction before 50,000: it had been a dramatic day, an almost holy day for the believers who had jammed the grandstands early to witness the canonization of a new stadium saint. Cardinal Spellman was on the committee, President Johnson sent a telegram, the day was officially proclaimed by the Mayor of New York, an orchestra assembled in the center field in front of the trinity of monuments to Ruth, Gehrig, Huggins; and high in the grandstands, billowing in the breeze of early autumn, were white banners that read: "Don't Quit, Mick," "We Love the Mick." </p>
<p>The banner had been held by hundreds of young boys whose dreams had been fulfilled so often by Mantle, but also seated in the grandstands were older men, paunchy and balding, in whose middle-aged minds DiMaggio was still vivid and invincible, and some of them remembered how one month before, during a pregame exhibition at Old-Timers' Day in Yankee Stadium, DiMaggio had hit a pitch into the left-field seats, and suddenly thousands of people had jumped wildly to their feet, joyously screaming - the great DiMaggio had returned, they were young again, it was yesterday. </p>
<p>But on this sunny September day at the stadium, the feast day of Mickey Mantle, DiMaggio was not wearing No. 5 on his back or a black cap to cover his graying hair; he was wearing a black suit and white shirt and blue tie, and he stood in one corner of the Yankees' dugout waiting to be introduced by Red Barber, who was standing near home plate behind a silver microphone. In the outfield Guy Lombardo's Royal Canadians were playing soothing, soft music; and moving slowly back and forth over the sprawling green grass between the left-field bullpen and the infield were two carts driven by grounds keepers and containing dozens and dozens of large gifts for Mantle - a 6-foot, 100-pound Hebrew National salami, a Winchester rifle, a mink coat for Mrs. Mantle, a set of Wilson golf clubs, a year's supply of Chunky Candy. DiMaggio smoked a cigarette, but cupped it in his hands as if not wanting to be caught in the act by teen-aged boys near enough to peek down into the dugout. Then, edging forward a step, DiMaggio poked his head out and looked up. He could see nothing above except the packed, towering green grandstands that seemed a mile high and moving, and he could see no clouds or blue sky, only a sky of faces. Then the announcer called out his name - <i>"Joe DiMaggio!"</i> - and suddenly there was a blast of cheering that grew louder and louder, echoing and reechoing within the big steel canyon, and DiMaggio stomped out his cigarette and climbed up the dugout steps and onto the soft green grass, the noise resounding in his ears, he could almost feel the breeze, the breath of 50,000 lungs upon him, 100,000 eyes watching his every move, and for the briefest instant as he walked he closed his eyes. </p>
<p>Then in his path he saw Mickey Mantle's mother, a smiling woman wearing an orchid, and he gently reached out for her elbow, holding it as he led her toward the microphone next to the other dignitaries lined up on the infield. Then he stood, very erect and without expression as the cheers softened and the stadium settled down. </p>
<p>Mantle was still in the dugout, in uniform, standing with one leg on the top step, and lined on both sides of him were the other Yankees who, when the ceremony was over, would play the Detroit Tigers. Then into the dugout, smiling, came Senator Robert Kennedy, accompanied by two tall curly-haired assistants with blue eyes, Fordham freckles. Jim Farley was the first on the field to notice the Senator, and Farley muttered, loud enough for others to hear, "Who the hell invited <i>him</i>?" </p>
<p>Toots Shor and some of the other committeemen standing near Farley looked into the dugout, and so did DiMaggio, his glance seeming cold, but he remained silent. Kennedy walked up and down within the dugout, shaking hands with the Yankees, but he did not walk onto the field. </p>
<p>"Senator," said Yankees' manager Johnny Keane, "why don't you sit down?" Kennedy quickly shook his head, smiled. He remained standing, and then one Yankee came over and asked about getting relatives out of Cuba, and Kennedy called over one of his aides to take down the details in a notebook. </p>
<p>On the infield the ceremony went on, Mantle's gifts continued to pile up - a Mobilette motorbike, a Sooner Schooner wagon barbecue, a year's supply of Chock Full O' Nuts coffee, a year's supply of Topps Chewing Gum - and the Yankee players watched, and Maris seemed glum. </p>
<p>"Hey, Rog," yelled a man with a tape recorder, Murray Olderman, "I want to do a 30-second tape with you." Maris swore angrily, shook his head. </p>
<p>"Why don't you ask Richardson? He's a better talker than me." </p>
<p>"Yes, but the fact that it comes from you ..." </p>
<p>Maris swore again. But finally he went over and said in an interview that Mantle was the finest player of his era, a great competitor, a great hitter. </p>
<p>Fifteen minutes later, standing behind the microphone at home plate, DiMaggio was telling the crowd, "I'm proud to introduce the man who succeeded me in center field in 1951," and from every corner of the stadium, the cheering, whistling, clapping came down. Mantle stepped forward. He stood with his wife and children, posed for the photographers kneeling in front. Then he thanked the crowd in a short speech, and, turning, shook hands with the dignitaries standing nearby. Among them now was Senator Kennedy, who had been spotted in the dugout five minutes before by Red Barber, and been called out and introduced. Kennedy posed with Mantle for a photographer, then shook hands with the Mantle children, and with Toots Shor and James Farley and others. DiMaggio saw him coming down the line and at the last second he backed away, casually, hardly anybody noticing it, and Kennedy seemed not to notice it either, just swept past, shaking more hands.</p><p>Finishing his tea, putting aside the newspaper, DiMaggio went upstairs to dress, and soon he was waving good-bye to Marie and driving toward his business appointment in downtown San Francisco with his partners in the retail television business. DiMaggio, while not a millionaire, has invested wisely and has always had, since his retirement from baseball, executive positions with big companies that have paid him well. He also was among the organizers of the Fisherman's National Bank of San Francisco last year, and, though it never came about, he demonstrated an acuteness that impressed those businessmen who had thought of him only in terms of baseball. He has had offers to manage big-league baseball teams but always has rejected them, saying, "I have enough trouble taking care of my own problems without taking on the responsibilities of 25 ball players." </p>
<p>So his only contact with baseball these days, excluding public appearances, is his unsalaried job as a batting coach each spring in Florida with the New York Yankees, a trip he would make once again on the following Sunday, three days away, if he could accomplish what for him is always the dreaded responsibility of packing, a task made no easier by the fact that he lately had fallen into the habit of keeping his clothes in two places - some hang in his closet at home, some hang in the back room of a saloon called Reno's. </p>
<p>Reno's is a dimly lit bar in the center of San Francisco. A portrait of DiMaggio swinging a bat hangs on the wall, in addition to portraits of other star athletes, and the clientele consists mainly of the sporting crowd and newspapermen, people who know DiMaggio quite well and around whom he speaks freely on a number of subjects and relaxes as he can in few other places. The owner of the bar is Reno Barsocchini, a broad-shouldered and handsome man of 51 with graying wavy hair who began as a fiddler in Dago Mary's tavern 35 years ago. He later became a bartender there and elsewhere, including DiMaggio's Restaurant, and now he is probably DiMaggio's closest friend. He was the best man at the DiMaggio-Monroe wedding in 1954, and when they separated nine months later in Los Angeles, Reno rushed down to help DiMaggio with the packing and drove him back to San Francisco. Reno will never forget the day. </p>
<p>Hundreds of people were gathered around the Beverly Hills home that DiMaggio and Marilyn had rented, and photographers were perched in the trees watching the windows, and others stood on the lawn and behind the rose bushes waiting to snap pictures of anybody who walked out of the house. The newspapers that day played all the puns - "Joe Fanned on Jealousy"; "Marilyn and Joe - Out at Home" -- and the Hollywood columnists, to whom DiMaggio was never an idol, never a gracious host, recounted instances of incompatibility, and Oscar Levant said it all proved that no man could be a success in two national pastimes. When Reno Barsocchini arrived, he had to push his way through the mob, then bang on the door for several minutes before being admitted. Marilyn Monroe was upstairs in bed. Joe DiMaggio was downstairs with his suitcases, tense and pale, his eyes bloodshot. </p>
<p>Reno took the suitcase and golf clubs out to DiMaggio's car, and then DiMaggio came out of the house, the reporters moving toward him, the lights flashing. </p>
<p>"Where are you going?" they yelled. </p>
<p>"I'm driving to San Francisco," he said, walking quickly. </p>
<p>"Is that going to be your home?" </p>
<p>"That <i>is</i> my home and always has been." </p>
<p>"Are you coming back?" </p>
<p>DiMaggio turned for a moment, looking up at the house. </p>
<p>"No," he said, "I'll never be back." </p>
<p>Reno Barsocchini, except for a brief falling-out over something he will not discuss, has been DiMaggio's trusted companion ever since, joining him whenever he can on the golf course or on the town, otherwise waiting for him in the bar with other middle-aged men. They may wait for hours sometimes, waiting and knowing that when he arrives he may wish to be alone; but it does not seem to matter, they are endlessly awed by him, moved by the mystique, he is a kind of male Garbo. They know that he can be warm and loyal if they are sensitive to his wishes, but they must never be late for an appointment to meet him. One man, unable to find a parking place, arrived a half hour late once, and DiMaggio did not talk to him again for three months. They know, too, when dining at night with DiMaggio, that he generally prefers male companions and occasionally one or two young women, but never wives; wives gossip, wives complain, wives are trouble, and men wishing to remain close to DiMaggio must keep their wives at home. </p>
<p>When DiMaggio strolls into Reno's bar, the men wave and call out his name and Reno Barsocchini smiles and announces, "Here's the Clipper!" -- the "Yankee Clipper" being a nickname from his baseball days. </p>
<p>"Hey Clipper, Clipper," Reno had said two nights before, "where you been, Clipper? ... Clipper, how 'bout a belt?" </p>
<p>DiMaggio refused the offer of a drink, ordering instead a pot of tea, which he prefers to all other beverages except before a date, when he will switch to vodka. </p>
<p>"Hey, Joe," a sports writer asked, a man researching a magazine piece on golf, "why is it that a golfer, when he starts getting older, loses his putting touch first? Like Snead and Hogan, they can still hit a ball well off the tee, but on the greens they lose the strokes." </p>
<p>"It's the pressure of age" DiMaggio said, turning around on his barstool. "With age you get jittery. It's true of golfers, it's true of any man when he gets into his 50s. He doesn't take chances like he used to. The younger golfer, on the greens, he'll stroke his putts better. The older man, he becomes hesitant. A little uncertain. Shaky. When it comes to taking chances, the younger man, even when driving a car, will take chances that the older man won't." </p>
<p>"Speaking of chances," another man said, one of the group that had gathered around DiMaggio, "did you see that guy on crutches in here last night?" </p>
<p>"Yeah, had his leg in a cast," a third said. "Skiing." </p>
<p>"I would never ski," DiMaggio said. "Men who ski must be doing it to impress a broad. You see these men, some of them 40, 50, getting onto skis. And later you see them all bandaged up, broken legs..." </p>
<p>"But skiing's a very sexy sport, Joe. All the clothes, the tight pants, the fireplaces in the ski lodge, the bear rug - Christ nobody goes to ski. They just go out there to get it cold so they can warm it up." </p>
<p>"Maybe you're right," DiMaggio said. "I might be persuaded." </p>
<p>"Want a belt, Clipper?" Reno asked. </p>
<p>DiMaggio thought for a second, then said, "All right - first belt tonight." </p><p>Now it was noon, a warm sunny day. DiMaggio's business meeting with the television retailers had gone well; he had made a strong appeal to George Shahood, president of Continental Television, Inc., which has eight retail outlets in Northern California, to put prices on color television sets and increase the sales volume, and Shahood had conceded it was worth a try. Then DiMaggio called Reno's bar to see if there were any messages, and now he was in Lefty O'Doul's car being driven along Fisherman's Wharf toward the Golden Gate Bridge en route to a golf course 30 miles upstate. Lefty O'Doul was one of the great hitters in the National League in the early thirties, and later he managed the San Francisco Seals when DiMaggio was the shining star. Though O'Doul is now 69, 18 years older than DiMaggio, he nevertheless possesses great energy and spirit, is a hard-drinking, boisterous man with a big belly and roving eye; and when DiMaggio, as they drove along the highway toward the golf club, noticed a lovely blonde at the wheel of a car nearby and exclaimed, "Look at that tomato!" O'Doul's head suddenly spun around, he took his eyes off the road, and yelled, "Where, <i>where</i>?" O'Doul's golf game is less than what it was - he used to have a two-handicap -- but he still shoots in the 80s, as does DiMaggio. </p>
<p>DiMaggio's drives range between 250 and 280 yards when he doesn't sky them, and his putting is good, but he is distracted by a bad back that both pains him and hinders the fullness of his swing. On the first hole, waiting to tee off, DiMaggio sat back watching a foursome of college boys ahead swinging with such freedom. "Oh," he said with a sigh, "to have <i>their</i> backs" </p>
<p>DiMaggio and O'Doul were accompanied around the golf course by Ernie Nevers, the former football star, and two brothers who are in the hotel and movie-distribution business. They moved quickly up and down the green hills in electric golf carts, and DiMaggio's game was exceptionally good for the first nine holes. But then he seemed distracted, perhaps tired, perhaps even reacting to a conversation of a few minutes before. One of the movie men was praising the film <i>Boeing, Boeing</i>, starring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis, and the man asked DiMaggio if he had seen it. </p>
<p>"No," DiMaggio said. Then he added, swiftly, "I haven't seen a film in eight years." </p>
<p>DiMaggio hooked a few shots, was in the woods. He took a No. 9 iron and tried to chip out. But O'Doul interrupted DiMaggio's concentration to remind him to keep the face of the club closed. DiMaggio hit the ball. It caromed off the side of his club, went skipping like a rabbit through the high grass down toward a pond. DiMaggio rarely displays any emotion on a golf course, but now, without saying a word, he took his No. 9 iron and flung it into the air. The club landed in a tree and stayed up there. </p>
<p>"Well," O'Doul said casually, "there goes <i>that</i> set of clubs." </p>
<p>DiMaggio walked to the tree. Fortunately the club had slipped to the lower branch, and DiMaggio could stretch up on the cart and get it back. </p>
<p>"Every time I get advice," DiMaggio muttered to himself, shaking his head slowly and walking toward the pond, "I shank it." </p>
<p>Later, showered and dressed, DiMaggio and the others drove to a banquet about 10 miles from the golf course. Somebody had said it was going to be an elegant dinner, but when they arrived they could see it was more like a county fair; farmers were gathered outside a big barn-like building, a candidate for sheriff was distributing leaflets at the front door, and a chorus of homely ladies was inside singing "You Are My Sunshine. </p>
<p>"How did we get sucked into this?" DiMaggio asked, talking out of the side of his mouth, as they approached the building. </p>
<p>"O'Doul," one of the men said. "It's his fault. Damned O'Doul can't turn <i>anything</i> down." </p>
<p>"Go to hell," O'Doul said. </p>
<p>Soon DiMaggio and O'Doul and Ernie Nevers were surrounded by the crowd, and the woman who had been leading the chorus came rushing over and said, "Oh, Mr. DiMaggio, it certainly is a pleasure having you" </p>
<p>"It's a pleasure being here, ma'am," he said, forcing a smile. </p>
<p>"It's too bad you didn't arrive a moment sooner. You'd have heard our singing." </p>
<p>"Oh, I heard it," he said, "and I enjoyed it very much." </p>
<p>"Good, good," she said. "And how are your brothers, Dom and Vic?" </p>
<p>"Fine. Dom lives near Boston. Vince is in Pittsburgh." </p>
<p>"Why, <i>hello</i> there, Joe," interrupted a man with wine on his breath, patting DiMaggio on the back, feeling his arm. "Who's gonna take it this year, Joe?" </p>
<p>"Well, I have no idea," DiMaggio said. </p>
<p>"What about the Giants?" </p>
<p>"Your guess is as good as mine." </p>
<p>"Well, you can't count the Dodgers out," the man said. </p>
<p>"You sure can't," DiMaggio said. </p>
<p>"Not with all that pitching." </p>
<p>"Pitching is certainly important," DiMaggio said. </p>
<p>Everywhere he goes the question seems the same, as if he has some special vision into the future of new heroes, and everywhere he goes, too, older men grab his hand and feel his arm and predict that he could still go out there and hit one, and the smile on DiMaggio's face is genuine. He tries hard to remain as he was - he diets, he takes steambaths, he is careful; and flabby men in the locker rooms of golf clubs sometimes steal peeks at him when he steps out of the shower, observing the tight muscles across his chest, the flat stomach, the long sinewy legs. He has a young man's body, very pale and little hair; his face is dark and lined, however, parched by the sun of several seasons. Still he is always an impressive figure at banquets such as this - an <i>immortal</i> sports writers called him, and that is how they have written about him and others like him, rarely suggesting that such heroes might ever be prone to the ills of mortal men, carousing, drinking, scheming; to suggest this would destroy the myth, would disillusion small boys, would infuriate rich men who own ball clubs and to whom baseball is a business dedicated to profit and in pursuit of which they trade mediocre players' flesh as casually as boys trade players' pictures on bubble-gum cards. And so the baseball hero must always act the part, must preserve the myth, and none does it better than DiMaggio, none is more patient when drunken old men grab an arm and ask, "Who's gonna take it this year, Joe?" </p>
<p>Two hours later, dinner and the speeches over, DiMaggio was slumped in O'Doul's car headed back to San Francisco. He edged himself up, however, when O'Doul pulled into a gas station in which a pretty red-haired girl sat on a stool, legs crossed, filing her fingernails. She was about 22, wore a tight black skirt and tighter white blouse. </p>
<p>"Look at <i>that</i>," DiMaggio said. </p>
<p>"Yeah," O'Doul said. </p>
<p>O'Doul turned away when a young man approached, opened the gas tank, began wiping the windshield. The young man wore a greasy white uniform on the front of which was printed the name "Burt." DiMaggio kept looking at the girl, but she was not distracted from her fingernails. Then he looked at Burt, who did not recognize him. When the tank was full, O'Doul paid and drove off. Burt returned to his girl; DiMaggio slumped down in the front seat and did not open his eyes again until they arrived in San Francisco. </p>
<p>"Let's go see Reno," DiMaggio said. </p>
<p>"No, I gotta go see my old lady," O'Doul said. So he dropped DiMaggio off in front of the bar, and a moment later Reno's voice was announcing in the smoky room, "Hey, here's the Clipper!" The men waved and offered to buy him a drink. DiMaggio ordered a vodka and sat for an hour at the bar talking to a half-dozen men around him. Then a blonde girl who had been with friends at the other end of the bar came over, and somebody introduced her to DiMaggio. He bought her a drink, offered her a cigarette. Then he struck a match and held it. His hand was unsteady. </p>
<p>"Is that me that's shaking?" he asked. </p>
<p>"It must be," said the blonde. "I'm calm." </p><p>Two nights later, having collected his clothes out of Reno's back room, DiMaggio boarded a jet; he slept crossways on three seats, then came down the steps as the sun began to rise in Miami. He claimed his luggage and golf clubs, put them into the trunk of a waiting automobile, and less than an hour later he was being driven into Fort Lauderdale, past palm-lined streets, toward the Yankee Clipper Hotel. </p>
<p>"All my life it seems I've been on the road traveling," he said, squinting through the windshield into the sun. "I never get a sense of being in any one place." </p>
<p>Arriving at the Yankee Clipper Hotel, DiMaggio checked into the largest suite. People rushed through the lobby to shake hands with him, to ask for his autograph, to say, "Joe, you look great." And early the next morning, and for the next 30 mornings, DiMaggio arrived punctually at the baseball park and wore his uniform with the famous No. 5, and the tourists seated in the sunny grandstands clapped when he first appeared on the field each time, and then they watched with nostalgia as he picked up a bat and played "pepper" with the younger Yankees, some of whom were not even born when, 25 years ago this summer, he hit in 56 straight games and became the most celebrated man in America. </p>
<p>But the younger spectators in the Fort Lauderdale park, and the sports writers, too, were more interested in Mantle and Maris, and nearly every day there were news dispatches reporting how Mantle and Maris felt, what they did, what they said, even though they said and did very little except walk around the field frowning when photographers asked for another picture and when sports writers asked how they felt. </p>
<p>After seven days of this, the big day arrived - Mantle and Maris would swing a bat - and a dozen sports writers were gathered around the big batting cage that was situated beyond the left-field fence; it was completely enclosed in wire, meaning that no baseball could travel more than 30 or 40 feet before being trapped in rope; still Mantle and Maris would be swinging, and this, in spring, makes news. </p>
<p>Mantle stepped in first. He wore black gloves to help prevent blisters. He hit right-handed against the pitching of a coach named Vern Benson, and soon Mantle was swinging hard, smashing line drives against the nets, going <i>ahhh ahhh</i> as he followed through with his mouth open. </p>
<p>Then Mantle, not wanting to overdo it on his first day, dropped his bat in the dirt and walked out of the batting cage. Roger Maris stepped in. He picked up Mantle's bat. </p>
<p>"This damn thing must be 38 ounces," Maris said. He threw the bat down into the dirt, left the cage, and walked toward the dugout on the other side of the field to get a lighter bat. </p>
<p>DiMaggio stood among the sports writers behind the cage, then turned when Vern Benson, inside the cage, yelled, "Joe, wanna hit some?" </p>
<p>"No chance," DiMaggio said. </p>
<p>"Com'on Joe," Benson said. </p>
<p>The reporters waited silently. Then DiMaggio walked slowly into the cage and picked up Mantle's bat. He took his position at the plate but obviously it was not the classic DiMaggio stance; he was holding the bat about two inches from the knob, his feet were not so far apart, and when DiMaggio took a cut at Benson's first pitch, fouling it, there was none of that ferocious follow-through, the blurred bat did not come whipping all the way around, the No. 5 was not stretched full across his broad back. </p>
<p>DiMaggio fouled Benson's second pitch, then he connected solidly with the third, the fourth, the fifth. He was just meeting the ball easily, however, not smashing it, and Benson called out, "I didn't know you were a choke hitter, Joe." </p>
<p>"I am now," DiMaggio said, getting ready for another pitch. </p>
<p>He hit three more squarely enough, and then he swung again and there was a hollow sound. </p>
<p>"Ohhh," DiMaggio yelled, dropping his bat, his fingers stung. "I was waiting for that one." He left the batting cage, rubbing his hands together. The reporters watched him. Nobody said anything. Then DiMaggio said to one of them, not in anger or in sadness, but merely as a simply stated fact, "There was a time when you couldn't get me out of there."</p>
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 The Silent Season of a Hero                           
                           
 Esquire, July 1966                           
                           
 "I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing," the old man said. "They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand."                         
                           
 --ERNEST HEMINGWAY, The Old Man and the Sea                           
                           
                           
                           
 IT WAS NOT quite spring, the silent season before the search for salmon, and the old fishermen of San Francisco were either painting their boats or repairing their nets along the pier or sitting in the sun talking quietly among themselves, watching the tourists come and go, and smiling, now, as a pretty girl paused to take their picture. She was about 25, healthy and blue-eyed and wearing a turtleneck sweater, and she had long, flowing blonde hair that she brushed back a few times before clicking her camera. The fishermen, looking at her, made admiring comments, but she did not understand because they spoke a Sicilian dialect; nor did she understand the tall gray-haired man in a dark suit who stood watching her from behind a big bay window on the second floor of DiMaggio's Restaurant that overlooks the pier.              
                           
 He watched until she left, lost in the crowd of newly arrived tourists that had just come down the hill by cable car. Then he sat down again at the table in the restaurant, finishing his tea and lighting another cigarette, his fifth in the last half hour. It was 11:30 in the morning. None of the other tables was occupied, and the only sounds came from the bar, where a liquor salesman was laughing at something the headwaiter had said. But then the salesman, his briefcase under his arm, headed for the door, stopping briefly to peek into the dining room and call out, "See you later, Joe." Joe DiMaggio turned and waved at the salesman. Then the room was quiet again.                 
                           
 At 51, DiMaggio was a most distinguished-looking man, aging as gracefully as he had played on the ball field, impeccable in his tailoring, his nails manicured, his 6-foot-2 body seeming as lean and capable as when he posed for the portrait that hangs in the restaurant and shows him in Yankee Stadium, swinging from the heels at a pitch thrown 20 years ago. His gray hair was thinning at the crown, but just barely, and his face was lined in the right places, and his expression, once as sad and haunted as a matador's, was more in repose these days, though, as now, tension had returned and he chain-smoked and occasionally paced the floor and looked out the window at the people below. In the crowd was a man he did not wish to see.                
                           
 The man had met DiMaggio in New York. This week he had come to San Francisco and had telephoned several times, but none of the calls had been returned because DiMaggio suspected that the man, who had said he was doing research on some vague sociological project, really wanted to delve into DiMaggio's private life and that of DiMaggio's former wife, Marilyn Monroe. DiMaggio would never tolerate this. The memory of her death is still very painful to him, and yet, because he keeps it to himself, some people are not sensitive to it. One night in a supper club, a woman who had been drinking approached his table, and when he did not ask her to join him, she snapped:                 
                           
 "All right, I guess I'm not Marilyn Monroe."                           
                           
 He ignored her remark, but when she repeated it, he replied, barely controlling his anger, "No - I wish you were, but you're not"                         
                           
 The tone of his voice softened her, and she asked, "Am I saying something wrong?"                          
                           
 "You already have," he said. "Now will you please leave me alone?"                          
                           
 His friends on the wharf, understanding him as they do, are very careful when discussing him with strangers, knowing that should they inadvertently betray a confidence, he will not denounce them but rather will never speak to them again; this comes from a sense of propriety not inconsistent in the man who also, after Marilyn Monroe's death, directed that fresh flowers be placed on her grave "forever."                     
                           
 Some of the older fishermen who have known DiMaggio all his life remember him as a small boy who helped clean his father's boat, and as a young man who sneaked away and used a broken oar as a bat on the sandlots nearby. His father, a small mustachioed man known as Zio Pepe, would become infuriated and call him lagnuso, lazy, meschino, good-for-nothing, but in 1936 Zio Pepe was among those who cheered when Joe DiMaggio returned to San Francisco after his first season with the New York Yankees and was carried along the wharf on the shoulders of the fishermen.                  
                           
 The fishermen also remember how, after his retirement in 1951, DiMaggio brought his second wife, Marilyn, to live near the wharf, and sometimes they would be seen early in the morning fishing off DiMaggio's boat, the Yankee Clipper, now docked quietly in the marina, and in the evening they would be sitting and talking on the pier. They had arguments, too, the fishermen knew, and one night Marilyn was seen running hysterically, crying, as she ran, along the road away from the pier, with Joe following. But the fishermen pretended they did not see this; it was none of their affair. They knew that Joe wanted her to stay in San Francisco and avoid the sharks in Hollywood, but she was confused and torn then - "She was a child," they said - and even today DiMaggio loathes Los Angeles and many of the people in it. He no longer speaks to his onetime friend, Frank Sinatra, who had befriended Marilyn in her final years, and he also is cool to Dean Martin and Peter Lawford and Lawford's former wife, Pat, who once gave a party at which she introduced Marilyn Monroe to Robert Kennedy, and the two of them danced often that night, Joe heard, and he did not take it well. He was possessive of her that year, his close friends say, because Marilyn and he had planned to remarry; but before they could she was dead, and DiMaggio banned the Lawfords and Sinatra and many Hollywood people from her funeral. When Marilyn Monroe's attorney complained that DiMaggio was keeping her friends away, DiMaggio answered coldly, "If it weren't for those friends persuading her to stay in Hollywood, she would still be alive."  
                           
 Joe DiMaggio now spends most of the year in San Francisco, and each day tourists, noticing the name on the restaurant, ask the men on the wharf if they ever see him. Oh, yes, the men say, they see him nearly every day; they have not seen him yet this morning, they add, but he should be arriving shortly. So the tourists continue to walk along the piers past the crab vendors, under the circling sea gulls, past the fish-'n'-chip stands, sometimes stopping to watch a large vessel, steaming toward the Golden Gate Bridge, which, to their dismay, is painted red. Then they visit the Wax Museum, where there is a life-size figure of DiMaggio in uniform, and walk across the street and spend a quarter to peer through the silver telescopes focused on the island of Alcatraz, which is no longer a federal prison. Then they return to ask the men if DiMaggio has been seen. Not yet, the men say, although they notice his blue Impala parked in the lot next to the restaurant. Sometimes tourists will walk into the restaurant and have lunch and will see him sitting calmly in a corner signing autographs and being extremely gracious with everyone. At other times, as on this particular morning when the man from New York chose to visit, DiMaggio was tense and suspicious.       
                           
 When the man entered the restaurant from the side steps leading to the dining room, he saw DiMaggio standing near the window, talking with an elderly maître d' named Charles Friscia. Not wanting to walk in and risk intrusion, the man asked one of DiMaggio's nephews to inform Joe of his presence. When DiMaggio got the message, he quickly turned and left Friscia and disappeared through an exit leading down to the kitchen.                     
                           
 Astonished and confused, the visitor stood in the hall. A moment later Friscia appeared and the man asked, "Did Joe leave?"                         
                           
 "Joe who?" Friscia replied.                           
                           
 "Joe DiMaggio!"                           
                           
 "Haven't seen him" Friscia said.                           
                           
 "You haven't seen him! He was standing right next to you a second ago!"                          
                           
 "It wasn't me," Friscia said.                           
                           
 "You were standing next to him. I saw you. In the dining room."                          
                           
 "You must be mistaken," Friscia said, softly, seriously. "It wasn't me."                          
                           
 "You must be kidding," the man said angrily, turning and leaving the restaurant. Before he could get to his car, however, DiMaggio's nephew came running after him and said, "Joe wants to see you"                        
                           
 He returned, expecting to see DiMaggio waiting for him. Instead, he was handed a telephone. The voice was powerful and deep and so tense that the quick sentences ran together: "You are invading my rights. I did not ask you to come. I assume you have a lawyer. You must have a lawyer, get your lawyer!"                       
                           
 "I came as a friend," the man interrupted.                           
                           
 "That's beside the point," DiMaggio said. "I have my privacy; I do not want it violated; you'd better get a lawyer." Then, pausing, DiMaggio asked, "Is my nephew there?"                         
                           
 He was not.                           
                           
 "Then wait where you are."                           
                           
 A moment later DiMaggio appeared, tall and red-faced, erect and beautifully dressed in his dark suit and white shirt with the gray silk tie and the gleaming silver cuff links. He moved with his big steps toward the man and handed him an airmail envelope unopened that the man had written from New York.                      
                           
 "Here," DiMaggio said. "This is yours"                           
                           
 Then DiMaggio sat down at a small table. He said nothing, just lit a cigarette and waited, legs crossed, his head held high and back so as to reveal the intricate construction of his nose, a fine sharp tip above the big nostrils and tiny bones built out from the bridge, a great nose.                       
                           
 "Look" DiMaggio said, more calmly, "I do not interfere with other people's lives. And I do not expect them to interfere with mine. There are things about my life, personal things, that I refuse to talk about. And even if you asked my brothers, they would be unable to tell you about them because they do not know. There are things about me, so many things, that they simply do not know."                     
                           
 "I don't want to cause trouble," the man said. "I think you're a great man, and ..."                          
                           
 "I'm not great," DiMaggio cut in. "I'm not great," he repeated softly. "I'm just a man trying to get along."                          
                           
 Then DiMaggio, as if realizing that he was intruding upon his own privacy, abruptly stood up. He looked at his watch.                         
                           
 "I'm late," he said, very formal again. "I'm 10 minutes late. You're making me late."                          
                           
 The man left the restaurant. He crossed the street and wandered over to the pier, briefly watching the fishermen hauling their nets and talking in the sun, seemingly very calm and contented. Then, after he turned and was headed back toward the parking lot, a blue Impala stopped in front of him and Joe DiMaggio leaned out the window and asked, "Do you have a car?" His voice was very gentle.                     
                           
 "Yes," the man said.                           
                           
 "Oh" DiMaggio said. "I would have given you a ride."                          
                           
                           
                           
 Joe DiMaggio was not born in San Francisco but in Martinez, a small fishing village 25 miles northeast of the Golden Gate. Zio Pepe had settled there after leaving Isola delle Femmine, an islet off Palermo where the DiMaggios had been fishermen for generations. But in 1915, hearing of the luckier waters off San Francisco's wharf, Zio Pepe left Martinez, packing his boat with furniture and family, including Joe, who was one year old.                    
                           
 San Francisco was placid and picturesque when the DiMaggios arrived, but there was a competitive undercurrent and struggle for power along the pier. At dawn the boats would sail out to where the bay meets the ocean and the sea is rough, and later the men would race back with their hauls, hoping to beat their fellow fishermen to shore and sell it while they could. Twenty or 30 boats would sometimes be trying to gain the channel shoreward at the same time, and a fisherman had to know every rock in the water, and later know every bargaining trick along the shore, because the dealers and restaurateurs would play one fisherman off against the other, keeping the prices down. Later the fishermen became wiser and organized, predetermining the maximum amount each fisherman would catch, but there were always some men who, like the fish, never learned, and so heads would sometimes be broken, nets slashed, gasoline poured onto their fish, flowers of warning placed outside their doors.            
                           
 But these days were ending when Zio Pepe arrived, and he expected his five sons to succeed him as fishermen, and the first two, Tom and Michael, did; but a third, Vincent, wanted to sing. He sang with such magnificent power as a young man that he came to the attention of the great banker, A. P. Giannini, and there were plans to send him to Italy for tutoring and the opera. But there was hesitation around the DiMaggio household and Vince never went; instead, he played ball with the San Francisco seals and sports writers misspelled his name.                   
                           
 It was DiMaggio until Joe, at Vince's recommendation, joined the team and became a sensation, being followed later by the youngest brother, Dominic, who was also outstanding. All three later played in the big leagues, and some writers like to say that Joe was the best hitter, Dom the best fielder, Vince the best singer, and Casey Stengel once said: "Vince is the only player I ever saw who could strike out three times in one game and not be embarrassed. He'd walk into the clubhouse whistling. Everybody would be feeling sorry for him, but Vince always thought he was doing good."                  
                           
 After he retired from baseball Vince became a bartender, then a milkman, now a carpenter. He lives 40 miles north of San Francisco in a house he partly built, has been happily married for 34 years, has four grandchildren, has in the closet one of Joe's tailor-made suits that he has never had altered to fit, and when People ask him if he envies Joe he always says, "No, maybe Joe would like to have what I have." The brother Vincent most admired was Michael, "a big earthy man, a dreamer, a fisherman who wanted things but didn't want to take from Joe, or to work in the restaurant. He wanted a bigger boat, but wanted to earn it on his own. He never got it." In 1953, at the age of 44, Michael fell from his boat and drowned.                
                           
 Since Zio Pepe's death at 77 in 1949, Tom at 62, the oldest brother - two of his four sisters are older - has become nominal head of the family and manages the restaurant that was opened in 1937 as Joe DiMaggio's Grotto. Later Joe sold out his share, and now Tom is the co-owner with Dominic. Of all the brothers, Dominic, who was known as the "Little Professor" when he played with the Boston Red Sox, is the most successful in business. He lives in a fashionable Boston suburb with his wife and three children and is president of a firm that manufactures fiber cushion materials and grossed more than $3.5 million last year.                 
                           
 Joe DiMaggio lives with his widowed sister, Marie, in a tan stone house on a quiet residential street not far from Fisherman's Wharf. He bought the house almost 30 years ago for his parents, and after their deaths he lived there with Marilyn Monroe. Now it is cared for by Marie, a slim and handsome dark-eyed woman who has an apartment on the second floor, Joe on the third. There are some baseball trophies and plaques in the small room off DiMaggio's bedroom, and on his dresser are photographs of Marilyn Monroe, and in the living room downstairs is a small painting of her that DiMaggio likes very much; it reveals only her face and shoulders and she is wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat, and there is a soft, sweet smile on her lips, an innocent curiosity about her that is the way he saw her and the way he wanted her to be seen by others - a simple girl, "a warm, big-hearted girl," he once described her, "that everybody took advantage of."            
                           
 The publicity photographs emphasizing her sex appeal often offend him, and a memorable moment for Billy Wilder, who directed her in The Seven-Year Itch, occurred when he spotted DiMaggio in a large crowd of people gathered on Lexington Avenue in New York to watch a scene in which Marilyn, standing over a subway grating to cool herself, had her skirts blown high by a sudden wind blow. "What the hell is going on here?" DiMaggio was overheard to have said in the crowd, and Wilder recalled, "I shall never forget the look of death on Joe's face."                   
                           
 He was then 39, she was 27. They had been married in January of that year, 1954, despite disharmony in temperament and time; he was tired of publicity, she was thriving on it; he was intolerant of tardiness, she was always late. During their honeymoon in Tokyo an American general had introduced himself and asked if, as a patriotic gesture, she would visit the troops in Korea. She looked at Joe. "It's your honeymoon," he said, shrugging, "go ahead if you want to."                    
                           
 She appeared on 10 occasions before 100,000 servicemen, and when she returned, she said, "It was so wonderful, Joe. You never heard such cheering."                         
                           
 "Yes, I have," he said.                           
                           
                           
                           
 Across from her portrait in the living room, on a coffee table in front of a sofa, is a sterling-silver humidor that was presented to him by his Yankee teammates at a time when he was the most talked-about man in America, and when Les Brown's band had recorded a hit that was heard day and night on the radio.                      
                           
                           
 From Coast to Coast, that's all you hear                           
 Of Joe the One-Man Show                           
 He's glorified the horsehide sphere,                           
 Jolting Joe DiMaggio...                           
 Joe...Joe...DiMaggio...we                           
 want you on our side.                           
                           
                           
 The year was 1941, and it began for DiMaggio in the middle of May after the Yankees had lost four games in a row, seven of their last nine, and were in fourth place, five and a half games behind the leading Cleveland Indians. On May 15, DiMaggio hit only a first-inning single in a game that New York lost to Chicago 13-1; he was barely hitting .300, and had greatly disappointed the crowds that had seen him finish with a .352 average the year before and .381 in 1939.                    
                           
 He got a hit in the next game, and the next, and the next. On May 24, with the Yankees losing 6-5 to Boston, DiMaggio came up with runners on second and third and singled them home, winning the game, extending his streak to 10 games. But it went largely unnoticed. Even DiMaggio was not conscious of it until it had reached 29 games in mid-June. Then the newspapers began to dramatize it, the public became aroused, they sent him good-luck charms of every description, and DiMaggio kept hitting, and radio announcers would interrupt programs to announce the news, and then the song again: "Joe ... Joe ... DiMaggio ... we want you on our side."                 
                           
 Sometimes DiMaggio would be hitless his first three times up, the tension would build, it would appear that the game would end without his getting another chance - but he always would, and then he would hit the ball against the left-field wall, or through the pitcher's legs, or between two leaping infielders. In the forty-first game, the first of a doubleheader in Washington, DiMaggio tied an American League record that George Sisler had set in 1922. But before the second game began, a spectator sneaked onto the field and into the Yankees' dugout and stole DiMaggio's favorite bat. In the second game, using another of his bats, DiMaggio lined out twice and flied out. But in the seventh inning, borrowing one of his old bats that a teammate was using, he singled and broke Sisler's record, and he was only three games away from surpassing the major-league record of 44 set in 1897 by Willie Keeler while playing for Baltimore when it was a National League franchise.            
                           
 An appeal for the missing bat was made through the newspapers. A man from Newark admitted the crime and returned it with regrets. And on July 2 at Yankee Stadium, DiMaggio hit a home run into the left-field stands. The record was broken.                        
                           
 He also got hits on the next 11 games, but on July 17...in Cleveland, at a night game attended by 67,468, he failed against two pitchers, Al Smith and Jim Bagby, Jr., although Cleveland's hero was really its third baseman, Ken Keltner, who in the first inning lunged to his right to make a spectacular backhanded stop of a drive and, from the foul line behind third base, threw DiMaggio out. DiMaggio received a walk in the fourth inning. But in the seventh he again hit a hard shot at Keltner, who again stopped it and threw him out. DiMaggio hit sharply toward the shortstop in the eighth inning, the ball taking a bad hop, but Lou Boudreau speared it off his shoulder and threw to the second baseman to start a double play and DiMaggio's streak was stopped at 56 games. But the New York Yankees were on their way to winning the pennant by 17 games, and the World Series too, and so in August, in a hotel suite in Washington, the players threw a surprise party for DiMaggio and toasted him with champagne and presented him with his Tiffany silver humidor that is now in San Francisco in his living room.          
                           
                           
                           
 Marie was in the kitchen making toast and tea when DiMaggio came down for breakfast; his gray hair was uncombed but, since he wears it short, it was not untidy. He said good morning to Marie, sat down, and yawned. He lit a cigarette. He wore a blue wool bathrobe over his pajamas. It was 8:00 A.M. He had many things to do today and he seemed cheerful. He had a conference with the president of Continental Television, Inc., a large retail chain in California of which he is a partner and vice-president; later he had a golf date, and then a big banquet to attend, and, if that did not go on too long and if he were not too tired afterward, he might have a date.                 
                           
 Picking up the morning paper, not rushing to the sports page, DiMaggio read the front-page news, the people problems of 1966; Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown in Ghana, students were burning their draft cards (DiMaggio shook his head), the flu epidemic was spreading through the whole state of California. Then he flipped inside through the gossip columns, thankful they did not have him in there today - they had printed an item about his dating "an electrifying airline hostess" not long ago, and they also spotted him at dinner with Dori Lane, "the frantic frugger" in Whisky à Go Go's glass cage - and then he turned to the sports page and read a story about how the injured Mickey Mantle may never regain his form.                
                           
 It happened all so quickly, the passing of Mantle, or so it seemed; he had succeeded DiMaggio, who had succeeded Ruth, but now there was no great young power hitter coming up, and the Yankee management, almost desperate, had talked Mantle out of retirement, and on September 18, 1965, they gave him a "day" in New York during which he received several thousand dollars' worth of gifts - an automobile, two quarter horses, free vacation trips to Rome, Nassau, Puerto Rico - and DiMaggio had flown to New York to make the introduction before 50,000: it had been a dramatic day, an almost holy day for the believers who had jammed the grandstands early to witness the canonization of a new stadium saint. Cardinal Spellman was on the committee, President Johnson sent a telegram, the day was officially proclaimed by the Mayor of New York, an orchestra assembled in the center field in front of the trinity of monuments to Ruth, Gehrig, Huggins; and high in the grandstands, billowing in the breeze of early autumn, were white banners that read: "Don't Quit, Mick," "We Love the Mick."          
                           
 The banner had been held by hundreds of young boys whose dreams had been fulfilled so often by Mantle, but also seated in the grandstands were older men, paunchy and balding, in whose middle-aged minds DiMaggio was still vivid and invincible, and some of them remembered how one month before, during a pregame exhibition at Old-Timers' Day in Yankee Stadium, DiMaggio had hit a pitch into the left-field seats, and suddenly thousands of people had jumped wildly to their feet, joyously screaming - the great DiMaggio had returned, they were young again, it was yesterday.                  
                           
 But on this sunny September day at the stadium, the feast day of Mickey Mantle, DiMaggio was not wearing No. 5 on his back or a black cap to cover his graying hair; he was wearing a black suit and white shirt and blue tie, and he stood in one corner of the Yankees' dugout waiting to be introduced by Red Barber, who was standing near home plate behind a silver microphone. In the outfield Guy Lombardo's Royal Canadians were playing soothing, soft music; and moving slowly back and forth over the sprawling green grass between the left-field bullpen and the infield were two carts driven by grounds keepers and containing dozens and dozens of large gifts for Mantle - a 6-foot, 100-pound Hebrew National salami, a Winchester rifle, a mink coat for Mrs. Mantle, a set of Wilson golf clubs, a year's supply of Chunky Candy. DiMaggio smoked a cigarette, but cupped it in his hands as if not wanting to be caught in the act by teen-aged boys near enough to peek down into the dugout. Then, edging forward a step, DiMaggio poked his head out and looked up. He could see nothing above except the packed, towering green grandstands that seemed a mile high and moving, and he could see no clouds or blue sky, only a sky of faces. Then the announcer called out his name - "Joe DiMaggio!" - and suddenly there was a blast of cheering that grew louder and louder, echoing and reechoing within the big steel canyon, and DiMaggio stomped out his cigarette and climbed up the dugout steps and onto the soft green grass, the noise resounding in his ears, he could almost feel the breeze, the breath of 50,000 lungs upon him, 100,000 eyes watching his every move, and for the briefest instant as he walked he closed his eyes.
                           
 Then in his path he saw Mickey Mantle's mother, a smiling woman wearing an orchid, and he gently reached out for her elbow, holding it as he led her toward the microphone next to the other dignitaries lined up on the infield. Then he stood, very erect and without expression as the cheers softened and the stadium settled down.                      
                           
 Mantle was still in the dugout, in uniform, standing with one leg on the top step, and lined on both sides of him were the other Yankees who, when the ceremony was over, would play the Detroit Tigers. Then into the dugout, smiling, came Senator Robert Kennedy, accompanied by two tall curly-haired assistants with blue eyes, Fordham freckles. Jim Farley was the first on the field to notice the Senator, and Farley muttered, loud enough for others to hear, "Who the hell invited him?"                    
                           
 Toots Shor and some of the other committeemen standing near Farley looked into the dugout, and so did DiMaggio, his glance seeming cold, but he remained silent. Kennedy walked up and down within the dugout, shaking hands with the Yankees, but he did not walk onto the field.                       
                           
 "Senator," said Yankees' manager Johnny Keane, "why don't you sit down?" Kennedy quickly shook his head, smiled. He remained standing, and then one Yankee came over and asked about getting relatives out of Cuba, and Kennedy called over one of his aides to take down the details in a notebook.                       
                           
 On the infield the ceremony went on, Mantle's gifts continued to pile up - a Mobilette motorbike, a Sooner Schooner wagon barbecue, a year's supply of Chock Full O' Nuts coffee, a year's supply of Topps Chewing Gum - and the Yankee players watched, and Maris seemed glum.                       
                           
 "Hey, Rog," yelled a man with a tape recorder, Murray Olderman, "I want to do a 30-second tape with you." Maris swore angrily, shook his head.                         
                           
 "Why don't you ask Richardson? He's a better talker than me."                          
                           
 "Yes, but the fact that it comes from you ..."                          
                           
 Maris swore again. But finally he went over and said in an interview that Mantle was the finest player of his era, a great competitor, a great hitter.                         
                           
 Fifteen minutes later, standing behind the microphone at home plate, DiMaggio was telling the crowd, "I'm proud to introduce the man who succeeded me in center field in 1951," and from every corner of the stadium, the cheering, whistling, clapping came down. Mantle stepped forward. He stood with his wife and children, posed for the photographers kneeling in front. Then he thanked the crowd in a short speech, and, turning, shook hands with the dignitaries standing nearby. Among them now was Senator Kennedy, who had been spotted in the dugout five minutes before by Red Barber, and been called out and introduced. Kennedy posed with Mantle for a photographer, then shook hands with the Mantle children, and with Toots Shor and James Farley and others. DiMaggio saw him coming down the line and at the last second he backed away, casually, hardly anybody noticing it, and Kennedy seemed not to notice it either, just swept past, shaking more hands.            
                           
                           
                           
 Finishing his tea, putting aside the newspaper, DiMaggio went upstairs to dress, and soon he was waving good-bye to Marie and driving toward his business appointment in downtown San Francisco with his partners in the retail television business. DiMaggio, while not a millionaire, has invested wisely and has always had, since his retirement from baseball, executive positions with big companies that have paid him well. He also was among the organizers of the Fisherman's National Bank of San Francisco last year, and, though it never came about, he demonstrated an acuteness that impressed those businessmen who had thought of him only in terms of baseball. He has had offers to manage big-league baseball teams but always has rejected them, saying, "I have enough trouble taking care of my own problems without taking on the responsibilities of 25 ball players."              
                           
 So his only contact with baseball these days, excluding public appearances, is his unsalaried job as a batting coach each spring in Florida with the New York Yankees, a trip he would make once again on the following Sunday, three days away, if he could accomplish what for him is always the dreaded responsibility of packing, a task made no easier by the fact that he lately had fallen into the habit of keeping his clothes in two places - some hang in his closet at home, some hang in the back room of a saloon called Reno's.                   
                           
 Reno's is a dimly lit bar in the center of San Francisco. A portrait of DiMaggio swinging a bat hangs on the wall, in addition to portraits of other star athletes, and the clientele consists mainly of the sporting crowd and newspapermen, people who know DiMaggio quite well and around whom he speaks freely on a number of subjects and relaxes as he can in few other places. The owner of the bar is Reno Barsocchini, a broad-shouldered and handsome man of 51 with graying wavy hair who began as a fiddler in Dago Mary's tavern 35 years ago. He later became a bartender there and elsewhere, including DiMaggio's Restaurant, and now he is probably DiMaggio's closest friend. He was the best man at the DiMaggio-Monroe wedding in 1954, and when they separated nine months later in Los Angeles, Reno rushed down to help DiMaggio with the packing and drove him back to San Francisco. Reno will never forget the day.             
                           
 Hundreds of people were gathered around the Beverly Hills home that DiMaggio and Marilyn had rented, and photographers were perched in the trees watching the windows, and others stood on the lawn and behind the rose bushes waiting to snap pictures of anybody who walked out of the house. The newspapers that day played all the puns - "Joe Fanned on Jealousy"; "Marilyn and Joe - Out at Home" -- and the Hollywood columnists, to whom DiMaggio was never an idol, never a gracious host, recounted instances of incompatibility, and Oscar Levant said it all proved that no man could be a success in two national pastimes. When Reno Barsocchini arrived, he had to push his way through the mob, then bang on the door for several minutes before being admitted. Marilyn Monroe was upstairs in bed. Joe DiMaggio was downstairs with his suitcases, tense and pale, his eyes bloodshot.              
                           
 Reno took the suitcase and golf clubs out to DiMaggio's car, and then DiMaggio came out of the house, the reporters moving toward him, the lights flashing.                         
                           
 "Where are you going?" they yelled.                           
                           
 "I'm driving to San Francisco," he said, walking quickly.                          
                           
 "Is that going to be your home?"                           
                           
 "That is my home and always has been."                           
                           
 "Are you coming back?"                           
                           
 DiMaggio turned for a moment, looking up at the house.                          
                           
 "No," he said, "I'll never be back."                           
                           
 Reno Barsocchini, except for a brief falling-out over something he will not discuss, has been DiMaggio's trusted companion ever since, joining him whenever he can on the golf course or on the town, otherwise waiting for him in the bar with other middle-aged men. They may wait for hours sometimes, waiting and knowing that when he arrives he may wish to be alone; but it does not seem to matter, they are endlessly awed by him, moved by the mystique, he is a kind of male Garbo. They know that he can be warm and loyal if they are sensitive to his wishes, but they must never be late for an appointment to meet him. One man, unable to find a parking place, arrived a half hour late once, and DiMaggio did not talk to him again for three months. They know, too, when dining at night with DiMaggio, that he generally prefers male companions and occasionally one or two young women, but never wives; wives gossip, wives complain, wives are trouble, and men wishing to remain close to DiMaggio must keep their wives at home.           
                           
 When DiMaggio strolls into Reno's bar, the men wave and call out his name and Reno Barsocchini smiles and announces, "Here's the Clipper!" -- the "Yankee Clipper" being a nickname from his baseball days.                        
                           
 "Hey Clipper, Clipper," Reno had said two nights before, "where you been, Clipper? ... Clipper, how 'bout a belt?"                         
                           
 DiMaggio refused the offer of a drink, ordering instead a pot of tea, which he prefers to all other beverages except before a date, when he will switch to vodka.                         
                           
 "Hey, Joe," a sports writer asked, a man researching a magazine piece on golf, "why is it that a golfer, when he starts getting older, loses his putting touch first? Like Snead and Hogan, they can still hit a ball well off the tee, but on the greens they lose the strokes."                       
                           
 "It's the pressure of age" DiMaggio said, turning around on his barstool. "With age you get jittery. It's true of golfers, it's true of any man when he gets into his 50s. He doesn't take chances like he used to. The younger golfer, on the greens, he'll stroke his putts better. The older man, he becomes hesitant. A little uncertain. Shaky. When it comes to taking chances, the younger man, even when driving a car, will take chances that the older man won't."                    
                           
 "Speaking of chances," another man said, one of the group that had gathered around DiMaggio, "did you see that guy on crutches in here last night?"                         
                           
 "Yeah, had his leg in a cast," a third said. "Skiing."                          
                           
 "I would never ski," DiMaggio said. "Men who ski must be doing it to impress a broad. You see these men, some of them 40, 50, getting onto skis. And later you see them all bandaged up, broken legs..."                        
                           
 "But skiing's a very sexy sport, Joe. All the clothes, the tight pants, the fireplaces in the ski lodge, the bear rug - Christ nobody goes to ski. They just go out there to get it cold so they can warm it up."                        
                           
 "Maybe you're right," DiMaggio said. "I might be persuaded."                          
                           
 "Want a belt, Clipper?" Reno asked.                           
                           
 DiMaggio thought for a second, then said, "All right - first belt tonight."                          
                           
                           
                           
 Now it was noon, a warm sunny day. DiMaggio's business meeting with the television retailers had gone well; he had made a strong appeal to George Shahood, president of Continental Television, Inc., which has eight retail outlets in Northern California, to put prices on color television sets and increase the sales volume, and Shahood had conceded it was worth a try. Then DiMaggio called Reno's bar to see if there were any messages, and now he was in Lefty O'Doul's car being driven along Fisherman's Wharf toward the Golden Gate Bridge en route to a golf course 30 miles upstate. Lefty O'Doul was one of the great hitters in the National League in the early thirties, and later he managed the San Francisco Seals when DiMaggio was the shining star. Though O'Doul is now 69, 18 years older than DiMaggio, he nevertheless possesses great energy and spirit, is a hard-drinking, boisterous man with a big belly and roving eye; and when DiMaggio, as they drove along the highway toward the golf club, noticed a lovely blonde at the wheel of a car nearby and exclaimed, "Look at that tomato!" O'Doul's head suddenly spun around, he took his eyes off the road, and yelled, "Where, where?" O'Doul's golf game is less than what it was - he used to have a two-handicap -- but he still shoots in the 80s, as does DiMaggio.       
                           
 DiMaggio's drives range between 250 and 280 yards when he doesn't sky them, and his putting is good, but he is distracted by a bad back that both pains him and hinders the fullness of his swing. On the first hole, waiting to tee off, DiMaggio sat back watching a foursome of college boys ahead swinging with such freedom. "Oh," he said with a sigh, "to have their backs"                     
                           
 DiMaggio and O'Doul were accompanied around the golf course by Ernie Nevers, the former football star, and two brothers who are in the hotel and movie-distribution business. They moved quickly up and down the green hills in electric golf carts, and DiMaggio's game was exceptionally good for the first nine holes. But then he seemed distracted, perhaps tired, perhaps even reacting to a conversation of a few minutes before. One of the movie men was praising the film Boeing, Boeing, starring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis, and the man asked DiMaggio if he had seen it.                  
                           
 "No," DiMaggio said. Then he added, swiftly, "I haven't seen a film in eight years."                          
                           
 DiMaggio hooked a few shots, was in the woods. He took a No. 9 iron and tried to chip out. But O'Doul interrupted DiMaggio's concentration to remind him to keep the face of the club closed. DiMaggio hit the ball. It caromed off the side of his club, went skipping like a rabbit through the high grass down toward a pond. DiMaggio rarely displays any emotion on a golf course, but now, without saying a word, he took his No. 9 iron and flung it into the air. The club landed in a tree and stayed up there.                   
                           
 "Well," O'Doul said casually, "there goes that set of clubs."                          
                           
 DiMaggio walked to the tree. Fortunately the club had slipped to the lower branch, and DiMaggio could stretch up on the cart and get it back.                         
                           
 "Every time I get advice," DiMaggio muttered to himself, shaking his head slowly and walking toward the pond, "I shank it."                         
                           
 Later, showered and dressed, DiMaggio and the others drove to a banquet about 10 miles from the golf course. Somebody had said it was going to be an elegant dinner, but when they arrived they could see it was more like a county fair; farmers were gathered outside a big barn-like building, a candidate for sheriff was distributing leaflets at the front door, and a chorus of homely ladies was inside singing "You Are My Sunshine.                     
                           
 "How did we get sucked into this?" DiMaggio asked, talking out of the side of his mouth, as they approached the building.                         
                           
 "O'Doul," one of the men said. "It's his fault. Damned O'Doul can't turn anything down."                          
                           
 "Go to hell," O'Doul said.                           
                           
 Soon DiMaggio and O'Doul and Ernie Nevers were surrounded by the crowd, and the woman who had been leading the chorus came rushing over and said, "Oh, Mr. DiMaggio, it certainly is a pleasure having you"                        
                           
 "It's a pleasure being here, ma'am," he said, forcing a smile.                          
                           
 "It's too bad you didn't arrive a moment sooner. You'd have heard our singing."                          
                           
 "Oh, I heard it," he said, "and I enjoyed it very much."                          
                           
 "Good, good," she said. "And how are your brothers, Dom and Vic?"                          
                           
 "Fine. Dom lives near Boston. Vince is in Pittsburgh."                          
                           
 "Why, hello there, Joe," interrupted a man with wine on his breath, patting DiMaggio on the back, feeling his arm. "Who's gonna take it this year, Joe?"                         
                           
 "Well, I have no idea," DiMaggio said.                           
                           
 "What about the Giants?"                           
                           
 "Your guess is as good as mine."                           
                           
 "Well, you can't count the Dodgers out," the man said.                          
                           
 "You sure can't," DiMaggio said.                           
                           
 "Not with all that pitching."                           
                           
 "Pitching is certainly important," DiMaggio said.                          
                           
 Everywhere he goes the question seems the same, as if he has some special vision into the future of new heroes, and everywhere he goes, too, older men grab his hand and feel his arm and predict that he could still go out there and hit one, and the smile on DiMaggio's face is genuine. He tries hard to remain as he was - he diets, he takes steambaths, he is careful; and flabby men in the locker rooms of golf clubs sometimes steal peeks at him when he steps out of the shower, observing the tight muscles across his chest, the flat stomach, the long sinewy legs. He has a young man's body, very pale and little hair; his face is dark and lined, however, parched by the sun of several seasons. Still he is always an impressive figure at banquets such as this - an immortal sports writers called him, and that is how they have written about him and others like him, rarely suggesting that such heroes might ever be prone to the ills of mortal men, carousing, drinking, scheming; to suggest this would destroy the myth, would disillusion small boys, would infuriate rich men who own ball clubs and to whom baseball is a business dedicated to profit and in pursuit of which they trade mediocre players' flesh as casually as boys trade players' pictures on bubble-gum cards. And so the baseball hero must always act the part, must preserve the myth, and none does it better than DiMaggio, none is more patient when drunken old men grab an arm and ask, "Who's gonna take it this year, Joe?"    
                           
 Two hours later, dinner and the speeches over, DiMaggio was slumped in O'Doul's car headed back to San Francisco. He edged himself up, however, when O'Doul pulled into a gas station in which a pretty red-haired girl sat on a stool, legs crossed, filing her fingernails. She was about 22, wore a tight black skirt and tighter white blouse.                      
                           
 "Look at that," DiMaggio said.                           
                           
 "Yeah," O'Doul said.                           
                           
 O'Doul turned away when a young man approached, opened the gas tank, began wiping the windshield. The young man wore a greasy white uniform on the front of which was printed the name "Burt." DiMaggio kept looking at the girl, but she was not distracted from her fingernails. Then he looked at Burt, who did not recognize him. When the tank was full, O'Doul paid and drove off. Burt returned to his girl; DiMaggio slumped down in the front seat and did not open his eyes again until they arrived in San Francisco.                   
                           
 "Let's go see Reno," DiMaggio said.                           
                           
 "No, I gotta go see my old lady," O'Doul said. So he dropped DiMaggio off in front of the bar, and a moment later Reno's voice was announcing in the smoky room, "Hey, here's the Clipper!" The men waved and offered to buy him a drink. DiMaggio ordered a vodka and sat for an hour at the bar talking to a half-dozen men around him. Then a blonde girl who had been with friends at the other end of the bar came over, and somebody introduced her to DiMaggio. He bought her a drink, offered her a cigarette. Then he struck a match and held it. His hand was unsteady.                  
                           
 "Is that me that's shaking?" he asked.                           
                           
 "It must be," said the blonde. "I'm calm."                           
                           
                           
                           
 Two nights later, having collected his clothes out of Reno's back room, DiMaggio boarded a jet; he slept crossways on three seats, then came down the steps as the sun began to rise in Miami. He claimed his luggage and golf clubs, put them into the trunk of a waiting automobile, and less than an hour later he was being driven into Fort Lauderdale, past palm-lined streets, toward the Yankee Clipper Hotel.                     
                           
 "All my life it seems I've been on the road traveling," he said, squinting through the windshield into the sun. "I never get a sense of being in any one place."                         
                           
 Arriving at the Yankee Clipper Hotel, DiMaggio checked into the largest suite. People rushed through the lobby to shake hands with him, to ask for his autograph, to say, "Joe, you look great." And early the next morning, and for the next 30 mornings, DiMaggio arrived punctually at the baseball park and wore his uniform with the famous No. 5, and the tourists seated in the sunny grandstands clapped when he first appeared on the field each time, and then they watched with nostalgia as he picked up a bat and played "pepper" with the younger Yankees, some of whom were not even born when, 25 years ago this summer, he hit in 56 straight games and became the most celebrated man in America.                
                           
 But the younger spectators in the Fort Lauderdale park, and the sports writers, too, were more interested in Mantle and Maris, and nearly every day there were news dispatches reporting how Mantle and Maris felt, what they did, what they said, even though they said and did very little except walk around the field frowning when photographers asked for another picture and when sports writers asked how they felt.                     
                           
 After seven days of this, the big day arrived - Mantle and Maris would swing a bat - and a dozen sports writers were gathered around the big batting cage that was situated beyond the left-field fence; it was completely enclosed in wire, meaning that no baseball could travel more than 30 or 40 feet before being trapped in rope; still Mantle and Maris would be swinging, and this, in spring, makes news.                     
                           
 Mantle stepped in first. He wore black gloves to help prevent blisters. He hit right-handed against the pitching of a coach named Vern Benson, and soon Mantle was swinging hard, smashing line drives against the nets, going ahhh ahhh as he followed through with his mouth open.                       
                           
 Then Mantle, not wanting to overdo it on his first day, dropped his bat in the dirt and walked out of the batting cage. Roger Maris stepped in. He picked up Mantle's bat.                         
                           
 "This damn thing must be 38 ounces," Maris said. He threw the bat down into the dirt, left the cage, and walked toward the dugout on the other side of the field to get a lighter bat.                        
                           
 DiMaggio stood among the sports writers behind the cage, then turned when Vern Benson, inside the cage, yelled, "Joe, wanna hit some?"                         
                           
 "No chance," DiMaggio said.                           
                           
 "Com'on Joe," Benson said.                           
                           
 The reporters waited silently. Then DiMaggio walked slowly into the cage and picked up Mantle's bat. He took his position at the plate but obviously it was not the classic DiMaggio stance; he was holding the bat about two inches from the knob, his feet were not so far apart, and when DiMaggio took a cut at Benson's first pitch, fouling it, there was none of that ferocious follow-through, the blurred bat did not come whipping all the way around, the No. 5 was not stretched full across his broad back.                   
                           
 DiMaggio fouled Benson's second pitch, then he connected solidly with the third, the fourth, the fifth. He was just meeting the ball easily, however, not smashing it, and Benson called out, "I didn't know you were a choke hitter, Joe."                        
                           
 "I am now," DiMaggio said, getting ready for another pitch.                          
                           
 He hit three more squarely enough, and then he swung again and there was a hollow sound.                          
                           
 "Ohhh," DiMaggio yelled, dropping his bat, his fingers stung. "I was waiting for that one." He left the batting cage, rubbing his hands together. The reporters watched him. Nobody said anything. Then DiMaggio said to one of them, not in anger or in sadness, but merely as a simply stated fact, "There was a time when you couldn't get me out of there."                      
                           
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 ©2007 Gay Talese Design by Charlevi¢
 
Esquire, July 1966
	
"I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing," the old man said. "They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand."
--ERNEST HEMINGWAY, The Old Man and the Sea  
 IT WAS NOT quite spring, the silent season before the search for salmon, and the old fishermen of San Francisco were either painting their boats or repairing their nets along the pier or sitting in the sun talking quietly among themselves, watching the tourists come and go, and smiling, now, as a pretty girl paused to take their picture. She was about 25, healthy and blue-eyed and wearing a turtleneck sweater, and she had long, flowing blonde hair that she brushed back a few times before clicking her camera. The fishermen, looking at her, made admiring comments, but she did not understand because they spoke a Sicilian dialect; nor did she understand the tall gray-haired man in a dark suit who stood watching her from behind a big bay window on the second floor of DiMaggio's Restaurant that overlooks the pier. 
He watched until she left, lost in the crowd of newly arrived tourists that had just come down the hill by cable car. Then he sat down again at the table in the restaurant, finishing his tea and lighting another cigarette, his fifth in the last half hour. It was 11:30 in the morning. None of the other tables was occupied, and the only sounds came from the bar, where a liquor salesman was laughing at something the headwaiter had said. But then the salesman, his briefcase under his arm, headed for the door, stopping briefly to peek into the dining room and call out, "See you later, Joe." Joe DiMaggio turned and waved at the salesman. Then the room was quiet again. 
At 51, DiMaggio was a most distinguished-looking man, aging as gracefully as he had played on the ball field, impeccable in his tailoring, his nails manicured, his 6-foot-2 body seeming as lean and capable as when he posed for the portrait that hangs in the restaurant and shows him in Yankee Stadium, swinging from the heels at a pitch thrown 20 years ago. His gray hair was thinning at the crown, but just barely, and his face was lined in the right places, and his expression, once as sad and haunted as a matador's, was more in repose these days, though, as now, tension had returned and he chain-smoked and occasionally paced the floor and looked out the window at the people below. In the crowd was a man he did not wish to see. 
The man had met DiMaggio in New York. This week he had come to San Francisco and had telephoned several times, but none of the calls had been returned because DiMaggio suspected that the man, who had said he was doing research on some vague sociological project, really wanted to delve into DiMaggio's private life and that of DiMaggio's former wife, Marilyn Monroe. DiMaggio would never tolerate this. The memory of her death is still very painful to him, and yet, because he keeps it to himself, some people are not sensitive to it. One night in a supper club, a woman who had been drinking approached his table, and when he did not ask her to join him, she snapped: 
"All right, I guess I'm not Marilyn Monroe." 
He ignored her remark, but when she repeated it, he replied, barely controlling his anger, "No - I wish you were, but you're not" 
The tone of his voice softened her, and she asked, "Am I saying something wrong?" 
"You already have," he said. "Now will you please leave me alone?" 
His friends on the wharf, understanding him as they do, are very careful when discussing him with strangers, knowing that should they inadvertently betray a confidence, he will not denounce them but rather will never speak to them again; this comes from a sense of propriety not inconsistent in the man who also, after Marilyn Monroe's death, directed that fresh flowers be placed on her grave "forever." 
Some of the older fishermen who have known DiMaggio all his life remember him as a small boy who helped clean his father's boat, and as a young man who sneaked away and used a broken oar as a bat on the sandlots nearby. His father, a small mustachioed man known as Zio Pepe, would become infuriated and call him lagnuso, lazy, meschino, good-for-nothing, but in 1936 Zio Pepe was among those who cheered when Joe DiMaggio returned to San Francisco after his first season with the New York Yankees and was carried along the wharf on the shoulders of the fishermen. 
The fishermen also remember how, after his retirement in 1951, DiMaggio brought his second wife, Marilyn, to live near the wharf, and sometimes they would be seen early in the morning fishing off DiMaggio's boat, the Yankee Clipper, now docked quietly in the marina, and in the evening they would be sitting and talking on the pier. They had arguments, too, the fishermen knew, and one night Marilyn was seen running hysterically, crying, as she ran, along the road away from the pier, with Joe following. But the fishermen pretended they did not see this; it was none of their affair. They knew that Joe wanted her to stay in San Francisco and avoid the sharks in Hollywood, but she was confused and torn then - "She was a child," they said - and even today DiMaggio loathes Los Angeles and many of the people in it. He no longer speaks to his onetime friend, Frank Sinatra, who had befriended Marilyn in her final years, and he also is cool to Dean Martin and Peter Lawford and Lawford's former wife, Pat, who once gave a party at which she introduced Marilyn Monroe to Robert Kennedy, and the two of them danced often that night, Joe heard, and he did not take it well. He was possessive of her that year, his close friends say, because Marilyn and he had planned to remarry; but before they could she was dead, and DiMaggio banned the Lawfords and Sinatra and many Hollywood people from her funeral. When Marilyn Monroe's attorney complained that DiMaggio was keeping her friends away, DiMaggio answered coldly, "If it weren't for those friends persuading her to stay in Hollywood, she would still be alive." 
Joe DiMaggio now spends most of the year in San Francisco, and each day tourists, noticing the name on the restaurant, ask the men on the wharf if they ever see him. Oh, yes, the men say, they see him nearly every day; they have not seen him yet this morning, they add, but he should be arriving shortly. So the tourists continue to walk along the piers past the crab vendors, under the circling sea gulls, past the fish-'n'-chip stands, sometimes stopping to watch a large vessel, steaming toward the Golden Gate Bridge, which, to their dismay, is painted red. Then they visit the Wax Museum, where there is a life-size figure of DiMaggio in uniform, and walk across the street and spend a quarter to peer through the silver telescopes focused on the island of Alcatraz, which is no longer a federal prison. Then they return to ask the men if DiMaggio has been seen. Not yet, the men say, although they notice his blue Impala parked in the lot next to the restaurant. Sometimes tourists will walk into the restaurant and have lunch and will see him sitting calmly in a corner signing autographs and being extremely gracious with everyone. At other times, as on this particular morning when the man from New York chose to visit, DiMaggio was tense and suspicious. 
When the man entered the restaurant from the side steps leading to the dining room, he saw DiMaggio standing near the window, talking with an elderly maître d' named Charles Friscia. Not wanting to walk in and risk intrusion, the man asked one of DiMaggio's nephews to inform Joe of his presence. When DiMaggio got the message, he quickly turned and left Friscia and disappeared through an exit leading down to the kitchen. 
Astonished and confused, the visitor stood in the hall. A moment later Friscia appeared and the man asked, "Did Joe leave?"
"Joe who?" Friscia replied. 
"Joe DiMaggio!" 
"Haven't seen him" Friscia said. 
"You haven't seen him! He was standing right next to you a second ago!" 
"It wasn't me," Friscia said. 
"You were standing next to him. I saw you. In the dining room." 
"You must be mistaken," Friscia said, softly, seriously. "It wasn't me." 
"You must be kidding," the man said angrily, turning and leaving the restaurant. Before he could get to his car, however, DiMaggio's nephew came running after him and said, "Joe wants to see you" 
He returned, expecting to see DiMaggio waiting for him. Instead, he was handed a telephone. The voice was powerful and deep and so tense that the quick sentences ran together: "You are invading my rights. I did not ask you to come. I assume you have a lawyer. You must have a lawyer, get your lawyer!" 
"I came as a friend," the man interrupted. 
"That's beside the point," DiMaggio said. "I have my privacy; I do not want it violated; you'd better get a lawyer." Then, pausing, DiMaggio asked, "Is my nephew there?" 
He was not. 
"Then wait where you are." 
A moment later DiMaggio appeared, tall and red-faced, erect and beautifully dressed in his dark suit and white shirt with the gray silk tie and the gleaming silver cuff links. He moved with his big steps toward the man and handed him an airmail envelope unopened that the man had written from New York. 
"Here," DiMaggio said. "This is yours" 
Then DiMaggio sat down at a small table. He said nothing, just lit a cigarette and waited, legs crossed, his head held high and back so as to reveal the intricate construction of his nose, a fine sharp tip above the big nostrils and tiny bones built out from the bridge, a great nose. 
"Look" DiMaggio said, more calmly, "I do not interfere with other people's lives. And I do not expect them to interfere with mine. There are things about my life, personal things, that I refuse to talk about. And even if you asked my brothers, they would be unable to tell you about them because they do not know. There are things about me, so many things, that they simply do not know." 
"I don't want to cause trouble," the man said. "I think you're a great man, and ..." 
"I'm not great," DiMaggio cut in. "I'm not great," he repeated softly. "I'm just a man trying to get along." 
Then DiMaggio, as if realizing that he was intruding upon his own privacy, abruptly stood up. He looked at his watch. 
"I'm late," he said, very formal again. "I'm 10 minutes late. You're making me late." 
The man left the restaurant. He crossed the street and wandered over to the pier, briefly watching the fishermen hauling their nets and talking in the sun, seemingly very calm and contented. Then, after he turned and was headed back toward the parking lot, a blue Impala stopped in front of him and Joe DiMaggio leaned out the window and asked, "Do you have a car?" His voice was very gentle. 
"Yes," the man said. 
"Oh" DiMaggio said. "I would have given you a ride."  Joe DiMaggio was not born in San Francisco but in Martinez, a small fishing village 25 miles northeast of the Golden Gate. Zio Pepe had settled there after leaving Isola delle Femmine, an islet off Palermo where the DiMaggios had been fishermen for generations. But in 1915, hearing of the luckier waters off San Francisco's wharf, Zio Pepe left Martinez, packing his boat with furniture and family, including Joe, who was one year old. 
San Francisco was placid and picturesque when the DiMaggios arrived, but there was a competitive undercurrent and struggle for power along the pier. At dawn the boats would sail out to where the bay meets the ocean and the sea is rough, and later the men would race back with their hauls, hoping to beat their fellow fishermen to shore and sell it while they could. Twenty or 30 boats would sometimes be trying to gain the channel shoreward at the same time, and a fisherman had to know every rock in the water, and later know every bargaining trick along the shore, because the dealers and restaurateurs would play one fisherman off against the other, keeping the prices down. Later the fishermen became wiser and organized, predetermining the maximum amount each fisherman would catch, but there were always some men who, like the fish, never learned, and so heads would sometimes be broken, nets slashed, gasoline poured onto their fish, flowers of warning placed outside their doors. 
But these days were ending when Zio Pepe arrived, and he expected his five sons to succeed him as fishermen, and the first two, Tom and Michael, did; but a third, Vincent, wanted to sing. He sang with such magnificent power as a young man that he came to the attention of the great banker, A. P. Giannini, and there were plans to send him to Italy for tutoring and the opera. But there was hesitation around the DiMaggio household and Vince never went; instead, he played ball with the San Francisco seals and sports writers misspelled his name. 
It was DiMaggio until Joe, at Vince's recommendation, joined the team and became a sensation, being followed later by the youngest brother, Dominic, who was also outstanding. All three later played in the big leagues, and some writers like to say that Joe was the best hitter, Dom the best fielder, Vince the best singer, and Casey Stengel once said: "Vince is the only player I ever saw who could strike out three times in one game and not be embarrassed. He'd walk into the clubhouse whistling. Everybody would be feeling sorry for him, but Vince always thought he was doing good." 
After he retired from baseball Vince became a bartender, then a milkman, now a carpenter. He lives 40 miles north of San Francisco in a house he partly built, has been happily married for 34 years, has four grandchildren, has in the closet one of Joe's tailor-made suits that he has never had altered to fit, and when People ask him if he envies Joe he always says, "No, maybe Joe would like to have what I have." The brother Vincent most admired was Michael, "a big earthy man, a dreamer, a fisherman who wanted things but didn't want to take from Joe, or to work in the restaurant. He wanted a bigger boat, but wanted to earn it on his own. He never got it." In 1953, at the age of 44, Michael fell from his boat and drowned. 
Since Zio Pepe's death at 77 in 1949, Tom at 62, the oldest brother - two of his four sisters are older - has become nominal head of the family and manages the restaurant that was opened in 1937 as Joe DiMaggio's Grotto. Later Joe sold out his share, and now Tom is the co-owner with Dominic. Of all the brothers, Dominic, who was known as the "Little Professor" when he played with the Boston Red Sox, is the most successful in business. He lives in a fashionable Boston suburb with his wife and three children and is president of a firm that manufactures fiber cushion materials and grossed more than $3.5 million last year. 
Joe DiMaggio lives with his widowed sister, Marie, in a tan stone house on a quiet residential street not far from Fisherman's Wharf. He bought the house almost 30 years ago for his parents, and after their deaths he lived there with Marilyn Monroe. Now it is cared for by Marie, a slim and handsome dark-eyed woman who has an apartment on the second floor, Joe on the third. There are some baseball trophies and plaques in the small room off DiMaggio's bedroom, and on his dresser are photographs of Marilyn Monroe, and in the living room downstairs is a small painting of her that DiMaggio likes very much; it reveals only her face and shoulders and she is wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat, and there is a soft, sweet smile on her lips, an innocent curiosity about her that is the way he saw her and the way he wanted her to be seen by others - a simple girl, "a warm, big-hearted girl," he once described her, "that everybody took advantage of." 
The publicity photographs emphasizing her sex appeal often offend him, and a memorable moment for Billy Wilder, who directed her in The Seven-Year Itch, occurred when he spotted DiMaggio in a large crowd of people gathered on Lexington Avenue in New York to watch a scene in which Marilyn, standing over a subway grating to cool herself, had her skirts blown high by a sudden wind blow. "What the hell is going on here?" DiMaggio was overheard to have said in the crowd, and Wilder recalled, "I shall never forget the look of death on Joe's face." 
He was then 39, she was 27. They had been married in January of that year, 1954, despite disharmony in temperament and time; he was tired of publicity, she was thriving on it; he was intolerant of tardiness, she was always late. During their honeymoon in Tokyo an American general had introduced himself and asked if, as a patriotic gesture, she would visit the troops in Korea. She looked at Joe. "It's your honeymoon," he said, shrugging, "go ahead if you want to." 
She appeared on 10 occasions before 100,000 servicemen, and when she returned, she said, "It was so wonderful, Joe. You never heard such cheering." 
"Yes, I have," he said.  Across from her portrait in the living room, on a coffee table in front of a sofa, is a sterling-silver humidor that was presented to him by his Yankee teammates at a time when he was the most talked-about man in America, and when Les Brown's band had recorded a hit that was heard day and night on the radio.  
From Coast to Coast, that's all you hear  
 Of Joe the One-Man Show  
He's glorified the horsehide sphere, 
 Jolting Joe DiMaggio... 
 Joe...Joe...DiMaggio...we  
 want you on our side. The year was 1941, and it began for DiMaggio in the middle of May after the Yankees had lost four games in a row, seven of their last nine, and were in fourth place, five and a half games behind the leading Cleveland Indians. On May 15, DiMaggio hit only a first-inning single in a game that New York lost to Chicago 13-1; he was barely hitting .300, and had greatly disappointed the crowds that had seen him finish with a .352 average the year before and .381 in 1939. 
He got a hit in the next game, and the next, and the next. On May 24, with the Yankees losing 6-5 to Boston, DiMaggio came up with runners on second and third and singled them home, winning the game, extending his streak to 10 games. But it went largely unnoticed. Even DiMaggio was not conscious of it until it had reached 29 games in mid-June. Then the newspapers began to dramatize it, the public became aroused, they sent him good-luck charms of every description, and DiMaggio kept hitting, and radio announcers would interrupt programs to announce the news, and then the song again: "Joe ... Joe ... DiMaggio ... we want you on our side." 
Sometimes DiMaggio would be hitless his first three times up, the tension would build, it would appear that the game would end without his getting another chance - but he always would, and then he would hit the ball against the left-field wall, or through the pitcher's legs, or between two leaping infielders. In the forty-first game, the first of a doubleheader in Washington, DiMaggio tied an American League record that George Sisler had set in 1922. But before the second game began, a spectator sneaked onto the field and into the Yankees' dugout and stole DiMaggio's favorite bat. In the second game, using another of his bats, DiMaggio lined out twice and flied out. But in the seventh inning, borrowing one of his old bats that a teammate was using, he singled and broke Sisler's record, and he was only three games away from surpassing the major-league record of 44 set in 1897 by Willie Keeler while playing for Baltimore when it was a National League franchise. 
An appeal for the missing bat was made through the newspapers. A man from Newark admitted the crime and returned it with regrets. And on July 2 at Yankee Stadium, DiMaggio hit a home run into the left-field stands. The record was broken. 
He also got hits on the next 11 games, but on July 17...in Cleveland, at a night game attended by 67,468, he failed against two pitchers, Al Smith and Jim Bagby, Jr., although Cleveland's hero was really its third baseman, Ken Keltner, who in the first inning lunged to his right to make a spectacular backhanded stop of a drive and, from the foul line behind third base, threw DiMaggio out. DiMaggio received a walk in the fourth inning. But in the seventh he again hit a hard shot at Keltner, who again stopped it and threw him out. DiMaggio hit sharply toward the shortstop in the eighth inning, the ball taking a bad hop, but Lou Boudreau speared it off his shoulder and threw to the second baseman to start a double play and DiMaggio's streak was stopped at 56 games. But the New York Yankees were on their way to winning the pennant by 17 games, and the World Series too, and so in August, in a hotel suite in Washington, the players threw a surprise party for DiMaggio and toasted him with champagne and presented him with his Tiffany silver humidor that is now in San Francisco in his living room. Marie was in the kitchen making toast and tea when DiMaggio came down for breakfast; his gray hair was uncombed but, since he wears it short, it was not untidy. He said good morning to Marie, sat down, and yawned. He lit a cigarette. He wore a blue wool bathrobe over his pajamas. It was 8:00 A.M. He had many things to do today and he seemed cheerful. He had a conference with the president of Continental Television, Inc., a large retail chain in California of which he is a partner and vice-president; later he had a golf date, and then a big banquet to attend, and, if that did not go on too long and if he were not too tired afterward, he might have a date. 
Picking up the morning paper, not rushing to the sports page, DiMaggio read the front-page news, the people problems of 1966; Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown in Ghana, students were burning their draft cards (DiMaggio shook his head), the flu epidemic was spreading through the whole state of California. Then he flipped inside through the gossip columns, thankful they did not have him in there today - they had printed an item about his dating "an electrifying airline hostess" not long ago, and they also spotted him at dinner with Dori Lane, "the frantic frugger" in Whisky à Go Go's glass cage - and then he turned to the sports page and read a story about how the injured Mickey Mantle may never regain his form. 
It happened all so quickly, the passing of Mantle, or so it seemed; he had succeeded DiMaggio, who had succeeded Ruth, but now there was no great young power hitter coming up, and the Yankee management, almost desperate, had talked Mantle out of retirement, and on September 18, 1965, they gave him a "day" in New York during which he received several thousand dollars' worth of gifts - an automobile, two quarter horses, free vacation trips to Rome, Nassau, Puerto Rico - and DiMaggio had flown to New York to make the introduction before 50,000: it had been a dramatic day, an almost holy day for the believers who had jammed the grandstands early to witness the canonization of a new stadium saint. Cardinal Spellman was on the committee, President Johnson sent a telegram, the day was officially proclaimed by the Mayor of New York, an orchestra assembled in the center field in front of the trinity of monuments to Ruth, Gehrig, Huggins; and high in the grandstands, billowing in the breeze of early autumn, were white banners that read: "Don't Quit, Mick," "We Love the Mick." 
The banner had been held by hundreds of young boys whose dreams had been fulfilled so often by Mantle, but also seated in the grandstands were older men, paunchy and balding, in whose middle-aged minds DiMaggio was still vivid and invincible, and some of them remembered how one month before, during a pregame exhibition at Old-Timers' Day in Yankee Stadium, DiMaggio had hit a pitch into the left-field seats, and suddenly thousands of people had jumped wildly to their feet, joyously screaming - the great DiMaggio had returned, they were young again, it was yesterday. 
But on this sunny September day at the stadium, the feast day of Mickey Mantle, DiMaggio was not wearing No. 5 on his back or a black cap to cover his graying hair; he was wearing a black suit and white shirt and blue tie, and he stood in one corner of the Yankees' dugout waiting to be introduced by Red Barber, who was standing near home plate behind a silver microphone. In the outfield Guy Lombardo's Royal Canadians were playing soothing, soft music; and moving slowly back and forth over the sprawling green grass between the left-field bullpen and the infield were two carts driven by grounds keepers and containing dozens and dozens of large gifts for Mantle - a 6-foot, 100-pound Hebrew National salami, a Winchester rifle, a mink coat for Mrs. Mantle, a set of Wilson golf clubs, a year's supply of Chunky Candy. DiMaggio smoked a cigarette, but cupped it in his hands as if not wanting to be caught in the act by teen-aged boys near enough to peek down into the dugout. Then, edging forward a step, DiMaggio poked his head out and looked up. He could see nothing above except the packed, towering green grandstands that seemed a mile high and moving, and he could see no clouds or blue sky, only a sky of faces. Then the announcer called out his name - "Joe DiMaggio!" - and suddenly there was a blast of cheering that grew louder and louder, echoing and reechoing within the big steel canyon, and DiMaggio stomped out his cigarette and climbed up the dugout steps and onto the soft green grass, the noise resounding in his ears, he could almost feel the breeze, the breath of 50,000 lungs upon him, 100,000 eyes watching his every move, and for the briefest instant as he walked he closed his eyes. 
Then in his path he saw Mickey Mantle's mother, a smiling woman wearing an orchid, and he gently reached out for her elbow, holding it as he led her toward the microphone next to the other dignitaries lined up on the infield. Then he stood, very erect and without expression as the cheers softened and the stadium settled down. 
Mantle was still in the dugout, in uniform, standing with one leg on the top step, and lined on both sides of him were the other Yankees who, when the ceremony was over, would play the Detroit Tigers. Then into the dugout, smiling, came Senator Robert Kennedy, accompanied by two tall curly-haired assistants with blue eyes, Fordham freckles. Jim Farley was the first on the field to notice the Senator, and Farley muttered, loud enough for others to hear, "Who the hell invited him?" 
Toots Shor and some of the other committeemen standing near Farley looked into the dugout, and so did DiMaggio, his glance seeming cold, but he remained silent. Kennedy walked up and down within the dugout, shaking hands with the Yankees, but he did not walk onto the field. 
"Senator," said Yankees' manager Johnny Keane, "why don't you sit down?" Kennedy quickly shook his head, smiled. He remained standing, and then one Yankee came over and asked about getting relatives out of Cuba, and Kennedy called over one of his aides to take down the details in a notebook. 
On the infield the ceremony went on, Mantle's gifts continued to pile up - a Mobilette motorbike, a Sooner Schooner wagon barbecue, a year's supply of Chock Full O' Nuts coffee, a year's supply of Topps Chewing Gum - and the Yankee players watched, and Maris seemed glum. 
"Hey, Rog," yelled a man with a tape recorder, Murray Olderman, "I want to do a 30-second tape with you." Maris swore angrily, shook his head. 
"Why don't you ask Richardson? He's a better talker than me." 
"Yes, but the fact that it comes from you ..." 
Maris swore again. But finally he went over and said in an interview that Mantle was the finest player of his era, a great competitor, a great hitter. 
Fifteen minutes later, standing behind the microphone at home plate, DiMaggio was telling the crowd, "I'm proud to introduce the man who succeeded me in center field in 1951," and from every corner of the stadium, the cheering, whistling, clapping came down. Mantle stepped forward. He stood with his wife and children, posed for the photographers kneeling in front. Then he thanked the crowd in a short speech, and, turning, shook hands with the dignitaries standing nearby. Among them now was Senator Kennedy, who had been spotted in the dugout five minutes before by Red Barber, and been called out and introduced. Kennedy posed with Mantle for a photographer, then shook hands with the Mantle children, and with Toots Shor and James Farley and others. DiMaggio saw him coming down the line and at the last second he backed away, casually, hardly anybody noticing it, and Kennedy seemed not to notice it either, just swept past, shaking more hands. Finishing his tea, putting aside the newspaper, DiMaggio went upstairs to dress, and soon he was waving good-bye to Marie and driving toward his business appointment in downtown San Francisco with his partners in the retail television business. DiMaggio, while not a millionaire, has invested wisely and has always had, since his retirement from baseball, executive positions with big companies that have paid him well. He also was among the organizers of the Fisherman's National Bank of San Francisco last year, and, though it never came about, he demonstrated an acuteness that impressed those businessmen who had thought of him only in terms of baseball. He has had offers to manage big-league baseball teams but always has rejected them, saying, "I have enough trouble taking care of my own problems without taking on the responsibilities of 25 ball players." 
So his only contact with baseball these days, excluding public appearances, is his unsalaried job as a batting coach each spring in Florida with the New York Yankees, a trip he would make once again on the following Sunday, three days away, if he could accomplish what for him is always the dreaded responsibility of packing, a task made no easier by the fact that he lately had fallen into the habit of keeping his clothes in two places - some hang in his closet at home, some hang in the back room of a saloon called Reno's. 
Reno's is a dimly lit bar in the center of San Francisco. A portrait of DiMaggio swinging a bat hangs on the wall, in addition to portraits of other star athletes, and the clientele consists mainly of the sporting crowd and newspapermen, people who know DiMaggio quite well and around whom he speaks freely on a number of subjects and relaxes as he can in few other places. The owner of the bar is Reno Barsocchini, a broad-shouldered and handsome man of 51 with graying wavy hair who began as a fiddler in Dago Mary's tavern 35 years ago. He later became a bartender there and elsewhere, including DiMaggio's Restaurant, and now he is probably DiMaggio's closest friend. He was the best man at the DiMaggio-Monroe wedding in 1954, and when they separated nine months later in Los Angeles, Reno rushed down to help DiMaggio with the packing and drove him back to San Francisco. Reno will never forget the day. 
Hundreds of people were gathered around the Beverly Hills home that DiMaggio and Marilyn had rented, and photographers were perched in the trees watching the windows, and others stood on the lawn and behind the rose bushes waiting to snap pictures of anybody who walked out of the house. The newspapers that day played all the puns - "Joe Fanned on Jealousy"; "Marilyn and Joe - Out at Home" -- and the Hollywood columnists, to whom DiMaggio was never an idol, never a gracious host, recounted instances of incompatibility, and Oscar Levant said it all proved that no man could be a success in two national pastimes. When Reno Barsocchini arrived, he had to push his way through the mob, then bang on the door for several minutes before being admitted. Marilyn Monroe was upstairs in bed. Joe DiMaggio was downstairs with his suitcases, tense and pale, his eyes bloodshot. 
Reno took the suitcase and golf clubs out to DiMaggio's car, and then DiMaggio came out of the house, the reporters moving toward him, the lights flashing. 
"Where are you going?" they yelled. 
"I'm driving to San Francisco," he said, walking quickly. 
"Is that going to be your home?" 
"That is my home and always has been." 
"Are you coming back?" 
DiMaggio turned for a moment, looking up at the house. 
"No," he said, "I'll never be back." 
Reno Barsocchini, except for a brief falling-out over something he will not discuss, has been DiMaggio's trusted companion ever since, joining him whenever he can on the golf course or on the town, otherwise waiting for him in the bar with other middle-aged men. They may wait for hours sometimes, waiting and knowing that when he arrives he may wish to be alone; but it does not seem to matter, they are endlessly awed by him, moved by the mystique, he is a kind of male Garbo. They know that he can be warm and loyal if they are sensitive to his wishes, but they must never be late for an appointment to meet him. One man, unable to find a parking place, arrived a half hour late once, and DiMaggio did not talk to him again for three months. They know, too, when dining at night with DiMaggio, that he generally prefers male companions and occasionally one or two young women, but never wives; wives gossip, wives complain, wives are trouble, and men wishing to remain close to DiMaggio must keep their wives at home. 
When DiMaggio strolls into Reno's bar, the men wave and call out his name and Reno Barsocchini smiles and announces, "Here's the Clipper!" -- the "Yankee Clipper" being a nickname from his baseball days. 
"Hey Clipper, Clipper," Reno had said two nights before, "where you been, Clipper? ... Clipper, how 'bout a belt?" 
DiMaggio refused the offer of a drink, ordering instead a pot of tea, which he prefers to all other beverages except before a date, when he will switch to vodka. 
"Hey, Joe," a sports writer asked, a man researching a magazine piece on golf, "why is it that a golfer, when he starts getting older, loses his putting touch first? Like Snead and Hogan, they can still hit a ball well off the tee, but on the greens they lose the strokes." 
"It's the pressure of age" DiMaggio said, turning around on his barstool. "With age you get jittery. It's true of golfers, it's true of any man when he gets into his 50s. He doesn't take chances like he used to. The younger golfer, on the greens, he'll stroke his putts better. The older man, he becomes hesitant. A little uncertain. Shaky. When it comes to taking chances, the younger man, even when driving a car, will take chances that the older man won't." 
"Speaking of chances," another man said, one of the group that had gathered around DiMaggio, "did you see that guy on crutches in here last night?" 
"Yeah, had his leg in a cast," a third said. "Skiing." 
"I would never ski," DiMaggio said. "Men who ski must be doing it to impress a broad. You see these men, some of them 40, 50, getting onto skis. And later you see them all bandaged up, broken legs..." 
"But skiing's a very sexy sport, Joe. All the clothes, the tight pants, the fireplaces in the ski lodge, the bear rug - Christ nobody goes to ski. They just go out there to get it cold so they can warm it up." 
"Maybe you're right," DiMaggio said. "I might be persuaded." 
"Want a belt, Clipper?" Reno asked. 
DiMaggio thought for a second, then said, "All right - first belt tonight."  Now it was noon, a warm sunny day. DiMaggio's business meeting with the television retailers had gone well; he had made a strong appeal to George Shahood, president of Continental Television, Inc., which has eight retail outlets in Northern California, to put prices on color television sets and increase the sales volume, and Shahood had conceded it was worth a try. Then DiMaggio called Reno's bar to see if there were any messages, and now he was in Lefty O'Doul's car being driven along Fisherman's Wharf toward the Golden Gate Bridge en route to a golf course 30 miles upstate. Lefty O'Doul was one of the great hitters in the National League in the early thirties, and later he managed the San Francisco Seals when DiMaggio was the shining star. Though O'Doul is now 69, 18 years older than DiMaggio, he nevertheless possesses great energy and spirit, is a hard-drinking, boisterous man with a big belly and roving eye; and when DiMaggio, as they drove along the highway toward the golf club, noticed a lovely blonde at the wheel of a car nearby and exclaimed, "Look at that tomato!" O'Doul's head suddenly spun around, he took his eyes off the road, and yelled, "Where, where?" O'Doul's golf game is less than what it was - he used to have a two-handicap -- but he still shoots in the 80s, as does DiMaggio. 
DiMaggio's drives range between 250 and 280 yards when he doesn't sky them, and his putting is good, but he is distracted by a bad back that both pains him and hinders the fullness of his swing. On the first hole, waiting to tee off, DiMaggio sat back watching a foursome of college boys ahead swinging with such freedom. "Oh," he said with a sigh, "to have their backs" 
DiMaggio and O'Doul were accompanied around the golf course by Ernie Nevers, the former football star, and two brothers who are in the hotel and movie-distribution business. They moved quickly up and down the green hills in electric golf carts, and DiMaggio's game was exceptionally good for the first nine holes. But then he seemed distracted, perhaps tired, perhaps even reacting to a conversation of a few minutes before. One of the movie men was praising the film Boeing, Boeing, starring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis, and the man asked DiMaggio if he had seen it. 
"No," DiMaggio said. Then he added, swiftly, "I haven't seen a film in eight years." 
DiMaggio hooked a few shots, was in the woods. He took a No. 9 iron and tried to chip out. But O'Doul interrupted DiMaggio's concentration to remind him to keep the face of the club closed. DiMaggio hit the ball. It caromed off the side of his club, went skipping like a rabbit through the high grass down toward a pond. DiMaggio rarely displays any emotion on a golf course, but now, without saying a word, he took his No. 9 iron and flung it into the air. The club landed in a tree and stayed up there. 
"Well," O'Doul said casually, "there goes that set of clubs." 
DiMaggio walked to the tree. Fortunately the club had slipped to the lower branch, and DiMaggio could stretch up on the cart and get it back. 
"Every time I get advice," DiMaggio muttered to himself, shaking his head slowly and walking toward the pond, "I shank it." 
Later, showered and dressed, DiMaggio and the others drove to a banquet about 10 miles from the golf course. Somebody had said it was going to be an elegant dinner, but when they arrived they could see it was more like a county fair; farmers were gathered outside a big barn-like building, a candidate for sheriff was distributing leaflets at the front door, and a chorus of homely ladies was inside singing "You Are My Sunshine. 
"How did we get sucked into this?" DiMaggio asked, talking out of the side of his mouth, as they approached the building. 
"O'Doul," one of the men said. "It's his fault. Damned O'Doul can't turn anything down." 
"Go to hell," O'Doul said. 
Soon DiMaggio and O'Doul and Ernie Nevers were surrounded by the crowd, and the woman who had been leading the chorus came rushing over and said, "Oh, Mr. DiMaggio, it certainly is a pleasure having you" 
"It's a pleasure being here, ma'am," he said, forcing a smile. 
"It's too bad you didn't arrive a moment sooner. You'd have heard our singing." 
"Oh, I heard it," he said, "and I enjoyed it very much." 
"Good, good," she said. "And how are your brothers, Dom and Vic?" 
"Fine. Dom lives near Boston. Vince is in Pittsburgh." 
"Why, hello there, Joe," interrupted a man with wine on his breath, patting DiMaggio on the back, feeling his arm. "Who's gonna take it this year, Joe?" 
"Well, I have no idea," DiMaggio said. 
"What about the Giants?" 
"Your guess is as good as mine." 
"Well, you can't count the Dodgers out," the man said. 
"You sure can't," DiMaggio said. 
"Not with all that pitching." 
"Pitching is certainly important," DiMaggio said. 
Everywhere he goes the question seems the same, as if he has some special vision into the future of new heroes, and everywhere he goes, too, older men grab his hand and feel his arm and predict that he could still go out there and hit one, and the smile on DiMaggio's face is genuine. He tries hard to remain as he was - he diets, he takes steambaths, he is careful; and flabby men in the locker rooms of golf clubs sometimes steal peeks at him when he steps out of the shower, observing the tight muscles across his chest, the flat stomach, the long sinewy legs. He has a young man's body, very pale and little hair; his face is dark and lined, however, parched by the sun of several seasons. Still he is always an impressive figure at banquets such as this - an immortal sports writers called him, and that is how they have written about him and others like him, rarely suggesting that such heroes might ever be prone to the ills of mortal men, carousing, drinking, scheming; to suggest this would destroy the myth, would disillusion small boys, would infuriate rich men who own ball clubs and to whom baseball is a business dedicated to profit and in pursuit of which they trade mediocre players' flesh as casually as boys trade players' pictures on bubble-gum cards. And so the baseball hero must always act the part, must preserve the myth, and none does it better than DiMaggio, none is more patient when drunken old men grab an arm and ask, "Who's gonna take it this year, Joe?" 
Two hours later, dinner and the speeches over, DiMaggio was slumped in O'Doul's car headed back to San Francisco. He edged himself up, however, when O'Doul pulled into a gas station in which a pretty red-haired girl sat on a stool, legs crossed, filing her fingernails. She was about 22, wore a tight black skirt and tighter white blouse. 
"Look at that," DiMaggio said. 
"Yeah," O'Doul said. 
O'Doul turned away when a young man approached, opened the gas tank, began wiping the windshield. The young man wore a greasy white uniform on the front of which was printed the name "Burt." DiMaggio kept looking at the girl, but she was not distracted from her fingernails. Then he looked at Burt, who did not recognize him. When the tank was full, O'Doul paid and drove off. Burt returned to his girl; DiMaggio slumped down in the front seat and did not open his eyes again until they arrived in San Francisco. 
"Let's go see Reno," DiMaggio said. 
"No, I gotta go see my old lady," O'Doul said. So he dropped DiMaggio off in front of the bar, and a moment later Reno's voice was announcing in the smoky room, "Hey, here's the Clipper!" The men waved and offered to buy him a drink. DiMaggio ordered a vodka and sat for an hour at the bar talking to a half-dozen men around him. Then a blonde girl who had been with friends at the other end of the bar came over, and somebody introduced her to DiMaggio. He bought her a drink, offered her a cigarette. Then he struck a match and held it. His hand was unsteady. 
"Is that me that's shaking?" he asked. 
"It must be," said the blonde. "I'm calm."  Two nights later, having collected his clothes out of Reno's back room, DiMaggio boarded a jet; he slept crossways on three seats, then came down the steps as the sun began to rise in Miami. He claimed his luggage and golf clubs, put them into the trunk of a waiting automobile, and less than an hour later he was being driven into Fort Lauderdale, past palm-lined streets, toward the Yankee Clipper Hotel. 
"All my life it seems I've been on the road traveling," he said, squinting through the windshield into the sun. "I never get a sense of being in any one place." 
Arriving at the Yankee Clipper Hotel, DiMaggio checked into the largest suite. People rushed through the lobby to shake hands with him, to ask for his autograph, to say, "Joe, you look great." And early the next morning, and for the next 30 mornings, DiMaggio arrived punctually at the baseball park and wore his uniform with the famous No. 5, and the tourists seated in the sunny grandstands clapped when he first appeared on the field each time, and then they watched with nostalgia as he picked up a bat and played "pepper" with the younger Yankees, some of whom were not even born when, 25 years ago this summer, he hit in 56 straight games and became the most celebrated man in America. 
But the younger spectators in the Fort Lauderdale park, and the sports writers, too, were more interested in Mantle and Maris, and nearly every day there were news dispatches reporting how Mantle and Maris felt, what they did, what they said, even though they said and did very little except walk around the field frowning when photographers asked for another picture and when sports writers asked how they felt. 
After seven days of this, the big day arrived - Mantle and Maris would swing a bat - and a dozen sports writers were gathered around the big batting cage that was situated beyond the left-field fence; it was completely enclosed in wire, meaning that no baseball could travel more than 30 or 40 feet before being trapped in rope; still Mantle and Maris would be swinging, and this, in spring, makes news. 
Mantle stepped in first. He wore black gloves to help prevent blisters. He hit right-handed against the pitching of a coach named Vern Benson, and soon Mantle was swinging hard, smashing line drives against the nets, going ahhh ahhh as he followed through with his mouth open. 
Then Mantle, not wanting to overdo it on his first day, dropped his bat in the dirt and walked out of the batting cage. Roger Maris stepped in. He picked up Mantle's bat. 
"This damn thing must be 38 ounces," Maris said. He threw the bat down into the dirt, left the cage, and walked toward the dugout on the other side of the field to get a lighter bat. 
DiMaggio stood among the sports writers behind the cage, then turned when Vern Benson, inside the cage, yelled, "Joe, wanna hit some?" 
"No chance," DiMaggio said. 
"Com'on Joe," Benson said. 
The reporters waited silently. Then DiMaggio walked slowly into the cage and picked up Mantle's bat. He took his position at the plate but obviously it was not the classic DiMaggio stance; he was holding the bat about two inches from the knob, his feet were not so far apart, and when DiMaggio took a cut at Benson's first pitch, fouling it, there was none of that ferocious follow-through, the blurred bat did not come whipping all the way around, the No. 5 was not stretched full across his broad back. 
DiMaggio fouled Benson's second pitch, then he connected solidly with the third, the fourth, the fifth. He was just meeting the ball easily, however, not smashing it, and Benson called out, "I didn't know you were a choke hitter, Joe." 
"I am now," DiMaggio said, getting ready for another pitch. 
He hit three more squarely enough, and then he swung again and there was a hollow sound. 
"Ohhh," DiMaggio yelled, dropping his bat, his fingers stung. "I was waiting for that one." He left the batting cage, rubbing his hands together. The reporters watched him. Nobody said anything. Then DiMaggio said to one of them, not in anger or in sadness, but merely as a simply stated fact, "There was a time when you couldn't get me out of there."
 Go back to essays page.
http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/talese/essays/dimaggio.html
https://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/prose/Susan_Sontag_-_Notes_on_Camp.html
Notes On "Camp"
None
None
<div>
<h2>by Susan Sontag</h2>
<p>Published in 1964.</p>
<blockquote>
Wikipedia 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_%22Camp%22">says</a> that this essay:
"was published in 1964 and was the author's first contribution to the
<cite>Partisan Review.</cite> The essay created a literary sensation and brought
Sontag her first brush with intellectual notoriety. It was published
in 1966 in book form in Sontag's debut collection of essays,
<cite><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Interpretation">Against Interpretation.</a></cite>
<p>I have here a copy of the text that I found somewhere on the net
and mean to share with a few friends. It is <em>not</em> at all an
official authoritative version-- if it's like other online texts, it
probably missing some sentences or paragraphs, has things out of
order, lacks helpful formatting, etc. Call it an extended preview of
the text-- read, then go get
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0312280866">the real book.</a></p></blockquote>
<hr />
<p>Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if
they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the
sensibility -- unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but
hardly identical with it -- that goes by the cult name of "Camp."
</p><p>A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things
to talk about; but there are special reasons why Camp, in particular,
has never been discussed. It is not a natural mode of sensibility, if
there be any such. Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the
unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric --
something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small
urban cliques. Apart from a lazy two-page sketch in Christopher
Isherwood's novel <i>The World in the Evening</i>
(1954), it has hardly broken into print. To talk about Camp is
therefore to betray it. If the betrayal can be defended, it will be for
the edification it provides, or the dignity of the conflict it
resolves. For myself, I plead the goal of self-edification, and the
goad of a sharp conflict in my own sensibility. I am strongly drawn to
Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it. That is why I want to talk
about it, and why I can. For no one who wholeheartedly shares in a
given sensibility can analyze it; he can only, whatever his intention,
exhibit it. To name a sensibility, to draw its contours and to recount
its history, requires a deep sympathy modified by revulsion.
</p><p>Though I am speaking about sensibility only -- and about a sensibility
that, among other things, converts the serious into the frivolous --
these are grave matters. Most people think of sensibility or taste as
the realm of purely subjective preferences, those mysterious
attractions, mainly sensual, that have not been brought under the
sovereignty of reason. They <i>allow</i>
that considerations of taste play a part in their reactions to people
and to works of art. But this attitude is naÃ¯ve. And even worse. To
patronize the faculty of taste is to patronize oneself. For taste
governs every free -- as opposed to rote -- human response. Nothing is
more decisive. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion
- and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well,
is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. (One of the facts to be
reckoned with is that taste tends to develop very unevenly. It's rare
that the same person has good visual taste and good taste in people <i>and</i> taste in ideas.)
</p><p>Taste has no system and no proofs. But there is something like a logic
of taste: the consistent sensibility which underlies and gives rise to
a certain taste. A sensibility is almost, but not quite, ineffable. Any
sensibility which can be crammed into the mold of a system, or handled
with the rough tools of proof, is no longer a sensibility at all. It
has hardened into an idea . . . 
</p><p>To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful,<a href="#1">1</a>
one must be tentative and nimble. The form of jottings, rather than an
essay (with its claim to a linear, consecutive argument), seemed more
appropriate for getting down something of this particular fugitive
sensibility. It's embarrassing to be solemn and treatise-like about
Camp. One runs the risk of having, oneself, produced a very inferior
piece of Camp.
</p><p>These notes are for Oscar Wilde.
</p><p>"One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art."
<br />- <i>Phrases &amp; Philosophies for the Use of the Young</i>
</p><p>1. To start very generally: Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It
is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way,
the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree
of artifice, of stylization.
</p><p>2. To emphasize style is to slight content, or to introduce an attitude
which is neutral with respect to content. It goes without saying that
the Camp sensibility is disengaged, depoliticized -- or at least
apolitical.
</p><p>3. Not only is there a Camp vision, a Camp way of looking at things.
Camp is as well a quality discoverable in objects and the behavior of
persons. There are "campy" movies, clothes, furniture, popular songs,
novels, people, buildings. . . . This distinction is important. True,
the Camp eye has the power to transform experience. But not everything
can be seen as Camp. It's not <i>all</i> in the eye of the beholder.
</p><p>4. Random examples of items which are part of the canon of Camp:
</p><p>    Zuleika Dobson
<br />    Tiffany lamps
<br />    Scopitone films
<br />    The Brown Derby restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in LA
<br />    <i>The Enquirer</i>, headlines and stories
<br />    Aubrey Beardsley drawings
<br />    <i>Swan Lake</i>
<br />    Bellini's operas
<br />    Visconti's direction of <i>Salome</i> and <i>'Tis Pity She's a Whore</i>
<br />    certain turn-of-the-century picture postcards
<br />    Schoedsack's <i>King Kong</i>
<br />    the Cuban pop singer La Lupe
<br />    Lynn Ward's novel in woodcuts, <i>God's Man</i>
<br />    the old Flash Gordon comics
<br />    women's clothes of the twenties (feather boas, fringed and beaded dresses, etc.)
<br />    the novels of Ronald Firbank and Ivy Compton-Burnett
<br />    stag movies seen without lust
</p><p>5. Camp taste has an affinity for certain arts rather than others.
Clothes, furniture, all the elements of visual dÃ©cor, for instance,
make up a large part of Camp. For Camp art is often decorative art,
emphasizing texture, sensuous surface, and style at the expense of
content. Concert music, though, because it is contentless, is rarely
Camp. It offers no opportunity, say, for a contrast between silly or
extravagant content and rich form. . . . Sometimes whole art forms
become saturated with Camp. Classical ballet, opera, movies have seemed
so for a long time. In the last two years, popular music (post
rock-'n'-roll, what the French call yÃ© yÃ©) has been annexed. And movie
criticism (like lists of "The 10 Best Bad Movies I Have Seen") is
probably the greatest popularizer of Camp taste today, because most
people still go to the movies in a high-spirited and unpretentious way.
</p><p>6. There is a sense in which it is correct to say: "It's too good to be
Camp." Or "too important," not marginal enough. (More on this later.)
Thus, the personality and many of the works of Jean Cocteau are Camp,
but not those of AndrÃ© Gide; the operas of Richard Strauss, but not
those of Wagner; concoctions of Tin Pan Alley and Liverpool, but not
jazz. Many examples of Camp are things which, from a "serious" point of
view, are either bad art or kitsch. Not all, though. Not only is Camp
not necessarily bad art, but some art which can be approached as Camp
(example: the major films of Louis Feuillade) merits the most serious
admiration and study.
</p><p>"The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature."
<br />- <i>The Decay of Lying</i>
</p><p>7. All Camp objects, and persons, contain a large element of artifice.
Nothing in nature can be campy . . . Rural Camp is still man-made, and
most campy objects are urban. (Yet, they often have a serenity -- or a
naÃ¯vetÃ© -- which is the equivalent of pastoral. A great deal of Camp
suggests Empson's phrase, "urban pastoral.")
</p><p>8. Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style -- but a particular
kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the "off," of
things-being-what-they-are-not. The best example is in Art Nouveau, the
most typical and fully developed Camp style. Art Nouveau objects,
typically, convert one thing into something else: the lighting fixtures
in the form of flowering plants, the living room which is really a
grotto. A remarkable example: the Paris MÃ©tro entrances designed by
Hector Guimard in the late 1890s in the shape of cast-iron orchid
stalks.
</p><p>9. As a taste in persons, Camp responds particularly to the markedly
attenuated and to the strongly exaggerated. The androgyne is certainly
one of the great images of Camp sensibility. Examples: the swooning,
slim, sinuous figures of pre-Raphaelite painting and poetry; the thin,
flowing, sexless bodies in Art Nouveau prints and posters, presented in
relief on lamps and ashtrays; the haunting androgynous vacancy behind
the perfect beauty of Greta Garbo. Here, Camp taste draws on a mostly
unacknowledged truth of taste: the most refined form of sexual
attractiveness (as well as the most refined form of sexual pleasure)
consists in going against the grain of one's sex. What is most
beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful
in feminine women is something masculine. . . . Allied to the Camp
taste for the androgynous is something that seems quite different but
isn't: a relish for the exaggeration of sexual characteristics and
personality mannerisms. For obvious reasons, the best examples that can
be cited are movie stars. The corny flamboyant female-ness of Jayne
Mansfield, Gina Lollobrigida, Jane Russell, Virginia Mayo; the
exaggerated he-man-ness of Steve Reeves, Victor Mature. The great
stylists of temperament and mannerism, like Bette Davis, Barbara
Stanwyck, Tallulah Bankhead, Edwige FeuilliÃ¨re.
</p><p>10. Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a
"lamp"; not a woman, but a "woman." To perceive Camp in objects and
persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest
extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.
</p><p>11. Camp is the triumph of the epicene style. (The convertibility of
"man" and "woman," "person" and "thing.") But all style, that is,
artifice, is, ultimately, epicene. Life is not stylish. Neither is
nature.
</p><p>12. The question isn't, "Why travesty, impersonation, theatricality?"
The question is, rather, "When does travesty, impersonation,
theatricality acquire the special flavor of Camp?" Why is the
atmosphere of Shakespeare's comedies (<i>As You Like It</i>, etc.) not epicene, while that of <i>Der Rosenkavalier</i> is?
</p><p>13. The dividing line seems to fall in the 18th century; there the
origins of Camp taste are to be found (Gothic novels, Chinoiserie,
caricature, artificial ruins, and so forth.) But the relation to nature
was quite different then. In the 18th century, people of taste either
patronized nature (Strawberry Hill) or attempted to remake it into
something artificial (Versailles). They also indefatigably patronized
the past. Today's Camp taste effaces nature, or else contradicts it
outright. And the relation of Camp taste to the past is extremely
sentimental.
</p><p>14. A pocket history of Camp might, of course, begin farther back --
with the mannerist artists like Pontormo, Rosso, and Caravaggio, or the
extraordinarily theatrical painting of Georges de La Tour, or Euphuism
(Lyly, etc.) in literature. Still, the soundest starting point seems to
be the late 17th and early 18th century, because of that period's
extraordinary feeling for artifice, for surface, for symmetry; its
taste for the picturesque and the thrilling, its elegant conventions
for representing instant feeling and the total presence of character --
the epigram and the rhymed couplet (in words), the flourish (in gesture
and in music). The late 17th and early 18th century is the great period
of Camp: Pope, Congreve, Walpole, etc, but not Swift; <i>les prÃ©cieux</i>
in France; the rococo churches of Munich; Pergolesi. Somewhat later:
much of Mozart. But in the 19th century, what had been distributed
throughout all of high culture now becomes a special taste; it takes on
overtones of the acute, the esoteric, the perverse. Confining the story
to England alone, we see Camp continuing wanly through 19th century
aestheticism (Bume-Jones, Pater, Ruskin, Tennyson), emerging full-blown
with the Art Nouveau movement in the visual and decorative arts, and
finding its conscious ideologists in such "wits" as Wilde and Firbank.
</p><p>15. Of course, to say all these things are Camp is not to argue they
are simply that. A full analysis of Art Nouveau, for instance, would
scarcely equate it with Camp. But such an analysis cannot ignore what
in Art Nouveau allows it to be experienced as Camp. Art Nouveau is full
of "content," even of a political-moral sort; it was a revolutionary
movement in the arts, spurred on by a Utopian vision (somewhere between
William Morris and the Bauhaus group) of an organic politics and taste.
Yet there is also a feature of the Art Nouveau objects which suggests a
disengaged, unserious, "aesthete's" vision. This tells us something
important about Art Nouveau -- and about what the lens of Camp, which
blocks out content, is.
</p><p>16. Thus, the Camp sensibility is one that is alive to a double sense
in which some things can be taken. But this is not the familiar
split-level construction of a literal meaning, on the one hand, and a
symbolic meaning, on the other. It is the difference, rather, between
the thing as meaning something, anything, and the thing as pure
artifice.
</p><p>17. This comes out clearly in the vulgar use of the word Camp as a
verb, "to camp," something that people do. To camp is a mode of
seduction -- one which employs flamboyant mannerisms susceptible of a
double interpretation; gestures full of duplicity, with a witty meaning
for cognoscenti and another, more impersonal, for outsiders. Equally
and by extension, when the word becomes a noun, when a person or a
thing is "a camp," a duplicity is involved. Behind the "straight"
public sense in which something can be taken, one has found a private
zany experience of the thing.
</p><p>"To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up."
<br />- <i>An Ideal Husband</i>
</p><p>18. One must distinguish between naÃ¯ve and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp
is always naÃ¯ve. Camp which knows itself to be Camp ("camping") is
usually less satisfying.
</p><p>19. The pure examples of Camp are unintentional; they are dead serious.
The Art Nouveau craftsman who makes a lamp with a snake coiled around
it is not kidding, nor is he trying to be charming. He is saying, in
all earnestness: VoilÃ ! the Orient! Genuine Camp -- for instance, the
numbers devised for the Warner Brothers musicals of the early thirties (<i>42nd Street</i>; <i>The Golddiggers of 1933</i>; ... <i>of 1935</i>; ... <i>of 1937</i>;
etc.) by Busby Berkeley -- does not mean to be funny. Camping -- say,
the plays of Noel Coward -- does. It seems unlikely that much of the
traditional opera repertoire could be such satisfying Camp if the
melodramatic absurdities of most opera plots had not been taken
seriously by their composers. One doesn't need to know the artist's
private intentions. The work tells all. (Compare a typical 19th century
opera with Samuel Barber's <i>Vanessa</i>, a piece of manufactured, calculated Camp, and the difference is clear.)
</p><p>20. Probably, intending to be campy is always harmful. The perfection of <i>Trouble in Paradise</i> and <i>The Maltese Falcon</i>,
among the greatest Camp movies ever made, comes from the effortless
smooth way in which tone is maintained. This is not so with such famous
would-be Camp films of the fifties as <i>All About Eve</i> and <i>Beat the Devil</i>.
These more recent movies have their fine moments, but the first is so
slick and the second so hysterical; they want so badly to be campy that
they're continually losing the beat. . . . Perhaps, though, it is not
so much a question of the unintended effect versus the conscious
intention, as of the delicate relation between parody and self-parody
in Camp. The films of Hitchcock are a showcase for this problem. When
self-parody lacks ebullience but instead reveals (even sporadically) a
contempt for one's themes and one's materials - as in <i>To Catch a Thief</i>, <i>Rear Window</i>, <i>North by Northwest</i>
-- the results are forced and heavy-handed, rarely Camp. Successful
Camp -- a movie like CarnÃ©'s DrÃ´le de Drame; the film performances of
Mae West and Edward Everett Horton; portions of the Goon Show -- even
when it reveals self-parody, reeks of self-love.
</p><p>21. So, again, Camp rests on innocence. That means Camp discloses
innocence, but also, when it can, corrupts it. Objects, being objects,
don't change when they are singled out by the Camp vision. Persons,
however, respond to their audiences. Persons begin "camping": Mae West,
Bea Lillie, La Lupe, Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat, Bette Davis in All
About Eve. (Persons can even be induced to camp without their knowing
it. Consider the way Fellini got Anita Ekberg to parody herself in <i>La Dolce Vita.</i>)
</p><p>22. Considered a little less strictly, Camp is either completely naÃ¯ve
or else wholly conscious (when one plays at being campy). An example of
the latter: Wilde's epigrams themselves.
</p><p>"It's absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."
<br />- <i>Lady Windemere's Fan</i>
</p><p>23. In naÃ¯ve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a
seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can
be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the
exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naÃ¯ve.
</p><p>24. When something is just bad (rather than Camp), it's often because
it is too mediocre in its ambition. The artist hasn't attempted to do
anything really outlandish. ("It's too much," "It's too fantastic,"
"It's not to be believed," are standard phrases of Camp enthusiasm.)
</p><p>25. The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance. Camp is a woman
walking around in a dress made of three million feathers. Camp is the
paintings of Carlo Crivelli, with their real jewels and <i>trompe-l'oeil</i>
insects and cracks in the masonry. Camp is the outrageous aestheticism
of Steinberg's six American movies with Dietrich, all six, but
especially the last, <i>The Devil Is a Woman</i>. . . . In Camp there
is often something dÃ©mesurÃ© in the quality of the ambition, not only in
the style of the work itself. GaudÃ­'s lurid and beautiful buildings in
Barcelona are Camp not only because of their style but because they
reveal -- most notably in the Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia -- the
ambition on the part of one man to do what it takes a generation, a
whole culture to accomplish.
</p><p>26. Camp is art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is "too much." <i>Titus Andronicus</i> and <i>Strange Interlude</i> are almost Camp, or could be played as Camp. The public manner and rhetoric of de Gaulle, often, are pure Camp.
</p><p>27. A work can come close to Camp, but not make it, because it
succeeds. Eisenstein's films are seldom Camp because, despite all
exaggeration, they do succeed (dramatically) without surplus. If they
were a little more "off," they could be great Camp - particularly <i>Ivan the Terrible I</i> &amp; <i>II</i>.
The same for Blake's drawings and paintings, weird and mannered as they
are. They aren't Camp; though Art Nouveau, influenced by Blake, is.
</p><p>What is extravagant in an inconsistent or an unpassionate way is not
Camp. Neither can anything be Camp that does not seem to spring from an
irrepressible, a virtually uncontrolled sensibility. Without passion,
one gets pseudo-Camp -- what is merely decorative, safe, in a word,
chic. On the barren edge of Camp lie a number of attractive things: the
sleek fantasies of Dali, the haute couture preciosity of Albicocco's <i>The Girl with the Golden Eyes</i>. But the two things - Camp and preciosity - must not be confused.
</p><p>28. Again, Camp is the attempt to do something extraordinary. But
extraordinary in the sense, often, of being special, glamorous. (The
curved line, the extravagant gesture.) Not extraordinary merely in the
sense of effort. Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not items are rarely campy.
These items, either natural oddities (the two-headed rooster, the
eggplant in the shape of a cross) or else the products of immense labor
(the man who walked from here to China on his hands, the woman who
engraved the New Testament on the head of a pin), lack the visual
reward - the glamour, the theatricality - that marks off certain
extravagances as Camp.
</p><p>29. The reason a movie like <i>On the Beach</i>, books like <i>Winesburg</i>, <i>Ohio</i> and <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls</i>
are bad to the point of being laughable, but not bad to the point of
being enjoyable, is that they are too dogged and pretentious. They lack
fantasy. There is Camp in such bad movies as <i>The Prodigal</i> and <i>Samson and Delilah</i>, the series of Italian color spectacles featuring the super-hero Maciste, numerous Japanese science fiction films (<i>Rodan</i>, <i>The Mysterians</i>, <i>The H-Man</i>)
because, in their relative unpretentiousness and vulgarity, they are
more extreme and irresponsible in their fantasy - and therefore
touching and quite enjoyable.
</p><p>30. Of course, the canon of Camp can change. Time has a great deal to
do with it. Time may enhance what seems simply dogged or lacking in
fantasy now because we are too close to it, because it resembles too
closely our own everyday fantasies, the fantastic nature of which we
don't perceive. We are better able to enjoy a fantasy as fantasy when
it is not our own.
</p><p>31. This is why so many of the objects prized by Camp taste are
old-fashioned, out-of-date, dÃ©modÃ©. It's not a love of the old as such.
It's simply that the process of aging or deterioration provides the
necessary detachment -- or arouses a necessary sympathy. When the theme
is important, and contemporary, the failure of a work of art may make
us indignant. Time can change that. Time liberates the work of art from
moral relevance, delivering it over to the Camp sensibility. . . .
Another effect: time contracts the sphere of banality. (Banality is,
strictly speaking, always a category of the contemporary.) What was
banal can, with the passage of time, become fantastic. Many people who
listen with delight to the style of Rudy Vallee revived by the English
pop group, The Temperance Seven, would have been driven up the wall by
Rudy Vallee in his heyday.
</p><p>Thus, things are campy, not when they become old - but when we become
less involved in them, and can enjoy, instead of be frustrated by, the
failure of the attempt. But the effect of time is unpredictable. Maybe
Method acting (James Dean, Rod Steiger, Warren Beatty) will seem as
Camp some day as Ruby Keeler's does now - or as Sarah Bernhardt's does,
in the films she made at the end of her career. And maybe not.
</p><p>32. Camp is the glorification of "character." The statement is of no
importance - except, of course, to the person (Loie Fuller, GaudÃ­,
Cecil B. De Mille, Crivelli, de Gaulle, etc.) who makes it. What the
Camp eye appreciates is the unity, the force of the person. In every
move the aging Martha Graham makes she's being Martha Graham, etc.,
etc. . . . This is clear in the case of the great serious idol of Camp
taste, Greta Garbo. Garbo's incompetence (at the least, lack of depth)
as an <i>actress</i> enhances her beauty. She's always herself.
</p><p>33. What Camp taste responds to is "instant character" (this is, of
course, very 18th century); and, conversely, what it is not stirred by
is the sense of the development of character. Character is understood
as a state of continual incandescence - a person being one, very
intense thing. This attitude toward character is a key element of the
theatricalization of experience embodied in the Camp sensibility. And
it helps account for the fact that opera and ballet are experienced as
such rich treasures of Camp, for neither of these forms can easily do
justice to the complexity of human nature. Wherever there is
development of character, Camp is reduced. Among operas, for example, <i>La Traviata</i> (which has some small development of character) is less campy than <i>Il Trovatore</i> (which has none).
</p><p>"Life is too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it."
<br />- <i>Vera, or The Nihilists</i>
</p><p>34. Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary
aesthetic judgment. Camp doesn't reverse things. It doesn't argue that
the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art
(and life) a different -- a supplementary -- set of standards.
</p><p>35. Ordinarily we value a work of art because of the seriousness and
dignity of what it achieves. We value it because it succeeds - in being
what it is and, presumably, in fulfilling the intention that lies
behind it. We assume a proper, that is to say, straightforward relation
between intention and performance. By such standards, we appraise <i>The Iliad</i>, Aristophanes' plays, The Art of the Fugue, <i>Middlemarch</i>, the paintings of Rembrandt, Chartres, the poetry of Donne, <i>The Divine Comedy</i>,
Beethoven's quartets, and - among people - Socrates, Jesus, St.
Francis, Napoleon, Savonarola. In short, the pantheon of high culture:
truth, beauty, and seriousness.
</p><p>36. But there are other creative sensibilities besides the seriousness
(both tragic and comic) of high culture and of the high style of
evaluating people. And one cheats oneself, as a human being, if one has
<i>respect</i> only for the style of high culture, whatever else one may do or feel on the sly.
</p><p>For instance, there is the kind of seriousness whose trademark is
anguish, cruelty, derangement. Here we do accept a disparity between
intention and result. I am speaking, obviously, of a style of personal
existence as well as of a style in art; but the examples had best come
from art. Think of Bosch, Sade, Rimbaud, Jarry, Kafka, Artaud, think of
most of the important works of art of the 20th century, that is, art
whose goal is not that of creating harmonies but of overstraining the
medium and introducing more and more violent, and unresolvable,
subject-matter. This sensibility also insists on the principle that an
oeuvre in the old sense (again, in art, but also in life) is not
possible. Only "fragments" are possible. . . . Clearly, different
standards apply here than to traditional high culture. Something is
good not because it is achieved, but because another kind of truth
about the human situation, another experience of what it is to be human
- in short, another valid sensibility -- is being revealed.
</p><p>And third among the great creative sensibilities is Camp: the
sensibility of failed seriousness, of the theatricalization of
experience. Camp refuses both the harmonies of traditional seriousness,
and the risks of fully identifying with extreme states of feeling.
</p><p>37. The first sensibility, that of high culture, is basically
moralistic. The second sensibility, that of extreme states of feeling,
represented in much contemporary "avant-garde" art, gains power by a
tension between moral and aesthetic passion. The third, Camp, is wholly
aesthetic.
</p><p>38. Camp is the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It
incarnates a victory of "style" over "content," "aesthetics" over
"morality," of irony over tragedy.
</p><p>39. Camp and tragedy are antitheses. There is seriousness in Camp
(seriousness in the degree of the artist's involvement) and, often,
pathos. The excruciating is also one of the tonalities of Camp; it is
the quality of excruciation in much of Henry James (for instance, <i>The Europeans</i>, <i>The Awkward Age</i>, <i>The Wings of the Dove</i>) that is responsible for the large element of Camp in his writings. But there is never, never tragedy.
</p><p>40. Style is everything. Genet's ideas, for instance, are very Camp.
Genet's statement that "the only criterion of an act is its elegance"<a href="#2">2</a>
is virtually interchangeable, as a statement, with Wilde's "in matters
of great importance, the vital element is not sincerity, but style."
But what counts, finally, is the style in which ideas are held. The
ideas about morality and politics in, say, <i>Lady Windemere's Fan</i> and in <i>Major Barbara</i>
are Camp, but not just because of the nature of the ideas themselves.
It is those ideas, held in a special playful way. The Camp ideas in <i>Our Lady of the Flowers</i> are maintained too grimly, and the writing itself is too successfully elevated and serious, for Genet's books to be Camp.
</p><p>41. The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is
playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more
complex relation to "the serious." One can be serious about the
frivolous, frivolous about the serious.
</p><p>42. One is drawn to Camp when one realizes that "sincerity" is not
enough. Sincerity can be simple philistinism, intellectual narrowness.
</p><p>43. The traditional means for going beyond straight seriousness -
irony, satire - seem feeble today, inadequate to the culturally
oversaturated medium in which contemporary sensibility is schooled.
Camp introduces a new standard: artifice as an ideal, theatricality.
</p><p>44. Camp proposes a comic vision of the world. But not a bitter or
polemical comedy. If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement,
comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.
</p><p>"I adore simple pleasures, they are the last refuge of the complex."
<br />- <i>A Woman of No Importance</i>
</p><p>45. Detachment is the prerogative of an elite; and as the dandy is the
19th century's surrogate for the aristocrat in matters of culture, so
Camp is the modern dandyism. Camp is the answer to the problem: how to
be a dandy in the age of mass culture.
</p><p>46. The dandy was overbred. His posture was disdain, or else ennui. He
sought rare sensations, undefiled by mass appreciation. (Models: Des
Esseintes in Huysmans' <i>Ã Rebours</i>, <i>Marius the Epicurean</i>, ValÃ©ry's <i>Monsieur Teste</i>.) He was dedicated to "good taste."
</p><p>The connoisseur of Camp has found more ingenious pleasures. Not in
Latin poetry and rare wines and velvet jackets, but in the coarsest,
commonest pleasures, in the arts of the masses. Mere use does not
defile the objects of his pleasure, since he learns to possess them in
a rare way. Camp -- Dandyism in the age of mass culture -- makes no
distinction between the unique object and the mass-produced object.
Camp taste transcends the nausea of the replica.
</p><p>47. Wilde himself is a transitional figure. The man who, when he first
came to London, sported a velvet beret, lace shirts, velveteen
knee-breeches and black silk stockings, could never depart too far in
his life from the pleasures of the old-style dandy; this conservatism
is reflected in <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i>.
But many of his attitudes suggest something more modern. It was Wilde
who formulated an important element of the Camp sensibility -- the
equivalence of all objects -- when he announced his intention of
"living up" to his blue-and-white china, or declared that a doorknob
could be as admirable as a painting. When he proclaimed the importance
of the necktie, the boutonniere, the chair, Wilde was anticipating the
democratic <i>esprit</i> of Camp.
</p><p>48. The old-style dandy hated vulgarity. The new-style dandy, the lover
of Camp, appreciates vulgarity. Where the dandy would be continually
offended or bored, the connoisseur of Camp is continually amused,
delighted. The dandy held a perfumed handkerchief to his nostrils and
was liable to swoon; the connoisseur of Camp sniffs the stink and
prides himself on his strong nerves.
</p><p>49. It is a feat, of course. A feat goaded on, in the last analysis, by
the threat of boredom. The relation between boredom and Camp taste
cannot be overestimated. Camp taste is by its nature possible only in
affluent societies, in societies or circles capable of experiencing the
psychopathology of affluence.
</p><p>"What is abnormal in Life stands in normal relations to Art. It is the
only thing in Life that stands in normal relations to Art."
<br />- <i>A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated</i>
</p><p>50. Aristocracy is a position vis-Ã -vis culture (as well as vis-Ã -vis
power), and the history of Camp taste is part of the history of snob
taste. But since no authentic aristocrats in the old sense exist today
to sponsor special tastes, who is the bearer of this taste? Answer: an
improvised self-elected class, mainly homosexuals, who constitute
themselves as aristocrats of taste.
</p><p>51. The peculiar relation between Camp taste and homosexuality has to be explained. While it's not true that Camp taste <i>is</i>
homosexual taste, there is no doubt a peculiar affinity and overlap.
Not all liberals are Jews, but Jews have shown a peculiar affinity for
liberal and reformist causes. So, not all homosexuals have Camp taste.
But homosexuals, by and large, constitute the vanguard -- and the most
articulate audience -- of Camp. (The analogy is not frivolously chosen.
Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in
contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense:
they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern
sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism
and irony.)
</p><p>52. The reason for the flourishing of the aristocratic posture among
homosexuals also seems to parallel the Jewish case. For every
sensibility is self-serving to the group that promotes it. Jewish
liberalism is a gesture of self-legitimization. So is Camp taste, which
definitely has something propagandistic about it. Needless to say, the
propaganda operates in exactly the opposite direction. The Jews pinned
their hopes for integrating into modern society on promoting the moral
sense. Homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on
promoting the aesthetic sense. Camp is a solvent of morality. It
neutralizes moral indignation, sponsors playfulness.
</p><p>53. Nevertheless, even though homosexuals have been its vanguard, Camp
taste is much more than homosexual taste. Obviously, its metaphor of
life as theater is peculiarly suited as a justification and projection
of a certain aspect of the situation of homosexuals. (The Camp
insistence on not being "serious," on playing, also connects with the
homosexual's desire to remain youthful.) Yet one feels that if
homosexuals hadn't more or less invented Camp, someone else would. For
the aristocratic posture with relation to culture cannot die, though it
may persist only in increasingly arbitrary and ingenious ways. Camp is
(to repeat) the relation to style in a time in which the adoption of
style -- as such -- has become altogether questionable. (In the modem
era, each new style, unless frankly anachronistic, has come on the
scene as an anti-style.)
</p><p>"One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing."
<br />- <i>In conversation</i>
</p><p>54. The experiences of Camp are based on the great discovery that the
sensibility of high culture has no monopoly upon refinement. Camp
asserts that good taste is not simply good taste; that there exists,
indeed, a good taste of bad taste. (Genet talks about this in <i>Our Lady of the Flowers</i>.)
The discovery of the good taste of bad taste can be very liberating.
The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself
of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the
constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself
out of the market, so to speak. Here Camp taste supervenes upon good
taste as a daring and witty hedonism. It makes the man of good taste
cheerful, where before he ran the risk of being chronically frustrated.
It is good for the digestion.
</p><p>55. Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation -
not judgment. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy. It only seems like
malice, cynicism. (Or, if it is cynicism, it's not a ruthless but a
sweet cynicism.) Camp taste doesn't propose that it is in bad taste to
be serious; it doesn't sneer at someone who succeeds in being seriously
dramatic. What it does is to find the success in certain passionate
failures.
</p><p>56. Camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes,
rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward intensities of
"character." . . . Camp taste identifies with what it is enjoying.
People who share this sensibility are not laughing at the thing they
label as "a camp," they're enjoying it. Camp is a <i>tender</i> feeling.
</p><p>(Here, one may compare Camp with much of Pop Art, which -- when it is
not just Camp -- embodies an attitude that is related, but still very
different. Pop Art is more flat and more dry, more serious, more
detached, ultimately nihilistic.)
</p><p>57. Camp taste nourishes itself on the love that has gone into certain
objects and personal styles. The absence of this love is the reason why
such kitsch items as <i>Peyton Place</i> (the book) and the Tishman Building aren't Camp.
</p><p>58. The ultimate Camp statement: it's good <i>because</i> it's
awful . . . Of course, one can't always say that. Only under certain
conditions, those which I've tried to sketch in these notes.
<br /></p><hr /><br />
<a><b>1</b></a> The sensibility of an era is
not only its most decisive, but also its most perishable, aspect. One
may capture the ideas (intellectual history) and the behavior (social
history) of an epoch without ever touching upon the sensibility or
taste which informed those ideas, that behavior. Rare are those
historical studies -- like Huizinga on the late Middle Ages, Febvre on
16th century France -- which do tell us something about the sensibility
of the period.
<p><a><b>2</b></a> Sartre's gloss on this in <i>Saint Genet</i> is: "Elegance is the quality of conduct which transforms the greatest amount of being into appearing."
</p>||||I||||Notes On "Camp"

by Susan Sontag

Published in 1964.

Wikipedia says that this essay: "was published in 1964 and was the author's first contribution to the Partisan Review. The essay created a literary sensation and brought Sontag her first brush with intellectual notoriety. It was published in 1966 in book form in Sontag's debut collection of essays, Against Interpretation.

I have here a copy of the text that I found somewhere on the net and mean to share with a few friends. It is not at all an official authoritative version-- if it's like other online texts, it probably missing some sentences or paragraphs, has things out of order, lacks helpful formatting, etc. Call it an extended preview of the text-- read, then go get the real book.

Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility -- unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with it -- that goes by the cult name of "Camp."

A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things to talk about; but there are special reasons why Camp, in particular, has never been discussed. It is not a natural mode of sensibility, if there be any such. Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric -- something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques. Apart from a lazy two-page sketch in Christopher Isherwood's novel The World in the Evening (1954), it has hardly broken into print. To talk about Camp is therefore to betray it. If the betrayal can be defended, it will be for the edification it provides, or the dignity of the conflict it resolves. For myself, I plead the goal of self-edification, and the goad of a sharp conflict in my own sensibility. I am strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it. That is why I want to talk about it, and why I can. For no one who wholeheartedly shares in a given sensibility can analyze it; he can only, whatever his intention, exhibit it. To name a sensibility, to draw its contours and to recount its history, requires a deep sympathy modified by revulsion.

Though I am speaking about sensibility only -- and about a sensibility that, among other things, converts the serious into the frivolous -- these are grave matters. Most people think of sensibility or taste as the realm of purely subjective preferences, those mysterious attractions, mainly sensual, that have not been brought under the sovereignty of reason. They allow that considerations of taste play a part in their reactions to people and to works of art. But this attitude is naÃ¯ve. And even worse. To patronize the faculty of taste is to patronize oneself. For taste governs every free -- as opposed to rote -- human response. Nothing is more decisive. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion - and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. (One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to develop very unevenly. It's rare that the same person has good visual taste and good taste in people and taste in ideas.)

Taste has no system and no proofs. But there is something like a logic of taste: the consistent sensibility which underlies and gives rise to a certain taste. A sensibility is almost, but not quite, ineffable. Any sensibility which can be crammed into the mold of a system, or handled with the rough tools of proof, is no longer a sensibility at all. It has hardened into an idea . . .

To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful,1 one must be tentative and nimble. The form of jottings, rather than an essay (with its claim to a linear, consecutive argument), seemed more appropriate for getting down something of this particular fugitive sensibility. It's embarrassing to be solemn and treatise-like about Camp. One runs the risk of having, oneself, produced a very inferior piece of Camp.

These notes are for Oscar Wilde.

"One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art."
- Phrases & Philosophies for the Use of the Young

1. To start very generally: Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.

2. To emphasize style is to slight content, or to introduce an attitude which is neutral with respect to content. It goes without saying that the Camp sensibility is disengaged, depoliticized -- or at least apolitical.

3. Not only is there a Camp vision, a Camp way of looking at things. Camp is as well a quality discoverable in objects and the behavior of persons. There are "campy" movies, clothes, furniture, popular songs, novels, people, buildings. . . . This distinction is important. True, the Camp eye has the power to transform experience. But not everything can be seen as Camp. It's not all in the eye of the beholder.

4. Random examples of items which are part of the canon of Camp:

Zuleika Dobson
Tiffany lamps
Scopitone films
The Brown Derby restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in LA
The Enquirer, headlines and stories
Aubrey Beardsley drawings
Swan Lake
Bellini's operas
Visconti's direction of Salome and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
certain turn-of-the-century picture postcards
Schoedsack's King Kong
the Cuban pop singer La Lupe
Lynn Ward's novel in woodcuts, God's Man
the old Flash Gordon comics
women's clothes of the twenties (feather boas, fringed and beaded dresses, etc.)
the novels of Ronald Firbank and Ivy Compton-Burnett
stag movies seen without lust

5. Camp taste has an affinity for certain arts rather than others. Clothes, furniture, all the elements of visual dÃ©cor, for instance, make up a large part of Camp. For Camp art is often decorative art, emphasizing texture, sensuous surface, and style at the expense of content. Concert music, though, because it is contentless, is rarely Camp. It offers no opportunity, say, for a contrast between silly or extravagant content and rich form. . . . Sometimes whole art forms become saturated with Camp. Classical ballet, opera, movies have seemed so for a long time. In the last two years, popular music (post rock-'n'-roll, what the French call yÃ© yÃ©) has been annexed. And movie criticism (like lists of "The 10 Best Bad Movies I Have Seen") is probably the greatest popularizer of Camp taste today, because most people still go to the movies in a high-spirited and unpretentious way.

6. There is a sense in which it is correct to say: "It's too good to be Camp." Or "too important," not marginal enough. (More on this later.) Thus, the personality and many of the works of Jean Cocteau are Camp, but not those of AndrÃ© Gide; the operas of Richard Strauss, but not those of Wagner; concoctions of Tin Pan Alley and Liverpool, but not jazz. Many examples of Camp are things which, from a "serious" point of view, are either bad art or kitsch. Not all, though. Not only is Camp not necessarily bad art, but some art which can be approached as Camp (example: the major films of Louis Feuillade) merits the most serious admiration and study.

"The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature."
- The Decay of Lying

7. All Camp objects, and persons, contain a large element of artifice. Nothing in nature can be campy . . . Rural Camp is still man-made, and most campy objects are urban. (Yet, they often have a serenity -- or a naÃ¯vetÃ© -- which is the equivalent of pastoral. A great deal of Camp suggests Empson's phrase, "urban pastoral.")

8. Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style -- but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the "off," of things-being-what-they-are-not. The best example is in Art Nouveau, the most typical and fully developed Camp style. Art Nouveau objects, typically, convert one thing into something else: the lighting fixtures in the form of flowering plants, the living room which is really a grotto. A remarkable example: the Paris MÃ©tro entrances designed by Hector Guimard in the late 1890s in the shape of cast-iron orchid stalks.

9. As a taste in persons, Camp responds particularly to the markedly attenuated and to the strongly exaggerated. The androgyne is certainly one of the great images of Camp sensibility. Examples: the swooning, slim, sinuous figures of pre-Raphaelite painting and poetry; the thin, flowing, sexless bodies in Art Nouveau prints and posters, presented in relief on lamps and ashtrays; the haunting androgynous vacancy behind the perfect beauty of Greta Garbo. Here, Camp taste draws on a mostly unacknowledged truth of taste: the most refined form of sexual attractiveness (as well as the most refined form of sexual pleasure) consists in going against the grain of one's sex. What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine. . . . Allied to the Camp taste for the androgynous is something that seems quite different but isn't: a relish for the exaggeration of sexual characteristics and personality mannerisms. For obvious reasons, the best examples that can be cited are movie stars. The corny flamboyant female-ness of Jayne Mansfield, Gina Lollobrigida, Jane Russell, Virginia Mayo; the exaggerated he-man-ness of Steve Reeves, Victor Mature. The great stylists of temperament and mannerism, like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Tallulah Bankhead, Edwige FeuilliÃ¨re.

10. Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a "lamp"; not a woman, but a "woman." To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.

11. Camp is the triumph of the epicene style. (The convertibility of "man" and "woman," "person" and "thing.") But all style, that is, artifice, is, ultimately, epicene. Life is not stylish. Neither is nature.

12. The question isn't, "Why travesty, impersonation, theatricality?" The question is, rather, "When does travesty, impersonation, theatricality acquire the special flavor of Camp?" Why is the atmosphere of Shakespeare's comedies (As You Like It, etc.) not epicene, while that of Der Rosenkavalier is?

13. The dividing line seems to fall in the 18th century; there the origins of Camp taste are to be found (Gothic novels, Chinoiserie, caricature, artificial ruins, and so forth.) But the relation to nature was quite different then. In the 18th century, people of taste either patronized nature (Strawberry Hill) or attempted to remake it into something artificial (Versailles). They also indefatigably patronized the past. Today's Camp taste effaces nature, or else contradicts it outright. And the relation of Camp taste to the past is extremely sentimental.

14. A pocket history of Camp might, of course, begin farther back -- with the mannerist artists like Pontormo, Rosso, and Caravaggio, or the extraordinarily theatrical painting of Georges de La Tour, or Euphuism (Lyly, etc.) in literature. Still, the soundest starting point seems to be the late 17th and early 18th century, because of that period's extraordinary feeling for artifice, for surface, for symmetry; its taste for the picturesque and the thrilling, its elegant conventions for representing instant feeling and the total presence of character -- the epigram and the rhymed couplet (in words), the flourish (in gesture and in music). The late 17th and early 18th century is the great period of Camp: Pope, Congreve, Walpole, etc, but not Swift; les prÃ©cieux in France; the rococo churches of Munich; Pergolesi. Somewhat later: much of Mozart. But in the 19th century, what had been distributed throughout all of high culture now becomes a special taste; it takes on overtones of the acute, the esoteric, the perverse. Confining the story to England alone, we see Camp continuing wanly through 19th century aestheticism (Bume-Jones, Pater, Ruskin, Tennyson), emerging full-blown with the Art Nouveau movement in the visual and decorative arts, and finding its conscious ideologists in such "wits" as Wilde and Firbank.

15. Of course, to say all these things are Camp is not to argue they are simply that. A full analysis of Art Nouveau, for instance, would scarcely equate it with Camp. But such an analysis cannot ignore what in Art Nouveau allows it to be experienced as Camp. Art Nouveau is full of "content," even of a political-moral sort; it was a revolutionary movement in the arts, spurred on by a Utopian vision (somewhere between William Morris and the Bauhaus group) of an organic politics and taste. Yet there is also a feature of the Art Nouveau objects which suggests a disengaged, unserious, "aesthete's" vision. This tells us something important about Art Nouveau -- and about what the lens of Camp, which blocks out content, is.

16. Thus, the Camp sensibility is one that is alive to a double sense in which some things can be taken. But this is not the familiar split-level construction of a literal meaning, on the one hand, and a symbolic meaning, on the other. It is the difference, rather, between the thing as meaning something, anything, and the thing as pure artifice.

17. This comes out clearly in the vulgar use of the word Camp as a verb, "to camp," something that people do. To camp is a mode of seduction -- one which employs flamboyant mannerisms susceptible of a double interpretation; gestures full of duplicity, with a witty meaning for cognoscenti and another, more impersonal, for outsiders. Equally and by extension, when the word becomes a noun, when a person or a thing is "a camp," a duplicity is involved. Behind the "straight" public sense in which something can be taken, one has found a private zany experience of the thing.

"To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up."
- An Ideal Husband

18. One must distinguish between naÃ¯ve and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp is always naÃ¯ve. Camp which knows itself to be Camp ("camping") is usually less satisfying.

19. The pure examples of Camp are unintentional; they are dead serious. The Art Nouveau craftsman who makes a lamp with a snake coiled around it is not kidding, nor is he trying to be charming. He is saying, in all earnestness: VoilÃ ! the Orient! Genuine Camp -- for instance, the numbers devised for the Warner Brothers musicals of the early thirties (42nd Street; The Golddiggers of 1933; ... of 1935; ... of 1937; etc.) by Busby Berkeley -- does not mean to be funny. Camping -- say, the plays of Noel Coward -- does. It seems unlikely that much of the traditional opera repertoire could be such satisfying Camp if the melodramatic absurdities of most opera plots had not been taken seriously by their composers. One doesn't need to know the artist's private intentions. The work tells all. (Compare a typical 19th century opera with Samuel Barber's Vanessa, a piece of manufactured, calculated Camp, and the difference is clear.)

20. Probably, intending to be campy is always harmful. The perfection of Trouble in Paradise and The Maltese Falcon, among the greatest Camp movies ever made, comes from the effortless smooth way in which tone is maintained. This is not so with such famous would-be Camp films of the fifties as All About Eve and Beat the Devil. These more recent movies have their fine moments, but the first is so slick and the second so hysterical; they want so badly to be campy that they're continually losing the beat. . . . Perhaps, though, it is not so much a question of the unintended effect versus the conscious intention, as of the delicate relation between parody and self-parody in Camp. The films of Hitchcock are a showcase for this problem. When self-parody lacks ebullience but instead reveals (even sporadically) a contempt for one's themes and one's materials - as in To Catch a Thief, Rear Window, North by Northwest -- the results are forced and heavy-handed, rarely Camp. Successful Camp -- a movie like CarnÃ©'s DrÃ´le de Drame; the film performances of Mae West and Edward Everett Horton; portions of the Goon Show -- even when it reveals self-parody, reeks of self-love.

21. So, again, Camp rests on innocence. That means Camp discloses innocence, but also, when it can, corrupts it. Objects, being objects, don't change when they are singled out by the Camp vision. Persons, however, respond to their audiences. Persons begin "camping": Mae West, Bea Lillie, La Lupe, Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat, Bette Davis in All About Eve. (Persons can even be induced to camp without their knowing it. Consider the way Fellini got Anita Ekberg to parody herself in La Dolce Vita.)

22. Considered a little less strictly, Camp is either completely naÃ¯ve or else wholly conscious (when one plays at being campy). An example of the latter: Wilde's epigrams themselves.

"It's absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."
- Lady Windemere's Fan

23. In naÃ¯ve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naÃ¯ve.

24. When something is just bad (rather than Camp), it's often because it is too mediocre in its ambition. The artist hasn't attempted to do anything really outlandish. ("It's too much," "It's too fantastic," "It's not to be believed," are standard phrases of Camp enthusiasm.)

25. The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance. Camp is a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers. Camp is the paintings of Carlo Crivelli, with their real jewels and trompe-l'oeil insects and cracks in the masonry. Camp is the outrageous aestheticism of Steinberg's six American movies with Dietrich, all six, but especially the last, The Devil Is a Woman. . . . In Camp there is often something dÃ©mesurÃ© in the quality of the ambition, not only in the style of the work itself. GaudÃ­'s lurid and beautiful buildings in Barcelona are Camp not only because of their style but because they reveal -- most notably in the Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia -- the ambition on the part of one man to do what it takes a generation, a whole culture to accomplish.

26. Camp is art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is "too much." Titus Andronicus and Strange Interlude are almost Camp, or could be played as Camp. The public manner and rhetoric of de Gaulle, often, are pure Camp.

27. A work can come close to Camp, but not make it, because it succeeds. Eisenstein's films are seldom Camp because, despite all exaggeration, they do succeed (dramatically) without surplus. If they were a little more "off," they could be great Camp - particularly Ivan the Terrible I & II. The same for Blake's drawings and paintings, weird and mannered as they are. They aren't Camp; though Art Nouveau, influenced by Blake, is.

What is extravagant in an inconsistent or an unpassionate way is not Camp. Neither can anything be Camp that does not seem to spring from an irrepressible, a virtually uncontrolled sensibility. Without passion, one gets pseudo-Camp -- what is merely decorative, safe, in a word, chic. On the barren edge of Camp lie a number of attractive things: the sleek fantasies of Dali, the haute couture preciosity of Albicocco's The Girl with the Golden Eyes. But the two things - Camp and preciosity - must not be confused.

28. Again, Camp is the attempt to do something extraordinary. But extraordinary in the sense, often, of being special, glamorous. (The curved line, the extravagant gesture.) Not extraordinary merely in the sense of effort. Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not items are rarely campy. These items, either natural oddities (the two-headed rooster, the eggplant in the shape of a cross) or else the products of immense labor (the man who walked from here to China on his hands, the woman who engraved the New Testament on the head of a pin), lack the visual reward - the glamour, the theatricality - that marks off certain extravagances as Camp.

29. The reason a movie like On the Beach, books like Winesburg, Ohio and For Whom the Bell Tolls are bad to the point of being laughable, but not bad to the point of being enjoyable, is that they are too dogged and pretentious. They lack fantasy. There is Camp in such bad movies as The Prodigal and Samson and Delilah, the series of Italian color spectacles featuring the super-hero Maciste, numerous Japanese science fiction films (Rodan, The Mysterians, The H-Man) because, in their relative unpretentiousness and vulgarity, they are more extreme and irresponsible in their fantasy - and therefore touching and quite enjoyable.

30. Of course, the canon of Camp can change. Time has a great deal to do with it. Time may enhance what seems simply dogged or lacking in fantasy now because we are too close to it, because it resembles too closely our own everyday fantasies, the fantastic nature of which we don't perceive. We are better able to enjoy a fantasy as fantasy when it is not our own.

31. This is why so many of the objects prized by Camp taste are old-fashioned, out-of-date, dÃ©modÃ©. It's not a love of the old as such. It's simply that the process of aging or deterioration provides the necessary detachment -- or arouses a necessary sympathy. When the theme is important, and contemporary, the failure of a work of art may make us indignant. Time can change that. Time liberates the work of art from moral relevance, delivering it over to the Camp sensibility. . . . Another effect: time contracts the sphere of banality. (Banality is, strictly speaking, always a category of the contemporary.) What was banal can, with the passage of time, become fantastic. Many people who listen with delight to the style of Rudy Vallee revived by the English pop group, The Temperance Seven, would have been driven up the wall by Rudy Vallee in his heyday.

Thus, things are campy, not when they become old - but when we become less involved in them, and can enjoy, instead of be frustrated by, the failure of the attempt. But the effect of time is unpredictable. Maybe Method acting (James Dean, Rod Steiger, Warren Beatty) will seem as Camp some day as Ruby Keeler's does now - or as Sarah Bernhardt's does, in the films she made at the end of her career. And maybe not.

32. Camp is the glorification of "character." The statement is of no importance - except, of course, to the person (Loie Fuller, GaudÃ­, Cecil B. De Mille, Crivelli, de Gaulle, etc.) who makes it. What the Camp eye appreciates is the unity, the force of the person. In every move the aging Martha Graham makes she's being Martha Graham, etc., etc. . . . This is clear in the case of the great serious idol of Camp taste, Greta Garbo. Garbo's incompetence (at the least, lack of depth) as an actress enhances her beauty. She's always herself.

33. What Camp taste responds to is "instant character" (this is, of course, very 18th century); and, conversely, what it is not stirred by is the sense of the development of character. Character is understood as a state of continual incandescence - a person being one, very intense thing. This attitude toward character is a key element of the theatricalization of experience embodied in the Camp sensibility. And it helps account for the fact that opera and ballet are experienced as such rich treasures of Camp, for neither of these forms can easily do justice to the complexity of human nature. Wherever there is development of character, Camp is reduced. Among operas, for example, La Traviata (which has some small development of character) is less campy than Il Trovatore (which has none).

"Life is too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it."
- Vera, or The Nihilists

34. Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgment. Camp doesn't reverse things. It doesn't argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art (and life) a different -- a supplementary -- set of standards.

35. Ordinarily we value a work of art because of the seriousness and dignity of what it achieves. We value it because it succeeds - in being what it is and, presumably, in fulfilling the intention that lies behind it. We assume a proper, that is to say, straightforward relation between intention and performance. By such standards, we appraise The Iliad, Aristophanes' plays, The Art of the Fugue, Middlemarch, the paintings of Rembrandt, Chartres, the poetry of Donne, The Divine Comedy, Beethoven's quartets, and - among people - Socrates, Jesus, St. Francis, Napoleon, Savonarola. In short, the pantheon of high culture: truth, beauty, and seriousness.

36. But there are other creative sensibilities besides the seriousness (both tragic and comic) of high culture and of the high style of evaluating people. And one cheats oneself, as a human being, if one has respect only for the style of high culture, whatever else one may do or feel on the sly.

For instance, there is the kind of seriousness whose trademark is anguish, cruelty, derangement. Here we do accept a disparity between intention and result. I am speaking, obviously, of a style of personal existence as well as of a style in art; but the examples had best come from art. Think of Bosch, Sade, Rimbaud, Jarry, Kafka, Artaud, think of most of the important works of art of the 20th century, that is, art whose goal is not that of creating harmonies but of overstraining the medium and introducing more and more violent, and unresolvable, subject-matter. This sensibility also insists on the principle that an oeuvre in the old sense (again, in art, but also in life) is not possible. Only "fragments" are possible. . . . Clearly, different standards apply here than to traditional high culture. Something is good not because it is achieved, but because another kind of truth about the human situation, another experience of what it is to be human - in short, another valid sensibility -- is being revealed.

And third among the great creative sensibilities is Camp: the sensibility of failed seriousness, of the theatricalization of experience. Camp refuses both the harmonies of traditional seriousness, and the risks of fully identifying with extreme states of feeling.

37. The first sensibility, that of high culture, is basically moralistic. The second sensibility, that of extreme states of feeling, represented in much contemporary "avant-garde" art, gains power by a tension between moral and aesthetic passion. The third, Camp, is wholly aesthetic.

38. Camp is the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of "style" over "content," "aesthetics" over "morality," of irony over tragedy.

39. Camp and tragedy are antitheses. There is seriousness in Camp (seriousness in the degree of the artist's involvement) and, often, pathos. The excruciating is also one of the tonalities of Camp; it is the quality of excruciation in much of Henry James (for instance, The Europeans, The Awkward Age, The Wings of the Dove) that is responsible for the large element of Camp in his writings. But there is never, never tragedy.

40. Style is everything. Genet's ideas, for instance, are very Camp. Genet's statement that "the only criterion of an act is its elegance"2 is virtually interchangeable, as a statement, with Wilde's "in matters of great importance, the vital element is not sincerity, but style." But what counts, finally, is the style in which ideas are held. The ideas about morality and politics in, say, Lady Windemere's Fan and in Major Barbara are Camp, but not just because of the nature of the ideas themselves. It is those ideas, held in a special playful way. The Camp ideas in Our Lady of the Flowers are maintained too grimly, and the writing itself is too successfully elevated and serious, for Genet's books to be Camp.

41. The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to "the serious." One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.

42. One is drawn to Camp when one realizes that "sincerity" is not enough. Sincerity can be simple philistinism, intellectual narrowness.

43. The traditional means for going beyond straight seriousness - irony, satire - seem feeble today, inadequate to the culturally oversaturated medium in which contemporary sensibility is schooled. Camp introduces a new standard: artifice as an ideal, theatricality.

44. Camp proposes a comic vision of the world. But not a bitter or polemical comedy. If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement, comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.

"I adore simple pleasures, they are the last refuge of the complex."
- A Woman of No Importance

45. Detachment is the prerogative of an elite; and as the dandy is the 19th century's surrogate for the aristocrat in matters of culture, so Camp is the modern dandyism. Camp is the answer to the problem: how to be a dandy in the age of mass culture.

46. The dandy was overbred. His posture was disdain, or else ennui. He sought rare sensations, undefiled by mass appreciation. (Models: Des Esseintes in Huysmans' Ã Rebours, Marius the Epicurean, ValÃ©ry's Monsieur Teste.) He was dedicated to "good taste."

The connoisseur of Camp has found more ingenious pleasures. Not in Latin poetry and rare wines and velvet jackets, but in the coarsest, commonest pleasures, in the arts of the masses. Mere use does not defile the objects of his pleasure, since he learns to possess them in a rare way. Camp -- Dandyism in the age of mass culture -- makes no distinction between the unique object and the mass-produced object. Camp taste transcends the nausea of the replica.

47. Wilde himself is a transitional figure. The man who, when he first came to London, sported a velvet beret, lace shirts, velveteen knee-breeches and black silk stockings, could never depart too far in his life from the pleasures of the old-style dandy; this conservatism is reflected in The Picture of Dorian Gray. But many of his attitudes suggest something more modern. It was Wilde who formulated an important element of the Camp sensibility -- the equivalence of all objects -- when he announced his intention of "living up" to his blue-and-white china, or declared that a doorknob could be as admirable as a painting. When he proclaimed the importance of the necktie, the boutonniere, the chair, Wilde was anticipating the democratic esprit of Camp.

48. The old-style dandy hated vulgarity. The new-style dandy, the lover of Camp, appreciates vulgarity. Where the dandy would be continually offended or bored, the connoisseur of Camp is continually amused, delighted. The dandy held a perfumed handkerchief to his nostrils and was liable to swoon; the connoisseur of Camp sniffs the stink and prides himself on his strong nerves.

49. It is a feat, of course. A feat goaded on, in the last analysis, by the threat of boredom. The relation between boredom and Camp taste cannot be overestimated. Camp taste is by its nature possible only in affluent societies, in societies or circles capable of experiencing the psychopathology of affluence.

"What is abnormal in Life stands in normal relations to Art. It is the only thing in Life that stands in normal relations to Art."
- A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated

50. Aristocracy is a position vis-Ã -vis culture (as well as vis-Ã -vis power), and the history of Camp taste is part of the history of snob taste. But since no authentic aristocrats in the old sense exist today to sponsor special tastes, who is the bearer of this taste? Answer: an improvised self-elected class, mainly homosexuals, who constitute themselves as aristocrats of taste.

51. The peculiar relation between Camp taste and homosexuality has to be explained. While it's not true that Camp taste is homosexual taste, there is no doubt a peculiar affinity and overlap. Not all liberals are Jews, but Jews have shown a peculiar affinity for liberal and reformist causes. So, not all homosexuals have Camp taste. But homosexuals, by and large, constitute the vanguard -- and the most articulate audience -- of Camp. (The analogy is not frivolously chosen. Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense: they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.)

52. The reason for the flourishing of the aristocratic posture among homosexuals also seems to parallel the Jewish case. For every sensibility is self-serving to the group that promotes it. Jewish liberalism is a gesture of self-legitimization. So is Camp taste, which definitely has something propagandistic about it. Needless to say, the propaganda operates in exactly the opposite direction. The Jews pinned their hopes for integrating into modern society on promoting the moral sense. Homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on promoting the aesthetic sense. Camp is a solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignation, sponsors playfulness.

53. Nevertheless, even though homosexuals have been its vanguard, Camp taste is much more than homosexual taste. Obviously, its metaphor of life as theater is peculiarly suited as a justification and projection of a certain aspect of the situation of homosexuals. (The Camp insistence on not being "serious," on playing, also connects with the homosexual's desire to remain youthful.) Yet one feels that if homosexuals hadn't more or less invented Camp, someone else would. For the aristocratic posture with relation to culture cannot die, though it may persist only in increasingly arbitrary and ingenious ways. Camp is (to repeat) the relation to style in a time in which the adoption of style -- as such -- has become altogether questionable. (In the modem era, each new style, unless frankly anachronistic, has come on the scene as an anti-style.)

"One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing."
- In conversation

54. The experiences of Camp are based on the great discovery that the sensibility of high culture has no monopoly upon refinement. Camp asserts that good taste is not simply good taste; that there exists, indeed, a good taste of bad taste. (Genet talks about this in Our Lady of the Flowers.) The discovery of the good taste of bad taste can be very liberating. The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the market, so to speak. Here Camp taste supervenes upon good taste as a daring and witty hedonism. It makes the man of good taste cheerful, where before he ran the risk of being chronically frustrated. It is good for the digestion.

55. Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation - not judgment. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy. It only seems like malice, cynicism. (Or, if it is cynicism, it's not a ruthless but a sweet cynicism.) Camp taste doesn't propose that it is in bad taste to be serious; it doesn't sneer at someone who succeeds in being seriously dramatic. What it does is to find the success in certain passionate failures.

56. Camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes, rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward intensities of "character." . . . Camp taste identifies with what it is enjoying. People who share this sensibility are not laughing at the thing they label as "a camp," they're enjoying it. Camp is a tender feeling.

(Here, one may compare Camp with much of Pop Art, which -- when it is not just Camp -- embodies an attitude that is related, but still very different. Pop Art is more flat and more dry, more serious, more detached, ultimately nihilistic.)

57. Camp taste nourishes itself on the love that has gone into certain objects and personal styles. The absence of this love is the reason why such kitsch items as Peyton Place (the book) and the Tishman Building aren't Camp.

58. The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful . . . Of course, one can't always say that. Only under certain conditions, those which I've tried to sketch in these notes.


1 The sensibility of an era is not only its most decisive, but also its most perishable, aspect. One may capture the ideas (intellectual history) and the behavior (social history) of an epoch without ever touching upon the sensibility or taste which informed those ideas, that behavior. Rare are those historical studies -- like Huizinga on the late Middle Ages, Febvre on 16th century France -- which do tell us something about the sensibility of the period.

2 Sartre's gloss on this in Saint Genet is: "Elegance is the quality of conduct which transforms the greatest amount of being into appearing."

by Susan Sontag
Published in 1964.
Wikipedia 
says that this essay:
"was published in 1964 and was the author's first contribution to the
Partisan Review. The essay created a literary sensation and brought
Sontag her first brush with intellectual notoriety. It was published
in 1966 in book form in Sontag's debut collection of essays,
 Against Interpretation. 
I have here a copy of the text that I found somewhere on the net
and mean to share with a few friends. It is not at all an
official authoritative version-- if it's like other online texts, it
probably missing some sentences or paragraphs, has things out of
order, lacks helpful formatting, etc. Call it an extended preview of
the text-- read, then go get
the real book.  
Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if
they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the
sensibility -- unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but
hardly identical with it -- that goes by the cult name of "Camp."
 A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things
to talk about; but there are special reasons why Camp, in particular,
has never been discussed. It is not a natural mode of sensibility, if
there be any such. Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the
unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric --
something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small
urban cliques. Apart from a lazy two-page sketch in Christopher
Isherwood's novel The World in the Evening
(1954), it has hardly broken into print. To talk about Camp is
therefore to betray it. If the betrayal can be defended, it will be for
the edification it provides, or the dignity of the conflict it
resolves. For myself, I plead the goal of self-edification, and the
goad of a sharp conflict in my own sensibility. I am strongly drawn to
Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it. That is why I want to talk
about it, and why I can. For no one who wholeheartedly shares in a
given sensibility can analyze it; he can only, whatever his intention,
exhibit it. To name a sensibility, to draw its contours and to recount
its history, requires a deep sympathy modified by revulsion.
 Though I am speaking about sensibility only -- and about a sensibility
that, among other things, converts the serious into the frivolous --
these are grave matters. Most people think of sensibility or taste as
the realm of purely subjective preferences, those mysterious
attractions, mainly sensual, that have not been brought under the
sovereignty of reason. They allow
that considerations of taste play a part in their reactions to people
and to works of art. But this attitude is naÃ¯ve. And even worse. To
patronize the faculty of taste is to patronize oneself. For taste
governs every free -- as opposed to rote -- human response. Nothing is
more decisive. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion
- and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well,
is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. (One of the facts to be
reckoned with is that taste tends to develop very unevenly. It's rare
that the same person has good visual taste and good taste in people and taste in ideas.)
 Taste has no system and no proofs. But there is something like a logic
of taste: the consistent sensibility which underlies and gives rise to
a certain taste. A sensibility is almost, but not quite, ineffable. Any
sensibility which can be crammed into the mold of a system, or handled
with the rough tools of proof, is no longer a sensibility at all. It
has hardened into an idea . . . 
 To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful,1
one must be tentative and nimble. The form of jottings, rather than an
essay (with its claim to a linear, consecutive argument), seemed more
appropriate for getting down something of this particular fugitive
sensibility. It's embarrassing to be solemn and treatise-like about
Camp. One runs the risk of having, oneself, produced a very inferior
piece of Camp.
 These notes are for Oscar Wilde.
 "One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art."
- Phrases &amp; Philosophies for the Use of the Young
 1. To start very generally: Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It
is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way,
the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree
of artifice, of stylization.
 2. To emphasize style is to slight content, or to introduce an attitude
which is neutral with respect to content. It goes without saying that
the Camp sensibility is disengaged, depoliticized -- or at least
apolitical.
 3. Not only is there a Camp vision, a Camp way of looking at things.
Camp is as well a quality discoverable in objects and the behavior of
persons. There are "campy" movies, clothes, furniture, popular songs,
novels, people, buildings. . . . This distinction is important. True,
the Camp eye has the power to transform experience. But not everything
can be seen as Camp. It's not all in the eye of the beholder.
 4. Random examples of items which are part of the canon of Camp:
     Zuleika Dobson
    Tiffany lamps
    Scopitone films
    The Brown Derby restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in LA
    The Enquirer, headlines and stories
    Aubrey Beardsley drawings
    Swan Lake
    Bellini's operas
    Visconti's direction of Salome and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
    certain turn-of-the-century picture postcards
    Schoedsack's King Kong
    the Cuban pop singer La Lupe
    Lynn Ward's novel in woodcuts, God's Man
    the old Flash Gordon comics
    women's clothes of the twenties (feather boas, fringed and beaded dresses, etc.)
    the novels of Ronald Firbank and Ivy Compton-Burnett
    stag movies seen without lust
 5. Camp taste has an affinity for certain arts rather than others.
Clothes, furniture, all the elements of visual dÃ©cor, for instance,
make up a large part of Camp. For Camp art is often decorative art,
emphasizing texture, sensuous surface, and style at the expense of
content. Concert music, though, because it is contentless, is rarely
Camp. It offers no opportunity, say, for a contrast between silly or
extravagant content and rich form. . . . Sometimes whole art forms
become saturated with Camp. Classical ballet, opera, movies have seemed
so for a long time. In the last two years, popular music (post
rock-'n'-roll, what the French call yÃ© yÃ©) has been annexed. And movie
criticism (like lists of "The 10 Best Bad Movies I Have Seen") is
probably the greatest popularizer of Camp taste today, because most
people still go to the movies in a high-spirited and unpretentious way.
 6. There is a sense in which it is correct to say: "It's too good to be
Camp." Or "too important," not marginal enough. (More on this later.)
Thus, the personality and many of the works of Jean Cocteau are Camp,
but not those of AndrÃ© Gide; the operas of Richard Strauss, but not
those of Wagner; concoctions of Tin Pan Alley and Liverpool, but not
jazz. Many examples of Camp are things which, from a "serious" point of
view, are either bad art or kitsch. Not all, though. Not only is Camp
not necessarily bad art, but some art which can be approached as Camp
(example: the major films of Louis Feuillade) merits the most serious
admiration and study.
 "The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature."
- The Decay of Lying
 7. All Camp objects, and persons, contain a large element of artifice.
Nothing in nature can be campy . . . Rural Camp is still man-made, and
most campy objects are urban. (Yet, they often have a serenity -- or a
naÃ¯vetÃ© -- which is the equivalent of pastoral. A great deal of Camp
suggests Empson's phrase, "urban pastoral.")
 8. Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style -- but a particular
kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the "off," of
things-being-what-they-are-not. The best example is in Art Nouveau, the
most typical and fully developed Camp style. Art Nouveau objects,
typically, convert one thing into something else: the lighting fixtures
in the form of flowering plants, the living room which is really a
grotto. A remarkable example: the Paris MÃ©tro entrances designed by
Hector Guimard in the late 1890s in the shape of cast-iron orchid
stalks.
 9. As a taste in persons, Camp responds particularly to the markedly
attenuated and to the strongly exaggerated. The androgyne is certainly
one of the great images of Camp sensibility. Examples: the swooning,
slim, sinuous figures of pre-Raphaelite painting and poetry; the thin,
flowing, sexless bodies in Art Nouveau prints and posters, presented in
relief on lamps and ashtrays; the haunting androgynous vacancy behind
the perfect beauty of Greta Garbo. Here, Camp taste draws on a mostly
unacknowledged truth of taste: the most refined form of sexual
attractiveness (as well as the most refined form of sexual pleasure)
consists in going against the grain of one's sex. What is most
beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful
in feminine women is something masculine. . . . Allied to the Camp
taste for the androgynous is something that seems quite different but
isn't: a relish for the exaggeration of sexual characteristics and
personality mannerisms. For obvious reasons, the best examples that can
be cited are movie stars. The corny flamboyant female-ness of Jayne
Mansfield, Gina Lollobrigida, Jane Russell, Virginia Mayo; the
exaggerated he-man-ness of Steve Reeves, Victor Mature. The great
stylists of temperament and mannerism, like Bette Davis, Barbara
Stanwyck, Tallulah Bankhead, Edwige FeuilliÃ¨re.
 10. Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a
"lamp"; not a woman, but a "woman." To perceive Camp in objects and
persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest
extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.
 11. Camp is the triumph of the epicene style. (The convertibility of
"man" and "woman," "person" and "thing.") But all style, that is,
artifice, is, ultimately, epicene. Life is not stylish. Neither is
nature.
 12. The question isn't, "Why travesty, impersonation, theatricality?"
The question is, rather, "When does travesty, impersonation,
theatricality acquire the special flavor of Camp?" Why is the
atmosphere of Shakespeare's comedies (As You Like It, etc.) not epicene, while that of Der Rosenkavalier is?
 13. The dividing line seems to fall in the 18th century; there the
origins of Camp taste are to be found (Gothic novels, Chinoiserie,
caricature, artificial ruins, and so forth.) But the relation to nature
was quite different then. In the 18th century, people of taste either
patronized nature (Strawberry Hill) or attempted to remake it into
something artificial (Versailles). They also indefatigably patronized
the past. Today's Camp taste effaces nature, or else contradicts it
outright. And the relation of Camp taste to the past is extremely
sentimental.
 14. A pocket history of Camp might, of course, begin farther back --
with the mannerist artists like Pontormo, Rosso, and Caravaggio, or the
extraordinarily theatrical painting of Georges de La Tour, or Euphuism
(Lyly, etc.) in literature. Still, the soundest starting point seems to
be the late 17th and early 18th century, because of that period's
extraordinary feeling for artifice, for surface, for symmetry; its
taste for the picturesque and the thrilling, its elegant conventions
for representing instant feeling and the total presence of character --
the epigram and the rhymed couplet (in words), the flourish (in gesture
and in music). The late 17th and early 18th century is the great period
of Camp: Pope, Congreve, Walpole, etc, but not Swift; les prÃ©cieux
in France; the rococo churches of Munich; Pergolesi. Somewhat later:
much of Mozart. But in the 19th century, what had been distributed
throughout all of high culture now becomes a special taste; it takes on
overtones of the acute, the esoteric, the perverse. Confining the story
to England alone, we see Camp continuing wanly through 19th century
aestheticism (Bume-Jones, Pater, Ruskin, Tennyson), emerging full-blown
with the Art Nouveau movement in the visual and decorative arts, and
finding its conscious ideologists in such "wits" as Wilde and Firbank.
 15. Of course, to say all these things are Camp is not to argue they
are simply that. A full analysis of Art Nouveau, for instance, would
scarcely equate it with Camp. But such an analysis cannot ignore what
in Art Nouveau allows it to be experienced as Camp. Art Nouveau is full
of "content," even of a political-moral sort; it was a revolutionary
movement in the arts, spurred on by a Utopian vision (somewhere between
William Morris and the Bauhaus group) of an organic politics and taste.
Yet there is also a feature of the Art Nouveau objects which suggests a
disengaged, unserious, "aesthete's" vision. This tells us something
important about Art Nouveau -- and about what the lens of Camp, which
blocks out content, is.
 16. Thus, the Camp sensibility is one that is alive to a double sense
in which some things can be taken. But this is not the familiar
split-level construction of a literal meaning, on the one hand, and a
symbolic meaning, on the other. It is the difference, rather, between
the thing as meaning something, anything, and the thing as pure
artifice.
 17. This comes out clearly in the vulgar use of the word Camp as a
verb, "to camp," something that people do. To camp is a mode of
seduction -- one which employs flamboyant mannerisms susceptible of a
double interpretation; gestures full of duplicity, with a witty meaning
for cognoscenti and another, more impersonal, for outsiders. Equally
and by extension, when the word becomes a noun, when a person or a
thing is "a camp," a duplicity is involved. Behind the "straight"
public sense in which something can be taken, one has found a private
zany experience of the thing.
 "To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up."
- An Ideal Husband
 18. One must distinguish between naÃ¯ve and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp
is always naÃ¯ve. Camp which knows itself to be Camp ("camping") is
usually less satisfying.
 19. The pure examples of Camp are unintentional; they are dead serious.
The Art Nouveau craftsman who makes a lamp with a snake coiled around
it is not kidding, nor is he trying to be charming. He is saying, in
all earnestness: VoilÃ ! the Orient! Genuine Camp -- for instance, the
numbers devised for the Warner Brothers musicals of the early thirties (42nd Street; The Golddiggers of 1933; ... of 1935; ... of 1937;
etc.) by Busby Berkeley -- does not mean to be funny. Camping -- say,
the plays of Noel Coward -- does. It seems unlikely that much of the
traditional opera repertoire could be such satisfying Camp if the
melodramatic absurdities of most opera plots had not been taken
seriously by their composers. One doesn't need to know the artist's
private intentions. The work tells all. (Compare a typical 19th century
opera with Samuel Barber's Vanessa, a piece of manufactured, calculated Camp, and the difference is clear.)
 20. Probably, intending to be campy is always harmful. The perfection of Trouble in Paradise and The Maltese Falcon,
among the greatest Camp movies ever made, comes from the effortless
smooth way in which tone is maintained. This is not so with such famous
would-be Camp films of the fifties as All About Eve and Beat the Devil.
These more recent movies have their fine moments, but the first is so
slick and the second so hysterical; they want so badly to be campy that
they're continually losing the beat. . . . Perhaps, though, it is not
so much a question of the unintended effect versus the conscious
intention, as of the delicate relation between parody and self-parody
in Camp. The films of Hitchcock are a showcase for this problem. When
self-parody lacks ebullience but instead reveals (even sporadically) a
contempt for one's themes and one's materials - as in To Catch a Thief, Rear Window, North by Northwest
-- the results are forced and heavy-handed, rarely Camp. Successful
Camp -- a movie like CarnÃ©'s DrÃ´le de Drame; the film performances of
Mae West and Edward Everett Horton; portions of the Goon Show -- even
when it reveals self-parody, reeks of self-love.
 21. So, again, Camp rests on innocence. That means Camp discloses
innocence, but also, when it can, corrupts it. Objects, being objects,
don't change when they are singled out by the Camp vision. Persons,
however, respond to their audiences. Persons begin "camping": Mae West,
Bea Lillie, La Lupe, Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat, Bette Davis in All
About Eve. (Persons can even be induced to camp without their knowing
it. Consider the way Fellini got Anita Ekberg to parody herself in La Dolce Vita.)
 22. Considered a little less strictly, Camp is either completely naÃ¯ve
or else wholly conscious (when one plays at being campy). An example of
the latter: Wilde's epigrams themselves.
 "It's absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."
- Lady Windemere's Fan
 23. In naÃ¯ve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a
seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can
be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the
exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naÃ¯ve.
 24. When something is just bad (rather than Camp), it's often because
it is too mediocre in its ambition. The artist hasn't attempted to do
anything really outlandish. ("It's too much," "It's too fantastic,"
"It's not to be believed," are standard phrases of Camp enthusiasm.)
 25. The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance. Camp is a woman
walking around in a dress made of three million feathers. Camp is the
paintings of Carlo Crivelli, with their real jewels and trompe-l'oeil
insects and cracks in the masonry. Camp is the outrageous aestheticism
of Steinberg's six American movies with Dietrich, all six, but
especially the last, The Devil Is a Woman. . . . In Camp there
is often something dÃ©mesurÃ© in the quality of the ambition, not only in
the style of the work itself. GaudÃ­'s lurid and beautiful buildings in
Barcelona are Camp not only because of their style but because they
reveal -- most notably in the Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia -- the
ambition on the part of one man to do what it takes a generation, a
whole culture to accomplish.
 26. Camp is art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is "too much." Titus Andronicus and Strange Interlude are almost Camp, or could be played as Camp. The public manner and rhetoric of de Gaulle, often, are pure Camp.
 27. A work can come close to Camp, but not make it, because it
succeeds. Eisenstein's films are seldom Camp because, despite all
exaggeration, they do succeed (dramatically) without surplus. If they
were a little more "off," they could be great Camp - particularly Ivan the Terrible I &amp; II.
The same for Blake's drawings and paintings, weird and mannered as they
are. They aren't Camp; though Art Nouveau, influenced by Blake, is.
 What is extravagant in an inconsistent or an unpassionate way is not
Camp. Neither can anything be Camp that does not seem to spring from an
irrepressible, a virtually uncontrolled sensibility. Without passion,
one gets pseudo-Camp -- what is merely decorative, safe, in a word,
chic. On the barren edge of Camp lie a number of attractive things: the
sleek fantasies of Dali, the haute couture preciosity of Albicocco's The Girl with the Golden Eyes. But the two things - Camp and preciosity - must not be confused.
 28. Again, Camp is the attempt to do something extraordinary. But
extraordinary in the sense, often, of being special, glamorous. (The
curved line, the extravagant gesture.) Not extraordinary merely in the
sense of effort. Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not items are rarely campy.
These items, either natural oddities (the two-headed rooster, the
eggplant in the shape of a cross) or else the products of immense labor
(the man who walked from here to China on his hands, the woman who
engraved the New Testament on the head of a pin), lack the visual
reward - the glamour, the theatricality - that marks off certain
extravagances as Camp.
 29. The reason a movie like On the Beach, books like Winesburg, Ohio and For Whom the Bell Tolls
are bad to the point of being laughable, but not bad to the point of
being enjoyable, is that they are too dogged and pretentious. They lack
fantasy. There is Camp in such bad movies as The Prodigal and Samson and Delilah, the series of Italian color spectacles featuring the super-hero Maciste, numerous Japanese science fiction films (Rodan, The Mysterians, The H-Man)
because, in their relative unpretentiousness and vulgarity, they are
more extreme and irresponsible in their fantasy - and therefore
touching and quite enjoyable.
 30. Of course, the canon of Camp can change. Time has a great deal to
do with it. Time may enhance what seems simply dogged or lacking in
fantasy now because we are too close to it, because it resembles too
closely our own everyday fantasies, the fantastic nature of which we
don't perceive. We are better able to enjoy a fantasy as fantasy when
it is not our own.
 31. This is why so many of the objects prized by Camp taste are
old-fashioned, out-of-date, dÃ©modÃ©. It's not a love of the old as such.
It's simply that the process of aging or deterioration provides the
necessary detachment -- or arouses a necessary sympathy. When the theme
is important, and contemporary, the failure of a work of art may make
us indignant. Time can change that. Time liberates the work of art from
moral relevance, delivering it over to the Camp sensibility. . . .
Another effect: time contracts the sphere of banality. (Banality is,
strictly speaking, always a category of the contemporary.) What was
banal can, with the passage of time, become fantastic. Many people who
listen with delight to the style of Rudy Vallee revived by the English
pop group, The Temperance Seven, would have been driven up the wall by
Rudy Vallee in his heyday.
 Thus, things are campy, not when they become old - but when we become
less involved in them, and can enjoy, instead of be frustrated by, the
failure of the attempt. But the effect of time is unpredictable. Maybe
Method acting (James Dean, Rod Steiger, Warren Beatty) will seem as
Camp some day as Ruby Keeler's does now - or as Sarah Bernhardt's does,
in the films she made at the end of her career. And maybe not.
 32. Camp is the glorification of "character." The statement is of no
importance - except, of course, to the person (Loie Fuller, GaudÃ­,
Cecil B. De Mille, Crivelli, de Gaulle, etc.) who makes it. What the
Camp eye appreciates is the unity, the force of the person. In every
move the aging Martha Graham makes she's being Martha Graham, etc.,
etc. . . . This is clear in the case of the great serious idol of Camp
taste, Greta Garbo. Garbo's incompetence (at the least, lack of depth)
as an actress enhances her beauty. She's always herself.
 33. What Camp taste responds to is "instant character" (this is, of
course, very 18th century); and, conversely, what it is not stirred by
is the sense of the development of character. Character is understood
as a state of continual incandescence - a person being one, very
intense thing. This attitude toward character is a key element of the
theatricalization of experience embodied in the Camp sensibility. And
it helps account for the fact that opera and ballet are experienced as
such rich treasures of Camp, for neither of these forms can easily do
justice to the complexity of human nature. Wherever there is
development of character, Camp is reduced. Among operas, for example, La Traviata (which has some small development of character) is less campy than Il Trovatore (which has none).
 "Life is too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it."
- Vera, or The Nihilists
 34. Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary
aesthetic judgment. Camp doesn't reverse things. It doesn't argue that
the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art
(and life) a different -- a supplementary -- set of standards.
 35. Ordinarily we value a work of art because of the seriousness and
dignity of what it achieves. We value it because it succeeds - in being
what it is and, presumably, in fulfilling the intention that lies
behind it. We assume a proper, that is to say, straightforward relation
between intention and performance. By such standards, we appraise The Iliad, Aristophanes' plays, The Art of the Fugue, Middlemarch, the paintings of Rembrandt, Chartres, the poetry of Donne, The Divine Comedy,
Beethoven's quartets, and - among people - Socrates, Jesus, St.
Francis, Napoleon, Savonarola. In short, the pantheon of high culture:
truth, beauty, and seriousness.
 36. But there are other creative sensibilities besides the seriousness
(both tragic and comic) of high culture and of the high style of
evaluating people. And one cheats oneself, as a human being, if one has
respect only for the style of high culture, whatever else one may do or feel on the sly.
 For instance, there is the kind of seriousness whose trademark is
anguish, cruelty, derangement. Here we do accept a disparity between
intention and result. I am speaking, obviously, of a style of personal
existence as well as of a style in art; but the examples had best come
from art. Think of Bosch, Sade, Rimbaud, Jarry, Kafka, Artaud, think of
most of the important works of art of the 20th century, that is, art
whose goal is not that of creating harmonies but of overstraining the
medium and introducing more and more violent, and unresolvable,
subject-matter. This sensibility also insists on the principle that an
oeuvre in the old sense (again, in art, but also in life) is not
possible. Only "fragments" are possible. . . . Clearly, different
standards apply here than to traditional high culture. Something is
good not because it is achieved, but because another kind of truth
about the human situation, another experience of what it is to be human
- in short, another valid sensibility -- is being revealed.
 And third among the great creative sensibilities is Camp: the
sensibility of failed seriousness, of the theatricalization of
experience. Camp refuses both the harmonies of traditional seriousness,
and the risks of fully identifying with extreme states of feeling.
 37. The first sensibility, that of high culture, is basically
moralistic. The second sensibility, that of extreme states of feeling,
represented in much contemporary "avant-garde" art, gains power by a
tension between moral and aesthetic passion. The third, Camp, is wholly
aesthetic.
 38. Camp is the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It
incarnates a victory of "style" over "content," "aesthetics" over
"morality," of irony over tragedy.
 39. Camp and tragedy are antitheses. There is seriousness in Camp
(seriousness in the degree of the artist's involvement) and, often,
pathos. The excruciating is also one of the tonalities of Camp; it is
the quality of excruciation in much of Henry James (for instance, The Europeans, The Awkward Age, The Wings of the Dove) that is responsible for the large element of Camp in his writings. But there is never, never tragedy.
 40. Style is everything. Genet's ideas, for instance, are very Camp.
Genet's statement that "the only criterion of an act is its elegance"2
is virtually interchangeable, as a statement, with Wilde's "in matters
of great importance, the vital element is not sincerity, but style."
But what counts, finally, is the style in which ideas are held. The
ideas about morality and politics in, say, Lady Windemere's Fan and in Major Barbara
are Camp, but not just because of the nature of the ideas themselves.
It is those ideas, held in a special playful way. The Camp ideas in Our Lady of the Flowers are maintained too grimly, and the writing itself is too successfully elevated and serious, for Genet's books to be Camp.
 41. The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is
playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more
complex relation to "the serious." One can be serious about the
frivolous, frivolous about the serious.
 42. One is drawn to Camp when one realizes that "sincerity" is not
enough. Sincerity can be simple philistinism, intellectual narrowness.
 43. The traditional means for going beyond straight seriousness -
irony, satire - seem feeble today, inadequate to the culturally
oversaturated medium in which contemporary sensibility is schooled.
Camp introduces a new standard: artifice as an ideal, theatricality.
 44. Camp proposes a comic vision of the world. But not a bitter or
polemical comedy. If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement,
comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.
 "I adore simple pleasures, they are the last refuge of the complex."
- A Woman of No Importance
 45. Detachment is the prerogative of an elite; and as the dandy is the
19th century's surrogate for the aristocrat in matters of culture, so
Camp is the modern dandyism. Camp is the answer to the problem: how to
be a dandy in the age of mass culture.
 46. The dandy was overbred. His posture was disdain, or else ennui. He
sought rare sensations, undefiled by mass appreciation. (Models: Des
Esseintes in Huysmans' Ã Rebours, Marius the Epicurean, ValÃ©ry's Monsieur Teste.) He was dedicated to "good taste."
 The connoisseur of Camp has found more ingenious pleasures. Not in
Latin poetry and rare wines and velvet jackets, but in the coarsest,
commonest pleasures, in the arts of the masses. Mere use does not
defile the objects of his pleasure, since he learns to possess them in
a rare way. Camp -- Dandyism in the age of mass culture -- makes no
distinction between the unique object and the mass-produced object.
Camp taste transcends the nausea of the replica.
 47. Wilde himself is a transitional figure. The man who, when he first
came to London, sported a velvet beret, lace shirts, velveteen
knee-breeches and black silk stockings, could never depart too far in
his life from the pleasures of the old-style dandy; this conservatism
is reflected in The Picture of Dorian Gray.
But many of his attitudes suggest something more modern. It was Wilde
who formulated an important element of the Camp sensibility -- the
equivalence of all objects -- when he announced his intention of
"living up" to his blue-and-white china, or declared that a doorknob
could be as admirable as a painting. When he proclaimed the importance
of the necktie, the boutonniere, the chair, Wilde was anticipating the
democratic esprit of Camp.
 48. The old-style dandy hated vulgarity. The new-style dandy, the lover
of Camp, appreciates vulgarity. Where the dandy would be continually
offended or bored, the connoisseur of Camp is continually amused,
delighted. The dandy held a perfumed handkerchief to his nostrils and
was liable to swoon; the connoisseur of Camp sniffs the stink and
prides himself on his strong nerves.
 49. It is a feat, of course. A feat goaded on, in the last analysis, by
the threat of boredom. The relation between boredom and Camp taste
cannot be overestimated. Camp taste is by its nature possible only in
affluent societies, in societies or circles capable of experiencing the
psychopathology of affluence.
 "What is abnormal in Life stands in normal relations to Art. It is the
only thing in Life that stands in normal relations to Art."
- A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated
 50. Aristocracy is a position vis-Ã -vis culture (as well as vis-Ã -vis
power), and the history of Camp taste is part of the history of snob
taste. But since no authentic aristocrats in the old sense exist today
to sponsor special tastes, who is the bearer of this taste? Answer: an
improvised self-elected class, mainly homosexuals, who constitute
themselves as aristocrats of taste.
 51. The peculiar relation between Camp taste and homosexuality has to be explained. While it's not true that Camp taste is
homosexual taste, there is no doubt a peculiar affinity and overlap.
Not all liberals are Jews, but Jews have shown a peculiar affinity for
liberal and reformist causes. So, not all homosexuals have Camp taste.
But homosexuals, by and large, constitute the vanguard -- and the most
articulate audience -- of Camp. (The analogy is not frivolously chosen.
Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in
contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense:
they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern
sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism
and irony.)
 52. The reason for the flourishing of the aristocratic posture among
homosexuals also seems to parallel the Jewish case. For every
sensibility is self-serving to the group that promotes it. Jewish
liberalism is a gesture of self-legitimization. So is Camp taste, which
definitely has something propagandistic about it. Needless to say, the
propaganda operates in exactly the opposite direction. The Jews pinned
their hopes for integrating into modern society on promoting the moral
sense. Homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on
promoting the aesthetic sense. Camp is a solvent of morality. It
neutralizes moral indignation, sponsors playfulness.
 53. Nevertheless, even though homosexuals have been its vanguard, Camp
taste is much more than homosexual taste. Obviously, its metaphor of
life as theater is peculiarly suited as a justification and projection
of a certain aspect of the situation of homosexuals. (The Camp
insistence on not being "serious," on playing, also connects with the
homosexual's desire to remain youthful.) Yet one feels that if
homosexuals hadn't more or less invented Camp, someone else would. For
the aristocratic posture with relation to culture cannot die, though it
may persist only in increasingly arbitrary and ingenious ways. Camp is
(to repeat) the relation to style in a time in which the adoption of
style -- as such -- has become altogether questionable. (In the modem
era, each new style, unless frankly anachronistic, has come on the
scene as an anti-style.)
 "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing."
- In conversation
 54. The experiences of Camp are based on the great discovery that the
sensibility of high culture has no monopoly upon refinement. Camp
asserts that good taste is not simply good taste; that there exists,
indeed, a good taste of bad taste. (Genet talks about this in Our Lady of the Flowers.)
The discovery of the good taste of bad taste can be very liberating.
The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself
of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the
constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself
out of the market, so to speak. Here Camp taste supervenes upon good
taste as a daring and witty hedonism. It makes the man of good taste
cheerful, where before he ran the risk of being chronically frustrated.
It is good for the digestion.
 55. Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation -
not judgment. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy. It only seems like
malice, cynicism. (Or, if it is cynicism, it's not a ruthless but a
sweet cynicism.) Camp taste doesn't propose that it is in bad taste to
be serious; it doesn't sneer at someone who succeeds in being seriously
dramatic. What it does is to find the success in certain passionate
failures.
 56. Camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes,
rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward intensities of
"character." . . . Camp taste identifies with what it is enjoying.
People who share this sensibility are not laughing at the thing they
label as "a camp," they're enjoying it. Camp is a tender feeling.
 (Here, one may compare Camp with much of Pop Art, which -- when it is
not just Camp -- embodies an attitude that is related, but still very
different. Pop Art is more flat and more dry, more serious, more
detached, ultimately nihilistic.)
 57. Camp taste nourishes itself on the love that has gone into certain
objects and personal styles. The absence of this love is the reason why
such kitsch items as Peyton Place (the book) and the Tishman Building aren't Camp.
 58. The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's
awful . . . Of course, one can't always say that. Only under certain
conditions, those which I've tried to sketch in these notes.
   
 1  The sensibility of an era is
not only its most decisive, but also its most perishable, aspect. One
may capture the ideas (intellectual history) and the behavior (social
history) of an epoch without ever touching upon the sensibility or
taste which informed those ideas, that behavior. Rare are those
historical studies -- like Huizinga on the late Middle Ages, Febvre on
16th century France -- which do tell us something about the sensibility
of the period.
  2  Sartre's gloss on this in Saint Genet is: "Elegance is the quality of conduct which transforms the greatest amount of being into appearing."
Notes On "Camp"
https://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/prose/Susan_Sontag_-_Notes_on_Camp.html
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1963/02/16/eichmann-in-jerusalem-i
Eichmann in Jerusalem
2023-01-01
Condé Nast; Hannah Arendt
<div><div><div><p><em>This is the first of a series of articles. <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/a-reporter-at-large/02/23/eichmann-in-jerusalem-ii">Read the second part.</a></em></p><p>Every morning, the words “<em>Beth Hamishpath</em>” (“The House of Justice”), shouted by the court usher at the top of his voice, make us jump to our feet as they announce the arrival of the three judges, who, bare-headed and in black robes, walk into the courtroom from a side entrance to take their seats on the highest tier of the raised platform at the front of the long hall. They sit at a long table, which is eventually to be covered with innumerable books and more than fifteen hundred documents. Immediately below the judges are the translators, whose services are needed for direct exchanges between the defendant or his counsel and the court; otherwise, Adolf Eichmann, the German-speaking accused party, like all the other foreigners in the courtroom, follows the Hebrew proceedings through the simultaneous radio transmission, which is excellent in French, bearable in English, and sheer comedy—frequently incomprehensible—in German. (In view of the scrupulous fairness of all the technical arrangements for the trial, it is among the minor mysteries of the new State of Israel that, with its high percentage of German-born people, it was unable to find an adequate translator into the only language the accused and his counsel could understand. The old prejudice against German Jews, once very pronounced in Israel, is no longer strong enough to account for it.) One tier below the translators are the glass booth of the accused and the witness box, facing each other. Finally, on the bottom tier, with their backs to the spectators, are the prosecutor, Attorney General Gideon Hausner, with his staff of four assistant attorneys, and Dr. Robert Servatius, counsel for the defense—a lawyer from Cologne, chosen by Eichmann and paid by the Israeli government (just as at the Nuremberg Trials all attorneys for the accused were paid by the tribunal of the victorious powers), who during the first weeks is accompanied by an assistant. Whoever planned this auditorium in the newly built House of the People, <em>Beth Ha’am</em>—now guarded from roof to cellar by heavily armed police, and surrounded by high fences, as well as by a wooden row of barracks in the front courtyard, in which all comers are expertly frisked—obviously had a theatre in mind, complete with orchestra and balcony, with proscenium and stage, and with side doors for the actors’ entrances.</p><p>At no time, however, is there anything theatrical in the conduct of the judges—Moshe Landau, the presiding judge, Judge Benjamin Halevi, and Judge Yitzhak Raveh. Their walk is unstudied; their sober and intense attention, visibly stiffening under the impact of grief as they listen to the tales of suffering, is natural; their impatience with the prosecutor’s attempt to drag out the hearings is spontaneous and refreshing; their attitude toward the defense is perhaps a shade over-polite, as though they had it always in mind that, to quote the judgment they handed down, “Dr. Servatius stood almost alone in this strenuous legal battle, in an unfamiliar environment;” their manner toward the accused is always beyond reproach. They are so evidently three good and honest men that one is not surprised to see that none of them yields to the greatest of all the temptations to play-act in this setting—that of pretending that they, all three born and educated in Germany, must wait for the Hebrew translation of anything said in German. Judge Landau hardly ever waits to give his answer until the translator has done his work, and he frequently interrupts the translation to correct and improve it, appearing grateful for this bit of distraction from the grim business at hand. In time, during the cross-examination of the accused, he even leads his colleagues to use their German mother tongue in the dialogue with Eichmann—a proof, if proof were still needed, of his remarkable independence of current public opinion in Israel.</p><p>There is no doubt from the very beginning that it is Judge Landau who sets the tone, and that he is doing his best—his very best—to prevent this trial from becoming a “show” trial under the direction of the prosecutor, whose love of showmanship is unmistakable. Among the reasons he cannot always succeed is the simple fact that the proceedings happen on a stage before an audience, with the usher’s marvellous shout at the beginning of each session producing the effect of a rising curtain. Clearly, this courtroom is well suited to the show trial that David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel, had in mind when he decided to have Eichmann kidnapped in Argentina and brought to the District Court of Jerusalem to answer the charge that he had played a principal role in “the Final Solution of the Jewish question,” as the Nazis called their plan to exterminate the Jews. And Ben-Gurion, who has rightly been given the title of “architect of the state,” is the invisible stage manager of the proceedings. He does not attend a single one of the sessions; in the courtroom, he speaks with the voice of his Attorney General, who, representing the government, does his best—his very best—to obey his master. And if his best often turns out not to be good enough, the reason is that the trial is presided over by someone who serves Justice as faithfully as Mr. Hausner serves the State of Israel. Justice demands that the accused be prosecuted, defended, and judged, and that all the other questions, though they may seem to be of greater import—of “How could it happen?” and “Why did it happen?,” of “Why the Jews?” and “Why the Germans?,” of “What was the role of other nations?” and “What was the extent to which the Allies shared the responsibility?,” of “How could the Jews, through their own leaders, coöperate in their own destruction?” and “Why did they go to their death like lambs to the slaughter?”—be left in abeyance. Justice insists on the importance of Adolf Eichmann, the man in the glass booth built for his protection: medium-sized, slender, middle-aged, with receding hair, ill-fitting teeth, and nearsighted eyes, who throughout the trial keeps craning his scraggy neck toward the bench (not once does he turn to face the audience), and who desperately tries to maintain his self-control—and mostly succeeds, despite a nervous tic, to which his mouth must have become subject long before this trial started. On trial are his deeds, not the sufferings of the Jews, not the German people or mankind, not even anti-Semitism and racism.</p><p>And Justice turns out to be a much sterner master than the Prime Minister. The latter’s rule, as Mr. Hausner is not slow in demonstrating, is permissive; it permits the prosecutor to give press conferences and interviews for television during the trial (the American program, sponsored by the Glickman Corporation, is constantly interrupted—business as usual—by real-estate advertising), and even “spontaneous” outbursts to reporters in the court building (he is sick of cross-examining Eichmann, who answers all questions with lies); it permits frequent side glances into the audience, and the theatrics characteristic of a conspicuous vanity, which finally achieves its triumph in the White House with a compliment on “a job well done” by the President of the United States. Justice does not permit anything of the sort; it demands seclusion, it requires sorrow rather than anger, and it prescribes the most careful abstention from all the nice pleasures of putting oneself in the limelight.</p><p>Yet no matter how consistently the judges shun the limelight, there they are, seated at the top of the platform, facing the audience as from a stage. The audience is supposed to represent the whole world, and in the first few weeks it indeed consisted chiefly of newspapermen and magazine writers who had flocked to Jerusalem from the four corners of the earth. They were to watch a spectacle as sensational as the Nuremberg Trials; only this time, Mr. Hausner noted, “the tragedy of Jewry as a whole was the central concern.” In fact, said Hausner, “if we charge him [Eichmann] also with crimes against non-Jews . . . this is” not because he committed them but, surprisingly, “<em>because we make no ethnic distinctions.</em>” That was certainly a remarkable sentence for a prosecutor to utter in his opening speech; it proved to be the key sentence in the case for the prosecution. For this case was built on what the Jews had suffered, not on what Eichmann had done. And, according to Mr. Hausner, that amounted to the same thing, because “there was only one man who had been concerned almost entirely with the Jews, whose business had been their destruction, whose role in the establishment of the iniquitous regime had been limited to them. That was Adolf Eichmann.” Was it not logical to bring before the court all the facts of Jewish suffering (which, of course, were never in dispute) and then look for evidence that, in one way or another, would connect Eichmann with what had happened? The Nuremberg Trials, where the defendants had been “indicted for crimes against members of many and various nations,” had left the Jewish tragedy out of account, Hausner said, for the simple reason that Eichmann had not been there. Did Hausner really believe the Nuremberg Trials would have paid greater attention to the fate of the Jews if Eichmann had been in the dock? Hardly. Like almost everybody else in Israel, he believed that only a Jewish court could render justice to Jews, and that it was the business of Jews to sit in judgment on their enemies.</p><p>If the audience was to be the world and the play was to be the huge panorama of Jewish suffering, the reality was falling short of expectations and failing to accomplish its purpose. The journalists remained faithful for no more than two weeks, and then the audience changed drastically. It was now supposed to consist of Israelis, and, specifically, of those who were too young to know the story or, as in the case of Oriental Jews, had never been told it. The trial was supposed to show them what it meant to live among non-Jews, to convince them that only in Israel could a Jew be safe and live an honorable life. (For correspondents, the lesson was spelled out in a little booklet on Israel’s legal system, which was handed to the press. Its author, Doris Lankin, cites a decision of Israel’s Supreme Court whereby two fathers who had “abducted their children and brought them to Israel” were directed to send them back to their mothers, living abroad, who had a legal right to their custody. This, says the author—no less proud of such strict legality than Hausner of his willingness to prosecute a murder charge even when the victims of the murder were non-Jews—“despite the fact that to send the children back to maternal custody and care would be committing them to waging an unequal struggle against the hostile elements in the Diaspora.”) But in actuality there were hardly any young people in the audience, and it did not consist of Israelis, as distinguished from Jews. It was filled with “survivors”—middle-aged and elderly people, immigrants from Europe, like myself—who knew by heart all that there was to know, and who were in no mood to learn any lessons and certainly did not need this trial to draw their own conclusions. As witness followed witness and horror was piled upon horror, they sat there and listened in public to stories they would hardly have been able to endure in private, when they would have had to face the storyteller. And the more “the calamity [in Hausner’s words] of the Jewish people in this generation” unfolded, and the more grandiose Hausner’s rhetoric became, the paler and more ghostlike became the figure in the glass booth, and no finger-wagging (“And there sits the monster responsible for all this”) could summon him back to life.</p><p>It was precisely the play aspect of the trial that collapsed under the weight of the hair-raising atrocities. A trial resembles a play in that both focus on the doer, not on the victim. A show trial, to be effective, needs even more urgently than an ordinary trial a limited and well-defined outline of what the doer did, and how. In the center of a trial can only be the one who did—in this respect, he is like the hero in the play—and if he suffers, he must suffer for what he has done, not for what he has caused others to suffer. No one knew this better than the presiding judge, before whose eyes the trial began to deteriorate into a bloody spectacle, or, as the judgment called it, “a rudderless ship tossed about by the waves.” But if his efforts to prevent this were often defeated, the defeat was, strangely, in part the fault of the defense, which hardly ever rose to challenge any testimony, no matter how irrelevant or immaterial it might be. <em>Dr</em>. Servatius (as everybody invariably addressed him) was a bit bolder when it came to the submission of documents, and the most impressive of his rare interventions occurred when the prosecution introduced as evidence the diaries of Hans Frank, wartime Governor General of Poland and one of the major war criminals hanged at Nuremberg. “I have only one question,” Dr. Servatius said. “Is the name Adolf Eichmann, the name of the accused, mentioned in those twenty-nine volumes [in fact, it was thirty-eight]? . . . The name Adolf Eichmann is not mentioned in all those twenty-nine volumes. . . . Thank you, no more questions.”</p><p>Thus, the trial never became a play, but the show that Ben-Gurion had had in mind did take place—or, rather, the “lessons” he thought should be offered to Israelis and Arabs, to Jews and Gentiles; that is, to the whole world. These lessons to be drawn from an identical show were meant to be different for the different recipients. Ben-Gurion had outlined them before the trial started, in a number of articles that were designed to explain why Israel had kidnapped the accused. There was the lesson to the non-Jewish world: “I want to establish before the nations of the world how millions of people, because they happened to be Jews, and one million babies, because they happened to be Jewish babies, were murdered by the Nazis.” Or, in the words of <em>Davar,</em> the organ of Ben-Gurion’s <em>Mapai</em> party: “Let world opinion know this, that not Nazi Germany alone was responsible for the destruction of six million Jews of Europe.” Hence, again in Ben-Gurion’s own words, “We want the nations of the world to know . . . and they should be ashamed.” The Jews in the Diaspora were to remember how “four-thousand-year-old Judaism, with its spiritual creations, its ethical strivings, its Messianic aspirations, had always faced a hostile world,” how the Jews had degenerated until they went to their death like sheep, and how only the establishment of a Jewish state had enabled Jews to hit back, as Israelis had done in the War of Independence, in the Suez adventure, and in the almost daily incidents on Israel’s unhappy borders. And if the Jews outside Israel had to be shown the difference between Israeli heroism and Jewish submissive meekness, there was a complementary lesson for the Israelis; for “the generation of Israelis who have grown up since the holocaust” were in danger of losing their ties with the Jewish people and, by implication, with their own history. “It is necessary that our youth remember what happened to the Jewish people. We want them to know the most tragic facts in our history.” Finally, one of the motives in bringing Eichmann to trial was “to ferret out other Nazis—for example, the connection between the Nazis and some Arab rulers.”</p></div><div><p>If these had been the only justifications for bringing Adolf Eichmann to the District Court of Jerusalem, the trial would have been a failure on most counts. In some respects, the lessons were superfluous, and in others they were positively misleading. Thanks to Hitler, anti-Semitism has been discredited, perhaps not forever but certainly for the time being, and this is not because the Jews have become more popular all of a sudden but because not only Ben-Gurion but most people have “realized that in our day the gas chamber and the soap factory are what anti-Semitism may lead to.” Equally superfluous was the lesson to the Jews in the Diaspora, who hardly needed a great catastrophe in which a third of their people perished to be convinced of the world’s hostility. Not only has their conviction of the eternal and ubiquitous nature of anti-Semitism been the most potent ideological factor in the Zionist involvement since the Dreyfus Affair; it must also have been the cause of the otherwise inexplicable readiness of the German-Jewish community to negotiate with the Nazi authorities during the early stages of the regime. This conviction produced a fatal inability to distinguish between friend and foe; the German Jews underestimated their enemies because they somehow thought that all Gentiles were alike.</p><p>The contrast between Israeli heroism and the submissive meekness with which Jews went to their death—arriving on time at the transportation points, walking under their own power to the places of execution, digging their own graves, undressing and making neat piles of their clothing, and lying down side by side to be shot—seemed a telling point, and the prosecutor, asking witness after witness, “Why did you not protest?,” “Why did you board the train?,” “Fifteen thousand people were standing there and hundreds of guards facing you—why didn’t you revolt and charge and attack these guards?,” harped on it for all it was worth. But the sad truth of the matter is that the point was ill taken, for no non-Jewish group or non-Jewish people had behaved differently. Sixteen years ago, while still under the direct impact of the events, a former French inmate of Buchenwald, David Rousset, described, in “Les Jours de Notre Mort,” the logic that obtained in all concentration camps: “The triumph of the S.S. demands that the tortured victim allow himself to be led to the noose without protesting, that he renounce and abandon himself to the point of ceasing to affirm his identity. And it is not for nothing. It is not gratuitously, out of sheer sadism, that the S.S. men desire his defeat. They know that the system which succeeds in destroying its victim before he mounts the scaffold . . . is incomparably the best for keeping a whole people in slavery. In submission. Nothing is more terrible than these processions of human beings going like dummies to their death.” The court received no answer to this cruel and silly question, but one could easily have found an answer had he permitted his imagination to dwell for a few minutes on the fate of those Dutch Jews who in 1941, in the old Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, dared to attack a German security police detachment. Four hundred and thirty Jews were arrested in reprisal, and they were literally tortured to death, being sent first to Buchenwald and then to the Austrian camp of Mauthausen. Month after month, they died a thousand deaths, and every single one of them would have envied his brethren in Auschwitz had he known about them. There exist many things considerably worse than death, and the S.S. saw to it that none of them was ever very far from the mind and imagination of their victims. In this respect, perhaps even more significantly than in others, the deliberate attempt in Jerusalem to tell only the Jewish side of the story distorted the truth, even the Jewish truth. The glory of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and the heroism of the few others who fought back lay precisely in their having refused the comparatively easy death that the Nazis offered them—before the firing squad or in the gas chamber. And the witnesses in Jerusalem who testified to resistance and rebellion, to “the small place the uprising had in this history of the holocaust,” confirmed the known fact that only the very young had been capable of taking the “decision that we cannot go and be slaughtered like sheep.”</p><p>In one respect, Ben-Gurion’s expectations for the trial were not altogether disappointed, for it did indeed become an important instrument for ferreting out other Nazis and criminals—but not in the Arab countries, which had openly offered refuge to hundreds of them. The wartime relationship between the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Nazis was no secret; he had hoped they would help him in the implementation of some “Final Solution” of the Jewish question in the Near East. Hence, newspapers in Damascus and Beirut, in Cairo and Amman, did not hide their sympathy for Eichmann or their regret that he had not “finished the job;” a broadcast from Cairo on the day the trial opened went as far as to inject a slightly anti-German note into its comments, complaining that there was not “a single incident in which one German plane flew over one Jewish settlement [in Palestine] and dropped one bomb on it throughout the last world war.” That Arab nationalists have been in sympathy with Nazism is notorious, and neither Ben-Gurion nor this trial was needed “to ferret them out;” they were never in hiding. The trial revealed only that all rumors about Eichmann’s connection with Haj Amin el Husseini, the wartime Mufti of Jerusalem, were unfounded. (Along with other departmental heads, he had once been introduced to the Mufti during a reception at an S.S. office in Berlin.) Documents produced by the prosecution showed that the Mufti had been in close contact with the German Foreign Office and with Himmler, but this was nothing new. But if Ben-Gurion’s remark about “the connection between the Nazis and some Arab rulers” was pointless, his failure to mention present-day West Germany in this context was surprising. Of course, it was reassuring to hear that Israel “does not hold Adenauer responsible for Hitler,” and that “for us a decent German, although he belongs to the same nation that twenty years ago helped to murder millions of Jews, is a decent human being.” (There was no mention of decent Arabs.) While the German Federal Republic has not yet recognized the State of Israel—presumably out of fear that the Arab countries might thereupon recognize Ulbricht’s Germany—it has paid seven hundred and thirty-seven million dollars in reparation to Israel during the last ten years; the reparation payments will soon come to an end, and Israel is now trying to arrange with West Germany for a long-term loan. Hence, the relationship between the two countries, and particularly the personal relationship between Ben-Gurion and Adenauer, has been quite good, and if, as an aftermath of the trial, some deputies in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, succeeded in imposing certain restraints on the cultural-exchange program with West Germany, this certainly was not hoped for, or even foreseen, by Ben-Gurion. It is more noteworthy that he did not foresee, or did not care to mention, the fact that Eichmann’s capture would trigger the first serious effort made by West Germans to bring to trial at least those war criminals who were directly implicated in murder. The Central Agency for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes, which was belatedly set up by the eleven West German states in 1958 (barely two years before—in May, 1960—the West German statute of limitations wiped out all offenses except first-degree murder, for which the time limit is twenty years), and of which Prosecutor Erwin Schüle is the head, had run into all kinds of difficulties, caused partly by the unwillingness of German witnesses to coöperate and partly by the unwillingness of the local courts to prosecute on the basis of material sent to them from the Central Agency. It was not that the trial in Jerusalem produced any important new evidence of the kind needed for the discovery of Eichmann’s associates but that the news of Eichmann’s sensational capture and the prospect of his trial had an impact strong enough to persuade the local courts to use Mr. Schüle’s findings and to overcome the native reluctance to do anything about the “murderers in our midst” by the time-honored expedient of posting rewards for the capture of well-known criminals.</p></div><div><p>The results were amazing. Seven months after Eichmann’s arrival in Jerusalem—and four months before the opening of the trial—Richard Baer, successor to Rudolf Höss as commandant of Auschwitz, was finally arrested. Then, in rapid succession, most of the members of the so-called Eichmann Commando—Franz Novak, Eichmann’s transportation officer, who had been living as a printer in Austria; Dr. Otto Hunsche, his legal expert and his assistant in Hungary, who had settled as a lawyer in West Germany; Hermann Krumey, Eichmann’s second in command in Hungary, who had become a druggist; Gustav Richter, former “Jewish adviser” in Rumania; and Dr. Günther Zöpf, who had filled the same post in Amsterdam—were arrested, too. (Although evidence against these five had been published in Germany years before, in books and magazine articles, not one of them had found it necessary to live under an assumed name.) For the first time since the close of the war, German newspapers were full of stories about trials of Nazi criminals—all of them mass murderers—and the reluctance of the local courts to prosecute these crimes still showed itself in the fantastically lenient sentences meted out to those convicted. (Thus, Dr. Hunsche, who was personally responsible for a last-minute deportation of some twelve hundred Hungarian Jews, of whom at least six hundred were killed, received a sentence of five years of hard labor; Dr. Otto Bradfisch, of the <em>Einsatzgruppen</em>, the mobile killing units of the S.S. in the East, was sentenced to ten years of hard labor for the killing of fifteen thousand Jews; and Joseph Lechthaler, who had “liquidated” the Jewish inhabitants of Slutsk and Smolevichi, in Russia, was sentenced to three years and six months.) Among the new arrests were people of great prominence under the Nazis, most of whom had already been denazified by the German courts. One was S.S. <em>Obergruppenführer</em> Karl Wolff, former chief of Himmler’s personal staff, who, according to a document submitted in 1946 at Nuremberg, had greeted “with particular joy” the news that “for two weeks now a train has been carrying, every day, five thousand members of the Chosen People” from Warsaw to Treblinka, one of the Eastern killing centers. He still awaits trial. The trial of Wilhelm Koppe, who had at first managed the gassing of Jews in Chelmno and then become the successor of Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger in Poland, in a high post in the S.S. whose duties included making Poland <em>judenrein</em> (Jew-clean)—in postwar West Germany, he was the director of a chocolate factory—has not yet taken place. Occasional harsh sentences were even less reassuring, for they were meted out to offenders like Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, a former S.S. <em>Obergruppenführer</em>. He was tried in 1961 for his participation in the Röhm rebellion in 1934, was sentenced to four and a half years, and then was indicted again in 1962 for the killing of six German Communists in 1933, tried before a jury in Nuremberg, and sentenced to life. Neither indictment mentioned that Bach-Zelewski had been anti-partisan chief on the Russian front or that he had participated in the Jewish massacres at Minsk and Mogilev, in White Russia. Should a German court, on the pretext that war crimes are no crimes, make “ethnic distinctions”? And is it possible that what was an unusually harsh sentence (for a German postwar court) was arrived at because Bach-Zelewski was among the very few Nazi leaders who had tried to protect Jews from the <em>Einsatzgruppen,</em> suffered a nervous breakdown after the mass killings, and testified for the prosecution in Nuremberg? (He was also the only such leader who in 1952 had denounced himself publicly for mass murder, but he was never prosecuted for it.) There is little hope that things will change now, even though the Adenauer administration has been forced to weed out of the judiciary a hundred and forty-odd judges and prosecutors, along with many police officers, with a more than ordinarily compromising past, and to dismiss the chief prosecutor of the Federal Supreme Court, Wolfgang Immerwahr Fränkel, because, his middle name notwithstanding, he had been less than candid when he was asked about his Nazi past. It has been estimated that of the eleven thousand five hundred judges in the <em>Bundesrepublik</em>, five thousand were active in the courts under the Hitler regime. In November, 1962, shortly after the purging of the judiciary and six months after Eichmann’s name had disappeared from the news, the long awaited trial of Martin Fellenz took place at Flensburg in an almost empty courtroom. The former Higher S.S. and Police Leader, who had been a prominent member of the Free Democratic Party in Adenauer’s Germany, was arrested in June, 1960, a few weeks after Eichmann’s capture. He was accused of participation in, and partial responsibility for, the murder of forty thousand Jews in Poland. After more than six weeks of detailed testimony, the prosecutor demanded the maximum penalty—a life sentence, to be served at hard labor. And the court sentenced him to four years, two and a half of which he had already served while waiting in jail.</p><p>Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the Eichmann trial had its deepest and most far-reaching consequences in Germany. The attitude of the German people toward their own past, which all experts on the German question had puzzled over for fifteen years, could hardly have been more clearly demonstrated: they themselves did not care much about it one way or the other, and did not particularly mind the presence of murderers at large in the country, since none of these particular murderers were likely to commit murder now, of their own free will; however, if world opinion—or, rather, what the Germans call <em>das Ausland</em>, collecting all countries outside Germany into a singular noun—became obstinate and demanded that these people be punished, they were perfectly willing to oblige, at least up to a point. When Eichmann was captured, Chancellor Adenauer had foreseen embarrassment and had voiced a fear that the trial would “stir up again all the horrors” and produce a new wave of anti-German feeling throughout the world—as it did. During the ten months that Israel needed to prepare the trial, Germany was busy bracing herself against its predictable results by showing an unprecedented zeal for searching out and prosecuting Nazi criminals within the country. At no time, however, did either the German authorities or any significant segment of public opinion demand Eichmann’s extradition, which seemed the obvious move, since every sovereign state is jealous of its right to sit in judgment on its own offenders. (The official objection of the Adenauer government that such a move was not possible because there existed no extradition treaty between Israel and West Germany is not valid; it meant only that Israel could not have been forced to extradite. Fritz Bauer, Attorney General of Hessen, applied to the federal government in Bonn to start extradition proceedings. But Mr. Bauer’s feelings in this matter were the feelings of a German Jew, and they were not shared by German public opinion. His application was not only refused by Bonn, it was hardly noticed and remained totally unsupported. Another argument against extradition, offered by the observers the West German government sent to Jerusalem, was that Germany had abolished capital punishment and hence was unable to mete out the sentence Eichmann deserved. In view of the leniency shown by German courts to Nazi murderers, it was difficult not to suspect that this objection was made in bad faith. Surely, the greatest political hazard of an Eichmann trial in Germany would have been that a German court might not have given him the maximum penalty under German law.)</p></div><div><p>Another aspect of the matter was at once more delicate and more relevant to the political situation in Germany. It was one thing to ferret out mass murderers and other criminals from their hiding places, and it was another thing to find them prominent and active in the public realm—to encounter innumerable men in the federal and state administrations whose careers had bloomed under the Hitler regime. To be sure, if the Adenauer administration had been too sensitive in employing officials with a compromising Nazi past, there might have been no administration at all. For the truth is, of course, the exact opposite of what Dr. Adenauer asserted it to be when he said that only “a relatively small percentage” of Germans had been Nazis, and that “a great majority were happy to help their Jewish fellow-citizens when they could.” (At least one West German newspaper, the <em>Frankfurter Rundschau</em>, asked itself the obvious question, long overdue—why so many people who must have known, for instance, the record of Wolfgang Immerwahr Frankel had kept silent—and then came up with the even more obvious answer: “Because they themselves felt incriminated.”) The logic of the Eichmann trial, as Ben-Gurion conceived of it—a trial stressing general issues, to the detriment of legal niceties—would have demanded exposure of the complicity of all German bureaus and authorities in the so-called Final Solution of the Jewish question; of all civil servants in the state ministries; of the regular armed forces, with their General Staff; of the judiciary; and of the business world. But although the prosecution went as far afield as to put witness after witness on the stand who testified to things that, while gruesome and true enough, had only the slightest connection, or none, with the deeds of the accused, it carefully avoided touching upon this highly explosive matter—upon the almost ubiquitous complicity, stretching far beyond the ranks of the Party membership. (There were widespread rumors prior to the trial that Eichmann had named “several hundred prominent personalities of the Federal Republic as his accomplices,” but these rumors were not true In his opening speech, Mr. Hausner still mentioned Eichmann’s “accomplices in the crime [who] were neither gangsters nor men of the underworld,” and promised that we should “encounter them—the doctors and lawyers, scholars, bankers, and economists—in those councils that resolved to exterminate the Jews.” This promise was not kept—nor could it have been kept in the form in which it was made, for in the Nazi regime there were no “councils that resolved” anything, and the “robed dignitaries with academic degrees” made no decision to exterminate the Jews; they came together only to plan the necessary steps in carrying out an order given by Hitler.) Still, one case of complicity was brought to the attention of the court—that of Dr. Hans Globke, who, more than twenty-five years ago, was co-author of an infamous commentary on the Nuremberg Laws and, somewhat later, author of the brilliant idea of compelling all German Jews to take “Israel” or “Sarah” as a middle name, and who is today one of Adenauer’s closest advisers. And Globke’s name—and only his name—was inserted into the proceedings by the defense, and probably only in the hope of “persuading” the Adenauer government to start proceedings to extradite Eichmann. Still, former Ministry Official and present Undersecretary of State Globke doubtless had more right than the former Mufti of Jerusalem to figure in the history of what the Jews had actually suffered at the hands of the Nazis.</p><p>And it was history that, as far as the prosecution was concerned, stood at the center of the trial. “It is not an individual that is in the dock at this historic trial, and not the Nazi regime alone,” Ben-Gurion said, “but anti-Semitism throughout history.” The tone set by Ben-Gurion was faithfully followed by Hausner. He began his opening address (which lasted through three sessions) with Pharaoh In Egypt and Haman’s decree “to destroy, to slay, and to cause them [the Jews] to perish.” He then proceeded to quote from Ezekiel’s words “And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee: ‘In thy blood, live!,’ ” explaining that they must be understood as “the imperative that has confronted this nation ever since its first appearance on the stage of history.” It was bad history and cheap rhetoric; worse, it was clearly at cross-purposes with putting Eichmann on trial at all, since it suggested that perhaps he was only an innocent executor of some mysteriously foreordained destiny, or even, for that matter, of anti-Semitism, which had been necessary to blaze the trail of “the bloodstained road travelled by this people” to fulfill its destiny. A few sessions later, after Salo W. Baron, Professor of Jewish History at Columbia University, had testified to the more recent history of Eastern European Jewry, Dr. Servatius could no longer resist temptation and asked the obvious questions: “Why did all this bad luck fall upon the Jewish people?” and “Don’t you think that irrational motives are at the basis of the fate of this people? Beyond the understanding of a human being?” Is not there perhaps something like “the spirit of history, which brings history forward . . . without the influence of men?” Is not Mr. Hausner basically in agreement with “the school of historical law”—an allusion to Hegel—and has he not shown that what “the leaders do will not always lead to the aim and destination they wanted?” And Dr. Servatius added, “Here the intention was to destroy the Jewish people and the objective was not reached and a new flourishing state came into being.” The argument of the defense had now come perilously close to the newest anti-Semitic theory about the Elders of Zion, which had been set forth in all seriousness a few weeks earlier in the old Egyptian National Assembly by Hussain Zulficar Sabri, Nasser’s Deputy Foreign Minister: Hitler was innocent of the slaughter of the Jews; he was a victim of the Zionists, who had compelled “Hitler to perpetrate crimes and to create the legend that would eventually enable them to achieve their aim—the creation of the State of Israel.” Except that Dr. Servatius, following the philosophy of history expounded by the prosecutor, had put History in the place of the Elders of Zion.</p></div><div><p>Despite the intentions of Ben-Gurion and the efforts of the prosecution, there remained an individual in the dock, a person of flesh and blood, and even if Ben-Gurion, as he claimed, did not “care what verdict is delivered against Eichmann,” it was undeniably the sole task of the Jerusalem court to deliver one.</p><p>Otto Adolf, son of Karl Adolf Eichmann and Maria née Schefferling, caught in a suburb of Buenos Aires on the evening of May 11, 1960, flown to Israel nine days later, brought to trial in the District Court of Jerusalem on April 1, 1961, stood accused on fifteen counts; “together with others,” he had committed crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and war crimes during the whole period of the Nazi regime and especially during the period of the Second World War. The Israeli Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law of 1950, under which he was tried, provides that “a person who has committed one of the . . . [three] offenses . . . is liable to the death penalty.” To each count Eichmann pleaded, “In the sense of the indictment, not guilty.” In which sense, then, did he think he was guilty? During the long cross-examination of the accused—Eichmann asserted that it was “the longest ever known”—neither the defense nor the prosecution nor any of the three judges ever bothered to ask him this obvious question. Dr. Servatius answered the question in a press interview—“Eichmann feels guilty before God, not before the law”—but this answer was never confirmed by the accused himself. The defense would apparently have preferred him to plead not guilty on other grounds: that under the Nazi legal system he had not done anything wrong; that the deeds he was accused of were not crimes but “acts of state,” over which no other state has jurisdiction (<em>par in parem imperium non habet</em>); that it had been his duty to obey; and that, in Dr. Servatius’ words, he had committed acts “for which you are decorated if you win and go to the gallows if you lose.” In Germany (at a meeting of the Catholic Academy in Bavaria that was devoted to “the ticklish problem” of “the possibilities and limits of coping with historical and political guilt through criminal proceedings”), Dr. Servatius went a step further, and declared that “the only legitimate criminal problem of the Eichmann trial lies in pronouncing judgment against his Israeli captors, which so far has not been done”—a statement, incidentally, that is somewhat difficult to reconcile with certain of his most often repeated and most widely publicized utterances in Israel, in which he called the conduct of the trial “a great spiritual achievement” and compared it favorably with the Nuremberg Trials.</p><p>Eichmann’s own attitude, it appeared, was different. First of all, the indictment for murder was wrong: “But I had nothing to do with the killing of the Jews. I never killed a Jew, or, for that matter, I never killed a non-Jew—I never killed any human being. I never gave an order to kill a Jew nor an order to kill a non-Jew; I just did not do it.” Or, as he was later to qualify this statement, “It so happened . . . that I had not once to do it”—for he said explicitly that he would have killed his own father if he had received an order to that effect. Thus, he repeated over and over a statement that he had first made in the so-called Sassen documents—an interview that he had given in 1955 in Argentina to the Dutch journalist Willem S. Sassen, a former S.S. man who was also a fugitive from justice, and that, after Eichmann’s capture, was published, in part, by <em>Life</em> in this country and by <em>Der Stern</em> in West Germany. He said that he could be accused only of “aiding and abetting” the almost successful annihilation of the Jews, and in Jerusalem he declared this annihilation to have been “one of the greatest crimes in the history of humanity.” The defense paid no attention to Eichmann’s own theory, but the prosecution wasted much time on an unsuccessful effort to prove that Eichmann had once, at least, killed with his own hands (he was supposed to have beaten to death a Jewish boy in Hungary). It spent more time, more successfully, on a note that Franz Rademacher, the Jewish expert in the German Foreign Office, had scribbled on a document dealing with Yugoslavia, made during a telephone conversation, which read, “Eichmann proposes shooting.” This turned out to be the only “order to kill,” if that is what it was, for which there existed a shred of evidence.</p><p>The evidence that he had “proposed shooting” was more questionable than it appeared to be during the trial, when the judges accepted the prosecutor’s version as against Eichmann’s categorical denial that he had ever killed or given an order to kill—a denial that was very ineffective, since it involved an implication that he had forgotten, as Dr. Servatius put it, “a brief incident [the killing of a mere eight thousand people], which was not so striking.” The incident took place in the autumn of 1941. The German Army had occupied the Serbian part of Yugoslavia six months earlier, and had been plagued by partisan warfare ever since. At length, the military authorities had decided to solve two problems at a stroke by shooting a hundred Jews and Gypsies as hostages for every dead German soldier. To be sure, neither Jews nor Gypsies were partisans, but, in the words of the responsible civilian officer in the military government, a certain <em>Staatsrat</em> Harald Turner, “the Jews we had in the camps [anyhow]; after all, they too are Serb nationals, and besides, they have to disappear.” The camps had been set up by General Franz Böhme, military governor of the region, and housed Jewish males only; neither General Böhme nor <em>Staatsrat</em> Turner had sought Eichmann’s approval before starting to shoot Jews—or Gypsies, for that matter—by the thousand. The trouble began when Böhme, without consulting the appropriate police and S.S. authorities, decided to <em>deport</em> all his Jews, probably in order to show that no special troops, under a different command, were required to make Serbia <em>judenrein</em>. Eichmann was informed, since it was a matter of deportation, and this was precisely his job. He refused to coöperate, because it interfered with other plans of the S.S. outfit to which he belonged, the Head Office for Reich Security, or R.S.H.A. (the <em>Reichssicherheitshauptamt</em>), but it was not Eichmann, it was a man named Martin Luther, of the Foreign Office, who reminded General Böhme that “in other territories [meaning Russia] other military commanders have taken care of considerably greater numbers of Jews without even mentioning it.” In any event, if Eichmann actually did “propose shooting,” he was only telling the military that they should go on doing what they had been doing all along, implying that questions of hostages were entirely in their own competence. This was an Army affair, obviously, since only males were involved. (In Serbia, the implementation of the Final Solution started about six months later, when women and children were rounded up and disposed of in mobile gas vans.) During cross-examination, Eichmann, characteristically, chose the most complicated and least likely explanation: Rademacher had needed the support of the Head Office for Reich Security for his own stand on the matter, and had therefore forged the document. Rademacher himself explained the incident much more reasonably at his own trial, before a West German court in 1952: “The Army was responsible for order in Serbia and had to kill rebellious Jews by shooting.” (This sounded more plausible but was a lie, for we know—from Nazi sources—that the Jews were not “rebellious.”) If it was difficult to interpret a remark made over the phone as an order, it was more difficult to believe that Eichmann had been in a position to give orders to Army generals.</p><p>Would Eichmann, then, have pleaded guilty if he had been indicted as an accessory to murder? Perhaps, but with certain important qualifications. What he had done was a crime only in retrospect, and he had always been a law-abiding citizen, because Hitler’s orders, which he had certainly executed to the best of his ability, had possessed “the force of law” in the Third Reich. (The defense could have quoted in support of Eichmann’s thesis the testimony of one of the best-known experts on constitutional law in the Third Reich, Theodor Maunz, who is currently Minister of Education and Culture in Bavaria. In 1943, in “Gestalt und Recht der Polizei,” he stated, “The command of the Führer . . . is absolutely the center of the present legal order.”) Those who today told him that he could have acted differently simply did not know, or had forgotten, how things had been. He did not want to be one of those who now pretended that they “had always been against it,” whereas in fact they had been very eager to do what they were told to do. However, times change, and he, like Professor Maunz, had “arrived at different insights.” What he had done he had done; he did not want to deny it. Rather, he proposed to “hang myself in public as a warning example for all anti-Semites on this earth.” By this he did not mean to say that he regretted anything. “Repentance is for little children.”</p><p>Even under considerable pressure from his lawyer, Eichmann did not change this position. During a discussion of the offer Heinrich Himmler had made to Zionist representatives in Hungary, in 1944, to exchange a million Jews for ten thousand trucks, and of Eichmann’s role in this plan, Dr. Servatius asked, “Mr. Witness, in the negotiations with your superiors, did you express any pity for the Jews and did you say there was room to help them?” Eichmann replied, “I am here under oath and must speak the truth. Not out of mercy did I launch this transaction”—which would have been acceptable, except that it was not Eichmann who “launched” it. He then continued, quite truthfully, “The reasons which made me think of this transaction I explained this morning.” They were as follows: Himmler had sent his own man to Budapest to deal with matters of Jewish emigration. (Incidentally, Jewish emigration had become a flourishing business; for enormous amounts of money, Jews could buy their way out. Eichmann, however, did not mention this.) It was the fact that “here matters of emigration were dealt with by a man who did not belong to the police force” that made Eichmann indignant, “because I had to help and to implement deportation, and matters of emigration, where I considered myself an expert, were assigned to a man who was new to the unit. . . . I was fed up. . . . I decided that I had to do something to take matters of emigration into my own hands.”</p><p>Throughout the trial, Eichmann tried to clarify, mostly without success, the point in his plea of his being “in the sense of the indictment, not guilty.” The indictment implied not only that he had acted on purpose, which he did not deny, but that he had acted out of base motives and in full knowledge of the criminal nature of his deeds. As for the base motives, he was sure that he was not what he called an <em>innerer Schweinehund</em>—a dirty bastard in the depths of his heart—and as for his conscience, he recalled perfectly well that he would have had a bad conscience only if he had not done what he had been ordered to do—to ship millions of men, women, and children to their death with great zeal and most meticulous care. This last statement, admittedly, was hard to take. Half a dozen psychiatrists had certified Eichmann as “normal.” “More normal, at any rate, than I am after having examined him,” one of them was said to have exclaimed, while another had found that Eichmann’s whole psychological outlook, including his relationship with his wife and children, his mother and father, his brothers and sisters and friends, was “not only normal but most desirable.” And, finally, a minister who paid regular visits to him in prison after the Supreme Court had finished hearing his appeal reassured everybody by declaring that Eichmann was “a man with very positive ideas.” Behind the comedy of the soul experts lay the hard fact that Eichmann’s was obviously no case of moral insanity. (Hausner’s recent revelations—in the <em>Saturday Evening Post</em>—of things he “could not bring out at the trial” have contradicted the information given informally in Jerusalem. Eichmann, we are now told, had been attested to be “a man obsessed with a dangerous and insatiable urge to kill,” “a dangerous, perverted, sadistic personality.” In which case he would have belonged in an insane asylum.) Worse, it was just as obviously no case of insane hatred of Jews, of fanatical anti-Semitism. He “personally” never had anything whatever against Jews; on the contrary, he had plenty of “private reasons” for not being a Jew hater. To be sure, there were fanatic anti-Semites among his closest friends—for instance, Vitez Lászlo Endre, State Secretary in Charge of Political (Jewish) Affairs in the Ministry of the Interior, in Hungary, who was hanged in Budapest in 1946—but this, it appeared, was more or less in the spirit of “some of my best friends are anti-Semites.”</p></div><div><p>Alas, nobody believed him. The prosecutor did not believe him, because that was not his job. Counsel for the defense paid no attention, because, unlike Eichmann, he was to all appearances not interested in questions of conscience. And the judges did not believe him, because they were too good, and perhaps also too conscious of the very foundations of their profession, to admit that an average, “normal” person, neither feeble-minded nor indoctrinated nor cynical, could be perfectly incapable of telling right from wrong.</p><p>Eichmann was born on March 19, 1906, in Solingen, in the Rhineland—a German city that is famous for its knives, scissors, and surgical instruments. Fifty-four years later, indulging in what had become his favorite pastime—writing his memoirs—he described this memorable event as follows: “Today, fifteen years and a day after May 7, 1945, I begin to lead my thoughts back to that 19th of March of the year 1906, when at five o’clock in the morning . . . I entered life on earth in the aspect of a human being.” According to his religious beliefs, which had not changed since the Nazi period (in Jerusalem, he declared himself to be a <em>Gottgläubiger</em>—literally, a believer, but the Nazi term for those who had broken with Christianity—and he refused to take his oath on the Bible), this event was to be ascribed to a “<em>Höheren Sinnesträger</em>,” or “Higher Bearer of Meaning,” an entity somehow identical with “the movement of the universe,” to which human life, in itself devoid of “higher meaning,” is subject. The terminology is quite suggestive. To call God a <em>Höheren Sinnesträger</em> meant, linguistically, to give him some place in the military hierarchy, because the Nazis had changed the military “recipient of orders,” the <em>Befehlsempfänger</em>, into a <em>Befehlsträger</em>, “bearer of orders,” indicating, as in the ancient phrase “bearer of ill tidings,” the importance and the burden of responsibility that were supposedly conferred upon those who had to execute orders. Moreover, Eichmann, like everyone else connected with the Final Solution, was officially a <em>Geheimnisträger</em>, or “bearer of secrets,” as well, which in the way of catering to self-importance was certainly nothing to sneeze at. But Eichmann, not very much interested in metaphysics, remained silent on any more intimate relationship between the Bearer of Meaning and the bearer of orders, and proceeded to a consideration of the other possible source of his existence, his parents: “They would hardly have been so overjoyed at the arrival of their first-born had they been able to watch how in the hour of my birth the Norn of misfortune, to spite the Norn of good fortune, was already spinning threads of grief and sorrow into my life. But a kind, impenetrable veil kept my parents from seeing into the future.”</p><p>The misfortune started soon enough; it started in school. Eichmann’s father, who was first an accountant for the Tramways &amp; Electricity Co. in Solingen and in 1914 became an official of the same corporation in Linz, in Austria, had five children—four sons and a daughter—of whom only Adolf, the eldest, it seems, was unable to finish high school, or even to graduate from a vocational school for engineering, into which he was put when his incapacity first became manifest. Throughout his life, Eichmann deceived people about his early “misfortunes” by hiding behind certain financial misfortunes of his father’s, which cast no discredit on him. In Israel, however, during his first sessions with a police examiner, Captain Avner Less, who spent approximately thirty-five days with him and produced 3,564 typewritten pages from seventy-six recorder tapes, he was in an ebullient mood, full of enthusiasm for this unique opportunity “to pour forth everything I know” and, by the same token, to advance to the rank of the most coöperative defendant ever. (His enthusiasm was soon dampened, though never quite extinguished, when he was confronted with concrete questions based on irrefutable documents.) The best proof of his initial boundless confidence—obviously wasted on Captain Less—was that for the first time in his life he admitted his early disasters, although he must have been aware of the fact that he thus contradicted several important entries in the records he had supplied to Nazi authorities.</p><p>Well, the misfortunes were ordinary. Since he “had not exactly been the most hard-working” pupil—or, one may add, the most gifted—his father had taken him first from high school and then from vocational school, long before graduation. Hence, the profession that appears on all his official documents (construction engineer) had about as much connection with reality as the statement that his birthplace was Palestine and that he was fluent in Hebrew and Yiddish—another outright lie he had liked to tell both to his S.S. comrades and to his Jewish victims. In the same vein, he had always pretended that he was later dismissed from a job as salesman for the Vacuum Oil Company, in Austria, because of membership in the National Socialist Party. The version he confided to Captain Less was less dramatic, but it was probably not the truth, either: He had been fired, he said, because it was a time of unemployment, in which unmarried employees were the first to lose their jobs. (This explanation, which may at first seem plausible, is not really satisfactory, because he lost his job in the spring of 1933, when he had been engaged for two full years to Veronika, or Vera, Liebl, who eventually became his wife. Why had he not married her while he still held a good job? He finally married in March, 1935, probably because bachelors in the S.S., as in the Vacuum Oil Company, were never sure of their jobs and could not be promoted.)</p><p>While young Eichmann was wasting his time in school, his father left the Tramways &amp; Electricity Co. and went into business for himself. He bought a small mine, in Salzburg, and put his unpromising youngster to work in it as a mining laborer, but only until he could find a job for him in the sales department of the Upper Austrian Elektrobau Company. Here Eichmann remained for over two years. At the conclusion of that period, he was about twenty-two years old and without any prospects for a career; the only thing he had learned, perhaps, was how to sell. What then happened he himself described as his first break, and, again, we have two rather different versions of it. In a handwritten biographical record that Eichmann submitted in 1939 to win promotion in the S.S., he described it as follows: “I worked during the years of 1925 to 1927 as a salesman for the Upper Austrian Elektrobau Company. I left this position of my own free will, as the Vacuum Oil Company of Vienna offered me the representation for Upper Austria.” The key word here is “offered,” since, according to the story Eichmann told Captain Less in Israel, nobody had offered him anything. His mother had died when he was ten years old, and his father had married again in the same year. A cousin of his stepmother’s—a man he called “uncle”—who was president of the Austrian Automobile Club and was married to the daughter of a Jewish businessman in Czechoslovakia, was acquainted with the general manager of the Austrian Vacuum Oil Company, a Jew named Weiss, and used this connection to get his unfortunate relative a job as travelling salesman. Eichmann was properly grateful; in fact, the Jews in his family were among his “private reasons” for not hating Jews. Even in 1943 or 1944, when the Final Solution was in full swing, he had not forgotten: “The daughter of this marriage, I believe, was half-Jewish according to the Nuremberg Laws. . . . She came to see me in order to obtain my permission for her emigration into Switzerland. Naturally, I granted this request, and the same uncle came also to see me to ask me to intervene for some Viennese Jewish couple. I mention this only to show that I myself had no hatred against Jews, for my whole education through my mother and my father had been strictly Christian, and my mother, because of her Jewish relatives, had different opinions from those current in S.S. circles.” He went to considerable lengths to prove that he had never harbored any ill feelings against his victims, and, what is more, had never made any secret of that fact: “I explained this to Dr. [Josef] Löwenherz [head of the Jewish Community in Vienna] as I explained it to Dr. [Rudolf] Kastner [associate president of the Zionist Organization in Budapest]; I think I told it to everybody, each of my men knew it, they all heard it from me sometime. Even in elementary school, I had a [Jewish] classmate with whom I spent my free time, and he came to our house—a family in Linz by the name of Sebba. The last time we met, we walked together through the streets of Linz, I already with the Party emblem of the N.S.D.A.P. [the Nazi Party] in my buttonhole, and he did not think anything of it.” Had Eichmann been a bit less prim or the police examination less discreet (it did not extend to cross-examination, presumably so that the examiner would be assured of his coöperation), his “lack of prejudice” might have shown itself in another aspect as well. It seems that in Vienna, where he was extraordinarily successful in forcing Jews to leave the country, he had a Jewish mistress, an “old flame” from Linz. <em>Rassenschande</em>—a word that literally means “race-defilement” but that in the Nazi vocabulary simply meant sexual intercourse with Jews—was probably the greatest crime a member of the S.S. could commit; though during the war the raping of Jewish girls became a favorite pastime at the front, it was by no means common for a higher S.S. officer to have an affair with a Jewish woman. Thus, Eichmann’s repeated violent denunciations, in Jerusalem, of Julius Streicher, the insane and obscene editor of <em>Der Stürmer</em>, and Streicher’s pornographic anti-Semitism were perhaps personally motivated, expressive of more than the routine contempt that an “enlightened” S.S. man was supposed to show toward the vulgar passions of lesser Party luminaries.</p><p>Eichmann spent five and a half years with the Vacuum Oil Company, and they must have been among the happier ones of his life. He was able to make a good living during a time of severe unemployment, and he was still living with his parents, except when he was out on the road. The moment when this idyll came to an end—on Pentecost, 1933—was among the few dates he always remembered. Actually, things had taken a turn for the worse somewhat earlier. At the end of 1932, he was unexpectedly transferred from Linz to Salzburg, very much against his inclinations: “I lost all joy in my work, I no longer liked to sell, to make calls.” From such sudden losses of <em>Arbeitsfreude</em> Eichmann was to suffer throughout his life. The worst of them, he explained to Captain Less, occurred when he was told of the Führer’s order (always officially called, to indicate its preëminence among his orders, the Führer Order) for the “physical extermination of the Jews,” in which he was to play such an important role. This, too, came unexpectedly; he himself had “never thought of such a thing, such a solution through violence,” and he described his reaction in almost the same words: “I lost everything, all joy in my work, all initiative, all interest; I was, so to speak, blown out.” A similar blowing out must have occurred in 1932 in Salzburg, and from his own account it is clear that he cannot have been very much surprised when he was fired, though one need not believe his testimony that he had been “very happy” about his dismissal.</p><p>In any event, the year 1932 marked a turning point of his life. It was in April of this year that he joined the National Socialist Party and entered the S.S., upon the invitation of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who was then a young lawyer in Linz and later became chief of the R.S.H.A., in one of whose six (later seven) main sections—Bureau IV, under the command of Heinrich Müller—Eichmann was employed, in charge of subsection B-4. In court, Eichmann gave the impression that he was a typical member of the lower middle classes, and this impression was more than borne out by every sentence he spoke or wrote while he was in prison. This was misleading; he was rather the déclassé son of a solid middle-class family, and it was indicative of his comedown that although his father was a good friend of Kaltenbrunner’s father, who was also a Linz lawyer, the relationship of the two sons was a rather cool one, in which Eichmann was unmistakably treated by Kaltenbrunner as his social inferior. Before Eichmann entered the Party and the S.S., he had proved that he was a joiner, and May 7, 1945, the official date of Germany’s defeat, was significant for him mainly because it then dawned upon him that thenceforward he would have to live without being a member of something or other: “I sensed I would have to live a leaderless and difficult individual life, I would receive no directives from anybody, no orders and commands would any longer be issued to me, no pertinent ordinances would be there to consult—in brief, a life never known before lay ahead of me.” When he was a child, his parents, who were uninterested in politics, had enrolled him in the Young Men’s Christian Association, from which he later went into the German youth movement, the <em>Wandervogel</em>. During his unsuccessful years in high school, he had joined the <em>Jungfrontkämpferverband</em>, the youth section of the German-Austrian organization of war veterans, which, though violently pro-German and anti-republican, was tolerated by the Austrian government. When Kaltenbrunner suggested that he enter the S.S., he was a probationary member—and just on the point of becoming a full-fledged member—of an altogether different outfit, called the Schlaraffia, “an association of businessmen, physicians, actors, civil servants, etc., who came together to cultivate merriment and gaiety and so on,” as he described it, adding, “Each member had to give a lecture from time to time whose tenor was to be humor, refined humor.” Kaltenbrunner explained to Eichmann that he would have to give up this merry society, because as a Nazi he could not be a Freemason—a word that at the time was unknown to Eichmann. The choice between the S.S. and the Schlaraffia (the name derives from Schlaraffenland, the gluttons’ Cloud-Cuckoo-Land of German fairy tales) might have been hard to make, but he was “kicked out” of Schlaraffia anyhow; he had committed a sin that even now, as he told the story in the Israeli prison, made him blush with shame: “Contrary to my upbringing, it happened that I had tried, though I was the youngest, to invite my companions to a glass of wine.”</p></div><div><p>A leaf in the whirlwind of the time, Eichmann was blown from Schlaraffia, the never-never land of magically set tables and of roast chickens that would fly into your mouth—or, more accurately, he was blown from the company of respectable Philistines with degrees and assured careers and “refined humor,” whose worst vice was probably an irrepressible desire for practical jokes—into the marching columns of the Thousand-Year Reich, which lasted exactly twelve years and three months. At any rate, he did not enter the Party out of conviction, nor did he ever become convinced by it; whenever he was asked to give his reasons, he repeated a set of embarrassed clichés about the Treaty of Versailles and unemployment. Rather, “it was like being swallowed up by the Party against all expectations and without previous decision,” he said in court, adding, “it happened so quickly and suddenly.” He had no time and less desire to be properly informed; he did not even know the Party program, and he had not read (as he never did read) “Mein Kampf.” Kaltenbrunner had said to him, Why not join the S.S.? And he had replied, Why not? That was how it had happened, and that was about all there was to it.</p><p>Of course, that was <em>not</em> all there was to it. What Eichmann failed to tell the presiding judge in cross-examination was that he had been an ambitious young man who was fed up with his job as travelling salesman even before the Vacuum Oil Company became fed up with him, and that from a humdrum life without significance or consequence the wind had blown him into History, as he understood it; namely, into a Movement that always kept moving and in which somebody like him—already a failure in the eyes of his social class, in the eyes of his family, and hence in his own eyes as well—could start from scratch and make a career. And if he did not always like what he had to do (for example, dispatching people to their death by the trainload instead of forcing them to emigrate); if he guessed, rather early, that the whole business would come to a bad end, with Germany losing the war; if all his most cherished plans came to nothing (an evacuation of European Jewry to Madagascar, the establishment of a Jewish territory in the Nisko region of Poland, an experiment with carefully built defense installations, around his Berlin office, to repel Russian tanks); and if, to his great “grief and sorrow,” he never advanced beyond the grade of S.S. <em>Obersturmbannführer</em> (a rank equivalent to lieutenant colonel)—in brief, if, with the exception of one year in Vienna, his life was beset with frustrations, he never forgot what the alternative would have been. Not only in Argentina, leading the unhappy existence of a refugee, but also in the courtroom of Jerusalem, with his life as good as forfeited, he might still have expressed a preference—if anybody had asked him—for being hanged as an S.S. <em>Obersturmbannführer</em> <em>a.D.</em> (that is, in retirement) over living out his life quietly and normally as a travelling salesman for the Vacuum Oil Company.</p><p>Eichmann’s new career did not start very promisingly. In the spring of 1933, while he was out of a job, the Nazi Party and all its affiliations were suspended in Austria because of Hitler’s rise to power. But even without this new calamity a career in the Austrian Nazi Party would then have been out of the question; those who enlisted in the S.S. went on working at their regular jobs. (Kaltenbrunner was still a partner in his father’s law firm.) Eichmann therefore decided to go to Germany—a decision that was all the more natural because his family had never given up its German citizenship. (This fact was of some relevance to the trial. Dr. Servatius had asked the West German government to demand extradition of the accused and, failing this, to pay the expenses of the defense, and Bonn had refused, on the ground that Eichmann was not a German national—which was not true.) At Passau, on the German border, he was suddenly a travelling salesman again, and when he reported to the local <em>Gauleiter</em>, he asked him eagerly “if he had perhaps some connection with the Bavarian Vacuum Oil Company.” Well, this was one of his not infrequent relapses from one period of his life into another; whenever he was confronted with telltale signs of his unregenerate Nazi outlook—whether in Argentina or in the Jerusalem jail—he excused himself with “There I go again, the old song and dance [<em>die alte Tour</em>].” But the relapse in Passau was quickly cured; he was told that he had better enlist for military training (“All right with me, I thought to myself, why not become a soldier?”), and, having done so, he was sent to two Bavarian S.S. camps, one after the other—in Lechfeld and in Dachau (he had nothing to do with the concentration camp there)—where “the Austrian Legion in exile” received its training. Thus he did become an Austrian after a fashion, despite his German passport. He remained in one or the other of these military camps from the beginning of August, 1933, to the end of September, 1934, a period in which he advanced to the rank of <em>Scharführer</em> (corporal) and had plenty of time to reconsider his willingness to embark upon the career of a soldier. According to his own account, there was only one thing in which he distinguished himself during these fourteen months, and that was punishment drill, which he performed with great obstinacy, in the wrathful spirit of “Serves my father right if my hands freeze. Why doesn’t he buy me gloves?” But apart from this rather dubious pleasure, to which he owed his first promotion, he had a miserable time; “The humdrum of military service, that was something I couldn’t stand, day after day always the same, over and over again the same.” Thus bored to distraction, he heard that the Security Service of the <em>Reichsführer</em> S.S. (the <em>Sicherheitsdienst</em>, or S.D.) had jobs open, and applied for one immediately. His application was approved.</p><p>In 1934, the S.D. was a relatively new apparatus in the S.S. It had been founded two years earlier by Heinrich Himmler, to serve as the intelligence service of the Party, and it was now headed by Reinhardt Heydrich, a former Navy Intelligence officer, who was to become, as Gerald Reitlinger, author of “The Final Solution,” put it, “the real engineer of the Final Solution.” Its initial task had been to spy on Party members—an activity giving the S.S. an ascendance over the regular Party apparatus. Then it had taken on some additional duties, becoming the information and research center for the <em>Geheime Staatspolizei</em> (Secret State Police, or Gestapo). This was the first step toward the merger of the S.S. and the police, which was not carried out until September of 1939, though Himmler held the double post of <em>Reichsführer</em> S.S. and Chief of the German Police from 1936 on. Eichmann, of course, could not at that time have known anything of this, but he seems to have known nothing even of the nature of the S.D. when he entered it—a state of affairs that was not really strange, since the operations of the S.D. had always been top-secret. According to what he told Captain Less, he joined the S.D. under a misapprehension. “When the high Party officials drove along,” he said, “there were commando guards with them, men standing on the running boards of the cars. . . . In brief, I had mistaken them [Himmler’s S.D. ] for the Reich Security Service (<em>Reichssicherheitsdienst</em>),which I only much later distinguished from the commando guard (<em>Begleitkommando</em>) with whom I had made this confusion [in the first place], but nobody made this clear to me and no one told me anything.” (The question of whether this was the truth had a certain bearing on the trial, where it had to be decided whether he had volunteered for his position in the S.D. or had been drafted into it.) Furthermore, he testified to having suffered “a great disappointment” in the S.D. His disappointment consisted chiefly in the fact that he was back at the bottom and had to start all over again; his only consolation was that other members of the S.D. had made the same mistake. He was put into the research division, in Berlin, where his first job was to file all information concerning Freemasonry—which in the early Nazi ideological muddle was somehow lumped with Judaism, Catholicism, and Communism—and to help in the establishment of an Anti-Freemasonry Museum. He now had ample opportunity to learn what this strange word meant that Kaltenbrunner had thrown at him in their discussion of the Schlaraffia. (Incidentally, an eagerness to establish museums to be used as propaganda against their enemies was characteristic of the Nazis. During the war, several German bureaus competed bitterly for the honor of establishing anti-Jewish museums and libraries. We owe to this strange craze the preservation of many great cultural treasures of European Jewry.) Unfortunately, things were again very, very boring, so Eichmann was greatly relieved when, after four or five months of Freemasonry, he was put into a brand-new department, concerned with Jews. This was the real beginning of the career that was to end in the Jerusalem court.</p><p>It was the year 1935, when Germany, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, introduced general conscription and publicly announced plans for rearmament, including the building of an air force and a navy. This was also the year when Germany, having left the League of Nations in 1933, prepared, far from secretly, the occupation of the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland. It was the year of Hitler’s peace speeches (“Germany needs peace and desires peace,” “We recognize Poland as the home of a great and nationally conscious people,” “Germany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria, to annex Austria, or to conclude an <em>Anschluss</em>”), and, above all, it was the year when the Nazi regime won general and genuine recognition both in Germany and abroad, Hitler being admired almost everywhere as a great national statesman. In Germany itself, this was a time of transition. Because of the enormous rearmament program, unemployment had ceased to exist, and the initial resistance of the working class was thereby broken. The aggressions of the regime, which had at first been directed primarily against “anti-Fascists”—Communists, Socialists, left-wing intellectuals, and Jews in prominent positions—had not yet shifted entirely to the persecution of the Jews qua Jews. To be sure, one of the first steps taken by the Nazi government, back in 1933, had been the exclusion of Jews from the civil service (which in Germany included all teaching positions, from grammar school to university, and most branches of the entertainment industry; namely, the theatre, the opera, concerts, and radio) and, in general, their removal from public office, but private business and the legal and medical professions were not touched until 1938, though Jews were no longer permitted to take the state examinations leading to these professions. The emigration of Jews in these years proceeded, on the whole, in an orderly and not unduly accelerated fashion, and the currency restrictions that made it difficult, but not impossible, for Jews to take their money—or, at least, the greater part of it—out of the country were the same for non-Jews; they dated back to the days of the Weimar Republic. There were a certain number of <em>Einzelaktionen</em>—individual actions putting Jews under pressure to sell their businesses and real property at absurdly low prices—but they usually occurred in small towns and, indeed, could be traced to the spontaneous, “individual” initiative of some enterprising Storm Troopers, the so-called S.A. men, or Brown Shirts, who, except for their officer corps, were mainly recruited from the lower classes. The police, it is true, never stopped these “excesses,” but the Nazi authorities were not entirely happy about them, because they affected the value of real estate all over the country. The Jewish emigrants, unless they were political refugees, were mostly young people who realized that there was no future for them in Germany—and since they soon found out that there was hardly any future for them in other European countries either, some of them actually returned during this period. When Eichmann was asked how he had reconciled his personal feelings about Jews with the outspoken and violent anti-Semitism of the Party he had joined, he replied with the proverb “Nothing is as hot when you eat it as when it’s being cooked”—a proverb that was then on the lips of many Jews as well. They lived in a fool’s paradise, in which, for a few years, even Streicher spoke of a “legal solution” of the Jewish problem. It took the organized pogroms of November, 1938—the so-called <em>Kristallnacht</em>, or Night of Broken Glass, when seventy-five hundred Jewish shop-windows were broken, all synagogues went up in flames, and twenty thousand Jewish men were taken off to concentration camps—to expel them from it.</p><p>One frequently forgotten point of the matter is that the famous Nuremberg Laws, issued in the fall of 1935, had failed to do the trick. At the trial, the testimony of three witnesses from Germany—former high-ranking officials of the Zionist Organization who left Germany shortly before the outbreak of the war—gave only the barest glimpse into the true state of affairs during the first five years of the Nazi regime. The Nuremberg Laws had deprived the Jews of their political rights but not of their civil rights; they were no longer citizens (<em>Reichsbürger</em>), but they remained members of the German state (<em>Staatsangehörige</em>)—which meant that if they emigrated, they were not automatically stateless. Sexual intercourse between Jews and Germans and the contraction of mixed marriages were forbidden, and no German woman under the age of forty-five could be employed in a Jewish household. Of these provisions, only the last was of practical significance; the others merely legalized a <em>de-facto</em> situation. Hence, it was felt that the Nuremberg Laws stabilized the new situation of Jews in the German Reich. They had been second-class citizens, to put it mildly, since January 30, 1933; their almost complete separation from the rest of the population had been achieved in a matter of weeks, through terror but also through the more than ordinary connivance of those around them. “There was a wall between Gentiles and Jews,” Dr. Benno Cohn, from Berlin, testified at the trial. “I cannot remember speaking to a Christian during all my journeys over Germany.” Now, the Jews felt, having been given laws of their own, they would no longer be outlawed; if they kept to themselves—as they had been forced to do anyhow—they would be able to live unmolested. In the words of the <em>Reichsvertretung</em> of the Jews in Germany (the national association of all communities and organizations, which had been founded in September, 1933, on the initiative of the Berlin Community, and was in no way Nazi-appointed), the intention of the Nuremberg Laws was “to establish a level on which a bearable relationship between the German and the Jewish people [became] possible”—to which, around the same time, a member of the Berlin Community who was a radical Zionist added, “Life is possible under every law. However, in complete ignorance of what is permitted and what is not one cannot live. One can also be a useful and respected citizen as a member of a minority in the midst of a great people.” And since Hitler, in the Röhm purge of the summer of 1934, had broken the power of the S.A., whose brown-shirted Storm Troopers had been almost exclusively responsible for the early pogroms and atrocities, and since the Jews were blissfully unaware of the growing power of the black-shirted S.S., who ordinarily abstained from what Eichmann contemptuously called “the <em>Stürmer</em> methods,” Jews generally believed that a modus vivendi would be possible; in fact, they even offered to coöperate in “the solution of the Jewish question.” In short, when Eichmann entered upon his apprenticeship in Jewish affairs (on which, four years later, he was the recognized “expert”), and made his first contacts with Jewish functionaries, both Zionists and Assimilationists talked in terms of a great “Jewish revival,” a “great constructive movement of German Jewry,” and quarrelled among themselves in ideological terms about the desirability of Jewish emigration, as though this depended upon their own decisions.</p></div><div><p>Eichmann’s account, during the police examination, of how he was introduced into the new department—an account that was, of course, distorted but not wholly devoid of truth—oddly recalls this fool’s paradise. The first thing that happened was that his new boss, a certain von Mildenstein, who shortly thereafter got himself transferred to Albert Speer’s <em>Organisation Todt</em>, where he was in charge of highway construction (he was what Eichmann pretended to be—an engineer by profession), required him to read Theodor Herzl’s “Der Judenstaat,” the famous Zionist classic, which converted Eichmann immediately and forever to Zionism. From then on, as he repeated over and over, he thought of hardly anything but a “political solution” (as opposed to the later “physical solution,” the first meaning expulsion and the second extermination) and how to “get some firm ground under the feet of the Jews.” To this end, he began spreading the gospel among his S.S. comrades—giving lectures and writing pamphlets. He then acquired a smattering of Hebrew, which enabled him to read, haltingly, a Yiddish newspaper—not a very difficult accomplishment, since Yiddish is basically an old German dialect written in Hebrew letters, and can be understood by any German-speaking person who has mastered a few dozen Hebrew words. He even read one more book, Adolf Böhm’s “The History of Zionism” (during the trial he kept confusing it with Herzl’s “Der Judenstaat”), and this was perhaps a considerable achievement for a man who, by his own account, had always been utterly reluctant to read anything except newspapers, and, to the distress of his father, had never paid any attention to the books in the family library. Following up Böhm, he studied the organizational setup of the Zionist movement—its parties, its youth groups, its different programs. This did not make him an “authority,” but it was enough to earn him an assignment as official spy on the Zionist offices and Zionist meetings. It is worth noting that his schooling in Jewish affairs was almost entirely concerned with Zionism.</p><p>Eichmann’s first personal contacts with Jewish functionaries, all of them well-known Zionists of long standing, were thoroughly satisfactory. The reason he became so fascinated by the “Jewish question,” he explained, was his own “idealism;” these Jews, unlike the Assimilationists, whom he always despised, and unlike the Orthodox Jews, who bored him, were “idealists,” like him. An “idealist,” according to Eichmann’s notions, was not simply a man who believed in an “idea” or a man who did not steal or accept bribes, though these qualifications were indispensable. An “idealist” was a man who <em>lived</em> for his idea (hence he could not be a businessman, for example) and who was prepared to sacrifice for his idea everything and, especially, everybody. When he asserted during the police examination that he would have sent his own father to his death if that had been required, he did not mean merely to stress the extent to which he was under orders, and ready to obey them; he also meant to show what an “idealist” he had always been. Of course, the perfect “idealist,” like everybody else, had his personal feelings, but if they came into conflict with his “ideal,” he would never permit them to interfere with his actions.</p><p>Eichmann was given his first opportunity to apply in practice what he had learned during his apprenticeship when, after the <em>Anschluss</em>, or incorporation of Austria into the Reich, in March, 1938, he was sent to Vienna to organize a kind of emigration that had thus far been utterly unknown in Germany, where up to the fall of 1938 the fiction was maintained that Jews were permitted to leave the country if they wished but were not forced to do so. Eichmann was made head of what was called the Center for Jewish Emigration, and his task was defined as “forced emigration.” The words meant exactly what they said; all Jews, regardless of their wishes and regardless of their citizenship, were to be forced to emigrate—an act that in ordinary language is called expulsion. Whenever Eichmann thought back to the twelve years that were the core of his life, he declared this year in Vienna to have been its happiest and most successful period. Shortly before he left Berlin, he had been promoted to officer’s rank, becoming an <em>Untersturmführer</em>, or second lieutenant, and he had been recommended for his “comprehensive knowledge of the methods of organization and ideology of the opponent, Jewry.” The job in Vienna was his first important one; his whole career, which had progressed rather slowly, was in the balance. He must have been frantic to make good, and certainly his success was spectacular. In eight months, forty-five thousand Jews left Austria, whereas no more than nineteen thousand Jews left Germany in the same period; in less than eighteen months, Austria was “cleansed” of close to a hundred and fifty thousand people (roughly fifty per cent of its Jewish population), all of whom left the country “legally.” How did Eichmann do it? The basic idea that made all this possible was not his but, almost certainly, was contained in a specific directive from Heydrich, who had sent him to Vienna in the first place. (Eichmann was vague about the question of authorship, though he claimed it by implication; the Israeli authorities, being bound to the fantastic “thesis of the all-inclusive responsibility of Adolf Eichmann,” as an Israeli judge who prepared material for the trial expressed it, and to the even more fantastic supposition that, in the words of another government-appointed researcher, “one [i.e. his] mind was behind it all,” helped him considerably in his efforts to deck himself in borrowed plumes.) The idea, as Heydrich explained it in a conference with Göring on the morning of the <em>Kristallnacht</em>, was simple and ingenious enough. “Through the Jewish Community, we extracted a certain amount of money from the rich Jews who wanted to emigrate,” Heydrich said. “By paying this amount, and an additional sum in foreign currency, they made it possible for a number of poor Jews to leave. The problem was not to make the rich Jews leave but to get rid of the Jewish mob.” Still, there remained enough problems that could be solved only in the course of the operation, and there is no doubt that here Eichmann, for the first time in his life, discovered in himself some special qualities. There were two things he could do well, or better than many other people: he could organize and he could negotiate.</p></div><div><p>Immediately upon his arrival in Vienna, Eichmann opened negotiations with the representatives of the Jewish Community—whom he had to liberate from prisons and concentration camps for the purpose, since the “revolutionary zeal” in Austria, greatly exceeding the early “excesses” in Germany, had resulted in the imprisonment of practically all prominent Jews. Having undergone such imprisonment, the Jewish functionaries did not need Eichmann to convince them of the desirability of emigration. Rather, their concern was to inform him of the enormous difficulties that lay ahead. Apart from the financial problem—already “solved”—the chief difficulty was the great number of papers every emigrant had to assemble before he could leave the country. Each of the papers was valid only for a limited time, and this meant that the validity of the first had usually expired long before the last could be obtained. Once Eichmann understood how the whole thing worked—or, rather, did not work—he “took counsel with himself,” as he said in Jerusalem, and “gave birth to the idea that I thought would do justice to both parties.” He imagined “an assembly line, at whose beginning the first document is put, and then the other papers, and at its end the passport would have to come out as the end product.” This plan could be realized if all the offices concerned—the Ministry of Finance, the income-tax people, the police, the Jewish Community, and so forth—were housed under the same roof and forced to do their work on the spot, in the presence of the applicant, who would no longer have to run from office to office, and who, presumably, would also be spared some humiliating chicanery and certain expenses for bribes. When everything was ready, the assembly line did its work smoothly and quickly, and Eichmann thereupon “invited” the Jewish functionaries from Berlin to inspect it. They were appalled. “This is like an automatic factory, like a flour mill connected with some bakery,” one of them said. “At one side you put in a Jew who still has some property and, let us assume, a factory, or a shop, or some bank account, and he goes through the whole building from counter to counter, from office to office, and he comes out at the other end without any money, without any rights, with only a passport in which it says: ‘You must leave the country within a fortnight. Otherwise, you will go to a concentration camp!’ ” This, of course, was essentially the truth about the procedure, but it was not the whole truth. Actually, these Jews could not be left “without any money,” for the simple reason that no country at this date would have received them in that condition. They needed, and were given, their <em>Vorzeigegeld</em>—the amount they had to show in order to obtain their visas and to pass the immigration inspection of the recipient country. For this amount, they needed foreign currency, which the Reich had no intention of wasting on its Jews. These needs were not covered by Jewish accounts in foreign countries, which, in any event, were difficult to get at, because they had been illegal for many years. Eichmann therefore sent a number of Jewish functionaries abroad to solicit funds from the great Jewish organizations, and these funds were then sold by the Jewish Community to the prospective emigrants for a considerable profit. One dollar, for instance, was sold for ten or twenty marks when its market value was 4.20 marks. It was chiefly in this way that the Community acquired not only the money necessary for the poor Jews and people without accounts abroad but also the funds it needed for its own, hugely expanded activities. Eichmann had not arranged the deal without encountering considerable opposition from the German financial authorities, who, after all, could not remain unaware of the fact that these transactions amounted to a devaluation of the mark.</p><p>Bragging was the vice that was Eichmann’s undoing. It was sheer rodomontade when he told men working under him during the last days of the war, “I will jump into my grave laughing, because the fact that I have the death of five million Jews [or “enemies of the Reich,” as he always claimed to have said] on my conscience gives me extraordinary satisfaction.” He did not jump, and if he had anything on his conscience, it was not murder but, as it turned out, the fact that he once had slapped the face of Dr. Löwenherz, head of the Jewish Community in Vienna, who later became one of his favorite Jews. (He had apologized in front of his staff at the time, but this incident kept bothering him.) The claim that he was responsible for the death of five million Jews—the approximate total of the losses suffered from the combined efforts of all Nazi bureaus and authorities—was preposterous, as he knew very well, but he had kept repeating the damning sentence <em>ad nauseam</em> to everyone who would listen, even long after the war, when he was in Argentina. (Former Consular Official Horst Grell, who had known Eichmann in Hungary and had heard him make the claim there, testified in a court, in Berchtesgaden, in 1961, that in his opinion Eichmann was boasting. That must have been obvious to everyone who heard him utter his absurd claim.) Certainly Eichmann was boasting when he pretended that he had “invented” the ghetto system, or that he “gave birth to the idea” of shipping all European Jews to Madagascar. The Theresienstadt ghetto, in Czechoslovakia, of which Eichmann claimed the “paternity,” was established years after the ghetto system had been introduced into the occupied territories of Eastern Europe, and the setting up of a special ghetto for certain privileged categories—which is what Theresienstadt was—was the “idea” of Heydrich; so, indeed, was the whole Nazi ghetto system. The Madagascar plan seems to have been “born” in the bureaus of the German Foreign Office, and Eichmann’s own contribution to it turned out to owe a good deal to Dr. Löwenherz, whom he had called upon to put down “some basic thoughts” on how some four million Jews might be transported from Europe after the war—presumably to Palestine, since the Madagascar project was top-secret. (Upon being confronted at the trial with the Löwenherz report, Eichmann did not deny that he had enlisted Dr. Löwenherz’s help; it was one of the few moments when he appeared genuinely embarrassed.) What eventually led to his capture in Argentina was his compulsion to talk big, even there—he was, he said at the time, “fed up with being an anonymous wanderer between two worlds”—and the compulsion must have grown considerably stronger as time passed, not only because he had nothing to do that he could consider worth doing but also because the postwar era had bestowed so much unexpected “fame” upon him.</p><p>But bragging is a common vice. A more specific, and also a more decisive, flaw in Eichmann’s character was his almost total inability ever to look at anything from the other fellow’s point of view. Nowhere was this flaw more conspicuous than in his account of his good year in Vienna. He and his men and the Jews were all “pulling together,” and whenever there were any difficulties, the Jewish functionaries would come running to him “to unburden their hearts,” to tell him “all their grief and sorrow,” and to ask his help. The Jews “desired” to emigrate, and he, Eichmann, was there to help them, because it happened that at that time the Nazi authorities had expressed a desire to see their Reich <em>judenrein</em>. The two desires coincided, and he, Eichmann, could “do justice to both parties.” At the trial, he never gave an inch when it came to this part of the story, though he agreed that today, when “times have changed so much,” the Jews might not be too happy to recall this “pulling together,” and he said he did not want “to hurt their feelings.”</p><p>The German text of the taped police examination, which was conducted by Captain Less between May 29, 1960, and January 17, 1961, and each page of which was corrected and approved by Eichmann, demonstrates that the horrible can sometimes be not only ludicrous but downright funny. Some of the comedy cannot be conveyed in English, because it lies in Eichmann’s heroic fight with the German language, which invariably defeats him. It is funny when he speaks, <em>passim</em>, of “winged words” (“<em>geflügelte Worte</em>,” a German colloquialism for famous quotes from the classics), because he means “stock phrases” (“<em>Redensarten</em>”) or “slogans” (“<em>Schlagworte</em>”). It was both funny and confusing when, during the cross-examination conducted by Judge Landau on the Sassen documents, he used the phrase “<em>kontra geben</em>” (“to give tit for tat”), which is a term used in a card game called skat, to indicate that he had resisted Sassen’s efforts to liven up his stories; Judge Landau, obviously ignorant of the mysteries of card games, did not understand, and Eichmann could not think of any other way to put it. He himself seemed dimly aware of a defect that must have plagued him even in school—it amounted to a mild case of aphasia—for he apologized by saying, “Officialese [<em>Amtssprache</em>] is my only language.” The real point here is that officialese became his language because he was genuinely incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a cliché. (Was it these clichés that the psychiatrists thought so “normal” and “desirable”? Are these the “positive ideas” a clergyman hopes for in those to whose souls he ministers? Eichmann’s best opportunity to show this positive side of his character in Jerusalem came when the young police officer, in charge of his mental and psychological well-being, handed him “Lolita” for relaxation. After two days Eichmann returned it, visibly indignant; “That is quite an unwholesome book [<em>Das ist aber ein sehr unerfreuliches Buch</em>],” he told his guard.) The judges were right when they finally told the accused that all he had said was “empty talk”—except that they thought the emptiness feigned, and believed that the accused wished to cover up other thoughts, which were not empty but hideous. This supposition seems refuted by the striking consistency with which Eichmann, despite his rather bad memory, constantly repeated, word for word, the same stock phrases and self-invented clichés (when he did succeed in constructing a sentence of his own, he thereupon repeated it until it became a cliché) in referring to every event or incident that was of some importance to him. Whether he wrote his memoirs in Argentina or in Jerusalem, whether he talked to the police examiner or to the court, what he said was always the same, expressed in the same words. The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to <em>think</em>; that is, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication with him was possible, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words of others, or even the presence of others, and hence against reality as such. Thus, confronted for eight months with the reality of being examined by a Jewish policeman, Eichmann did not have the slightest hesitation in explaining to him at considerable length, and repeatedly, how he had been unable to attain a higher grade in the S.S., and why this was not his fault. He had done everything; he had even asked to be sent to active military duty. (“Now, off to the front, I said to myself, then the <em>Standartenführer</em> [colonelcy] will come quicker.”) In court, on the contrary, he pretended that he had asked to be transferred because he wanted to escape his murderous duties. He did not insist much on this, though, and, strangely, he was not confronted with his statements to the police examiner, to whom he had said that he had hoped to be nominated for the <em>Einsatzgruppen</em>, the S.S. mobile killing units in the East, because by the time they were officially organized, in March, 1941, his office was “dead;” that is, there was no longer any emigration, and deportations had not yet been started. There was, finally, his greatest ambition—to be promoted to the job of police chief in some German town. Again, nothing doing. What makes these pages of the police examinations so funny is that Eichmann related all this in the tone of someone who was sure to find, as he put it, “normal, human” sympathy for a hard-luck story. “Whatever I prepared and planned, everything went wrong,” he said. “My personal affairs as well as my years-long efforts to obtain land and soil for the Jews came to naught. I don’t know—everything in my life was as if under an evil spell; whatever I planned and whatever I wanted and desired to do, fate prevented it somehow. I was frustrated in everything, no matter what.” When Captain Less asked his opinion on some damning and possibly lying evidence furnished by a former colonel of the S.S., he exclaimed, suddenly stuttering with rage, “I am very much surprised that this man could ever have been S.S. <em>Standartenführer!</em> That surprises me very much indeed. It is altogether, altogether unthinkable. I don’t know what to say.” He never said these things in a spirit of defiance, as though he wanted, even now, to defend the standards by which he had lived in the past. The very word “S.S.” or “career” or “Himmler” (whom he always spoke of by his long official title, <em>Reichsführer</em> S.S. and Chief of the German Police, although he by no means admired him) triggered in him a mechanism that had become completely unalterable. The presence of Captain Less, a Jew from Germany, who was unlikely to think that members of the S.S. advanced in their careers through the exercise of high moral qualities, did not for a moment throw this mechanism out of gear.</p><p>Now and then, the comedy breaks into the horror itself, and the result is stories, presumably true enough, whose macabre humor easily surpasses that of any Surrealist invention. Such was the story that Eichmann told during the police examination about the unlucky Commercial Councillor Bertold Storfer, one of the representatives of the Viennese Jewish Community. Eichmann had received a telegram from Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz, telling him that Storfer had arrived and had urgently requested to see Eichmann. “I said to myself, O.K., this man has always behaved well; that is worth my while. . . . I’ll go there myself and see what is the matter with him. And I go to Ebner [chief of the Gestapo in Vienna], and Ebner says—I remember it only vaguely—‘Yes,’ he said, ‘if only he had not been so clumsy! He went into hiding and wanted to escape,’ or something of the sort. And the police arrested him and sent him to the concentration camp, and, according to the orders of the <em>Reichsführer</em> [Himmler], no one could get out once he was in. Nothing could be done; neither Dr. Ebner nor I nor anybody else could do anything about it. I went to Auschwitz, looked up Höss, and said: ‘Storfer is here?’ ‘Yes, yes [he replied], he is in one of the labor gangs.’ With Storfer afterward, well, it was normal and human; we had a normal, human encounter. He told me all his grief and sorrow. I said, ‘Well, my dear old friend [<em>Ja, mein Lieber guter Storfer</em>], we certainly got it! What rotten luck!’ And I also said, ‘Look, I really cannot help you, because according to orders of the <em>Reichsführer</em> nobody can get you out. I can’t get you out. Dr. Ebner can’t get you out. I hear you made a mistake, that you went into hiding or wanted to bolt, which, after all, you did not need to do.’ [Eichmann meant that Storfer, as a Jewish functionary, had immunity from deportation.] I forget what his reply to this was. And then I asked him how he was. And he said, yes, he wondered if he couldn’t be let off work; it was heavy work. And then I said to Höss, ‘Work—Storfer won’t have to work!’ Höss said, ‘Everyone works here.’ So I said, ‘O.K. I’ll make out a chit to the effect that Storfer has to keep the gravel paths in order with a broom’—there were little gravel paths there—‘and that he has the right to sit down with his broom on one of the benches.’ I said, ‘Will that be all right, Mr. Storfer? Will that suit you?’ Whereupon he was very pleased, and we shook hands, and then he was given the broom and sat down on the bench. It was a great inner joy to me that I could at least see the man with whom I had worked for so many long years, and that we could speak with each other.” Six weeks after this normal, human encounter, Storfer was dead—not gassed, apparently, but shot.</p><p>Is this a textbook case of bad faith combined with outrageous stupidity? Or is it simply the case of the eternally unrepentant criminal (Dostoevski once mentions in his diaries that in Siberia, among scores of murderers, rapists, and burglars, he never met a single man who would admit that he had done wrong)—of the wrongdoer who cannot afford to face reality because his crime has become part and parcel of it? Yet Eichmann’s case is different from the case of the ordinary criminal, who can shield himself effectively against the reality of a non-criminal world only within the narrow limits of his gang. Eichmann needed only to recall the past in order to feel sure that he was not lying and that he was not deceiving himself, for he and the world he lived in had once been in perfect harmony. Eighty million Germans had been shielded against reality and factuality by exactly the same self-deception, lies, and stupidity that had now become ingrained in Eichmann’s nature. These lies changed from year to year, and they frequently contradicted each other; moreover, they were not necessarily the same for the various branches of the Party hierarchy or the people at large. But the practice of self-deception had become so widespread—almost a moral prerequisite for survival—that even now, eighteen years after the collapse of the Nazi regime, when most of the specific content of its lies has been forgotten, it is sometimes difficult not to believe that mendacity has become an integral part of the German national character. During the war, the lie that was most effective with the whole of the German people was the slogan calling the war “the battle of destiny for the German people” (“<em>der Schicksalskampf des deutschen Volkes</em>”). This slogan, which was coined either by Hitler or by Goebbels, made self-deception easier on three counts, for it suggested, first, that the war was no war; second, that it was started by destiny and not by Germany; and, third, that it was a matter of life and death for the Germans, who must annihilate their enemies or be annihilated.</p><p>Eichmann’s astounding willingness, both in Argentina and in Jerusalem, to admit his crimes was due less to his own criminal capacity for self-deception than to the aura of systematic mendacity that had constituted the general, and generally accepted, atmosphere of the Third Reich. “Of course” he had played a role in the extermination of the Jews; of course if he “had not transported them, they would not have been delivered to the butcher.” He went on to ask, “What is there to ‘admit’?” Now, he proceeded, he “would like to find peace with [his] former enemies”—a sentiment he shared not only with Himmler (who had expressed it during the last year of the war) and with the Labor Front leader Robert Ley (who, before he committed suicide in Nuremberg, had proposed the establishment of a “conciliation committee” consisting of the Nazis responsible for the massacres and the Jewish survivors) but also, unbelievably, with many ordinary Germans, who were heard to express themselves in exactly the same terms at the end of the war. This outrageous cliché was no longer issued to them from above; it was a self-fabricated stock phrase, as devoid of reality as those clichés by which the people had lived for twelve years.</p><p>Eichmann’s mind was filled to the brim with such sentences. His memory proved to he very unreliable about what actually happened. In a rare moment of exasperation, Judge Landau asked the accused, “What <em>can</em> you remember?” (if you don’t remember the discussions at the so-called Wannsee Conference, which dealt with the various methods of killing Jews); the answer, of course, was that Eichmann remembered the turning points in his own career rather well but that they did not necessarily coincide with the turning points in the story of Jewish extermination, or, as a matter of fact, with the turning points in history. (He always had trouble remembering the exact date of the outbreak of the war or of the invasion of Russia.) But the point of the matter is that he had not forgotten a single one of the sentences that at one time or another had served to give him what he repeatedly called a “sense of elation.” Hence, whenever, during the cross-examination, the judges tried to appeal to his conscience, they were met with “elation,” and they were outraged as well as disconcerted when they learned that the accused had at his disposal a different elating cliché for each period of his life and each of his activities. In his mind, there was no contradiction between “I will jump into my grave laughing,” appropriate for the end of the war, and “I am ready to hang myself in public as a warning example for all anti-Semites on this earth,” which now, under vastly different circumstances, fulfilled exactly the same function—that of giving him a lift.</p></div><div><p>These habits of Eichmann’s created considerable difficulty during the trial—less for Eichmann himself than for those who had come to prosecute him, to defend him, to judge him, or to report on him. For all this, it was essential that one take him seriously, and this was very hard to do, unless one sought the easiest way out of the dilemma between the unspeakable horror of the deeds and the undeniable ludicrousness of the man who perpetrated them, and declared him a clever, calculating liar—which he obviously was not. His own convictions in this matter were far from modest: “One of the few gifts fate bestowed upon me is a capacity for truth insofar as it depends upon myself.” This gift he had claimed even before the prosecutor wanted to ascribe to him crimes he had not committed. In the disorganized, rambling notes he made in Argentina, in preparation for the interview with Sassen, when he was still, as he pointed out at the time, “in full possession of my physical and psychological freedom,” he had issued a fantastic warning to “future historians [to] be objective enough not to stray from the path of truth recorded here”—fantastic because every line of these scribblings shows his utter ignorance of everything that was not directly, technically, bureaucratically connected with his job, and also shows an extraordinarily faulty memory.</p><p>Despite all the efforts of the prosecution, everybody could see that this man was not a “monster,” but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown. And since this suspicion would have been fatal to the whole enterprise, and was also rather hard to sustain, in view of the sufferings he and his like had caused so many millions of people, his worst clowneries were hardly noticed. What could you do with a man who first declared, with great emphasis, that the one thing he had learned in an ill-spent life was that one should never take an oath (“Today no man, no judge could ever persuade me to make a sworn statement. I refuse it; I refuse it for moral reasons. Since my experience tells me that if one is loyal to his oath, one day he has to take the consequences, I have made up my mind once and for all that no judge in the world or other authority will ever be capable of making me swear an oath, to give sworn testimony. I won’t do it voluntarily and no one will be able to force me”), and then, after being told explicitly that if he wished to testify in his own defense he might “do so under oath or without an oath,” declared without further ado that he would prefer to testify under oath? Or who, repeatedly and with a great show of feeling, assured the court, as he had assured the police examiner, that the worst thing he could do would be to try to escape his true responsibilities, to fight for his neck, to plead for mercy—and then, upon instruction of his counsel, submitted a handwritten document that contained a plea for mercy? As far as Eichmann was concerned, these were questions of changing moods, not of inconsistencies, and as long as he was capable of finding, either in his memory or on the spur of the moment, an elating stock phrase to go with them, he was quite content. ♦</p></div></div>||||I|||| Skip to main content
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 Illustration by Daniel Zender

 A Reporter at Large
 February 16, 1963 Issue

 Eichmann in Jerusalem—I

 Adolf Eichmann and the banality of evil.

 By Hannah Arendt

 February 8, 1963
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 This is the first of a series of articles. Read the second part.

 Every morning, the words “Beth Hamishpath” (“The House of Justice”), shouted by the court usher at the top of his voice, make us jump to our feet as they announce the arrival of the three judges, who, bare-headed and in black robes, walk into the courtroom from a side entrance to take their seats on the highest tier of the raised platform at the front of the long hall. They sit at a long table, which is eventually to be covered with innumerable books and more than fifteen hundred documents. Immediately below the judges are the translators, whose services are needed for direct exchanges between the defendant or his counsel and the court; otherwise, Adolf Eichmann, the German-speaking accused party, like all the other foreigners in the courtroom, follows the Hebrew proceedings through the simultaneous radio transmission, which is excellent in French, bearable in English, and sheer comedy—frequently incomprehensible—in German. (In view of the scrupulous fairness of all the technical arrangements for the trial, it is among the minor mysteries of the new State of Israel that, with its high percentage of German-born people, it was unable to find an adequate translator into the only language the accused and his counsel could understand. The old prejudice against German Jews, once very pronounced in Israel, is no longer strong enough to account for it.) One tier below the translators are the glass booth of the accused and the witness box, facing each other. Finally, on the bottom tier, with their backs to the spectators, are the prosecutor, Attorney General Gideon Hausner, with his staff of four assistant attorneys, and Dr. Robert Servatius, counsel for the defense—a lawyer from Cologne, chosen by Eichmann and paid by the Israeli government (just as at the Nuremberg Trials all attorneys for the accused were paid by the tribunal of the victorious powers), who during the first weeks is accompanied by an assistant. Whoever planned this auditorium in the newly built House of the People, Beth Ha’am—now guarded from roof to cellar by heavily armed police, and surrounded by high fences, as well as by a wooden row of barracks in the front courtyard, in which all comers are expertly frisked—obviously had a theatre in mind, complete with orchestra and balcony, with proscenium and stage, and with side doors for the actors’ entrances.

 At no time, however, is there anything theatrical in the conduct of the judges—Moshe Landau, the presiding judge, Judge Benjamin Halevi, and Judge Yitzhak Raveh. Their walk is unstudied; their sober and intense attention, visibly stiffening under the impact of grief as they listen to the tales of suffering, is natural; their impatience with the prosecutor’s attempt to drag out the hearings is spontaneous and refreshing; their attitude toward the defense is perhaps a shade over-polite, as though they had it always in mind that, to quote the judgment they handed down, “Dr. Servatius stood almost alone in this strenuous legal battle, in an unfamiliar environment;” their manner toward the accused is always beyond reproach. They are so evidently three good and honest men that one is not surprised to see that none of them yields to the greatest of all the temptations to play-act in this setting—that of pretending that they, all three born and educated in Germany, must wait for the Hebrew translation of anything said in German. Judge Landau hardly ever waits to give his answer until the translator has done his work, and he frequently interrupts the translation to correct and improve it, appearing grateful for this bit of distraction from the grim business at hand. In time, during the cross-examination of the accused, he even leads his colleagues to use their German mother tongue in the dialogue with Eichmann—a proof, if proof were still needed, of his remarkable independence of current public opinion in Israel.

 There is no doubt from the very beginning that it is Judge Landau who sets the tone, and that he is doing his best—his very best—to prevent this trial from becoming a “show” trial under the direction of the prosecutor, whose love of showmanship is unmistakable. Among the reasons he cannot always succeed is the simple fact that the proceedings happen on a stage before an audience, with the usher’s marvellous shout at the beginning of each session producing the effect of a rising curtain. Clearly, this courtroom is well suited to the show trial that David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel, had in mind when he decided to have Eichmann kidnapped in Argentina and brought to the District Court of Jerusalem to answer the charge that he had played a principal role in “the Final Solution of the Jewish question,” as the Nazis called their plan to exterminate the Jews. And Ben-Gurion, who has rightly been given the title of “architect of the state,” is the invisible stage manager of the proceedings. He does not attend a single one of the sessions; in the courtroom, he speaks with the voice of his Attorney General, who, representing the government, does his best—his very best—to obey his master. And if his best often turns out not to be good enough, the reason is that the trial is presided over by someone who serves Justice as faithfully as Mr. Hausner serves the State of Israel. Justice demands that the accused be prosecuted, defended, and judged, and that all the other questions, though they may seem to be of greater import—of “How could it happen?” and “Why did it happen?,” of “Why the Jews?” and “Why the Germans?,” of “What was the role of other nations?” and “What was the extent to which the Allies shared the responsibility?,” of “How could the Jews, through their own leaders, coöperate in their own destruction?” and “Why did they go to their death like lambs to the slaughter?”—be left in abeyance. Justice insists on the importance of Adolf Eichmann, the man in the glass booth built for his protection: medium-sized, slender, middle-aged, with receding hair, ill-fitting teeth, and nearsighted eyes, who throughout the trial keeps craning his scraggy neck toward the bench (not once does he turn to face the audience), and who desperately tries to maintain his self-control—and mostly succeeds, despite a nervous tic, to which his mouth must have become subject long before this trial started. On trial are his deeds, not the sufferings of the Jews, not the German people or mankind, not even anti-Semitism and racism.

 And Justice turns out to be a much sterner master than the Prime Minister. The latter’s rule, as Mr. Hausner is not slow in demonstrating, is permissive; it permits the prosecutor to give press conferences and interviews for television during the trial (the American program, sponsored by the Glickman Corporation, is constantly interrupted—business as usual—by real-estate advertising), and even “spontaneous” outbursts to reporters in the court building (he is sick of cross-examining Eichmann, who answers all questions with lies); it permits frequent side glances into the audience, and the theatrics characteristic of a conspicuous vanity, which finally achieves its triumph in the White House with a compliment on “a job well done” by the President of the United States. Justice does not permit anything of the sort; it demands seclusion, it requires sorrow rather than anger, and it prescribes the most careful abstention from all the nice pleasures of putting oneself in the limelight.

 Yet no matter how consistently the judges shun the limelight, there they are, seated at the top of the platform, facing the audience as from a stage. The audience is supposed to represent the whole world, and in the first few weeks it indeed consisted chiefly of newspapermen and magazine writers who had flocked to Jerusalem from the four corners of the earth. They were to watch a spectacle as sensational as the Nuremberg Trials; only this time, Mr. Hausner noted, “the tragedy of Jewry as a whole was the central concern.” In fact, said Hausner, “if we charge him [Eichmann] also with crimes against non-Jews . . . this is” not because he committed them but, surprisingly, “because we make no ethnic distinctions.” That was certainly a remarkable sentence for a prosecutor to utter in his opening speech; it proved to be the key sentence in the case for the prosecution. For this case was built on what the Jews had suffered, not on what Eichmann had done. And, according to Mr. Hausner, that amounted to the same thing, because “there was only one man who had been concerned almost entirely with the Jews, whose business had been their destruction, whose role in the establishment of the iniquitous regime had been limited to them. That was Adolf Eichmann.” Was it not logical to bring before the court all the facts of Jewish suffering (which, of course, were never in dispute) and then look for evidence that, in one way or another, would connect Eichmann with what had happened? The Nuremberg Trials, where the defendants had been “indicted for crimes against members of many and various nations,” had left the Jewish tragedy out of account, Hausner said, for the simple reason that Eichmann had not been there. Did Hausner really believe the Nuremberg Trials would have paid greater attention to the fate of the Jews if Eichmann had been in the dock? Hardly. Like almost everybody else in Israel, he believed that only a Jewish court could render justice to Jews, and that it was the business of Jews to sit in judgment on their enemies.

 If the audience was to be the world and the play was to be the huge panorama of Jewish suffering, the reality was falling short of expectations and failing to accomplish its purpose. The journalists remained faithful for no more than two weeks, and then the audience changed drastically. It was now supposed to consist of Israelis, and, specifically, of those who were too young to know the story or, as in the case of Oriental Jews, had never been told it. The trial was supposed to show them what it meant to live among non-Jews, to convince them that only in Israel could a Jew be safe and live an honorable life. (For correspondents, the lesson was spelled out in a little booklet on Israel’s legal system, which was handed to the press. Its author, Doris Lankin, cites a decision of Israel’s Supreme Court whereby two fathers who had “abducted their children and brought them to Israel” were directed to send them back to their mothers, living abroad, who had a legal right to their custody. This, says the author—no less proud of such strict legality than Hausner of his willingness to prosecute a murder charge even when the victims of the murder were non-Jews—“despite the fact that to send the children back to maternal custody and care would be committing them to waging an unequal struggle against the hostile elements in the Diaspora.”) But in actuality there were hardly any young people in the audience, and it did not consist of Israelis, as distinguished from Jews. It was filled with “survivors”—middle-aged and elderly people, immigrants from Europe, like myself—who knew by heart all that there was to know, and who were in no mood to learn any lessons and certainly did not need this trial to draw their own conclusions. As witness followed witness and horror was piled upon horror, they sat there and listened in public to stories they would hardly have been able to endure in private, when they would have had to face the storyteller. And the more “the calamity [in Hausner’s words] of the Jewish people in this generation” unfolded, and the more grandiose Hausner’s rhetoric became, the paler and more ghostlike became the figure in the glass booth, and no finger-wagging (“And there sits the monster responsible for all this”) could summon him back to life.

 It was precisely the play aspect of the trial that collapsed under the weight of the hair-raising atrocities. A trial resembles a play in that both focus on the doer, not on the victim. A show trial, to be effective, needs even more urgently than an ordinary trial a limited and well-defined outline of what the doer did, and how. In the center of a trial can only be the one who did—in this respect, he is like the hero in the play—and if he suffers, he must suffer for what he has done, not for what he has caused others to suffer. No one knew this better than the presiding judge, before whose eyes the trial began to deteriorate into a bloody spectacle, or, as the judgment called it, “a rudderless ship tossed about by the waves.” But if his efforts to prevent this were often defeated, the defeat was, strangely, in part the fault of the defense, which hardly ever rose to challenge any testimony, no matter how irrelevant or immaterial it might be. Dr. Servatius (as everybody invariably addressed him) was a bit bolder when it came to the submission of documents, and the most impressive of his rare interventions occurred when the prosecution introduced as evidence the diaries of Hans Frank, wartime Governor General of Poland and one of the major war criminals hanged at Nuremberg. “I have only one question,” Dr. Servatius said. “Is the name Adolf Eichmann, the name of the accused, mentioned in those twenty-nine volumes [in fact, it was thirty-eight]? . . . The name Adolf Eichmann is not mentioned in all those twenty-nine volumes. . . . Thank you, no more questions.”

 Thus, the trial never became a play, but the show that Ben-Gurion had had in mind did take place—or, rather, the “lessons” he thought should be offered to Israelis and Arabs, to Jews and Gentiles; that is, to the whole world. These lessons to be drawn from an identical show were meant to be different for the different recipients. Ben-Gurion had outlined them before the trial started, in a number of articles that were designed to explain why Israel had kidnapped the accused. There was the lesson to the non-Jewish world: “I want to establish before the nations of the world how millions of people, because they happened to be Jews, and one million babies, because they happened to be Jewish babies, were murdered by the Nazis.” Or, in the words of Davar, the organ of Ben-Gurion’s Mapai party: “Let world opinion know this, that not Nazi Germany alone was responsible for the destruction of six million Jews of Europe.” Hence, again in Ben-Gurion’s own words, “We want the nations of the world to know . . . and they should be ashamed.” The Jews in the Diaspora were to remember how “four-thousand-year-old Judaism, with its spiritual creations, its ethical strivings, its Messianic aspirations, had always faced a hostile world,” how the Jews had degenerated until they went to their death like sheep, and how only the establishment of a Jewish state had enabled Jews to hit back, as Israelis had done in the War of Independence, in the Suez adventure, and in the almost daily incidents on Israel’s unhappy borders. And if the Jews outside Israel had to be shown the difference between Israeli heroism and Jewish submissive meekness, there was a complementary lesson for the Israelis; for “the generation of Israelis who have grown up since the holocaust” were in danger of losing their ties with the Jewish people and, by implication, with their own history. “It is necessary that our youth remember what happened to the Jewish people. We want them to know the most tragic facts in our history.” Finally, one of the motives in bringing Eichmann to trial was “to ferret out other Nazis—for example, the connection between the Nazis and some Arab rulers.”

 If these had been the only justifications for bringing Adolf Eichmann to the District Court of Jerusalem, the trial would have been a failure on most counts. In some respects, the lessons were superfluous, and in others they were positively misleading. Thanks to Hitler, anti-Semitism has been discredited, perhaps not forever but certainly for the time being, and this is not because the Jews have become more popular all of a sudden but because not only Ben-Gurion but most people have “realized that in our day the gas chamber and the soap factory are what anti-Semitism may lead to.” Equally superfluous was the lesson to the Jews in the Diaspora, who hardly needed a great catastrophe in which a third of their people perished to be convinced of the world’s hostility. Not only has their conviction of the eternal and ubiquitous nature of anti-Semitism been the most potent ideological factor in the Zionist involvement since the Dreyfus Affair; it must also have been the cause of the otherwise inexplicable readiness of the German-Jewish community to negotiate with the Nazi authorities during the early stages of the regime. This conviction produced a fatal inability to distinguish between friend and foe; the German Jews underestimated their enemies because they somehow thought that all Gentiles were alike.

 The contrast between Israeli heroism and the submissive meekness with which Jews went to their death—arriving on time at the transportation points, walking under their own power to the places of execution, digging their own graves, undressing and making neat piles of their clothing, and lying down side by side to be shot—seemed a telling point, and the prosecutor, asking witness after witness, “Why did you not protest?,” “Why did you board the train?,” “Fifteen thousand people were standing there and hundreds of guards facing you—why didn’t you revolt and charge and attack these guards?,” harped on it for all it was worth. But the sad truth of the matter is that the point was ill taken, for no non-Jewish group or non-Jewish people had behaved differently. Sixteen years ago, while still under the direct impact of the events, a former French inmate of Buchenwald, David Rousset, described, in “Les Jours de Notre Mort,” the logic that obtained in all concentration camps: “The triumph of the S.S. demands that the tortured victim allow himself to be led to the noose without protesting, that he renounce and abandon himself to the point of ceasing to affirm his identity. And it is not for nothing. It is not gratuitously, out of sheer sadism, that the S.S. men desire his defeat. They know that the system which succeeds in destroying its victim before he mounts the scaffold . . . is incomparably the best for keeping a whole people in slavery. In submission. Nothing is more terrible than these processions of human beings going like dummies to their death.” The court received no answer to this cruel and silly question, but one could easily have found an answer had he permitted his imagination to dwell for a few minutes on the fate of those Dutch Jews who in 1941, in the old Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, dared to attack a German security police detachment. Four hundred and thirty Jews were arrested in reprisal, and they were literally tortured to death, being sent first to Buchenwald and then to the Austrian camp of Mauthausen. Month after month, they died a thousand deaths, and every single one of them would have envied his brethren in Auschwitz had he known about them. There exist many things considerably worse than death, and the S.S. saw to it that none of them was ever very far from the mind and imagination of their victims. In this respect, perhaps even more significantly than in others, the deliberate attempt in Jerusalem to tell only the Jewish side of the story distorted the truth, even the Jewish truth. The glory of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and the heroism of the few others who fought back lay precisely in their having refused the comparatively easy death that the Nazis offered them—before the firing squad or in the gas chamber. And the witnesses in Jerusalem who testified to resistance and rebellion, to “the small place the uprising had in this history of the holocaust,” confirmed the known fact that only the very young had been capable of taking the “decision that we cannot go and be slaughtered like sheep.”

 In one respect, Ben-Gurion’s expectations for the trial were not altogether disappointed, for it did indeed become an important instrument for ferreting out other Nazis and criminals—but not in the Arab countries, which had openly offered refuge to hundreds of them. The wartime relationship between the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Nazis was no secret; he had hoped they would help him in the implementation of some “Final Solution” of the Jewish question in the Near East. Hence, newspapers in Damascus and Beirut, in Cairo and Amman, did not hide their sympathy for Eichmann or their regret that he had not “finished the job;” a broadcast from Cairo on the day the trial opened went as far as to inject a slightly anti-German note into its comments, complaining that there was not “a single incident in which one German plane flew over one Jewish settlement [in Palestine] and dropped one bomb on it throughout the last world war.” That Arab nationalists have been in sympathy with Nazism is notorious, and neither Ben-Gurion nor this trial was needed “to ferret them out;” they were never in hiding. The trial revealed only that all rumors about Eichmann’s connection with Haj Amin el Husseini, the wartime Mufti of Jerusalem, were unfounded. (Along with other departmental heads, he had once been introduced to the Mufti during a reception at an S.S. office in Berlin.) Documents produced by the prosecution showed that the Mufti had been in close contact with the German Foreign Office and with Himmler, but this was nothing new. But if Ben-Gurion’s remark about “the connection between the Nazis and some Arab rulers” was pointless, his failure to mention present-day West Germany in this context was surprising. Of course, it was reassuring to hear that Israel “does not hold Adenauer responsible for Hitler,” and that “for us a decent German, although he belongs to the same nation that twenty years ago helped to murder millions of Jews, is a decent human being.” (There was no mention of decent Arabs.) While the German Federal Republic has not yet recognized the State of Israel—presumably out of fear that the Arab countries might thereupon recognize Ulbricht’s Germany—it has paid seven hundred and thirty-seven million dollars in reparation to Israel during the last ten years; the reparation payments will soon come to an end, and Israel is now trying to arrange with West Germany for a long-term loan. Hence, the relationship between the two countries, and particularly the personal relationship between Ben-Gurion and Adenauer, has been quite good, and if, as an aftermath of the trial, some deputies in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, succeeded in imposing certain restraints on the cultural-exchange program with West Germany, this certainly was not hoped for, or even foreseen, by Ben-Gurion. It is more noteworthy that he did not foresee, or did not care to mention, the fact that Eichmann’s capture would trigger the first serious effort made by West Germans to bring to trial at least those war criminals who were directly implicated in murder. The Central Agency for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes, which was belatedly set up by the eleven West German states in 1958 (barely two years before—in May, 1960—the West German statute of limitations wiped out all offenses except first-degree murder, for which the time limit is twenty years), and of which Prosecutor Erwin Schüle is the head, had run into all kinds of difficulties, caused partly by the unwillingness of German witnesses to coöperate and partly by the unwillingness of the local courts to prosecute on the basis of material sent to them from the Central Agency. It was not that the trial in Jerusalem produced any important new evidence of the kind needed for the discovery of Eichmann’s associates but that the news of Eichmann’s sensational capture and the prospect of his trial had an impact strong enough to persuade the local courts to use Mr. Schüle’s findings and to overcome the native reluctance to do anything about the “murderers in our midst” by the time-honored expedient of posting rewards for the capture of well-known criminals.

 The results were amazing. Seven months after Eichmann’s arrival in Jerusalem—and four months before the opening of the trial—Richard Baer, successor to Rudolf Höss as commandant of Auschwitz, was finally arrested. Then, in rapid succession, most of the members of the so-called Eichmann Commando—Franz Novak, Eichmann’s transportation officer, who had been living as a printer in Austria; Dr. Otto Hunsche, his legal expert and his assistant in Hungary, who had settled as a lawyer in West Germany; Hermann Krumey, Eichmann’s second in command in Hungary, who had become a druggist; Gustav Richter, former “Jewish adviser” in Rumania; and Dr. Günther Zöpf, who had filled the same post in Amsterdam—were arrested, too. (Although evidence against these five had been published in Germany years before, in books and magazine articles, not one of them had found it necessary to live under an assumed name.) For the first time since the close of the war, German newspapers were full of stories about trials of Nazi criminals—all of them mass murderers—and the reluctance of the local courts to prosecute these crimes still showed itself in the fantastically lenient sentences meted out to those convicted. (Thus, Dr. Hunsche, who was personally responsible for a last-minute deportation of some twelve hundred Hungarian Jews, of whom at least six hundred were killed, received a sentence of five years of hard labor; Dr. Otto Bradfisch, of the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing units of the S.S. in the East, was sentenced to ten years of hard labor for the killing of fifteen thousand Jews; and Joseph Lechthaler, who had “liquidated” the Jewish inhabitants of Slutsk and Smolevichi, in Russia, was sentenced to three years and six months.) Among the new arrests were people of great prominence under the Nazis, most of whom had already been denazified by the German courts. One was S.S. Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, former chief of Himmler’s personal staff, who, according to a document submitted in 1946 at Nuremberg, had greeted “with particular joy” the news that “for two weeks now a train has been carrying, every day, five thousand members of the Chosen People” from Warsaw to Treblinka, one of the Eastern killing centers. He still awaits trial. The trial of Wilhelm Koppe, who had at first managed the gassing of Jews in Chelmno and then become the successor of Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger in Poland, in a high post in the S.S. whose duties included making Poland judenrein (Jew-clean)—in postwar West Germany, he was the director of a chocolate factory—has not yet taken place. Occasional harsh sentences were even less reassuring, for they were meted out to offenders like Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, a former S.S. Obergruppenführer. He was tried in 1961 for his participation in the Röhm rebellion in 1934, was sentenced to four and a half years, and then was indicted again in 1962 for the killing of six German Communists in 1933, tried before a jury in Nuremberg, and sentenced to life. Neither indictment mentioned that Bach-Zelewski had been anti-partisan chief on the Russian front or that he had participated in the Jewish massacres at Minsk and Mogilev, in White Russia. Should a German court, on the pretext that war crimes are no crimes, make “ethnic distinctions”? And is it possible that what was an unusually harsh sentence (for a German postwar court) was arrived at because Bach-Zelewski was among the very few Nazi leaders who had tried to protect Jews from the Einsatzgruppen, suffered a nervous breakdown after the mass killings, and testified for the prosecution in Nuremberg? (He was also the only such leader who in 1952 had denounced himself publicly for mass murder, but he was never prosecuted for it.) There is little hope that things will change now, even though the Adenauer administration has been forced to weed out of the judiciary a hundred and forty-odd judges and prosecutors, along with many police officers, with a more than ordinarily compromising past, and to dismiss the chief prosecutor of the Federal Supreme Court, Wolfgang Immerwahr Fränkel, because, his middle name notwithstanding, he had been less than candid when he was asked about his Nazi past. It has been estimated that of the eleven thousand five hundred judges in the Bundesrepublik, five thousand were active in the courts under the Hitler regime. In November, 1962, shortly after the purging of the judiciary and six months after Eichmann’s name had disappeared from the news, the long awaited trial of Martin Fellenz took place at Flensburg in an almost empty courtroom. The former Higher S.S. and Police Leader, who had been a prominent member of the Free Democratic Party in Adenauer’s Germany, was arrested in June, 1960, a few weeks after Eichmann’s capture. He was accused of participation in, and partial responsibility for, the murder of forty thousand Jews in Poland. After more than six weeks of detailed testimony, the prosecutor demanded the maximum penalty—a life sentence, to be served at hard labor. And the court sentenced him to four years, two and a half of which he had already served while waiting in jail.

 Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the Eichmann trial had its deepest and most far-reaching consequences in Germany. The attitude of the German people toward their own past, which all experts on the German question had puzzled over for fifteen years, could hardly have been more clearly demonstrated: they themselves did not care much about it one way or the other, and did not particularly mind the presence of murderers at large in the country, since none of these particular murderers were likely to commit murder now, of their own free will; however, if world opinion—or, rather, what the Germans call das Ausland, collecting all countries outside Germany into a singular noun—became obstinate and demanded that these people be punished, they were perfectly willing to oblige, at least up to a point. When Eichmann was captured, Chancellor Adenauer had foreseen embarrassment and had voiced a fear that the trial would “stir up again all the horrors” and produce a new wave of anti-German feeling throughout the world—as it did. During the ten months that Israel needed to prepare the trial, Germany was busy bracing herself against its predictable results by showing an unprecedented zeal for searching out and prosecuting Nazi criminals within the country. At no time, however, did either the German authorities or any significant segment of public opinion demand Eichmann’s extradition, which seemed the obvious move, since every sovereign state is jealous of its right to sit in judgment on its own offenders. (The official objection of the Adenauer government that such a move was not possible because there existed no extradition treaty between Israel and West Germany is not valid; it meant only that Israel could not have been forced to extradite. Fritz Bauer, Attorney General of Hessen, applied to the federal government in Bonn to start extradition proceedings. But Mr. Bauer’s feelings in this matter were the feelings of a German Jew, and they were not shared by German public opinion. His application was not only refused by Bonn, it was hardly noticed and remained totally unsupported. Another argument against extradition, offered by the observers the West German government sent to Jerusalem, was that Germany had abolished capital punishment and hence was unable to mete out the sentence Eichmann deserved. In view of the leniency shown by German courts to Nazi murderers, it was difficult not to suspect that this objection was made in bad faith. Surely, the greatest political hazard of an Eichmann trial in Germany would have been that a German court might not have given him the maximum penalty under German law.)

 Another aspect of the matter was at once more delicate and more relevant to the political situation in Germany. It was one thing to ferret out mass murderers and other criminals from their hiding places, and it was another thing to find them prominent and active in the public realm—to encounter innumerable men in the federal and state administrations whose careers had bloomed under the Hitler regime. To be sure, if the Adenauer administration had been too sensitive in employing officials with a compromising Nazi past, there might have been no administration at all. For the truth is, of course, the exact opposite of what Dr. Adenauer asserted it to be when he said that only “a relatively small percentage” of Germans had been Nazis, and that “a great majority were happy to help their Jewish fellow-citizens when they could.” (At least one West German newspaper, the Frankfurter Rundschau, asked itself the obvious question, long overdue—why so many people who must have known, for instance, the record of Wolfgang Immerwahr Frankel had kept silent—and then came up with the even more obvious answer: “Because they themselves felt incriminated.”) The logic of the Eichmann trial, as Ben-Gurion conceived of it—a trial stressing general issues, to the detriment of legal niceties—would have demanded exposure of the complicity of all German bureaus and authorities in the so-called Final Solution of the Jewish question; of all civil servants in the state ministries; of the regular armed forces, with their General Staff; of the judiciary; and of the business world. But although the prosecution went as far afield as to put witness after witness on the stand who testified to things that, while gruesome and true enough, had only the slightest connection, or none, with the deeds of the accused, it carefully avoided touching upon this highly explosive matter—upon the almost ubiquitous complicity, stretching far beyond the ranks of the Party membership. (There were widespread rumors prior to the trial that Eichmann had named “several hundred prominent personalities of the Federal Republic as his accomplices,” but these rumors were not true In his opening speech, Mr. Hausner still mentioned Eichmann’s “accomplices in the crime [who] were neither gangsters nor men of the underworld,” and promised that we should “encounter them—the doctors and lawyers, scholars, bankers, and economists—in those councils that resolved to exterminate the Jews.” This promise was not kept—nor could it have been kept in the form in which it was made, for in the Nazi regime there were no “councils that resolved” anything, and the “robed dignitaries with academic degrees” made no decision to exterminate the Jews; they came together only to plan the necessary steps in carrying out an order given by Hitler.) Still, one case of complicity was brought to the attention of the court—that of Dr. Hans Globke, who, more than twenty-five years ago, was co-author of an infamous commentary on the Nuremberg Laws and, somewhat later, author of the brilliant idea of compelling all German Jews to take “Israel” or “Sarah” as a middle name, and who is today one of Adenauer’s closest advisers. And Globke’s name—and only his name—was inserted into the proceedings by the defense, and probably only in the hope of “persuading” the Adenauer government to start proceedings to extradite Eichmann. Still, former Ministry Official and present Undersecretary of State Globke doubtless had more right than the former Mufti of Jerusalem to figure in the history of what the Jews had actually suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

 And it was history that, as far as the prosecution was concerned, stood at the center of the trial. “It is not an individual that is in the dock at this historic trial, and not the Nazi regime alone,” Ben-Gurion said, “but anti-Semitism throughout history.” The tone set by Ben-Gurion was faithfully followed by Hausner. He began his opening address (which lasted through three sessions) with Pharaoh In Egypt and Haman’s decree “to destroy, to slay, and to cause them [the Jews] to perish.” He then proceeded to quote from Ezekiel’s words “And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee: ‘In thy blood, live!,’ ” explaining that they must be understood as “the imperative that has confronted this nation ever since its first appearance on the stage of history.” It was bad history and cheap rhetoric; worse, it was clearly at cross-purposes with putting Eichmann on trial at all, since it suggested that perhaps he was only an innocent executor of some mysteriously foreordained destiny, or even, for that matter, of anti-Semitism, which had been necessary to blaze the trail of “the bloodstained road travelled by this people” to fulfill its destiny. A few sessions later, after Salo W. Baron, Professor of Jewish History at Columbia University, had testified to the more recent history of Eastern European Jewry, Dr. Servatius could no longer resist temptation and asked the obvious questions: “Why did all this bad luck fall upon the Jewish people?” and “Don’t you think that irrational motives are at the basis of the fate of this people? Beyond the understanding of a human being?” Is not there perhaps something like “the spirit of history, which brings history forward . . . without the influence of men?” Is not Mr. Hausner basically in agreement with “the school of historical law”—an allusion to Hegel—and has he not shown that what “the leaders do will not always lead to the aim and destination they wanted?” And Dr. Servatius added, “Here the intention was to destroy the Jewish people and the objective was not reached and a new flourishing state came into being.” The argument of the defense had now come perilously close to the newest anti-Semitic theory about the Elders of Zion, which had been set forth in all seriousness a few weeks earlier in the old Egyptian National Assembly by Hussain Zulficar Sabri, Nasser’s Deputy Foreign Minister: Hitler was innocent of the slaughter of the Jews; he was a victim of the Zionists, who had compelled “Hitler to perpetrate crimes and to create the legend that would eventually enable them to achieve their aim—the creation of the State of Israel.” Except that Dr. Servatius, following the philosophy of history expounded by the prosecutor, had put History in the place of the Elders of Zion.

 Despite the intentions of Ben-Gurion and the efforts of the prosecution, there remained an individual in the dock, a person of flesh and blood, and even if Ben-Gurion, as he claimed, did not “care what verdict is delivered against Eichmann,” it was undeniably the sole task of the Jerusalem court to deliver one.

 Otto Adolf, son of Karl Adolf Eichmann and Maria née Schefferling, caught in a suburb of Buenos Aires on the evening of May 11, 1960, flown to Israel nine days later, brought to trial in the District Court of Jerusalem on April 1, 1961, stood accused on fifteen counts; “together with others,” he had committed crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and war crimes during the whole period of the Nazi regime and especially during the period of the Second World War. The Israeli Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law of 1950, under which he was tried, provides that “a person who has committed one of the . . . [three] offenses . . . is liable to the death penalty.” To each count Eichmann pleaded, “In the sense of the indictment, not guilty.” In which sense, then, did he think he was guilty? During the long cross-examination of the accused—Eichmann asserted that it was “the longest ever known”—neither the defense nor the prosecution nor any of the three judges ever bothered to ask him this obvious question. Dr. Servatius answered the question in a press interview—“Eichmann feels guilty before God, not before the law”—but this answer was never confirmed by the accused himself. The defense would apparently have preferred him to plead not guilty on other grounds: that under the Nazi legal system he had not done anything wrong; that the deeds he was accused of were not crimes but “acts of state,” over which no other state has jurisdiction (par in parem imperium non habet); that it had been his duty to obey; and that, in Dr. Servatius’ words, he had committed acts “for which you are decorated if you win and go to the gallows if you lose.” In Germany (at a meeting of the Catholic Academy in Bavaria that was devoted to “the ticklish problem” of “the possibilities and limits of coping with historical and political guilt through criminal proceedings”), Dr. Servatius went a step further, and declared that “the only legitimate criminal problem of the Eichmann trial lies in pronouncing judgment against his Israeli captors, which so far has not been done”—a statement, incidentally, that is somewhat difficult to reconcile with certain of his most often repeated and most widely publicized utterances in Israel, in which he called the conduct of the trial “a great spiritual achievement” and compared it favorably with the Nuremberg Trials.

 Eichmann’s own attitude, it appeared, was different. First of all, the indictment for murder was wrong: “But I had nothing to do with the killing of the Jews. I never killed a Jew, or, for that matter, I never killed a non-Jew—I never killed any human being. I never gave an order to kill a Jew nor an order to kill a non-Jew; I just did not do it.” Or, as he was later to qualify this statement, “It so happened . . . that I had not once to do it”—for he said explicitly that he would have killed his own father if he had received an order to that effect. Thus, he repeated over and over a statement that he had first made in the so-called Sassen documents—an interview that he had given in 1955 in Argentina to the Dutch journalist Willem S. Sassen, a former S.S. man who was also a fugitive from justice, and that, after Eichmann’s capture, was published, in part, by Life in this country and by Der Stern in West Germany. He said that he could be accused only of “aiding and abetting” the almost successful annihilation of the Jews, and in Jerusalem he declared this annihilation to have been “one of the greatest crimes in the history of humanity.” The defense paid no attention to Eichmann’s own theory, but the prosecution wasted much time on an unsuccessful effort to prove that Eichmann had once, at least, killed with his own hands (he was supposed to have beaten to death a Jewish boy in Hungary). It spent more time, more successfully, on a note that Franz Rademacher, the Jewish expert in the German Foreign Office, had scribbled on a document dealing with Yugoslavia, made during a telephone conversation, which read, “Eichmann proposes shooting.” This turned out to be the only “order to kill,” if that is what it was, for which there existed a shred of evidence.

 The evidence that he had “proposed shooting” was more questionable than it appeared to be during the trial, when the judges accepted the prosecutor’s version as against Eichmann’s categorical denial that he had ever killed or given an order to kill—a denial that was very ineffective, since it involved an implication that he had forgotten, as Dr. Servatius put it, “a brief incident [the killing of a mere eight thousand people], which was not so striking.” The incident took place in the autumn of 1941. The German Army had occupied the Serbian part of Yugoslavia six months earlier, and had been plagued by partisan warfare ever since. At length, the military authorities had decided to solve two problems at a stroke by shooting a hundred Jews and Gypsies as hostages for every dead German soldier. To be sure, neither Jews nor Gypsies were partisans, but, in the words of the responsible civilian officer in the military government, a certain Staatsrat Harald Turner, “the Jews we had in the camps [anyhow]; after all, they too are Serb nationals, and besides, they have to disappear.” The camps had been set up by General Franz Böhme, military governor of the region, and housed Jewish males only; neither General Böhme nor Staatsrat Turner had sought Eichmann’s approval before starting to shoot Jews—or Gypsies, for that matter—by the thousand. The trouble began when Böhme, without consulting the appropriate police and S.S. authorities, decided to deport all his Jews, probably in order to show that no special troops, under a different command, were required to make Serbia judenrein. Eichmann was informed, since it was a matter of deportation, and this was precisely his job. He refused to coöperate, because it interfered with other plans of the S.S. outfit to which he belonged, the Head Office for Reich Security, or R.S.H.A. (the Reichssicherheitshauptamt), but it was not Eichmann, it was a man named Martin Luther, of the Foreign Office, who reminded General Böhme that “in other territories [meaning Russia] other military commanders have taken care of considerably greater numbers of Jews without even mentioning it.” In any event, if Eichmann actually did “propose shooting,” he was only telling the military that they should go on doing what they had been doing all along, implying that questions of hostages were entirely in their own competence. This was an Army affair, obviously, since only males were involved. (In Serbia, the implementation of the Final Solution started about six months later, when women and children were rounded up and disposed of in mobile gas vans.) During cross-examination, Eichmann, characteristically, chose the most complicated and least likely explanation: Rademacher had needed the support of the Head Office for Reich Security for his own stand on the matter, and had therefore forged the document. Rademacher himself explained the incident much more reasonably at his own trial, before a West German court in 1952: “The Army was responsible for order in Serbia and had to kill rebellious Jews by shooting.” (This sounded more plausible but was a lie, for we know—from Nazi sources—that the Jews were not “rebellious.”) If it was difficult to interpret a remark made over the phone as an order, it was more difficult to believe that Eichmann had been in a position to give orders to Army generals.

 Would Eichmann, then, have pleaded guilty if he had been indicted as an accessory to murder? Perhaps, but with certain important qualifications. What he had done was a crime only in retrospect, and he had always been a law-abiding citizen, because Hitler’s orders, which he had certainly executed to the best of his ability, had possessed “the force of law” in the Third Reich. (The defense could have quoted in support of Eichmann’s thesis the testimony of one of the best-known experts on constitutional law in the Third Reich, Theodor Maunz, who is currently Minister of Education and Culture in Bavaria. In 1943, in “Gestalt und Recht der Polizei,” he stated, “The command of the Führer . . . is absolutely the center of the present legal order.”) Those who today told him that he could have acted differently simply did not know, or had forgotten, how things had been. He did not want to be one of those who now pretended that they “had always been against it,” whereas in fact they had been very eager to do what they were told to do. However, times change, and he, like Professor Maunz, had “arrived at different insights.” What he had done he had done; he did not want to deny it. Rather, he proposed to “hang myself in public as a warning example for all anti-Semites on this earth.” By this he did not mean to say that he regretted anything. “Repentance is for little children.”

 Even under considerable pressure from his lawyer, Eichmann did not change this position. During a discussion of the offer Heinrich Himmler had made to Zionist representatives in Hungary, in 1944, to exchange a million Jews for ten thousand trucks, and of Eichmann’s role in this plan, Dr. Servatius asked, “Mr. Witness, in the negotiations with your superiors, did you express any pity for the Jews and did you say there was room to help them?” Eichmann replied, “I am here under oath and must speak the truth. Not out of mercy did I launch this transaction”—which would have been acceptable, except that it was not Eichmann who “launched” it. He then continued, quite truthfully, “The reasons which made me think of this transaction I explained this morning.” They were as follows: Himmler had sent his own man to Budapest to deal with matters of Jewish emigration. (Incidentally, Jewish emigration had become a flourishing business; for enormous amounts of money, Jews could buy their way out. Eichmann, however, did not mention this.) It was the fact that “here matters of emigration were dealt with by a man who did not belong to the police force” that made Eichmann indignant, “because I had to help and to implement deportation, and matters of emigration, where I considered myself an expert, were assigned to a man who was new to the unit. . . . I was fed up. . . . I decided that I had to do something to take matters of emigration into my own hands.”

 Throughout the trial, Eichmann tried to clarify, mostly without success, the point in his plea of his being “in the sense of the indictment, not guilty.” The indictment implied not only that he had acted on purpose, which he did not deny, but that he had acted out of base motives and in full knowledge of the criminal nature of his deeds. As for the base motives, he was sure that he was not what he called an innerer Schweinehund—a dirty bastard in the depths of his heart—and as for his conscience, he recalled perfectly well that he would have had a bad conscience only if he had not done what he had been ordered to do—to ship millions of men, women, and children to their death with great zeal and most meticulous care. This last statement, admittedly, was hard to take. Half a dozen psychiatrists had certified Eichmann as “normal.” “More normal, at any rate, than I am after having examined him,” one of them was said to have exclaimed, while another had found that Eichmann’s whole psychological outlook, including his relationship with his wife and children, his mother and father, his brothers and sisters and friends, was “not only normal but most desirable.” And, finally, a minister who paid regular visits to him in prison after the Supreme Court had finished hearing his appeal reassured everybody by declaring that Eichmann was “a man with very positive ideas.” Behind the comedy of the soul experts lay the hard fact that Eichmann’s was obviously no case of moral insanity. (Hausner’s recent revelations—in the Saturday Evening Post—of things he “could not bring out at the trial” have contradicted the information given informally in Jerusalem. Eichmann, we are now told, had been attested to be “a man obsessed with a dangerous and insatiable urge to kill,” “a dangerous, perverted, sadistic personality.” In which case he would have belonged in an insane asylum.) Worse, it was just as obviously no case of insane hatred of Jews, of fanatical anti-Semitism. He “personally” never had anything whatever against Jews; on the contrary, he had plenty of “private reasons” for not being a Jew hater. To be sure, there were fanatic anti-Semites among his closest friends—for instance, Vitez Lászlo Endre, State Secretary in Charge of Political (Jewish) Affairs in the Ministry of the Interior, in Hungary, who was hanged in Budapest in 1946—but this, it appeared, was more or less in the spirit of “some of my best friends are anti-Semites.”

 Alas, nobody believed him. The prosecutor did not believe him, because that was not his job. Counsel for the defense paid no attention, because, unlike Eichmann, he was to all appearances not interested in questions of conscience. And the judges did not believe him, because they were too good, and perhaps also too conscious of the very foundations of their profession, to admit that an average, “normal” person, neither feeble-minded nor indoctrinated nor cynical, could be perfectly incapable of telling right from wrong.

 Eichmann was born on March 19, 1906, in Solingen, in the Rhineland—a German city that is famous for its knives, scissors, and surgical instruments. Fifty-four years later, indulging in what had become his favorite pastime—writing his memoirs—he described this memorable event as follows: “Today, fifteen years and a day after May 7, 1945, I begin to lead my thoughts back to that 19th of March of the year 1906, when at five o’clock in the morning . . . I entered life on earth in the aspect of a human being.” According to his religious beliefs, which had not changed since the Nazi period (in Jerusalem, he declared himself to be a Gottgläubiger—literally, a believer, but the Nazi term for those who had broken with Christianity—and he refused to take his oath on the Bible), this event was to be ascribed to a “Höheren Sinnesträger,” or “Higher Bearer of Meaning,” an entity somehow identical with “the movement of the universe,” to which human life, in itself devoid of “higher meaning,” is subject. The terminology is quite suggestive. To call God a Höheren Sinnesträger meant, linguistically, to give him some place in the military hierarchy, because the Nazis had changed the military “recipient of orders,” the Befehlsempfänger, into a Befehlsträger, “bearer of orders,” indicating, as in the ancient phrase “bearer of ill tidings,” the importance and the burden of responsibility that were supposedly conferred upon those who had to execute orders. Moreover, Eichmann, like everyone else connected with the Final Solution, was officially a Geheimnisträger, or “bearer of secrets,” as well, which in the way of catering to self-importance was certainly nothing to sneeze at. But Eichmann, not very much interested in metaphysics, remained silent on any more intimate relationship between the Bearer of Meaning and the bearer of orders, and proceeded to a consideration of the other possible source of his existence, his parents: “They would hardly have been so overjoyed at the arrival of their first-born had they been able to watch how in the hour of my birth the Norn of misfortune, to spite the Norn of good fortune, was already spinning threads of grief and sorrow into my life. But a kind, impenetrable veil kept my parents from seeing into the future.”

 The misfortune started soon enough; it started in school. Eichmann’s father, who was first an accountant for the Tramways & Electricity Co. in Solingen and in 1914 became an official of the same corporation in Linz, in Austria, had five children—four sons and a daughter—of whom only Adolf, the eldest, it seems, was unable to finish high school, or even to graduate from a vocational school for engineering, into which he was put when his incapacity first became manifest. Throughout his life, Eichmann deceived people about his early “misfortunes” by hiding behind certain financial misfortunes of his father’s, which cast no discredit on him. In Israel, however, during his first sessions with a police examiner, Captain Avner Less, who spent approximately thirty-five days with him and produced 3,564 typewritten pages from seventy-six recorder tapes, he was in an ebullient mood, full of enthusiasm for this unique opportunity “to pour forth everything I know” and, by the same token, to advance to the rank of the most coöperative defendant ever. (His enthusiasm was soon dampened, though never quite extinguished, when he was confronted with concrete questions based on irrefutable documents.) The best proof of his initial boundless confidence—obviously wasted on Captain Less—was that for the first time in his life he admitted his early disasters, although he must have been aware of the fact that he thus contradicted several important entries in the records he had supplied to Nazi authorities.

 Well, the misfortunes were ordinary. Since he “had not exactly been the most hard-working” pupil—or, one may add, the most gifted—his father had taken him first from high school and then from vocational school, long before graduation. Hence, the profession that appears on all his official documents (construction engineer) had about as much connection with reality as the statement that his birthplace was Palestine and that he was fluent in Hebrew and Yiddish—another outright lie he had liked to tell both to his S.S. comrades and to his Jewish victims. In the same vein, he had always pretended that he was later dismissed from a job as salesman for the Vacuum Oil Company, in Austria, because of membership in the National Socialist Party. The version he confided to Captain Less was less dramatic, but it was probably not the truth, either: He had been fired, he said, because it was a time of unemployment, in which unmarried employees were the first to lose their jobs. (This explanation, which may at first seem plausible, is not really satisfactory, because he lost his job in the spring of 1933, when he had been engaged for two full years to Veronika, or Vera, Liebl, who eventually became his wife. Why had he not married her while he still held a good job? He finally married in March, 1935, probably because bachelors in the S.S., as in the Vacuum Oil Company, were never sure of their jobs and could not be promoted.)

 While young Eichmann was wasting his time in school, his father left the Tramways & Electricity Co. and went into business for himself. He bought a small mine, in Salzburg, and put his unpromising youngster to work in it as a mining laborer, but only until he could find a job for him in the sales department of the Upper Austrian Elektrobau Company. Here Eichmann remained for over two years. At the conclusion of that period, he was about twenty-two years old and without any prospects for a career; the only thing he had learned, perhaps, was how to sell. What then happened he himself described as his first break, and, again, we have two rather different versions of it. In a handwritten biographical record that Eichmann submitted in 1939 to win promotion in the S.S., he described it as follows: “I worked during the years of 1925 to 1927 as a salesman for the Upper Austrian Elektrobau Company. I left this position of my own free will, as the Vacuum Oil Company of Vienna offered me the representation for Upper Austria.” The key word here is “offered,” since, according to the story Eichmann told Captain Less in Israel, nobody had offered him anything. His mother had died when he was ten years old, and his father had married again in the same year. A cousin of his stepmother’s—a man he called “uncle”—who was president of the Austrian Automobile Club and was married to the daughter of a Jewish businessman in Czechoslovakia, was acquainted with the general manager of the Austrian Vacuum Oil Company, a Jew named Weiss, and used this connection to get his unfortunate relative a job as travelling salesman. Eichmann was properly grateful; in fact, the Jews in his family were among his “private reasons” for not hating Jews. Even in 1943 or 1944, when the Final Solution was in full swing, he had not forgotten: “The daughter of this marriage, I believe, was half-Jewish according to the Nuremberg Laws. . . . She came to see me in order to obtain my permission for her emigration into Switzerland. Naturally, I granted this request, and the same uncle came also to see me to ask me to intervene for some Viennese Jewish couple. I mention this only to show that I myself had no hatred against Jews, for my whole education through my mother and my father had been strictly Christian, and my mother, because of her Jewish relatives, had different opinions from those current in S.S. circles.” He went to considerable lengths to prove that he had never harbored any ill feelings against his victims, and, what is more, had never made any secret of that fact: “I explained this to Dr. [Josef] Löwenherz [head of the Jewish Community in Vienna] as I explained it to Dr. [Rudolf] Kastner [associate president of the Zionist Organization in Budapest]; I think I told it to everybody, each of my men knew it, they all heard it from me sometime. Even in elementary school, I had a [Jewish] classmate with whom I spent my free time, and he came to our house—a family in Linz by the name of Sebba. The last time we met, we walked together through the streets of Linz, I already with the Party emblem of the N.S.D.A.P. [the Nazi Party] in my buttonhole, and he did not think anything of it.” Had Eichmann been a bit less prim or the police examination less discreet (it did not extend to cross-examination, presumably so that the examiner would be assured of his coöperation), his “lack of prejudice” might have shown itself in another aspect as well. It seems that in Vienna, where he was extraordinarily successful in forcing Jews to leave the country, he had a Jewish mistress, an “old flame” from Linz. Rassenschande—a word that literally means “race-defilement” but that in the Nazi vocabulary simply meant sexual intercourse with Jews—was probably the greatest crime a member of the S.S. could commit; though during the war the raping of Jewish girls became a favorite pastime at the front, it was by no means common for a higher S.S. officer to have an affair with a Jewish woman. Thus, Eichmann’s repeated violent denunciations, in Jerusalem, of Julius Streicher, the insane and obscene editor of Der Stürmer, and Streicher’s pornographic anti-Semitism were perhaps personally motivated, expressive of more than the routine contempt that an “enlightened” S.S. man was supposed to show toward the vulgar passions of lesser Party luminaries.

 Eichmann spent five and a half years with the Vacuum Oil Company, and they must have been among the happier ones of his life. He was able to make a good living during a time of severe unemployment, and he was still living with his parents, except when he was out on the road. The moment when this idyll came to an end—on Pentecost, 1933—was among the few dates he always remembered. Actually, things had taken a turn for the worse somewhat earlier. At the end of 1932, he was unexpectedly transferred from Linz to Salzburg, very much against his inclinations: “I lost all joy in my work, I no longer liked to sell, to make calls.” From such sudden losses of Arbeitsfreude Eichmann was to suffer throughout his life. The worst of them, he explained to Captain Less, occurred when he was told of the Führer’s order (always officially called, to indicate its preëminence among his orders, the Führer Order) for the “physical extermination of the Jews,” in which he was to play such an important role. This, too, came unexpectedly; he himself had “never thought of such a thing, such a solution through violence,” and he described his reaction in almost the same words: “I lost everything, all joy in my work, all initiative, all interest; I was, so to speak, blown out.” A similar blowing out must have occurred in 1932 in Salzburg, and from his own account it is clear that he cannot have been very much surprised when he was fired, though one need not believe his testimony that he had been “very happy” about his dismissal.

 In any event, the year 1932 marked a turning point of his life. It was in April of this year that he joined the National Socialist Party and entered the S.S., upon the invitation of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who was then a young lawyer in Linz and later became chief of the R.S.H.A., in one of whose six (later seven) main sections—Bureau IV, under the command of Heinrich Müller—Eichmann was employed, in charge of subsection B-4. In court, Eichmann gave the impression that he was a typical member of the lower middle classes, and this impression was more than borne out by every sentence he spoke or wrote while he was in prison. This was misleading; he was rather the déclassé son of a solid middle-class family, and it was indicative of his comedown that although his father was a good friend of Kaltenbrunner’s father, who was also a Linz lawyer, the relationship of the two sons was a rather cool one, in which Eichmann was unmistakably treated by Kaltenbrunner as his social inferior. Before Eichmann entered the Party and the S.S., he had proved that he was a joiner, and May 7, 1945, the official date of Germany’s defeat, was significant for him mainly because it then dawned upon him that thenceforward he would have to live without being a member of something or other: “I sensed I would have to live a leaderless and difficult individual life, I would receive no directives from anybody, no orders and commands would any longer be issued to me, no pertinent ordinances would be there to consult—in brief, a life never known before lay ahead of me.” When he was a child, his parents, who were uninterested in politics, had enrolled him in the Young Men’s Christian Association, from which he later went into the German youth movement, the Wandervogel. During his unsuccessful years in high school, he had joined the Jungfrontkämpferverband, the youth section of the German-Austrian organization of war veterans, which, though violently pro-German and anti-republican, was tolerated by the Austrian government. When Kaltenbrunner suggested that he enter the S.S., he was a probationary member—and just on the point of becoming a full-fledged member—of an altogether different outfit, called the Schlaraffia, “an association of businessmen, physicians, actors, civil servants, etc., who came together to cultivate merriment and gaiety and so on,” as he described it, adding, “Each member had to give a lecture from time to time whose tenor was to be humor, refined humor.” Kaltenbrunner explained to Eichmann that he would have to give up this merry society, because as a Nazi he could not be a Freemason—a word that at the time was unknown to Eichmann. The choice between the S.S. and the Schlaraffia (the name derives from Schlaraffenland, the gluttons’ Cloud-Cuckoo-Land of German fairy tales) might have been hard to make, but he was “kicked out” of Schlaraffia anyhow; he had committed a sin that even now, as he told the story in the Israeli prison, made him blush with shame: “Contrary to my upbringing, it happened that I had tried, though I was the youngest, to invite my companions to a glass of wine.”

 A leaf in the whirlwind of the time, Eichmann was blown from Schlaraffia, the never-never land of magically set tables and of roast chickens that would fly into your mouth—or, more accurately, he was blown from the company of respectable Philistines with degrees and assured careers and “refined humor,” whose worst vice was probably an irrepressible desire for practical jokes—into the marching columns of the Thousand-Year Reich, which lasted exactly twelve years and three months. At any rate, he did not enter the Party out of conviction, nor did he ever become convinced by it; whenever he was asked to give his reasons, he repeated a set of embarrassed clichés about the Treaty of Versailles and unemployment. Rather, “it was like being swallowed up by the Party against all expectations and without previous decision,” he said in court, adding, “it happened so quickly and suddenly.” He had no time and less desire to be properly informed; he did not even know the Party program, and he had not read (as he never did read) “Mein Kampf.” Kaltenbrunner had said to him, Why not join the S.S.? And he had replied, Why not? That was how it had happened, and that was about all there was to it.

 Of course, that was not all there was to it. What Eichmann failed to tell the presiding judge in cross-examination was that he had been an ambitious young man who was fed up with his job as travelling salesman even before the Vacuum Oil Company became fed up with him, and that from a humdrum life without significance or consequence the wind had blown him into History, as he understood it; namely, into a Movement that always kept moving and in which somebody like him—already a failure in the eyes of his social class, in the eyes of his family, and hence in his own eyes as well—could start from scratch and make a career. And if he did not always like what he had to do (for example, dispatching people to their death by the trainload instead of forcing them to emigrate); if he guessed, rather early, that the whole business would come to a bad end, with Germany losing the war; if all his most cherished plans came to nothing (an evacuation of European Jewry to Madagascar, the establishment of a Jewish territory in the Nisko region of Poland, an experiment with carefully built defense installations, around his Berlin office, to repel Russian tanks); and if, to his great “grief and sorrow,” he never advanced beyond the grade of S.S. Obersturmbannführer (a rank equivalent to lieutenant colonel)—in brief, if, with the exception of one year in Vienna, his life was beset with frustrations, he never forgot what the alternative would have been. Not only in Argentina, leading the unhappy existence of a refugee, but also in the courtroom of Jerusalem, with his life as good as forfeited, he might still have expressed a preference—if anybody had asked him—for being hanged as an S.S. Obersturmbannführer a.D. (that is, in retirement) over living out his life quietly and normally as a travelling salesman for the Vacuum Oil Company.

 Eichmann’s new career did not start very promisingly. In the spring of 1933, while he was out of a job, the Nazi Party and all its affiliations were suspended in Austria because of Hitler’s rise to power. But even without this new calamity a career in the Austrian Nazi Party would then have been out of the question; those who enlisted in the S.S. went on working at their regular jobs. (Kaltenbrunner was still a partner in his father’s law firm.) Eichmann therefore decided to go to Germany—a decision that was all the more natural because his family had never given up its German citizenship. (This fact was of some relevance to the trial. Dr. Servatius had asked the West German government to demand extradition of the accused and, failing this, to pay the expenses of the defense, and Bonn had refused, on the ground that Eichmann was not a German national—which was not true.) At Passau, on the German border, he was suddenly a travelling salesman again, and when he reported to the local Gauleiter, he asked him eagerly “if he had perhaps some connection with the Bavarian Vacuum Oil Company.” Well, this was one of his not infrequent relapses from one period of his life into another; whenever he was confronted with telltale signs of his unregenerate Nazi outlook—whether in Argentina or in the Jerusalem jail—he excused himself with “There I go again, the old song and dance [die alte Tour].” But the relapse in Passau was quickly cured; he was told that he had better enlist for military training (“All right with me, I thought to myself, why not become a soldier?”), and, having done so, he was sent to two Bavarian S.S. camps, one after the other—in Lechfeld and in Dachau (he had nothing to do with the concentration camp there)—where “the Austrian Legion in exile” received its training. Thus he did become an Austrian after a fashion, despite his German passport. He remained in one or the other of these military camps from the beginning of August, 1933, to the end of September, 1934, a period in which he advanced to the rank of Scharführer (corporal) and had plenty of time to reconsider his willingness to embark upon the career of a soldier. According to his own account, there was only one thing in which he distinguished himself during these fourteen months, and that was punishment drill, which he performed with great obstinacy, in the wrathful spirit of “Serves my father right if my hands freeze. Why doesn’t he buy me gloves?” But apart from this rather dubious pleasure, to which he owed his first promotion, he had a miserable time; “The humdrum of military service, that was something I couldn’t stand, day after day always the same, over and over again the same.” Thus bored to distraction, he heard that the Security Service of the Reichsführer S.S. (the Sicherheitsdienst, or S.D.) had jobs open, and applied for one immediately. His application was approved.

 In 1934, the S.D. was a relatively new apparatus in the S.S. It had been founded two years earlier by Heinrich Himmler, to serve as the intelligence service of the Party, and it was now headed by Reinhardt Heydrich, a former Navy Intelligence officer, who was to become, as Gerald Reitlinger, author of “The Final Solution,” put it, “the real engineer of the Final Solution.” Its initial task had been to spy on Party members—an activity giving the S.S. an ascendance over the regular Party apparatus. Then it had taken on some additional duties, becoming the information and research center for the Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police, or Gestapo). This was the first step toward the merger of the S.S. and the police, which was not carried out until September of 1939, though Himmler held the double post of Reichsführer S.S. and Chief of the German Police from 1936 on. Eichmann, of course, could not at that time have known anything of this, but he seems to have known nothing even of the nature of the S.D. when he entered it—a state of affairs that was not really strange, since the operations of the S.D. had always been top-secret. According to what he told Captain Less, he joined the S.D. under a misapprehension. “When the high Party officials drove along,” he said, “there were commando guards with them, men standing on the running boards of the cars. . . . In brief, I had mistaken them [Himmler’s S.D. ] for the Reich Security Service (Reichssicherheitsdienst),which I only much later distinguished from the commando guard (Begleitkommando) with whom I had made this confusion [in the first place], but nobody made this clear to me and no one told me anything.” (The question of whether this was the truth had a certain bearing on the trial, where it had to be decided whether he had volunteered for his position in the S.D. or had been drafted into it.) Furthermore, he testified to having suffered “a great disappointment” in the S.D. His disappointment consisted chiefly in the fact that he was back at the bottom and had to start all over again; his only consolation was that other members of the S.D. had made the same mistake. He was put into the research division, in Berlin, where his first job was to file all information concerning Freemasonry—which in the early Nazi ideological muddle was somehow lumped with Judaism, Catholicism, and Communism—and to help in the establishment of an Anti-Freemasonry Museum. He now had ample opportunity to learn what this strange word meant that Kaltenbrunner had thrown at him in their discussion of the Schlaraffia. (Incidentally, an eagerness to establish museums to be used as propaganda against their enemies was characteristic of the Nazis. During the war, several German bureaus competed bitterly for the honor of establishing anti-Jewish museums and libraries. We owe to this strange craze the preservation of many great cultural treasures of European Jewry.) Unfortunately, things were again very, very boring, so Eichmann was greatly relieved when, after four or five months of Freemasonry, he was put into a brand-new department, concerned with Jews. This was the real beginning of the career that was to end in the Jerusalem court.

 It was the year 1935, when Germany, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, introduced general conscription and publicly announced plans for rearmament, including the building of an air force and a navy. This was also the year when Germany, having left the League of Nations in 1933, prepared, far from secretly, the occupation of the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland. It was the year of Hitler’s peace speeches (“Germany needs peace and desires peace,” “We recognize Poland as the home of a great and nationally conscious people,” “Germany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria, to annex Austria, or to conclude an Anschluss”), and, above all, it was the year when the Nazi regime won general and genuine recognition both in Germany and abroad, Hitler being admired almost everywhere as a great national statesman. In Germany itself, this was a time of transition. Because of the enormous rearmament program, unemployment had ceased to exist, and the initial resistance of the working class was thereby broken. The aggressions of the regime, which had at first been directed primarily against “anti-Fascists”—Communists, Socialists, left-wing intellectuals, and Jews in prominent positions—had not yet shifted entirely to the persecution of the Jews qua Jews. To be sure, one of the first steps taken by the Nazi government, back in 1933, had been the exclusion of Jews from the civil service (which in Germany included all teaching positions, from grammar school to university, and most branches of the entertainment industry; namely, the theatre, the opera, concerts, and radio) and, in general, their removal from public office, but private business and the legal and medical professions were not touched until 1938, though Jews were no longer permitted to take the state examinations leading to these professions. The emigration of Jews in these years proceeded, on the whole, in an orderly and not unduly accelerated fashion, and the currency restrictions that made it difficult, but not impossible, for Jews to take their money—or, at least, the greater part of it—out of the country were the same for non-Jews; they dated back to the days of the Weimar Republic. There were a certain number of Einzelaktionen—individual actions putting Jews under pressure to sell their businesses and real property at absurdly low prices—but they usually occurred in small towns and, indeed, could be traced to the spontaneous, “individual” initiative of some enterprising Storm Troopers, the so-called S.A. men, or Brown Shirts, who, except for their officer corps, were mainly recruited from the lower classes. The police, it is true, never stopped these “excesses,” but the Nazi authorities were not entirely happy about them, because they affected the value of real estate all over the country. The Jewish emigrants, unless they were political refugees, were mostly young people who realized that there was no future for them in Germany—and since they soon found out that there was hardly any future for them in other European countries either, some of them actually returned during this period. When Eichmann was asked how he had reconciled his personal feelings about Jews with the outspoken and violent anti-Semitism of the Party he had joined, he replied with the proverb “Nothing is as hot when you eat it as when it’s being cooked”—a proverb that was then on the lips of many Jews as well. They lived in a fool’s paradise, in which, for a few years, even Streicher spoke of a “legal solution” of the Jewish problem. It took the organized pogroms of November, 1938—the so-called Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, when seventy-five hundred Jewish shop-windows were broken, all synagogues went up in flames, and twenty thousand Jewish men were taken off to concentration camps—to expel them from it.

 One frequently forgotten point of the matter is that the famous Nuremberg Laws, issued in the fall of 1935, had failed to do the trick. At the trial, the testimony of three witnesses from Germany—former high-ranking officials of the Zionist Organization who left Germany shortly before the outbreak of the war—gave only the barest glimpse into the true state of affairs during the first five years of the Nazi regime. The Nuremberg Laws had deprived the Jews of their political rights but not of their civil rights; they were no longer citizens (Reichsbürger), but they remained members of the German state (Staatsangehörige)—which meant that if they emigrated, they were not automatically stateless. Sexual intercourse between Jews and Germans and the contraction of mixed marriages were forbidden, and no German woman under the age of forty-five could be employed in a Jewish household. Of these provisions, only the last was of practical significance; the others merely legalized a de-facto situation. Hence, it was felt that the Nuremberg Laws stabilized the new situation of Jews in the German Reich. They had been second-class citizens, to put it mildly, since January 30, 1933; their almost complete separation from the rest of the population had been achieved in a matter of weeks, through terror but also through the more than ordinary connivance of those around them. “There was a wall between Gentiles and Jews,” Dr. Benno Cohn, from Berlin, testified at the trial. “I cannot remember speaking to a Christian during all my journeys over Germany.” Now, the Jews felt, having been given laws of their own, they would no longer be outlawed; if they kept to themselves—as they had been forced to do anyhow—they would be able to live unmolested. In the words of the Reichsvertretung of the Jews in Germany (the national association of all communities and organizations, which had been founded in September, 1933, on the initiative of the Berlin Community, and was in no way Nazi-appointed), the intention of the Nuremberg Laws was “to establish a level on which a bearable relationship between the German and the Jewish people [became] possible”—to which, around the same time, a member of the Berlin Community who was a radical Zionist added, “Life is possible under every law. However, in complete ignorance of what is permitted and what is not one cannot live. One can also be a useful and respected citizen as a member of a minority in the midst of a great people.” And since Hitler, in the Röhm purge of the summer of 1934, had broken the power of the S.A., whose brown-shirted Storm Troopers had been almost exclusively responsible for the early pogroms and atrocities, and since the Jews were blissfully unaware of the growing power of the black-shirted S.S., who ordinarily abstained from what Eichmann contemptuously called “the Stürmer methods,” Jews generally believed that a modus vivendi would be possible; in fact, they even offered to coöperate in “the solution of the Jewish question.” In short, when Eichmann entered upon his apprenticeship in Jewish affairs (on which, four years later, he was the recognized “expert”), and made his first contacts with Jewish functionaries, both Zionists and Assimilationists talked in terms of a great “Jewish revival,” a “great constructive movement of German Jewry,” and quarrelled among themselves in ideological terms about the desirability of Jewish emigration, as though this depended upon their own decisions.

 Eichmann’s account, during the police examination, of how he was introduced into the new department—an account that was, of course, distorted but not wholly devoid of truth—oddly recalls this fool’s paradise. The first thing that happened was that his new boss, a certain von Mildenstein, who shortly thereafter got himself transferred to Albert Speer’s Organisation Todt, where he was in charge of highway construction (he was what Eichmann pretended to be—an engineer by profession), required him to read Theodor Herzl’s “Der Judenstaat,” the famous Zionist classic, which converted Eichmann immediately and forever to Zionism. From then on, as he repeated over and over, he thought of hardly anything but a “political solution” (as opposed to the later “physical solution,” the first meaning expulsion and the second extermination) and how to “get some firm ground under the feet of the Jews.” To this end, he began spreading the gospel among his S.S. comrades—giving lectures and writing pamphlets. He then acquired a smattering of Hebrew, which enabled him to read, haltingly, a Yiddish newspaper—not a very difficult accomplishment, since Yiddish is basically an old German dialect written in Hebrew letters, and can be understood by any German-speaking person who has mastered a few dozen Hebrew words. He even read one more book, Adolf Böhm’s “The History of Zionism” (during the trial he kept confusing it with Herzl’s “Der Judenstaat”), and this was perhaps a considerable achievement for a man who, by his own account, had always been utterly reluctant to read anything except newspapers, and, to the distress of his father, had never paid any attention to the books in the family library. Following up Böhm, he studied the organizational setup of the Zionist movement—its parties, its youth groups, its different programs. This did not make him an “authority,” but it was enough to earn him an assignment as official spy on the Zionist offices and Zionist meetings. It is worth noting that his schooling in Jewish affairs was almost entirely concerned with Zionism.

 Eichmann’s first personal contacts with Jewish functionaries, all of them well-known Zionists of long standing, were thoroughly satisfactory. The reason he became so fascinated by the “Jewish question,” he explained, was his own “idealism;” these Jews, unlike the Assimilationists, whom he always despised, and unlike the Orthodox Jews, who bored him, were “idealists,” like him. An “idealist,” according to Eichmann’s notions, was not simply a man who believed in an “idea” or a man who did not steal or accept bribes, though these qualifications were indispensable. An “idealist” was a man who lived for his idea (hence he could not be a businessman, for example) and who was prepared to sacrifice for his idea everything and, especially, everybody. When he asserted during the police examination that he would have sent his own father to his death if that had been required, he did not mean merely to stress the extent to which he was under orders, and ready to obey them; he also meant to show what an “idealist” he had always been. Of course, the perfect “idealist,” like everybody else, had his personal feelings, but if they came into conflict with his “ideal,” he would never permit them to interfere with his actions.

 Eichmann was given his first opportunity to apply in practice what he had learned during his apprenticeship when, after the Anschluss, or incorporation of Austria into the Reich, in March, 1938, he was sent to Vienna to organize a kind of emigration that had thus far been utterly unknown in Germany, where up to the fall of 1938 the fiction was maintained that Jews were permitted to leave the country if they wished but were not forced to do so. Eichmann was made head of what was called the Center for Jewish Emigration, and his task was defined as “forced emigration.” The words meant exactly what they said; all Jews, regardless of their wishes and regardless of their citizenship, were to be forced to emigrate—an act that in ordinary language is called expulsion. Whenever Eichmann thought back to the twelve years that were the core of his life, he declared this year in Vienna to have been its happiest and most successful period. Shortly before he left Berlin, he had been promoted to officer’s rank, becoming an Untersturmführer, or second lieutenant, and he had been recommended for his “comprehensive knowledge of the methods of organization and ideology of the opponent, Jewry.” The job in Vienna was his first important one; his whole career, which had progressed rather slowly, was in the balance. He must have been frantic to make good, and certainly his success was spectacular. In eight months, forty-five thousand Jews left Austria, whereas no more than nineteen thousand Jews left Germany in the same period; in less than eighteen months, Austria was “cleansed” of close to a hundred and fifty thousand people (roughly fifty per cent of its Jewish population), all of whom left the country “legally.” How did Eichmann do it? The basic idea that made all this possible was not his but, almost certainly, was contained in a specific directive from Heydrich, who had sent him to Vienna in the first place. (Eichmann was vague about the question of authorship, though he claimed it by implication; the Israeli authorities, being bound to the fantastic “thesis of the all-inclusive responsibility of Adolf Eichmann,” as an Israeli judge who prepared material for the trial expressed it, and to the even more fantastic supposition that, in the words of another government-appointed researcher, “one [i.e. his] mind was behind it all,” helped him considerably in his efforts to deck himself in borrowed plumes.) The idea, as Heydrich explained it in a conference with Göring on the morning of the Kristallnacht, was simple and ingenious enough. “Through the Jewish Community, we extracted a certain amount of money from the rich Jews who wanted to emigrate,” Heydrich said. “By paying this amount, and an additional sum in foreign currency, they made it possible for a number of poor Jews to leave. The problem was not to make the rich Jews leave but to get rid of the Jewish mob.” Still, there remained enough problems that could be solved only in the course of the operation, and there is no doubt that here Eichmann, for the first time in his life, discovered in himself some special qualities. There were two things he could do well, or better than many other people: he could organize and he could negotiate.

 Immediately upon his arrival in Vienna, Eichmann opened negotiations with the representatives of the Jewish Community—whom he had to liberate from prisons and concentration camps for the purpose, since the “revolutionary zeal” in Austria, greatly exceeding the early “excesses” in Germany, had resulted in the imprisonment of practically all prominent Jews. Having undergone such imprisonment, the Jewish functionaries did not need Eichmann to convince them of the desirability of emigration. Rather, their concern was to inform him of the enormous difficulties that lay ahead. Apart from the financial problem—already “solved”—the chief difficulty was the great number of papers every emigrant had to assemble before he could leave the country. Each of the papers was valid only for a limited time, and this meant that the validity of the first had usually expired long before the last could be obtained. Once Eichmann understood how the whole thing worked—or, rather, did not work—he “took counsel with himself,” as he said in Jerusalem, and “gave birth to the idea that I thought would do justice to both parties.” He imagined “an assembly line, at whose beginning the first document is put, and then the other papers, and at its end the passport would have to come out as the end product.” This plan could be realized if all the offices concerned—the Ministry of Finance, the income-tax people, the police, the Jewish Community, and so forth—were housed under the same roof and forced to do their work on the spot, in the presence of the applicant, who would no longer have to run from office to office, and who, presumably, would also be spared some humiliating chicanery and certain expenses for bribes. When everything was ready, the assembly line did its work smoothly and quickly, and Eichmann thereupon “invited” the Jewish functionaries from Berlin to inspect it. They were appalled. “This is like an automatic factory, like a flour mill connected with some bakery,” one of them said. “At one side you put in a Jew who still has some property and, let us assume, a factory, or a shop, or some bank account, and he goes through the whole building from counter to counter, from office to office, and he comes out at the other end without any money, without any rights, with only a passport in which it says: ‘You must leave the country within a fortnight. Otherwise, you will go to a concentration camp!’ ” This, of course, was essentially the truth about the procedure, but it was not the whole truth. Actually, these Jews could not be left “without any money,” for the simple reason that no country at this date would have received them in that condition. They needed, and were given, their Vorzeigegeld—the amount they had to show in order to obtain their visas and to pass the immigration inspection of the recipient country. For this amount, they needed foreign currency, which the Reich had no intention of wasting on its Jews. These needs were not covered by Jewish accounts in foreign countries, which, in any event, were difficult to get at, because they had been illegal for many years. Eichmann therefore sent a number of Jewish functionaries abroad to solicit funds from the great Jewish organizations, and these funds were then sold by the Jewish Community to the prospective emigrants for a considerable profit. One dollar, for instance, was sold for ten or twenty marks when its market value was 4.20 marks. It was chiefly in this way that the Community acquired not only the money necessary for the poor Jews and people without accounts abroad but also the funds it needed for its own, hugely expanded activities. Eichmann had not arranged the deal without encountering considerable opposition from the German financial authorities, who, after all, could not remain unaware of the fact that these transactions amounted to a devaluation of the mark.

 Bragging was the vice that was Eichmann’s undoing. It was sheer rodomontade when he told men working under him during the last days of the war, “I will jump into my grave laughing, because the fact that I have the death of five million Jews [or “enemies of the Reich,” as he always claimed to have said] on my conscience gives me extraordinary satisfaction.” He did not jump, and if he had anything on his conscience, it was not murder but, as it turned out, the fact that he once had slapped the face of Dr. Löwenherz, head of the Jewish Community in Vienna, who later became one of his favorite Jews. (He had apologized in front of his staff at the time, but this incident kept bothering him.) The claim that he was responsible for the death of five million Jews—the approximate total of the losses suffered from the combined efforts of all Nazi bureaus and authorities—was preposterous, as he knew very well, but he had kept repeating the damning sentence ad nauseam to everyone who would listen, even long after the war, when he was in Argentina. (Former Consular Official Horst Grell, who had known Eichmann in Hungary and had heard him make the claim there, testified in a court, in Berchtesgaden, in 1961, that in his opinion Eichmann was boasting. That must have been obvious to everyone who heard him utter his absurd claim.) Certainly Eichmann was boasting when he pretended that he had “invented” the ghetto system, or that he “gave birth to the idea” of shipping all European Jews to Madagascar. The Theresienstadt ghetto, in Czechoslovakia, of which Eichmann claimed the “paternity,” was established years after the ghetto system had been introduced into the occupied territories of Eastern Europe, and the setting up of a special ghetto for certain privileged categories—which is what Theresienstadt was—was the “idea” of Heydrich; so, indeed, was the whole Nazi ghetto system. The Madagascar plan seems to have been “born” in the bureaus of the German Foreign Office, and Eichmann’s own contribution to it turned out to owe a good deal to Dr. Löwenherz, whom he had called upon to put down “some basic thoughts” on how some four million Jews might be transported from Europe after the war—presumably to Palestine, since the Madagascar project was top-secret. (Upon being confronted at the trial with the Löwenherz report, Eichmann did not deny that he had enlisted Dr. Löwenherz’s help; it was one of the few moments when he appeared genuinely embarrassed.) What eventually led to his capture in Argentina was his compulsion to talk big, even there—he was, he said at the time, “fed up with being an anonymous wanderer between two worlds”—and the compulsion must have grown considerably stronger as time passed, not only because he had nothing to do that he could consider worth doing but also because the postwar era had bestowed so much unexpected “fame” upon him.

 But bragging is a common vice. A more specific, and also a more decisive, flaw in Eichmann’s character was his almost total inability ever to look at anything from the other fellow’s point of view. Nowhere was this flaw more conspicuous than in his account of his good year in Vienna. He and his men and the Jews were all “pulling together,” and whenever there were any difficulties, the Jewish functionaries would come running to him “to unburden their hearts,” to tell him “all their grief and sorrow,” and to ask his help. The Jews “desired” to emigrate, and he, Eichmann, was there to help them, because it happened that at that time the Nazi authorities had expressed a desire to see their Reich judenrein. The two desires coincided, and he, Eichmann, could “do justice to both parties.” At the trial, he never gave an inch when it came to this part of the story, though he agreed that today, when “times have changed so much,” the Jews might not be too happy to recall this “pulling together,” and he said he did not want “to hurt their feelings.”

 The German text of the taped police examination, which was conducted by Captain Less between May 29, 1960, and January 17, 1961, and each page of which was corrected and approved by Eichmann, demonstrates that the horrible can sometimes be not only ludicrous but downright funny. Some of the comedy cannot be conveyed in English, because it lies in Eichmann’s heroic fight with the German language, which invariably defeats him. It is funny when he speaks, passim, of “winged words” (“geflügelte Worte,” a German colloquialism for famous quotes from the classics), because he means “stock phrases” (“Redensarten”) or “slogans” (“Schlagworte”). It was both funny and confusing when, during the cross-examination conducted by Judge Landau on the Sassen documents, he used the phrase “kontra geben” (“to give tit for tat”), which is a term used in a card game called skat, to indicate that he had resisted Sassen’s efforts to liven up his stories; Judge Landau, obviously ignorant of the mysteries of card games, did not understand, and Eichmann could not think of any other way to put it. He himself seemed dimly aware of a defect that must have plagued him even in school—it amounted to a mild case of aphasia—for he apologized by saying, “Officialese [Amtssprache] is my only language.” The real point here is that officialese became his language because he was genuinely incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a cliché. (Was it these clichés that the psychiatrists thought so “normal” and “desirable”? Are these the “positive ideas” a clergyman hopes for in those to whose souls he ministers? Eichmann’s best opportunity to show this positive side of his character in Jerusalem came when the young police officer, in charge of his mental and psychological well-being, handed him “Lolita” for relaxation. After two days Eichmann returned it, visibly indignant; “That is quite an unwholesome book [Das ist aber ein sehr unerfreuliches Buch],” he told his guard.) The judges were right when they finally told the accused that all he had said was “empty talk”—except that they thought the emptiness feigned, and believed that the accused wished to cover up other thoughts, which were not empty but hideous. This supposition seems refuted by the striking consistency with which Eichmann, despite his rather bad memory, constantly repeated, word for word, the same stock phrases and self-invented clichés (when he did succeed in constructing a sentence of his own, he thereupon repeated it until it became a cliché) in referring to every event or incident that was of some importance to him. Whether he wrote his memoirs in Argentina or in Jerusalem, whether he talked to the police examiner or to the court, what he said was always the same, expressed in the same words. The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think; that is, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication with him was possible, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words of others, or even the presence of others, and hence against reality as such. Thus, confronted for eight months with the reality of being examined by a Jewish policeman, Eichmann did not have the slightest hesitation in explaining to him at considerable length, and repeatedly, how he had been unable to attain a higher grade in the S.S., and why this was not his fault. He had done everything; he had even asked to be sent to active military duty. (“Now, off to the front, I said to myself, then the Standartenführer [colonelcy] will come quicker.”) In court, on the contrary, he pretended that he had asked to be transferred because he wanted to escape his murderous duties. He did not insist much on this, though, and, strangely, he was not confronted with his statements to the police examiner, to whom he had said that he had hoped to be nominated for the Einsatzgruppen, the S.S. mobile killing units in the East, because by the time they were officially organized, in March, 1941, his office was “dead;” that is, there was no longer any emigration, and deportations had not yet been started. There was, finally, his greatest ambition—to be promoted to the job of police chief in some German town. Again, nothing doing. What makes these pages of the police examinations so funny is that Eichmann related all this in the tone of someone who was sure to find, as he put it, “normal, human” sympathy for a hard-luck story. “Whatever I prepared and planned, everything went wrong,” he said. “My personal affairs as well as my years-long efforts to obtain land and soil for the Jews came to naught. I don’t know—everything in my life was as if under an evil spell; whatever I planned and whatever I wanted and desired to do, fate prevented it somehow. I was frustrated in everything, no matter what.” When Captain Less asked his opinion on some damning and possibly lying evidence furnished by a former colonel of the S.S., he exclaimed, suddenly stuttering with rage, “I am very much surprised that this man could ever have been S.S. Standartenführer! That surprises me very much indeed. It is altogether, altogether unthinkable. I don’t know what to say.” He never said these things in a spirit of defiance, as though he wanted, even now, to defend the standards by which he had lived in the past. The very word “S.S.” or “career” or “Himmler” (whom he always spoke of by his long official title, Reichsführer S.S. and Chief of the German Police, although he by no means admired him) triggered in him a mechanism that had become completely unalterable. The presence of Captain Less, a Jew from Germany, who was unlikely to think that members of the S.S. advanced in their careers through the exercise of high moral qualities, did not for a moment throw this mechanism out of gear.

 Now and then, the comedy breaks into the horror itself, and the result is stories, presumably true enough, whose macabre humor easily surpasses that of any Surrealist invention. Such was the story that Eichmann told during the police examination about the unlucky Commercial Councillor Bertold Storfer, one of the representatives of the Viennese Jewish Community. Eichmann had received a telegram from Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz, telling him that Storfer had arrived and had urgently requested to see Eichmann. “I said to myself, O.K., this man has always behaved well; that is worth my while. . . . I’ll go there myself and see what is the matter with him. And I go to Ebner [chief of the Gestapo in Vienna], and Ebner says—I remember it only vaguely—‘Yes,’ he said, ‘if only he had not been so clumsy! He went into hiding and wanted to escape,’ or something of the sort. And the police arrested him and sent him to the concentration camp, and, according to the orders of the Reichsführer [Himmler], no one could get out once he was in. Nothing could be done; neither Dr. Ebner nor I nor anybody else could do anything about it. I went to Auschwitz, looked up Höss, and said: ‘Storfer is here?’ ‘Yes, yes [he replied], he is in one of the labor gangs.’ With Storfer afterward, well, it was normal and human; we had a normal, human encounter. He told me all his grief and sorrow. I said, ‘Well, my dear old friend [Ja, mein Lieber guter Storfer], we certainly got it! What rotten luck!’ And I also said, ‘Look, I really cannot help you, because according to orders of the Reichsführer nobody can get you out. I can’t get you out. Dr. Ebner can’t get you out. I hear you made a mistake, that you went into hiding or wanted to bolt, which, after all, you did not need to do.’ [Eichmann meant that Storfer, as a Jewish functionary, had immunity from deportation.] I forget what his reply to this was. And then I asked him how he was. And he said, yes, he wondered if he couldn’t be let off work; it was heavy work. And then I said to Höss, ‘Work—Storfer won’t have to work!’ Höss said, ‘Everyone works here.’ So I said, ‘O.K. I’ll make out a chit to the effect that Storfer has to keep the gravel paths in order with a broom’—there were little gravel paths there—‘and that he has the right to sit down with his broom on one of the benches.’ I said, ‘Will that be all right, Mr. Storfer? Will that suit you?’ Whereupon he was very pleased, and we shook hands, and then he was given the broom and sat down on the bench. It was a great inner joy to me that I could at least see the man with whom I had worked for so many long years, and that we could speak with each other.” Six weeks after this normal, human encounter, Storfer was dead—not gassed, apparently, but shot.

 Is this a textbook case of bad faith combined with outrageous stupidity? Or is it simply the case of the eternally unrepentant criminal (Dostoevski once mentions in his diaries that in Siberia, among scores of murderers, rapists, and burglars, he never met a single man who would admit that he had done wrong)—of the wrongdoer who cannot afford to face reality because his crime has become part and parcel of it? Yet Eichmann’s case is different from the case of the ordinary criminal, who can shield himself effectively against the reality of a non-criminal world only within the narrow limits of his gang. Eichmann needed only to recall the past in order to feel sure that he was not lying and that he was not deceiving himself, for he and the world he lived in had once been in perfect harmony. Eighty million Germans had been shielded against reality and factuality by exactly the same self-deception, lies, and stupidity that had now become ingrained in Eichmann’s nature. These lies changed from year to year, and they frequently contradicted each other; moreover, they were not necessarily the same for the various branches of the Party hierarchy or the people at large. But the practice of self-deception had become so widespread—almost a moral prerequisite for survival—that even now, eighteen years after the collapse of the Nazi regime, when most of the specific content of its lies has been forgotten, it is sometimes difficult not to believe that mendacity has become an integral part of the German national character. During the war, the lie that was most effective with the whole of the German people was the slogan calling the war “the battle of destiny for the German people” (“der Schicksalskampf des deutschen Volkes”). This slogan, which was coined either by Hitler or by Goebbels, made self-deception easier on three counts, for it suggested, first, that the war was no war; second, that it was started by destiny and not by Germany; and, third, that it was a matter of life and death for the Germans, who must annihilate their enemies or be annihilated.

 Eichmann’s astounding willingness, both in Argentina and in Jerusalem, to admit his crimes was due less to his own criminal capacity for self-deception than to the aura of systematic mendacity that had constituted the general, and generally accepted, atmosphere of the Third Reich. “Of course” he had played a role in the extermination of the Jews; of course if he “had not transported them, they would not have been delivered to the butcher.” He went on to ask, “What is there to ‘admit’?” Now, he proceeded, he “would like to find peace with [his] former enemies”—a sentiment he shared not only with Himmler (who had expressed it during the last year of the war) and with the Labor Front leader Robert Ley (who, before he committed suicide in Nuremberg, had proposed the establishment of a “conciliation committee” consisting of the Nazis responsible for the massacres and the Jewish survivors) but also, unbelievably, with many ordinary Germans, who were heard to express themselves in exactly the same terms at the end of the war. This outrageous cliché was no longer issued to them from above; it was a self-fabricated stock phrase, as devoid of reality as those clichés by which the people had lived for twelve years.

 Eichmann’s mind was filled to the brim with such sentences. His memory proved to he very unreliable about what actually happened. In a rare moment of exasperation, Judge Landau asked the accused, “What can you remember?” (if you don’t remember the discussions at the so-called Wannsee Conference, which dealt with the various methods of killing Jews); the answer, of course, was that Eichmann remembered the turning points in his own career rather well but that they did not necessarily coincide with the turning points in the story of Jewish extermination, or, as a matter of fact, with the turning points in history. (He always had trouble remembering the exact date of the outbreak of the war or of the invasion of Russia.) But the point of the matter is that he had not forgotten a single one of the sentences that at one time or another had served to give him what he repeatedly called a “sense of elation.” Hence, whenever, during the cross-examination, the judges tried to appeal to his conscience, they were met with “elation,” and they were outraged as well as disconcerted when they learned that the accused had at his disposal a different elating cliché for each period of his life and each of his activities. In his mind, there was no contradiction between “I will jump into my grave laughing,” appropriate for the end of the war, and “I am ready to hang myself in public as a warning example for all anti-Semites on this earth,” which now, under vastly different circumstances, fulfilled exactly the same function—that of giving him a lift.

 These habits of Eichmann’s created considerable difficulty during the trial—less for Eichmann himself than for those who had come to prosecute him, to defend him, to judge him, or to report on him. For all this, it was essential that one take him seriously, and this was very hard to do, unless one sought the easiest way out of the dilemma between the unspeakable horror of the deeds and the undeniable ludicrousness of the man who perpetrated them, and declared him a clever, calculating liar—which he obviously was not. His own convictions in this matter were far from modest: “One of the few gifts fate bestowed upon me is a capacity for truth insofar as it depends upon myself.” This gift he had claimed even before the prosecutor wanted to ascribe to him crimes he had not committed. In the disorganized, rambling notes he made in Argentina, in preparation for the interview with Sassen, when he was still, as he pointed out at the time, “in full possession of my physical and psychological freedom,” he had issued a fantastic warning to “future historians [to] be objective enough not to stray from the path of truth recorded here”—fantastic because every line of these scribblings shows his utter ignorance of everything that was not directly, technically, bureaucratically connected with his job, and also shows an extraordinarily faulty memory.

 Despite all the efforts of the prosecution, everybody could see that this man was not a “monster,” but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown. And since this suspicion would have been fatal to the whole enterprise, and was also rather hard to sustain, in view of the sufferings he and his like had caused so many millions of people, his worst clowneries were hardly noticed. What could you do with a man who first declared, with great emphasis, that the one thing he had learned in an ill-spent life was that one should never take an oath (“Today no man, no judge could ever persuade me to make a sworn statement. I refuse it; I refuse it for moral reasons. Since my experience tells me that if one is loyal to his oath, one day he has to take the consequences, I have made up my mind once and for all that no judge in the world or other authority will ever be capable of making me swear an oath, to give sworn testimony. I won’t do it voluntarily and no one will be able to force me”), and then, after being told explicitly that if he wished to testify in his own defense he might “do so under oath or without an oath,” declared without further ado that he would prefer to testify under oath? Or who, repeatedly and with a great show of feeling, assured the court, as he had assured the police examiner, that the worst thing he could do would be to try to escape his true responsibilities, to fight for his neck, to plead for mercy—and then, upon instruction of his counsel, submitted a handwritten document that contained a plea for mercy? As far as Eichmann was concerned, these were questions of changing moods, not of inconsistencies, and as long as he was capable of finding, either in his memory or on the spur of the moment, an elating stock phrase to go with them, he was quite content. ♦

 Published in the print edition of the February 16, 1963, issue.
 Hannah Arendt, the author of “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” died in 1975. Her earliest reporting for The New Yorker became the 1963 book “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.”
 More: Adolf Benjamin Cohn Concentration Camps David Egypt Frank Frankel Franz Germans Germany Hans Hermann Israel Jews Joseph Karl Martin Nazis Richard Richter Trials Zionism

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This is the first of a series of articles. Read the second part.   Every morning, the words “Beth Hamishpath” (“The House of Justice”), shouted by the court usher at the top of his voice, make us jump to our feet as they announce the arrival of the three judges, who, bare-headed and in black robes, walk into the courtroom from a side entrance to take their seats on the highest tier of the raised platform at the front of the long hall. They sit at a long table, which is eventually to be covered with innumerable books and more than fifteen hundred documents. Immediately below the judges are the translators, whose services are needed for direct exchanges between the defendant or his counsel and the court; otherwise, Adolf Eichmann, the German-speaking accused party, like all the other foreigners in the courtroom, follows the Hebrew proceedings through the simultaneous radio transmission, which is excellent in French, bearable in English, and sheer comedy—frequently incomprehensible—in German. (In view of the scrupulous fairness of all the technical arrangements for the trial, it is among the minor mysteries of the new State of Israel that, with its high percentage of German-born people, it was unable to find an adequate translator into the only language the accused and his counsel could understand. The old prejudice against German Jews, once very pronounced in Israel, is no longer strong enough to account for it.) One tier below the translators are the glass booth of the accused and the witness box, facing each other. Finally, on the bottom tier, with their backs to the spectators, are the prosecutor, Attorney General Gideon Hausner, with his staff of four assistant attorneys, and Dr. Robert Servatius, counsel for the defense—a lawyer from Cologne, chosen by Eichmann and paid by the Israeli government (just as at the Nuremberg Trials all attorneys for the accused were paid by the tribunal of the victorious powers), who during the first weeks is accompanied by an assistant. Whoever planned this auditorium in the newly built House of the People, Beth Ha’am—now guarded from roof to cellar by heavily armed police, and surrounded by high fences, as well as by a wooden row of barracks in the front courtyard, in which all comers are expertly frisked—obviously had a theatre in mind, complete with orchestra and balcony, with proscenium and stage, and with side doors for the actors’ entrances. At no time, however, is there anything theatrical in the conduct of the judges—Moshe Landau, the presiding judge, Judge Benjamin Halevi, and Judge Yitzhak Raveh. Their walk is unstudied; their sober and intense attention, visibly stiffening under the impact of grief as they listen to the tales of suffering, is natural; their impatience with the prosecutor’s attempt to drag out the hearings is spontaneous and refreshing; their attitude toward the defense is perhaps a shade over-polite, as though they had it always in mind that, to quote the judgment they handed down, “Dr. Servatius stood almost alone in this strenuous legal battle, in an unfamiliar environment;” their manner toward the accused is always beyond reproach. They are so evidently three good and honest men that one is not surprised to see that none of them yields to the greatest of all the temptations to play-act in this setting—that of pretending that they, all three born and educated in Germany, must wait for the Hebrew translation of anything said in German. Judge Landau hardly ever waits to give his answer until the translator has done his work, and he frequently interrupts the translation to correct and improve it, appearing grateful for this bit of distraction from the grim business at hand. In time, during the cross-examination of the accused, he even leads his colleagues to use their German mother tongue in the dialogue with Eichmann—a proof, if proof were still needed, of his remarkable independence of current public opinion in Israel. There is no doubt from the very beginning that it is Judge Landau who sets the tone, and that he is doing his best—his very best—to prevent this trial from becoming a “show” trial under the direction of the prosecutor, whose love of showmanship is unmistakable. Among the reasons he cannot always succeed is the simple fact that the proceedings happen on a stage before an audience, with the usher’s marvellous shout at the beginning of each session producing the effect of a rising curtain. Clearly, this courtroom is well suited to the show trial that David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel, had in mind when he decided to have Eichmann kidnapped in Argentina and brought to the District Court of Jerusalem to answer the charge that he had played a principal role in “the Final Solution of the Jewish question,” as the Nazis called their plan to exterminate the Jews. And Ben-Gurion, who has rightly been given the title of “architect of the state,” is the invisible stage manager of the proceedings. He does not attend a single one of the sessions; in the courtroom, he speaks with the voice of his Attorney General, who, representing the government, does his best—his very best—to obey his master. And if his best often turns out not to be good enough, the reason is that the trial is presided over by someone who serves Justice as faithfully as Mr. Hausner serves the State of Israel. Justice demands that the accused be prosecuted, defended, and judged, and that all the other questions, though they may seem to be of greater import—of “How could it happen?” and “Why did it happen?,” of “Why the Jews?” and “Why the Germans?,” of “What was the role of other nations?” and “What was the extent to which the Allies shared the responsibility?,” of “How could the Jews, through their own leaders, coöperate in their own destruction?” and “Why did they go to their death like lambs to the slaughter?”—be left in abeyance. Justice insists on the importance of Adolf Eichmann, the man in the glass booth built for his protection: medium-sized, slender, middle-aged, with receding hair, ill-fitting teeth, and nearsighted eyes, who throughout the trial keeps craning his scraggy neck toward the bench (not once does he turn to face the audience), and who desperately tries to maintain his self-control—and mostly succeeds, despite a nervous tic, to which his mouth must have become subject long before this trial started. On trial are his deeds, not the sufferings of the Jews, not the German people or mankind, not even anti-Semitism and racism. And Justice turns out to be a much sterner master than the Prime Minister. The latter’s rule, as Mr. Hausner is not slow in demonstrating, is permissive; it permits the prosecutor to give press conferences and interviews for television during the trial (the American program, sponsored by the Glickman Corporation, is constantly interrupted—business as usual—by real-estate advertising), and even “spontaneous” outbursts to reporters in the court building (he is sick of cross-examining Eichmann, who answers all questions with lies); it permits frequent side glances into the audience, and the theatrics characteristic of a conspicuous vanity, which finally achieves its triumph in the White House with a compliment on “a job well done” by the President of the United States. Justice does not permit anything of the sort; it demands seclusion, it requires sorrow rather than anger, and it prescribes the most careful abstention from all the nice pleasures of putting oneself in the limelight. Yet no matter how consistently the judges shun the limelight, there they are, seated at the top of the platform, facing the audience as from a stage. The audience is supposed to represent the whole world, and in the first few weeks it indeed consisted chiefly of newspapermen and magazine writers who had flocked to Jerusalem from the four corners of the earth. They were to watch a spectacle as sensational as the Nuremberg Trials; only this time, Mr. Hausner noted, “the tragedy of Jewry as a whole was the central concern.” In fact, said Hausner, “if we charge him [Eichmann] also with crimes against non-Jews . . . this is” not because he committed them but, surprisingly, “because we make no ethnic distinctions.” That was certainly a remarkable sentence for a prosecutor to utter in his opening speech; it proved to be the key sentence in the case for the prosecution. For this case was built on what the Jews had suffered, not on what Eichmann had done. And, according to Mr. Hausner, that amounted to the same thing, because “there was only one man who had been concerned almost entirely with the Jews, whose business had been their destruction, whose role in the establishment of the iniquitous regime had been limited to them. That was Adolf Eichmann.” Was it not logical to bring before the court all the facts of Jewish suffering (which, of course, were never in dispute) and then look for evidence that, in one way or another, would connect Eichmann with what had happened? The Nuremberg Trials, where the defendants had been “indicted for crimes against members of many and various nations,” had left the Jewish tragedy out of account, Hausner said, for the simple reason that Eichmann had not been there. Did Hausner really believe the Nuremberg Trials would have paid greater attention to the fate of the Jews if Eichmann had been in the dock? Hardly. Like almost everybody else in Israel, he believed that only a Jewish court could render justice to Jews, and that it was the business of Jews to sit in judgment on their enemies. If the audience was to be the world and the play was to be the huge panorama of Jewish suffering, the reality was falling short of expectations and failing to accomplish its purpose. The journalists remained faithful for no more than two weeks, and then the audience changed drastically. It was now supposed to consist of Israelis, and, specifically, of those who were too young to know the story or, as in the case of Oriental Jews, had never been told it. The trial was supposed to show them what it meant to live among non-Jews, to convince them that only in Israel could a Jew be safe and live an honorable life. (For correspondents, the lesson was spelled out in a little booklet on Israel’s legal system, which was handed to the press. Its author, Doris Lankin, cites a decision of Israel’s Supreme Court whereby two fathers who had “abducted their children and brought them to Israel” were directed to send them back to their mothers, living abroad, who had a legal right to their custody. This, says the author—no less proud of such strict legality than Hausner of his willingness to prosecute a murder charge even when the victims of the murder were non-Jews—“despite the fact that to send the children back to maternal custody and care would be committing them to waging an unequal struggle against the hostile elements in the Diaspora.”) But in actuality there were hardly any young people in the audience, and it did not consist of Israelis, as distinguished from Jews. It was filled with “survivors”—middle-aged and elderly people, immigrants from Europe, like myself—who knew by heart all that there was to know, and who were in no mood to learn any lessons and certainly did not need this trial to draw their own conclusions. As witness followed witness and horror was piled upon horror, they sat there and listened in public to stories they would hardly have been able to endure in private, when they would have had to face the storyteller. And the more “the calamity [in Hausner’s words] of the Jewish people in this generation” unfolded, and the more grandiose Hausner’s rhetoric became, the paler and more ghostlike became the figure in the glass booth, and no finger-wagging (“And there sits the monster responsible for all this”) could summon him back to life. It was precisely the play aspect of the trial that collapsed under the weight of the hair-raising atrocities. A trial resembles a play in that both focus on the doer, not on the victim. A show trial, to be effective, needs even more urgently than an ordinary trial a limited and well-defined outline of what the doer did, and how. In the center of a trial can only be the one who did—in this respect, he is like the hero in the play—and if he suffers, he must suffer for what he has done, not for what he has caused others to suffer. No one knew this better than the presiding judge, before whose eyes the trial began to deteriorate into a bloody spectacle, or, as the judgment called it, “a rudderless ship tossed about by the waves.” But if his efforts to prevent this were often defeated, the defeat was, strangely, in part the fault of the defense, which hardly ever rose to challenge any testimony, no matter how irrelevant or immaterial it might be. Dr. Servatius (as everybody invariably addressed him) was a bit bolder when it came to the submission of documents, and the most impressive of his rare interventions occurred when the prosecution introduced as evidence the diaries of Hans Frank, wartime Governor General of Poland and one of the major war criminals hanged at Nuremberg. “I have only one question,” Dr. Servatius said. “Is the name Adolf Eichmann, the name of the accused, mentioned in those twenty-nine volumes [in fact, it was thirty-eight]? . . . The name Adolf Eichmann is not mentioned in all those twenty-nine volumes. . . . Thank you, no more questions.” Thus, the trial never became a play, but the show that Ben-Gurion had had in mind did take place—or, rather, the “lessons” he thought should be offered to Israelis and Arabs, to Jews and Gentiles; that is, to the whole world. These lessons to be drawn from an identical show were meant to be different for the different recipients. Ben-Gurion had outlined them before the trial started, in a number of articles that were designed to explain why Israel had kidnapped the accused. There was the lesson to the non-Jewish world: “I want to establish before the nations of the world how millions of people, because they happened to be Jews, and one million babies, because they happened to be Jewish babies, were murdered by the Nazis.” Or, in the words of Davar, the organ of Ben-Gurion’s Mapai party: “Let world opinion know this, that not Nazi Germany alone was responsible for the destruction of six million Jews of Europe.” Hence, again in Ben-Gurion’s own words, “We want the nations of the world to know . . . and they should be ashamed.” The Jews in the Diaspora were to remember how “four-thousand-year-old Judaism, with its spiritual creations, its ethical strivings, its Messianic aspirations, had always faced a hostile world,” how the Jews had degenerated until they went to their death like sheep, and how only the establishment of a Jewish state had enabled Jews to hit back, as Israelis had done in the War of Independence, in the Suez adventure, and in the almost daily incidents on Israel’s unhappy borders. And if the Jews outside Israel had to be shown the difference between Israeli heroism and Jewish submissive meekness, there was a complementary lesson for the Israelis; for “the generation of Israelis who have grown up since the holocaust” were in danger of losing their ties with the Jewish people and, by implication, with their own history. “It is necessary that our youth remember what happened to the Jewish people. We want them to know the most tragic facts in our history.” Finally, one of the motives in bringing Eichmann to trial was “to ferret out other Nazis—for example, the connection between the Nazis and some Arab rulers.”   If these had been the only justifications for bringing Adolf Eichmann to the District Court of Jerusalem, the trial would have been a failure on most counts. In some respects, the lessons were superfluous, and in others they were positively misleading. Thanks to Hitler, anti-Semitism has been discredited, perhaps not forever but certainly for the time being, and this is not because the Jews have become more popular all of a sudden but because not only Ben-Gurion but most people have “realized that in our day the gas chamber and the soap factory are what anti-Semitism may lead to.” Equally superfluous was the lesson to the Jews in the Diaspora, who hardly needed a great catastrophe in which a third of their people perished to be convinced of the world’s hostility. Not only has their conviction of the eternal and ubiquitous nature of anti-Semitism been the most potent ideological factor in the Zionist involvement since the Dreyfus Affair; it must also have been the cause of the otherwise inexplicable readiness of the German-Jewish community to negotiate with the Nazi authorities during the early stages of the regime. This conviction produced a fatal inability to distinguish between friend and foe; the German Jews underestimated their enemies because they somehow thought that all Gentiles were alike. The contrast between Israeli heroism and the submissive meekness with which Jews went to their death—arriving on time at the transportation points, walking under their own power to the places of execution, digging their own graves, undressing and making neat piles of their clothing, and lying down side by side to be shot—seemed a telling point, and the prosecutor, asking witness after witness, “Why did you not protest?,” “Why did you board the train?,” “Fifteen thousand people were standing there and hundreds of guards facing you—why didn’t you revolt and charge and attack these guards?,” harped on it for all it was worth. But the sad truth of the matter is that the point was ill taken, for no non-Jewish group or non-Jewish people had behaved differently. Sixteen years ago, while still under the direct impact of the events, a former French inmate of Buchenwald, David Rousset, described, in “Les Jours de Notre Mort,” the logic that obtained in all concentration camps: “The triumph of the S.S. demands that the tortured victim allow himself to be led to the noose without protesting, that he renounce and abandon himself to the point of ceasing to affirm his identity. And it is not for nothing. It is not gratuitously, out of sheer sadism, that the S.S. men desire his defeat. They know that the system which succeeds in destroying its victim before he mounts the scaffold . . . is incomparably the best for keeping a whole people in slavery. In submission. Nothing is more terrible than these processions of human beings going like dummies to their death.” The court received no answer to this cruel and silly question, but one could easily have found an answer had he permitted his imagination to dwell for a few minutes on the fate of those Dutch Jews who in 1941, in the old Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, dared to attack a German security police detachment. Four hundred and thirty Jews were arrested in reprisal, and they were literally tortured to death, being sent first to Buchenwald and then to the Austrian camp of Mauthausen. Month after month, they died a thousand deaths, and every single one of them would have envied his brethren in Auschwitz had he known about them. There exist many things considerably worse than death, and the S.S. saw to it that none of them was ever very far from the mind and imagination of their victims. In this respect, perhaps even more significantly than in others, the deliberate attempt in Jerusalem to tell only the Jewish side of the story distorted the truth, even the Jewish truth. The glory of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and the heroism of the few others who fought back lay precisely in their having refused the comparatively easy death that the Nazis offered them—before the firing squad or in the gas chamber. And the witnesses in Jerusalem who testified to resistance and rebellion, to “the small place the uprising had in this history of the holocaust,” confirmed the known fact that only the very young had been capable of taking the “decision that we cannot go and be slaughtered like sheep.” In one respect, Ben-Gurion’s expectations for the trial were not altogether disappointed, for it did indeed become an important instrument for ferreting out other Nazis and criminals—but not in the Arab countries, which had openly offered refuge to hundreds of them. The wartime relationship between the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Nazis was no secret; he had hoped they would help him in the implementation of some “Final Solution” of the Jewish question in the Near East. Hence, newspapers in Damascus and Beirut, in Cairo and Amman, did not hide their sympathy for Eichmann or their regret that he had not “finished the job;” a broadcast from Cairo on the day the trial opened went as far as to inject a slightly anti-German note into its comments, complaining that there was not “a single incident in which one German plane flew over one Jewish settlement [in Palestine] and dropped one bomb on it throughout the last world war.” That Arab nationalists have been in sympathy with Nazism is notorious, and neither Ben-Gurion nor this trial was needed “to ferret them out;” they were never in hiding. The trial revealed only that all rumors about Eichmann’s connection with Haj Amin el Husseini, the wartime Mufti of Jerusalem, were unfounded. (Along with other departmental heads, he had once been introduced to the Mufti during a reception at an S.S. office in Berlin.) Documents produced by the prosecution showed that the Mufti had been in close contact with the German Foreign Office and with Himmler, but this was nothing new. But if Ben-Gurion’s remark about “the connection between the Nazis and some Arab rulers” was pointless, his failure to mention present-day West Germany in this context was surprising. Of course, it was reassuring to hear that Israel “does not hold Adenauer responsible for Hitler,” and that “for us a decent German, although he belongs to the same nation that twenty years ago helped to murder millions of Jews, is a decent human being.” (There was no mention of decent Arabs.) While the German Federal Republic has not yet recognized the State of Israel—presumably out of fear that the Arab countries might thereupon recognize Ulbricht’s Germany—it has paid seven hundred and thirty-seven million dollars in reparation to Israel during the last ten years; the reparation payments will soon come to an end, and Israel is now trying to arrange with West Germany for a long-term loan. Hence, the relationship between the two countries, and particularly the personal relationship between Ben-Gurion and Adenauer, has been quite good, and if, as an aftermath of the trial, some deputies in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, succeeded in imposing certain restraints on the cultural-exchange program with West Germany, this certainly was not hoped for, or even foreseen, by Ben-Gurion. It is more noteworthy that he did not foresee, or did not care to mention, the fact that Eichmann’s capture would trigger the first serious effort made by West Germans to bring to trial at least those war criminals who were directly implicated in murder. The Central Agency for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes, which was belatedly set up by the eleven West German states in 1958 (barely two years before—in May, 1960—the West German statute of limitations wiped out all offenses except first-degree murder, for which the time limit is twenty years), and of which Prosecutor Erwin Schüle is the head, had run into all kinds of difficulties, caused partly by the unwillingness of German witnesses to coöperate and partly by the unwillingness of the local courts to prosecute on the basis of material sent to them from the Central Agency. It was not that the trial in Jerusalem produced any important new evidence of the kind needed for the discovery of Eichmann’s associates but that the news of Eichmann’s sensational capture and the prospect of his trial had an impact strong enough to persuade the local courts to use Mr. Schüle’s findings and to overcome the native reluctance to do anything about the “murderers in our midst” by the time-honored expedient of posting rewards for the capture of well-known criminals.   The results were amazing. Seven months after Eichmann’s arrival in Jerusalem—and four months before the opening of the trial—Richard Baer, successor to Rudolf Höss as commandant of Auschwitz, was finally arrested. Then, in rapid succession, most of the members of the so-called Eichmann Commando—Franz Novak, Eichmann’s transportation officer, who had been living as a printer in Austria; Dr. Otto Hunsche, his legal expert and his assistant in Hungary, who had settled as a lawyer in West Germany; Hermann Krumey, Eichmann’s second in command in Hungary, who had become a druggist; Gustav Richter, former “Jewish adviser” in Rumania; and Dr. Günther Zöpf, who had filled the same post in Amsterdam—were arrested, too. (Although evidence against these five had been published in Germany years before, in books and magazine articles, not one of them had found it necessary to live under an assumed name.) For the first time since the close of the war, German newspapers were full of stories about trials of Nazi criminals—all of them mass murderers—and the reluctance of the local courts to prosecute these crimes still showed itself in the fantastically lenient sentences meted out to those convicted. (Thus, Dr. Hunsche, who was personally responsible for a last-minute deportation of some twelve hundred Hungarian Jews, of whom at least six hundred were killed, received a sentence of five years of hard labor; Dr. Otto Bradfisch, of the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing units of the S.S. in the East, was sentenced to ten years of hard labor for the killing of fifteen thousand Jews; and Joseph Lechthaler, who had “liquidated” the Jewish inhabitants of Slutsk and Smolevichi, in Russia, was sentenced to three years and six months.) Among the new arrests were people of great prominence under the Nazis, most of whom had already been denazified by the German courts. One was S.S. Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, former chief of Himmler’s personal staff, who, according to a document submitted in 1946 at Nuremberg, had greeted “with particular joy” the news that “for two weeks now a train has been carrying, every day, five thousand members of the Chosen People” from Warsaw to Treblinka, one of the Eastern killing centers. He still awaits trial. The trial of Wilhelm Koppe, who had at first managed the gassing of Jews in Chelmno and then become the successor of Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger in Poland, in a high post in the S.S. whose duties included making Poland judenrein (Jew-clean)—in postwar West Germany, he was the director of a chocolate factory—has not yet taken place. Occasional harsh sentences were even less reassuring, for they were meted out to offenders like Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, a former S.S. Obergruppenführer. He was tried in 1961 for his participation in the Röhm rebellion in 1934, was sentenced to four and a half years, and then was indicted again in 1962 for the killing of six German Communists in 1933, tried before a jury in Nuremberg, and sentenced to life. Neither indictment mentioned that Bach-Zelewski had been anti-partisan chief on the Russian front or that he had participated in the Jewish massacres at Minsk and Mogilev, in White Russia. Should a German court, on the pretext that war crimes are no crimes, make “ethnic distinctions”? And is it possible that what was an unusually harsh sentence (for a German postwar court) was arrived at because Bach-Zelewski was among the very few Nazi leaders who had tried to protect Jews from the Einsatzgruppen, suffered a nervous breakdown after the mass killings, and testified for the prosecution in Nuremberg? (He was also the only such leader who in 1952 had denounced himself publicly for mass murder, but he was never prosecuted for it.) There is little hope that things will change now, even though the Adenauer administration has been forced to weed out of the judiciary a hundred and forty-odd judges and prosecutors, along with many police officers, with a more than ordinarily compromising past, and to dismiss the chief prosecutor of the Federal Supreme Court, Wolfgang Immerwahr Fränkel, because, his middle name notwithstanding, he had been less than candid when he was asked about his Nazi past. It has been estimated that of the eleven thousand five hundred judges in the Bundesrepublik, five thousand were active in the courts under the Hitler regime. In November, 1962, shortly after the purging of the judiciary and six months after Eichmann’s name had disappeared from the news, the long awaited trial of Martin Fellenz took place at Flensburg in an almost empty courtroom. The former Higher S.S. and Police Leader, who had been a prominent member of the Free Democratic Party in Adenauer’s Germany, was arrested in June, 1960, a few weeks after Eichmann’s capture. He was accused of participation in, and partial responsibility for, the murder of forty thousand Jews in Poland. After more than six weeks of detailed testimony, the prosecutor demanded the maximum penalty—a life sentence, to be served at hard labor. And the court sentenced him to four years, two and a half of which he had already served while waiting in jail. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the Eichmann trial had its deepest and most far-reaching consequences in Germany. The attitude of the German people toward their own past, which all experts on the German question had puzzled over for fifteen years, could hardly have been more clearly demonstrated: they themselves did not care much about it one way or the other, and did not particularly mind the presence of murderers at large in the country, since none of these particular murderers were likely to commit murder now, of their own free will; however, if world opinion—or, rather, what the Germans call das Ausland, collecting all countries outside Germany into a singular noun—became obstinate and demanded that these people be punished, they were perfectly willing to oblige, at least up to a point. When Eichmann was captured, Chancellor Adenauer had foreseen embarrassment and had voiced a fear that the trial would “stir up again all the horrors” and produce a new wave of anti-German feeling throughout the world—as it did. During the ten months that Israel needed to prepare the trial, Germany was busy bracing herself against its predictable results by showing an unprecedented zeal for searching out and prosecuting Nazi criminals within the country. At no time, however, did either the German authorities or any significant segment of public opinion demand Eichmann’s extradition, which seemed the obvious move, since every sovereign state is jealous of its right to sit in judgment on its own offenders. (The official objection of the Adenauer government that such a move was not possible because there existed no extradition treaty between Israel and West Germany is not valid; it meant only that Israel could not have been forced to extradite. Fritz Bauer, Attorney General of Hessen, applied to the federal government in Bonn to start extradition proceedings. But Mr. Bauer’s feelings in this matter were the feelings of a German Jew, and they were not shared by German public opinion. His application was not only refused by Bonn, it was hardly noticed and remained totally unsupported. Another argument against extradition, offered by the observers the West German government sent to Jerusalem, was that Germany had abolished capital punishment and hence was unable to mete out the sentence Eichmann deserved. In view of the leniency shown by German courts to Nazi murderers, it was difficult not to suspect that this objection was made in bad faith. Surely, the greatest political hazard of an Eichmann trial in Germany would have been that a German court might not have given him the maximum penalty under German law.)   Another aspect of the matter was at once more delicate and more relevant to the political situation in Germany. It was one thing to ferret out mass murderers and other criminals from their hiding places, and it was another thing to find them prominent and active in the public realm—to encounter innumerable men in the federal and state administrations whose careers had bloomed under the Hitler regime. To be sure, if the Adenauer administration had been too sensitive in employing officials with a compromising Nazi past, there might have been no administration at all. For the truth is, of course, the exact opposite of what Dr. Adenauer asserted it to be when he said that only “a relatively small percentage” of Germans had been Nazis, and that “a great majority were happy to help their Jewish fellow-citizens when they could.” (At least one West German newspaper, the Frankfurter Rundschau, asked itself the obvious question, long overdue—why so many people who must have known, for instance, the record of Wolfgang Immerwahr Frankel had kept silent—and then came up with the even more obvious answer: “Because they themselves felt incriminated.”) The logic of the Eichmann trial, as Ben-Gurion conceived of it—a trial stressing general issues, to the detriment of legal niceties—would have demanded exposure of the complicity of all German bureaus and authorities in the so-called Final Solution of the Jewish question; of all civil servants in the state ministries; of the regular armed forces, with their General Staff; of the judiciary; and of the business world. But although the prosecution went as far afield as to put witness after witness on the stand who testified to things that, while gruesome and true enough, had only the slightest connection, or none, with the deeds of the accused, it carefully avoided touching upon this highly explosive matter—upon the almost ubiquitous complicity, stretching far beyond the ranks of the Party membership. (There were widespread rumors prior to the trial that Eichmann had named “several hundred prominent personalities of the Federal Republic as his accomplices,” but these rumors were not true In his opening speech, Mr. Hausner still mentioned Eichmann’s “accomplices in the crime [who] were neither gangsters nor men of the underworld,” and promised that we should “encounter them—the doctors and lawyers, scholars, bankers, and economists—in those councils that resolved to exterminate the Jews.” This promise was not kept—nor could it have been kept in the form in which it was made, for in the Nazi regime there were no “councils that resolved” anything, and the “robed dignitaries with academic degrees” made no decision to exterminate the Jews; they came together only to plan the necessary steps in carrying out an order given by Hitler.) Still, one case of complicity was brought to the attention of the court—that of Dr. Hans Globke, who, more than twenty-five years ago, was co-author of an infamous commentary on the Nuremberg Laws and, somewhat later, author of the brilliant idea of compelling all German Jews to take “Israel” or “Sarah” as a middle name, and who is today one of Adenauer’s closest advisers. And Globke’s name—and only his name—was inserted into the proceedings by the defense, and probably only in the hope of “persuading” the Adenauer government to start proceedings to extradite Eichmann. Still, former Ministry Official and present Undersecretary of State Globke doubtless had more right than the former Mufti of Jerusalem to figure in the history of what the Jews had actually suffered at the hands of the Nazis. And it was history that, as far as the prosecution was concerned, stood at the center of the trial. “It is not an individual that is in the dock at this historic trial, and not the Nazi regime alone,” Ben-Gurion said, “but anti-Semitism throughout history.” The tone set by Ben-Gurion was faithfully followed by Hausner. He began his opening address (which lasted through three sessions) with Pharaoh In Egypt and Haman’s decree “to destroy, to slay, and to cause them [the Jews] to perish.” He then proceeded to quote from Ezekiel’s words “And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee: ‘In thy blood, live!,’ ” explaining that they must be understood as “the imperative that has confronted this nation ever since its first appearance on the stage of history.” It was bad history and cheap rhetoric; worse, it was clearly at cross-purposes with putting Eichmann on trial at all, since it suggested that perhaps he was only an innocent executor of some mysteriously foreordained destiny, or even, for that matter, of anti-Semitism, which had been necessary to blaze the trail of “the bloodstained road travelled by this people” to fulfill its destiny. A few sessions later, after Salo W. Baron, Professor of Jewish History at Columbia University, had testified to the more recent history of Eastern European Jewry, Dr. Servatius could no longer resist temptation and asked the obvious questions: “Why did all this bad luck fall upon the Jewish people?” and “Don’t you think that irrational motives are at the basis of the fate of this people? Beyond the understanding of a human being?” Is not there perhaps something like “the spirit of history, which brings history forward . . . without the influence of men?” Is not Mr. Hausner basically in agreement with “the school of historical law”—an allusion to Hegel—and has he not shown that what “the leaders do will not always lead to the aim and destination they wanted?” And Dr. Servatius added, “Here the intention was to destroy the Jewish people and the objective was not reached and a new flourishing state came into being.” The argument of the defense had now come perilously close to the newest anti-Semitic theory about the Elders of Zion, which had been set forth in all seriousness a few weeks earlier in the old Egyptian National Assembly by Hussain Zulficar Sabri, Nasser’s Deputy Foreign Minister: Hitler was innocent of the slaughter of the Jews; he was a victim of the Zionists, who had compelled “Hitler to perpetrate crimes and to create the legend that would eventually enable them to achieve their aim—the creation of the State of Israel.” Except that Dr. Servatius, following the philosophy of history expounded by the prosecutor, had put History in the place of the Elders of Zion.   Despite the intentions of Ben-Gurion and the efforts of the prosecution, there remained an individual in the dock, a person of flesh and blood, and even if Ben-Gurion, as he claimed, did not “care what verdict is delivered against Eichmann,” it was undeniably the sole task of the Jerusalem court to deliver one. Otto Adolf, son of Karl Adolf Eichmann and Maria née Schefferling, caught in a suburb of Buenos Aires on the evening of May 11, 1960, flown to Israel nine days later, brought to trial in the District Court of Jerusalem on April 1, 1961, stood accused on fifteen counts; “together with others,” he had committed crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and war crimes during the whole period of the Nazi regime and especially during the period of the Second World War. The Israeli Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law of 1950, under which he was tried, provides that “a person who has committed one of the . . . [three] offenses . . . is liable to the death penalty.” To each count Eichmann pleaded, “In the sense of the indictment, not guilty.” In which sense, then, did he think he was guilty? During the long cross-examination of the accused—Eichmann asserted that it was “the longest ever known”—neither the defense nor the prosecution nor any of the three judges ever bothered to ask him this obvious question. Dr. Servatius answered the question in a press interview—“Eichmann feels guilty before God, not before the law”—but this answer was never confirmed by the accused himself. The defense would apparently have preferred him to plead not guilty on other grounds: that under the Nazi legal system he had not done anything wrong; that the deeds he was accused of were not crimes but “acts of state,” over which no other state has jurisdiction (par in parem imperium non habet); that it had been his duty to obey; and that, in Dr. Servatius’ words, he had committed acts “for which you are decorated if you win and go to the gallows if you lose.” In Germany (at a meeting of the Catholic Academy in Bavaria that was devoted to “the ticklish problem” of “the possibilities and limits of coping with historical and political guilt through criminal proceedings”), Dr. Servatius went a step further, and declared that “the only legitimate criminal problem of the Eichmann trial lies in pronouncing judgment against his Israeli captors, which so far has not been done”—a statement, incidentally, that is somewhat difficult to reconcile with certain of his most often repeated and most widely publicized utterances in Israel, in which he called the conduct of the trial “a great spiritual achievement” and compared it favorably with the Nuremberg Trials. Eichmann’s own attitude, it appeared, was different. First of all, the indictment for murder was wrong: “But I had nothing to do with the killing of the Jews. I never killed a Jew, or, for that matter, I never killed a non-Jew—I never killed any human being. I never gave an order to kill a Jew nor an order to kill a non-Jew; I just did not do it.” Or, as he was later to qualify this statement, “It so happened . . . that I had not once to do it”—for he said explicitly that he would have killed his own father if he had received an order to that effect. Thus, he repeated over and over a statement that he had first made in the so-called Sassen documents—an interview that he had given in 1955 in Argentina to the Dutch journalist Willem S. Sassen, a former S.S. man who was also a fugitive from justice, and that, after Eichmann’s capture, was published, in part, by Life in this country and by Der Stern in West Germany. He said that he could be accused only of “aiding and abetting” the almost successful annihilation of the Jews, and in Jerusalem he declared this annihilation to have been “one of the greatest crimes in the history of humanity.” The defense paid no attention to Eichmann’s own theory, but the prosecution wasted much time on an unsuccessful effort to prove that Eichmann had once, at least, killed with his own hands (he was supposed to have beaten to death a Jewish boy in Hungary). It spent more time, more successfully, on a note that Franz Rademacher, the Jewish expert in the German Foreign Office, had scribbled on a document dealing with Yugoslavia, made during a telephone conversation, which read, “Eichmann proposes shooting.” This turned out to be the only “order to kill,” if that is what it was, for which there existed a shred of evidence. The evidence that he had “proposed shooting” was more questionable than it appeared to be during the trial, when the judges accepted the prosecutor’s version as against Eichmann’s categorical denial that he had ever killed or given an order to kill—a denial that was very ineffective, since it involved an implication that he had forgotten, as Dr. Servatius put it, “a brief incident [the killing of a mere eight thousand people], which was not so striking.” The incident took place in the autumn of 1941. The German Army had occupied the Serbian part of Yugoslavia six months earlier, and had been plagued by partisan warfare ever since. At length, the military authorities had decided to solve two problems at a stroke by shooting a hundred Jews and Gypsies as hostages for every dead German soldier. To be sure, neither Jews nor Gypsies were partisans, but, in the words of the responsible civilian officer in the military government, a certain Staatsrat Harald Turner, “the Jews we had in the camps [anyhow]; after all, they too are Serb nationals, and besides, they have to disappear.” The camps had been set up by General Franz Böhme, military governor of the region, and housed Jewish males only; neither General Böhme nor Staatsrat Turner had sought Eichmann’s approval before starting to shoot Jews—or Gypsies, for that matter—by the thousand. The trouble began when Böhme, without consulting the appropriate police and S.S. authorities, decided to deport all his Jews, probably in order to show that no special troops, under a different command, were required to make Serbia judenrein. Eichmann was informed, since it was a matter of deportation, and this was precisely his job. He refused to coöperate, because it interfered with other plans of the S.S. outfit to which he belonged, the Head Office for Reich Security, or R.S.H.A. (the Reichssicherheitshauptamt), but it was not Eichmann, it was a man named Martin Luther, of the Foreign Office, who reminded General Böhme that “in other territories [meaning Russia] other military commanders have taken care of considerably greater numbers of Jews without even mentioning it.” In any event, if Eichmann actually did “propose shooting,” he was only telling the military that they should go on doing what they had been doing all along, implying that questions of hostages were entirely in their own competence. This was an Army affair, obviously, since only males were involved. (In Serbia, the implementation of the Final Solution started about six months later, when women and children were rounded up and disposed of in mobile gas vans.) During cross-examination, Eichmann, characteristically, chose the most complicated and least likely explanation: Rademacher had needed the support of the Head Office for Reich Security for his own stand on the matter, and had therefore forged the document. Rademacher himself explained the incident much more reasonably at his own trial, before a West German court in 1952: “The Army was responsible for order in Serbia and had to kill rebellious Jews by shooting.” (This sounded more plausible but was a lie, for we know—from Nazi sources—that the Jews were not “rebellious.”) If it was difficult to interpret a remark made over the phone as an order, it was more difficult to believe that Eichmann had been in a position to give orders to Army generals. Would Eichmann, then, have pleaded guilty if he had been indicted as an accessory to murder? Perhaps, but with certain important qualifications. What he had done was a crime only in retrospect, and he had always been a law-abiding citizen, because Hitler’s orders, which he had certainly executed to the best of his ability, had possessed “the force of law” in the Third Reich. (The defense could have quoted in support of Eichmann’s thesis the testimony of one of the best-known experts on constitutional law in the Third Reich, Theodor Maunz, who is currently Minister of Education and Culture in Bavaria. In 1943, in “Gestalt und Recht der Polizei,” he stated, “The command of the Führer . . . is absolutely the center of the present legal order.”) Those who today told him that he could have acted differently simply did not know, or had forgotten, how things had been. He did not want to be one of those who now pretended that they “had always been against it,” whereas in fact they had been very eager to do what they were told to do. However, times change, and he, like Professor Maunz, had “arrived at different insights.” What he had done he had done; he did not want to deny it. Rather, he proposed to “hang myself in public as a warning example for all anti-Semites on this earth.” By this he did not mean to say that he regretted anything. “Repentance is for little children.” Even under considerable pressure from his lawyer, Eichmann did not change this position. During a discussion of the offer Heinrich Himmler had made to Zionist representatives in Hungary, in 1944, to exchange a million Jews for ten thousand trucks, and of Eichmann’s role in this plan, Dr. Servatius asked, “Mr. Witness, in the negotiations with your superiors, did you express any pity for the Jews and did you say there was room to help them?” Eichmann replied, “I am here under oath and must speak the truth. Not out of mercy did I launch this transaction”—which would have been acceptable, except that it was not Eichmann who “launched” it. He then continued, quite truthfully, “The reasons which made me think of this transaction I explained this morning.” They were as follows: Himmler had sent his own man to Budapest to deal with matters of Jewish emigration. (Incidentally, Jewish emigration had become a flourishing business; for enormous amounts of money, Jews could buy their way out. Eichmann, however, did not mention this.) It was the fact that “here matters of emigration were dealt with by a man who did not belong to the police force” that made Eichmann indignant, “because I had to help and to implement deportation, and matters of emigration, where I considered myself an expert, were assigned to a man who was new to the unit. . . . I was fed up. . . . I decided that I had to do something to take matters of emigration into my own hands.” Throughout the trial, Eichmann tried to clarify, mostly without success, the point in his plea of his being “in the sense of the indictment, not guilty.” The indictment implied not only that he had acted on purpose, which he did not deny, but that he had acted out of base motives and in full knowledge of the criminal nature of his deeds. As for the base motives, he was sure that he was not what he called an innerer Schweinehund—a dirty bastard in the depths of his heart—and as for his conscience, he recalled perfectly well that he would have had a bad conscience only if he had not done what he had been ordered to do—to ship millions of men, women, and children to their death with great zeal and most meticulous care. This last statement, admittedly, was hard to take. Half a dozen psychiatrists had certified Eichmann as “normal.” “More normal, at any rate, than I am after having examined him,” one of them was said to have exclaimed, while another had found that Eichmann’s whole psychological outlook, including his relationship with his wife and children, his mother and father, his brothers and sisters and friends, was “not only normal but most desirable.” And, finally, a minister who paid regular visits to him in prison after the Supreme Court had finished hearing his appeal reassured everybody by declaring that Eichmann was “a man with very positive ideas.” Behind the comedy of the soul experts lay the hard fact that Eichmann’s was obviously no case of moral insanity. (Hausner’s recent revelations—in the Saturday Evening Post—of things he “could not bring out at the trial” have contradicted the information given informally in Jerusalem. Eichmann, we are now told, had been attested to be “a man obsessed with a dangerous and insatiable urge to kill,” “a dangerous, perverted, sadistic personality.” In which case he would have belonged in an insane asylum.) Worse, it was just as obviously no case of insane hatred of Jews, of fanatical anti-Semitism. He “personally” never had anything whatever against Jews; on the contrary, he had plenty of “private reasons” for not being a Jew hater. To be sure, there were fanatic anti-Semites among his closest friends—for instance, Vitez Lászlo Endre, State Secretary in Charge of Political (Jewish) Affairs in the Ministry of the Interior, in Hungary, who was hanged in Budapest in 1946—but this, it appeared, was more or less in the spirit of “some of my best friends are anti-Semites.”   Alas, nobody believed him. The prosecutor did not believe him, because that was not his job. Counsel for the defense paid no attention, because, unlike Eichmann, he was to all appearances not interested in questions of conscience. And the judges did not believe him, because they were too good, and perhaps also too conscious of the very foundations of their profession, to admit that an average, “normal” person, neither feeble-minded nor indoctrinated nor cynical, could be perfectly incapable of telling right from wrong. Eichmann was born on March 19, 1906, in Solingen, in the Rhineland—a German city that is famous for its knives, scissors, and surgical instruments. Fifty-four years later, indulging in what had become his favorite pastime—writing his memoirs—he described this memorable event as follows: “Today, fifteen years and a day after May 7, 1945, I begin to lead my thoughts back to that 19th of March of the year 1906, when at five o’clock in the morning . . . I entered life on earth in the aspect of a human being.” According to his religious beliefs, which had not changed since the Nazi period (in Jerusalem, he declared himself to be a Gottgläubiger—literally, a believer, but the Nazi term for those who had broken with Christianity—and he refused to take his oath on the Bible), this event was to be ascribed to a “Höheren Sinnesträger,” or “Higher Bearer of Meaning,” an entity somehow identical with “the movement of the universe,” to which human life, in itself devoid of “higher meaning,” is subject. The terminology is quite suggestive. To call God a Höheren Sinnesträger meant, linguistically, to give him some place in the military hierarchy, because the Nazis had changed the military “recipient of orders,” the Befehlsempfänger, into a Befehlsträger, “bearer of orders,” indicating, as in the ancient phrase “bearer of ill tidings,” the importance and the burden of responsibility that were supposedly conferred upon those who had to execute orders. Moreover, Eichmann, like everyone else connected with the Final Solution, was officially a Geheimnisträger, or “bearer of secrets,” as well, which in the way of catering to self-importance was certainly nothing to sneeze at. But Eichmann, not very much interested in metaphysics, remained silent on any more intimate relationship between the Bearer of Meaning and the bearer of orders, and proceeded to a consideration of the other possible source of his existence, his parents: “They would hardly have been so overjoyed at the arrival of their first-born had they been able to watch how in the hour of my birth the Norn of misfortune, to spite the Norn of good fortune, was already spinning threads of grief and sorrow into my life. But a kind, impenetrable veil kept my parents from seeing into the future.” The misfortune started soon enough; it started in school. Eichmann’s father, who was first an accountant for the Tramways &amp; Electricity Co. in Solingen and in 1914 became an official of the same corporation in Linz, in Austria, had five children—four sons and a daughter—of whom only Adolf, the eldest, it seems, was unable to finish high school, or even to graduate from a vocational school for engineering, into which he was put when his incapacity first became manifest. Throughout his life, Eichmann deceived people about his early “misfortunes” by hiding behind certain financial misfortunes of his father’s, which cast no discredit on him. In Israel, however, during his first sessions with a police examiner, Captain Avner Less, who spent approximately thirty-five days with him and produced 3,564 typewritten pages from seventy-six recorder tapes, he was in an ebullient mood, full of enthusiasm for this unique opportunity “to pour forth everything I know” and, by the same token, to advance to the rank of the most coöperative defendant ever. (His enthusiasm was soon dampened, though never quite extinguished, when he was confronted with concrete questions based on irrefutable documents.) The best proof of his initial boundless confidence—obviously wasted on Captain Less—was that for the first time in his life he admitted his early disasters, although he must have been aware of the fact that he thus contradicted several important entries in the records he had supplied to Nazi authorities. Well, the misfortunes were ordinary. Since he “had not exactly been the most hard-working” pupil—or, one may add, the most gifted—his father had taken him first from high school and then from vocational school, long before graduation. Hence, the profession that appears on all his official documents (construction engineer) had about as much connection with reality as the statement that his birthplace was Palestine and that he was fluent in Hebrew and Yiddish—another outright lie he had liked to tell both to his S.S. comrades and to his Jewish victims. In the same vein, he had always pretended that he was later dismissed from a job as salesman for the Vacuum Oil Company, in Austria, because of membership in the National Socialist Party. The version he confided to Captain Less was less dramatic, but it was probably not the truth, either: He had been fired, he said, because it was a time of unemployment, in which unmarried employees were the first to lose their jobs. (This explanation, which may at first seem plausible, is not really satisfactory, because he lost his job in the spring of 1933, when he had been engaged for two full years to Veronika, or Vera, Liebl, who eventually became his wife. Why had he not married her while he still held a good job? He finally married in March, 1935, probably because bachelors in the S.S., as in the Vacuum Oil Company, were never sure of their jobs and could not be promoted.) While young Eichmann was wasting his time in school, his father left the Tramways &amp; Electricity Co. and went into business for himself. He bought a small mine, in Salzburg, and put his unpromising youngster to work in it as a mining laborer, but only until he could find a job for him in the sales department of the Upper Austrian Elektrobau Company. Here Eichmann remained for over two years. At the conclusion of that period, he was about twenty-two years old and without any prospects for a career; the only thing he had learned, perhaps, was how to sell. What then happened he himself described as his first break, and, again, we have two rather different versions of it. In a handwritten biographical record that Eichmann submitted in 1939 to win promotion in the S.S., he described it as follows: “I worked during the years of 1925 to 1927 as a salesman for the Upper Austrian Elektrobau Company. I left this position of my own free will, as the Vacuum Oil Company of Vienna offered me the representation for Upper Austria.” The key word here is “offered,” since, according to the story Eichmann told Captain Less in Israel, nobody had offered him anything. His mother had died when he was ten years old, and his father had married again in the same year. A cousin of his stepmother’s—a man he called “uncle”—who was president of the Austrian Automobile Club and was married to the daughter of a Jewish businessman in Czechoslovakia, was acquainted with the general manager of the Austrian Vacuum Oil Company, a Jew named Weiss, and used this connection to get his unfortunate relative a job as travelling salesman. Eichmann was properly grateful; in fact, the Jews in his family were among his “private reasons” for not hating Jews. Even in 1943 or 1944, when the Final Solution was in full swing, he had not forgotten: “The daughter of this marriage, I believe, was half-Jewish according to the Nuremberg Laws. . . . She came to see me in order to obtain my permission for her emigration into Switzerland. Naturally, I granted this request, and the same uncle came also to see me to ask me to intervene for some Viennese Jewish couple. I mention this only to show that I myself had no hatred against Jews, for my whole education through my mother and my father had been strictly Christian, and my mother, because of her Jewish relatives, had different opinions from those current in S.S. circles.” He went to considerable lengths to prove that he had never harbored any ill feelings against his victims, and, what is more, had never made any secret of that fact: “I explained this to Dr. [Josef] Löwenherz [head of the Jewish Community in Vienna] as I explained it to Dr. [Rudolf] Kastner [associate president of the Zionist Organization in Budapest]; I think I told it to everybody, each of my men knew it, they all heard it from me sometime. Even in elementary school, I had a [Jewish] classmate with whom I spent my free time, and he came to our house—a family in Linz by the name of Sebba. The last time we met, we walked together through the streets of Linz, I already with the Party emblem of the N.S.D.A.P. [the Nazi Party] in my buttonhole, and he did not think anything of it.” Had Eichmann been a bit less prim or the police examination less discreet (it did not extend to cross-examination, presumably so that the examiner would be assured of his coöperation), his “lack of prejudice” might have shown itself in another aspect as well. It seems that in Vienna, where he was extraordinarily successful in forcing Jews to leave the country, he had a Jewish mistress, an “old flame” from Linz. Rassenschande—a word that literally means “race-defilement” but that in the Nazi vocabulary simply meant sexual intercourse with Jews—was probably the greatest crime a member of the S.S. could commit; though during the war the raping of Jewish girls became a favorite pastime at the front, it was by no means common for a higher S.S. officer to have an affair with a Jewish woman. Thus, Eichmann’s repeated violent denunciations, in Jerusalem, of Julius Streicher, the insane and obscene editor of Der Stürmer, and Streicher’s pornographic anti-Semitism were perhaps personally motivated, expressive of more than the routine contempt that an “enlightened” S.S. man was supposed to show toward the vulgar passions of lesser Party luminaries. Eichmann spent five and a half years with the Vacuum Oil Company, and they must have been among the happier ones of his life. He was able to make a good living during a time of severe unemployment, and he was still living with his parents, except when he was out on the road. The moment when this idyll came to an end—on Pentecost, 1933—was among the few dates he always remembered. Actually, things had taken a turn for the worse somewhat earlier. At the end of 1932, he was unexpectedly transferred from Linz to Salzburg, very much against his inclinations: “I lost all joy in my work, I no longer liked to sell, to make calls.” From such sudden losses of Arbeitsfreude Eichmann was to suffer throughout his life. The worst of them, he explained to Captain Less, occurred when he was told of the Führer’s order (always officially called, to indicate its preëminence among his orders, the Führer Order) for the “physical extermination of the Jews,” in which he was to play such an important role. This, too, came unexpectedly; he himself had “never thought of such a thing, such a solution through violence,” and he described his reaction in almost the same words: “I lost everything, all joy in my work, all initiative, all interest; I was, so to speak, blown out.” A similar blowing out must have occurred in 1932 in Salzburg, and from his own account it is clear that he cannot have been very much surprised when he was fired, though one need not believe his testimony that he had been “very happy” about his dismissal. In any event, the year 1932 marked a turning point of his life. It was in April of this year that he joined the National Socialist Party and entered the S.S., upon the invitation of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who was then a young lawyer in Linz and later became chief of the R.S.H.A., in one of whose six (later seven) main sections—Bureau IV, under the command of Heinrich Müller—Eichmann was employed, in charge of subsection B-4. In court, Eichmann gave the impression that he was a typical member of the lower middle classes, and this impression was more than borne out by every sentence he spoke or wrote while he was in prison. This was misleading; he was rather the déclassé son of a solid middle-class family, and it was indicative of his comedown that although his father was a good friend of Kaltenbrunner’s father, who was also a Linz lawyer, the relationship of the two sons was a rather cool one, in which Eichmann was unmistakably treated by Kaltenbrunner as his social inferior. Before Eichmann entered the Party and the S.S., he had proved that he was a joiner, and May 7, 1945, the official date of Germany’s defeat, was significant for him mainly because it then dawned upon him that thenceforward he would have to live without being a member of something or other: “I sensed I would have to live a leaderless and difficult individual life, I would receive no directives from anybody, no orders and commands would any longer be issued to me, no pertinent ordinances would be there to consult—in brief, a life never known before lay ahead of me.” When he was a child, his parents, who were uninterested in politics, had enrolled him in the Young Men’s Christian Association, from which he later went into the German youth movement, the Wandervogel. During his unsuccessful years in high school, he had joined the Jungfrontkämpferverband, the youth section of the German-Austrian organization of war veterans, which, though violently pro-German and anti-republican, was tolerated by the Austrian government. When Kaltenbrunner suggested that he enter the S.S., he was a probationary member—and just on the point of becoming a full-fledged member—of an altogether different outfit, called the Schlaraffia, “an association of businessmen, physicians, actors, civil servants, etc., who came together to cultivate merriment and gaiety and so on,” as he described it, adding, “Each member had to give a lecture from time to time whose tenor was to be humor, refined humor.” Kaltenbrunner explained to Eichmann that he would have to give up this merry society, because as a Nazi he could not be a Freemason—a word that at the time was unknown to Eichmann. The choice between the S.S. and the Schlaraffia (the name derives from Schlaraffenland, the gluttons’ Cloud-Cuckoo-Land of German fairy tales) might have been hard to make, but he was “kicked out” of Schlaraffia anyhow; he had committed a sin that even now, as he told the story in the Israeli prison, made him blush with shame: “Contrary to my upbringing, it happened that I had tried, though I was the youngest, to invite my companions to a glass of wine.”   A leaf in the whirlwind of the time, Eichmann was blown from Schlaraffia, the never-never land of magically set tables and of roast chickens that would fly into your mouth—or, more accurately, he was blown from the company of respectable Philistines with degrees and assured careers and “refined humor,” whose worst vice was probably an irrepressible desire for practical jokes—into the marching columns of the Thousand-Year Reich, which lasted exactly twelve years and three months. At any rate, he did not enter the Party out of conviction, nor did he ever become convinced by it; whenever he was asked to give his reasons, he repeated a set of embarrassed clichés about the Treaty of Versailles and unemployment. Rather, “it was like being swallowed up by the Party against all expectations and without previous decision,” he said in court, adding, “it happened so quickly and suddenly.” He had no time and less desire to be properly informed; he did not even know the Party program, and he had not read (as he never did read) “Mein Kampf.” Kaltenbrunner had said to him, Why not join the S.S.? And he had replied, Why not? That was how it had happened, and that was about all there was to it. Of course, that was not all there was to it. What Eichmann failed to tell the presiding judge in cross-examination was that he had been an ambitious young man who was fed up with his job as travelling salesman even before the Vacuum Oil Company became fed up with him, and that from a humdrum life without significance or consequence the wind had blown him into History, as he understood it; namely, into a Movement that always kept moving and in which somebody like him—already a failure in the eyes of his social class, in the eyes of his family, and hence in his own eyes as well—could start from scratch and make a career. And if he did not always like what he had to do (for example, dispatching people to their death by the trainload instead of forcing them to emigrate); if he guessed, rather early, that the whole business would come to a bad end, with Germany losing the war; if all his most cherished plans came to nothing (an evacuation of European Jewry to Madagascar, the establishment of a Jewish territory in the Nisko region of Poland, an experiment with carefully built defense installations, around his Berlin office, to repel Russian tanks); and if, to his great “grief and sorrow,” he never advanced beyond the grade of S.S. Obersturmbannführer (a rank equivalent to lieutenant colonel)—in brief, if, with the exception of one year in Vienna, his life was beset with frustrations, he never forgot what the alternative would have been. Not only in Argentina, leading the unhappy existence of a refugee, but also in the courtroom of Jerusalem, with his life as good as forfeited, he might still have expressed a preference—if anybody had asked him—for being hanged as an S.S. Obersturmbannführer a.D. (that is, in retirement) over living out his life quietly and normally as a travelling salesman for the Vacuum Oil Company. Eichmann’s new career did not start very promisingly. In the spring of 1933, while he was out of a job, the Nazi Party and all its affiliations were suspended in Austria because of Hitler’s rise to power. But even without this new calamity a career in the Austrian Nazi Party would then have been out of the question; those who enlisted in the S.S. went on working at their regular jobs. (Kaltenbrunner was still a partner in his father’s law firm.) Eichmann therefore decided to go to Germany—a decision that was all the more natural because his family had never given up its German citizenship. (This fact was of some relevance to the trial. Dr. Servatius had asked the West German government to demand extradition of the accused and, failing this, to pay the expenses of the defense, and Bonn had refused, on the ground that Eichmann was not a German national—which was not true.) At Passau, on the German border, he was suddenly a travelling salesman again, and when he reported to the local Gauleiter, he asked him eagerly “if he had perhaps some connection with the Bavarian Vacuum Oil Company.” Well, this was one of his not infrequent relapses from one period of his life into another; whenever he was confronted with telltale signs of his unregenerate Nazi outlook—whether in Argentina or in the Jerusalem jail—he excused himself with “There I go again, the old song and dance [die alte Tour].” But the relapse in Passau was quickly cured; he was told that he had better enlist for military training (“All right with me, I thought to myself, why not become a soldier?”), and, having done so, he was sent to two Bavarian S.S. camps, one after the other—in Lechfeld and in Dachau (he had nothing to do with the concentration camp there)—where “the Austrian Legion in exile” received its training. Thus he did become an Austrian after a fashion, despite his German passport. He remained in one or the other of these military camps from the beginning of August, 1933, to the end of September, 1934, a period in which he advanced to the rank of Scharführer (corporal) and had plenty of time to reconsider his willingness to embark upon the career of a soldier. According to his own account, there was only one thing in which he distinguished himself during these fourteen months, and that was punishment drill, which he performed with great obstinacy, in the wrathful spirit of “Serves my father right if my hands freeze. Why doesn’t he buy me gloves?” But apart from this rather dubious pleasure, to which he owed his first promotion, he had a miserable time; “The humdrum of military service, that was something I couldn’t stand, day after day always the same, over and over again the same.” Thus bored to distraction, he heard that the Security Service of the Reichsführer S.S. (the Sicherheitsdienst, or S.D.) had jobs open, and applied for one immediately. His application was approved. In 1934, the S.D. was a relatively new apparatus in the S.S. It had been founded two years earlier by Heinrich Himmler, to serve as the intelligence service of the Party, and it was now headed by Reinhardt Heydrich, a former Navy Intelligence officer, who was to become, as Gerald Reitlinger, author of “The Final Solution,” put it, “the real engineer of the Final Solution.” Its initial task had been to spy on Party members—an activity giving the S.S. an ascendance over the regular Party apparatus. Then it had taken on some additional duties, becoming the information and research center for the Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police, or Gestapo). This was the first step toward the merger of the S.S. and the police, which was not carried out until September of 1939, though Himmler held the double post of Reichsführer S.S. and Chief of the German Police from 1936 on. Eichmann, of course, could not at that time have known anything of this, but he seems to have known nothing even of the nature of the S.D. when he entered it—a state of affairs that was not really strange, since the operations of the S.D. had always been top-secret. According to what he told Captain Less, he joined the S.D. under a misapprehension. “When the high Party officials drove along,” he said, “there were commando guards with them, men standing on the running boards of the cars. . . . In brief, I had mistaken them [Himmler’s S.D. ] for the Reich Security Service (Reichssicherheitsdienst),which I only much later distinguished from the commando guard (Begleitkommando) with whom I had made this confusion [in the first place], but nobody made this clear to me and no one told me anything.” (The question of whether this was the truth had a certain bearing on the trial, where it had to be decided whether he had volunteered for his position in the S.D. or had been drafted into it.) Furthermore, he testified to having suffered “a great disappointment” in the S.D. His disappointment consisted chiefly in the fact that he was back at the bottom and had to start all over again; his only consolation was that other members of the S.D. had made the same mistake. He was put into the research division, in Berlin, where his first job was to file all information concerning Freemasonry—which in the early Nazi ideological muddle was somehow lumped with Judaism, Catholicism, and Communism—and to help in the establishment of an Anti-Freemasonry Museum. He now had ample opportunity to learn what this strange word meant that Kaltenbrunner had thrown at him in their discussion of the Schlaraffia. (Incidentally, an eagerness to establish museums to be used as propaganda against their enemies was characteristic of the Nazis. During the war, several German bureaus competed bitterly for the honor of establishing anti-Jewish museums and libraries. We owe to this strange craze the preservation of many great cultural treasures of European Jewry.) Unfortunately, things were again very, very boring, so Eichmann was greatly relieved when, after four or five months of Freemasonry, he was put into a brand-new department, concerned with Jews. This was the real beginning of the career that was to end in the Jerusalem court. It was the year 1935, when Germany, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, introduced general conscription and publicly announced plans for rearmament, including the building of an air force and a navy. This was also the year when Germany, having left the League of Nations in 1933, prepared, far from secretly, the occupation of the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland. It was the year of Hitler’s peace speeches (“Germany needs peace and desires peace,” “We recognize Poland as the home of a great and nationally conscious people,” “Germany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria, to annex Austria, or to conclude an Anschluss”), and, above all, it was the year when the Nazi regime won general and genuine recognition both in Germany and abroad, Hitler being admired almost everywhere as a great national statesman. In Germany itself, this was a time of transition. Because of the enormous rearmament program, unemployment had ceased to exist, and the initial resistance of the working class was thereby broken. The aggressions of the regime, which had at first been directed primarily against “anti-Fascists”—Communists, Socialists, left-wing intellectuals, and Jews in prominent positions—had not yet shifted entirely to the persecution of the Jews qua Jews. To be sure, one of the first steps taken by the Nazi government, back in 1933, had been the exclusion of Jews from the civil service (which in Germany included all teaching positions, from grammar school to university, and most branches of the entertainment industry; namely, the theatre, the opera, concerts, and radio) and, in general, their removal from public office, but private business and the legal and medical professions were not touched until 1938, though Jews were no longer permitted to take the state examinations leading to these professions. The emigration of Jews in these years proceeded, on the whole, in an orderly and not unduly accelerated fashion, and the currency restrictions that made it difficult, but not impossible, for Jews to take their money—or, at least, the greater part of it—out of the country were the same for non-Jews; they dated back to the days of the Weimar Republic. There were a certain number of Einzelaktionen—individual actions putting Jews under pressure to sell their businesses and real property at absurdly low prices—but they usually occurred in small towns and, indeed, could be traced to the spontaneous, “individual” initiative of some enterprising Storm Troopers, the so-called S.A. men, or Brown Shirts, who, except for their officer corps, were mainly recruited from the lower classes. The police, it is true, never stopped these “excesses,” but the Nazi authorities were not entirely happy about them, because they affected the value of real estate all over the country. The Jewish emigrants, unless they were political refugees, were mostly young people who realized that there was no future for them in Germany—and since they soon found out that there was hardly any future for them in other European countries either, some of them actually returned during this period. When Eichmann was asked how he had reconciled his personal feelings about Jews with the outspoken and violent anti-Semitism of the Party he had joined, he replied with the proverb “Nothing is as hot when you eat it as when it’s being cooked”—a proverb that was then on the lips of many Jews as well. They lived in a fool’s paradise, in which, for a few years, even Streicher spoke of a “legal solution” of the Jewish problem. It took the organized pogroms of November, 1938—the so-called Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, when seventy-five hundred Jewish shop-windows were broken, all synagogues went up in flames, and twenty thousand Jewish men were taken off to concentration camps—to expel them from it. One frequently forgotten point of the matter is that the famous Nuremberg Laws, issued in the fall of 1935, had failed to do the trick. At the trial, the testimony of three witnesses from Germany—former high-ranking officials of the Zionist Organization who left Germany shortly before the outbreak of the war—gave only the barest glimpse into the true state of affairs during the first five years of the Nazi regime. The Nuremberg Laws had deprived the Jews of their political rights but not of their civil rights; they were no longer citizens (Reichsbürger), but they remained members of the German state (Staatsangehörige)—which meant that if they emigrated, they were not automatically stateless. Sexual intercourse between Jews and Germans and the contraction of mixed marriages were forbidden, and no German woman under the age of forty-five could be employed in a Jewish household. Of these provisions, only the last was of practical significance; the others merely legalized a de-facto situation. Hence, it was felt that the Nuremberg Laws stabilized the new situation of Jews in the German Reich. They had been second-class citizens, to put it mildly, since January 30, 1933; their almost complete separation from the rest of the population had been achieved in a matter of weeks, through terror but also through the more than ordinary connivance of those around them. “There was a wall between Gentiles and Jews,” Dr. Benno Cohn, from Berlin, testified at the trial. “I cannot remember speaking to a Christian during all my journeys over Germany.” Now, the Jews felt, having been given laws of their own, they would no longer be outlawed; if they kept to themselves—as they had been forced to do anyhow—they would be able to live unmolested. In the words of the Reichsvertretung of the Jews in Germany (the national association of all communities and organizations, which had been founded in September, 1933, on the initiative of the Berlin Community, and was in no way Nazi-appointed), the intention of the Nuremberg Laws was “to establish a level on which a bearable relationship between the German and the Jewish people [became] possible”—to which, around the same time, a member of the Berlin Community who was a radical Zionist added, “Life is possible under every law. However, in complete ignorance of what is permitted and what is not one cannot live. One can also be a useful and respected citizen as a member of a minority in the midst of a great people.” And since Hitler, in the Röhm purge of the summer of 1934, had broken the power of the S.A., whose brown-shirted Storm Troopers had been almost exclusively responsible for the early pogroms and atrocities, and since the Jews were blissfully unaware of the growing power of the black-shirted S.S., who ordinarily abstained from what Eichmann contemptuously called “the Stürmer methods,” Jews generally believed that a modus vivendi would be possible; in fact, they even offered to coöperate in “the solution of the Jewish question.” In short, when Eichmann entered upon his apprenticeship in Jewish affairs (on which, four years later, he was the recognized “expert”), and made his first contacts with Jewish functionaries, both Zionists and Assimilationists talked in terms of a great “Jewish revival,” a “great constructive movement of German Jewry,” and quarrelled among themselves in ideological terms about the desirability of Jewish emigration, as though this depended upon their own decisions.   Eichmann’s account, during the police examination, of how he was introduced into the new department—an account that was, of course, distorted but not wholly devoid of truth—oddly recalls this fool’s paradise. The first thing that happened was that his new boss, a certain von Mildenstein, who shortly thereafter got himself transferred to Albert Speer’s Organisation Todt, where he was in charge of highway construction (he was what Eichmann pretended to be—an engineer by profession), required him to read Theodor Herzl’s “Der Judenstaat,” the famous Zionist classic, which converted Eichmann immediately and forever to Zionism. From then on, as he repeated over and over, he thought of hardly anything but a “political solution” (as opposed to the later “physical solution,” the first meaning expulsion and the second extermination) and how to “get some firm ground under the feet of the Jews.” To this end, he began spreading the gospel among his S.S. comrades—giving lectures and writing pamphlets. He then acquired a smattering of Hebrew, which enabled him to read, haltingly, a Yiddish newspaper—not a very difficult accomplishment, since Yiddish is basically an old German dialect written in Hebrew letters, and can be understood by any German-speaking person who has mastered a few dozen Hebrew words. He even read one more book, Adolf Böhm’s “The History of Zionism” (during the trial he kept confusing it with Herzl’s “Der Judenstaat”), and this was perhaps a considerable achievement for a man who, by his own account, had always been utterly reluctant to read anything except newspapers, and, to the distress of his father, had never paid any attention to the books in the family library. Following up Böhm, he studied the organizational setup of the Zionist movement—its parties, its youth groups, its different programs. This did not make him an “authority,” but it was enough to earn him an assignment as official spy on the Zionist offices and Zionist meetings. It is worth noting that his schooling in Jewish affairs was almost entirely concerned with Zionism. Eichmann’s first personal contacts with Jewish functionaries, all of them well-known Zionists of long standing, were thoroughly satisfactory. The reason he became so fascinated by the “Jewish question,” he explained, was his own “idealism;” these Jews, unlike the Assimilationists, whom he always despised, and unlike the Orthodox Jews, who bored him, were “idealists,” like him. An “idealist,” according to Eichmann’s notions, was not simply a man who believed in an “idea” or a man who did not steal or accept bribes, though these qualifications were indispensable. An “idealist” was a man who lived for his idea (hence he could not be a businessman, for example) and who was prepared to sacrifice for his idea everything and, especially, everybody. When he asserted during the police examination that he would have sent his own father to his death if that had been required, he did not mean merely to stress the extent to which he was under orders, and ready to obey them; he also meant to show what an “idealist” he had always been. Of course, the perfect “idealist,” like everybody else, had his personal feelings, but if they came into conflict with his “ideal,” he would never permit them to interfere with his actions. Eichmann was given his first opportunity to apply in practice what he had learned during his apprenticeship when, after the Anschluss, or incorporation of Austria into the Reich, in March, 1938, he was sent to Vienna to organize a kind of emigration that had thus far been utterly unknown in Germany, where up to the fall of 1938 the fiction was maintained that Jews were permitted to leave the country if they wished but were not forced to do so. Eichmann was made head of what was called the Center for Jewish Emigration, and his task was defined as “forced emigration.” The words meant exactly what they said; all Jews, regardless of their wishes and regardless of their citizenship, were to be forced to emigrate—an act that in ordinary language is called expulsion. Whenever Eichmann thought back to the twelve years that were the core of his life, he declared this year in Vienna to have been its happiest and most successful period. Shortly before he left Berlin, he had been promoted to officer’s rank, becoming an Untersturmführer, or second lieutenant, and he had been recommended for his “comprehensive knowledge of the methods of organization and ideology of the opponent, Jewry.” The job in Vienna was his first important one; his whole career, which had progressed rather slowly, was in the balance. He must have been frantic to make good, and certainly his success was spectacular. In eight months, forty-five thousand Jews left Austria, whereas no more than nineteen thousand Jews left Germany in the same period; in less than eighteen months, Austria was “cleansed” of close to a hundred and fifty thousand people (roughly fifty per cent of its Jewish population), all of whom left the country “legally.” How did Eichmann do it? The basic idea that made all this possible was not his but, almost certainly, was contained in a specific directive from Heydrich, who had sent him to Vienna in the first place. (Eichmann was vague about the question of authorship, though he claimed it by implication; the Israeli authorities, being bound to the fantastic “thesis of the all-inclusive responsibility of Adolf Eichmann,” as an Israeli judge who prepared material for the trial expressed it, and to the even more fantastic supposition that, in the words of another government-appointed researcher, “one [i.e. his] mind was behind it all,” helped him considerably in his efforts to deck himself in borrowed plumes.) The idea, as Heydrich explained it in a conference with Göring on the morning of the Kristallnacht, was simple and ingenious enough. “Through the Jewish Community, we extracted a certain amount of money from the rich Jews who wanted to emigrate,” Heydrich said. “By paying this amount, and an additional sum in foreign currency, they made it possible for a number of poor Jews to leave. The problem was not to make the rich Jews leave but to get rid of the Jewish mob.” Still, there remained enough problems that could be solved only in the course of the operation, and there is no doubt that here Eichmann, for the first time in his life, discovered in himself some special qualities. There were two things he could do well, or better than many other people: he could organize and he could negotiate.   Immediately upon his arrival in Vienna, Eichmann opened negotiations with the representatives of the Jewish Community—whom he had to liberate from prisons and concentration camps for the purpose, since the “revolutionary zeal” in Austria, greatly exceeding the early “excesses” in Germany, had resulted in the imprisonment of practically all prominent Jews. Having undergone such imprisonment, the Jewish functionaries did not need Eichmann to convince them of the desirability of emigration. Rather, their concern was to inform him of the enormous difficulties that lay ahead. Apart from the financial problem—already “solved”—the chief difficulty was the great number of papers every emigrant had to assemble before he could leave the country. Each of the papers was valid only for a limited time, and this meant that the validity of the first had usually expired long before the last could be obtained. Once Eichmann understood how the whole thing worked—or, rather, did not work—he “took counsel with himself,” as he said in Jerusalem, and “gave birth to the idea that I thought would do justice to both parties.” He imagined “an assembly line, at whose beginning the first document is put, and then the other papers, and at its end the passport would have to come out as the end product.” This plan could be realized if all the offices concerned—the Ministry of Finance, the income-tax people, the police, the Jewish Community, and so forth—were housed under the same roof and forced to do their work on the spot, in the presence of the applicant, who would no longer have to run from office to office, and who, presumably, would also be spared some humiliating chicanery and certain expenses for bribes. When everything was ready, the assembly line did its work smoothly and quickly, and Eichmann thereupon “invited” the Jewish functionaries from Berlin to inspect it. They were appalled. “This is like an automatic factory, like a flour mill connected with some bakery,” one of them said. “At one side you put in a Jew who still has some property and, let us assume, a factory, or a shop, or some bank account, and he goes through the whole building from counter to counter, from office to office, and he comes out at the other end without any money, without any rights, with only a passport in which it says: ‘You must leave the country within a fortnight. Otherwise, you will go to a concentration camp!’ ” This, of course, was essentially the truth about the procedure, but it was not the whole truth. Actually, these Jews could not be left “without any money,” for the simple reason that no country at this date would have received them in that condition. They needed, and were given, their Vorzeigegeld—the amount they had to show in order to obtain their visas and to pass the immigration inspection of the recipient country. For this amount, they needed foreign currency, which the Reich had no intention of wasting on its Jews. These needs were not covered by Jewish accounts in foreign countries, which, in any event, were difficult to get at, because they had been illegal for many years. Eichmann therefore sent a number of Jewish functionaries abroad to solicit funds from the great Jewish organizations, and these funds were then sold by the Jewish Community to the prospective emigrants for a considerable profit. One dollar, for instance, was sold for ten or twenty marks when its market value was 4.20 marks. It was chiefly in this way that the Community acquired not only the money necessary for the poor Jews and people without accounts abroad but also the funds it needed for its own, hugely expanded activities. Eichmann had not arranged the deal without encountering considerable opposition from the German financial authorities, who, after all, could not remain unaware of the fact that these transactions amounted to a devaluation of the mark. Bragging was the vice that was Eichmann’s undoing. It was sheer rodomontade when he told men working under him during the last days of the war, “I will jump into my grave laughing, because the fact that I have the death of five million Jews [or “enemies of the Reich,” as he always claimed to have said] on my conscience gives me extraordinary satisfaction.” He did not jump, and if he had anything on his conscience, it was not murder but, as it turned out, the fact that he once had slapped the face of Dr. Löwenherz, head of the Jewish Community in Vienna, who later became one of his favorite Jews. (He had apologized in front of his staff at the time, but this incident kept bothering him.) The claim that he was responsible for the death of five million Jews—the approximate total of the losses suffered from the combined efforts of all Nazi bureaus and authorities—was preposterous, as he knew very well, but he had kept repeating the damning sentence ad nauseam to everyone who would listen, even long after the war, when he was in Argentina. (Former Consular Official Horst Grell, who had known Eichmann in Hungary and had heard him make the claim there, testified in a court, in Berchtesgaden, in 1961, that in his opinion Eichmann was boasting. That must have been obvious to everyone who heard him utter his absurd claim.) Certainly Eichmann was boasting when he pretended that he had “invented” the ghetto system, or that he “gave birth to the idea” of shipping all European Jews to Madagascar. The Theresienstadt ghetto, in Czechoslovakia, of which Eichmann claimed the “paternity,” was established years after the ghetto system had been introduced into the occupied territories of Eastern Europe, and the setting up of a special ghetto for certain privileged categories—which is what Theresienstadt was—was the “idea” of Heydrich; so, indeed, was the whole Nazi ghetto system. The Madagascar plan seems to have been “born” in the bureaus of the German Foreign Office, and Eichmann’s own contribution to it turned out to owe a good deal to Dr. Löwenherz, whom he had called upon to put down “some basic thoughts” on how some four million Jews might be transported from Europe after the war—presumably to Palestine, since the Madagascar project was top-secret. (Upon being confronted at the trial with the Löwenherz report, Eichmann did not deny that he had enlisted Dr. Löwenherz’s help; it was one of the few moments when he appeared genuinely embarrassed.) What eventually led to his capture in Argentina was his compulsion to talk big, even there—he was, he said at the time, “fed up with being an anonymous wanderer between two worlds”—and the compulsion must have grown considerably stronger as time passed, not only because he had nothing to do that he could consider worth doing but also because the postwar era had bestowed so much unexpected “fame” upon him. But bragging is a common vice. A more specific, and also a more decisive, flaw in Eichmann’s character was his almost total inability ever to look at anything from the other fellow’s point of view. Nowhere was this flaw more conspicuous than in his account of his good year in Vienna. He and his men and the Jews were all “pulling together,” and whenever there were any difficulties, the Jewish functionaries would come running to him “to unburden their hearts,” to tell him “all their grief and sorrow,” and to ask his help. The Jews “desired” to emigrate, and he, Eichmann, was there to help them, because it happened that at that time the Nazi authorities had expressed a desire to see their Reich judenrein. The two desires coincided, and he, Eichmann, could “do justice to both parties.” At the trial, he never gave an inch when it came to this part of the story, though he agreed that today, when “times have changed so much,” the Jews might not be too happy to recall this “pulling together,” and he said he did not want “to hurt their feelings.” The German text of the taped police examination, which was conducted by Captain Less between May 29, 1960, and January 17, 1961, and each page of which was corrected and approved by Eichmann, demonstrates that the horrible can sometimes be not only ludicrous but downright funny. Some of the comedy cannot be conveyed in English, because it lies in Eichmann’s heroic fight with the German language, which invariably defeats him. It is funny when he speaks, passim, of “winged words” (“geflügelte Worte,” a German colloquialism for famous quotes from the classics), because he means “stock phrases” (“Redensarten”) or “slogans” (“Schlagworte”). It was both funny and confusing when, during the cross-examination conducted by Judge Landau on the Sassen documents, he used the phrase “kontra geben” (“to give tit for tat”), which is a term used in a card game called skat, to indicate that he had resisted Sassen’s efforts to liven up his stories; Judge Landau, obviously ignorant of the mysteries of card games, did not understand, and Eichmann could not think of any other way to put it. He himself seemed dimly aware of a defect that must have plagued him even in school—it amounted to a mild case of aphasia—for he apologized by saying, “Officialese [Amtssprache] is my only language.” The real point here is that officialese became his language because he was genuinely incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a cliché. (Was it these clichés that the psychiatrists thought so “normal” and “desirable”? Are these the “positive ideas” a clergyman hopes for in those to whose souls he ministers? Eichmann’s best opportunity to show this positive side of his character in Jerusalem came when the young police officer, in charge of his mental and psychological well-being, handed him “Lolita” for relaxation. After two days Eichmann returned it, visibly indignant; “That is quite an unwholesome book [Das ist aber ein sehr unerfreuliches Buch],” he told his guard.) The judges were right when they finally told the accused that all he had said was “empty talk”—except that they thought the emptiness feigned, and believed that the accused wished to cover up other thoughts, which were not empty but hideous. This supposition seems refuted by the striking consistency with which Eichmann, despite his rather bad memory, constantly repeated, word for word, the same stock phrases and self-invented clichés (when he did succeed in constructing a sentence of his own, he thereupon repeated it until it became a cliché) in referring to every event or incident that was of some importance to him. Whether he wrote his memoirs in Argentina or in Jerusalem, whether he talked to the police examiner or to the court, what he said was always the same, expressed in the same words. The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think; that is, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication with him was possible, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words of others, or even the presence of others, and hence against reality as such. Thus, confronted for eight months with the reality of being examined by a Jewish policeman, Eichmann did not have the slightest hesitation in explaining to him at considerable length, and repeatedly, how he had been unable to attain a higher grade in the S.S., and why this was not his fault. He had done everything; he had even asked to be sent to active military duty. (“Now, off to the front, I said to myself, then the Standartenführer [colonelcy] will come quicker.”) In court, on the contrary, he pretended that he had asked to be transferred because he wanted to escape his murderous duties. He did not insist much on this, though, and, strangely, he was not confronted with his statements to the police examiner, to whom he had said that he had hoped to be nominated for the Einsatzgruppen, the S.S. mobile killing units in the East, because by the time they were officially organized, in March, 1941, his office was “dead;” that is, there was no longer any emigration, and deportations had not yet been started. There was, finally, his greatest ambition—to be promoted to the job of police chief in some German town. Again, nothing doing. What makes these pages of the police examinations so funny is that Eichmann related all this in the tone of someone who was sure to find, as he put it, “normal, human” sympathy for a hard-luck story. “Whatever I prepared and planned, everything went wrong,” he said. “My personal affairs as well as my years-long efforts to obtain land and soil for the Jews came to naught. I don’t know—everything in my life was as if under an evil spell; whatever I planned and whatever I wanted and desired to do, fate prevented it somehow. I was frustrated in everything, no matter what.” When Captain Less asked his opinion on some damning and possibly lying evidence furnished by a former colonel of the S.S., he exclaimed, suddenly stuttering with rage, “I am very much surprised that this man could ever have been S.S. Standartenführer! That surprises me very much indeed. It is altogether, altogether unthinkable. I don’t know what to say.” He never said these things in a spirit of defiance, as though he wanted, even now, to defend the standards by which he had lived in the past. The very word “S.S.” or “career” or “Himmler” (whom he always spoke of by his long official title, Reichsführer S.S. and Chief of the German Police, although he by no means admired him) triggered in him a mechanism that had become completely unalterable. The presence of Captain Less, a Jew from Germany, who was unlikely to think that members of the S.S. advanced in their careers through the exercise of high moral qualities, did not for a moment throw this mechanism out of gear. Now and then, the comedy breaks into the horror itself, and the result is stories, presumably true enough, whose macabre humor easily surpasses that of any Surrealist invention. Such was the story that Eichmann told during the police examination about the unlucky Commercial Councillor Bertold Storfer, one of the representatives of the Viennese Jewish Community. Eichmann had received a telegram from Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz, telling him that Storfer had arrived and had urgently requested to see Eichmann. “I said to myself, O.K., this man has always behaved well; that is worth my while. . . . I’ll go there myself and see what is the matter with him. And I go to Ebner [chief of the Gestapo in Vienna], and Ebner says—I remember it only vaguely—‘Yes,’ he said, ‘if only he had not been so clumsy! He went into hiding and wanted to escape,’ or something of the sort. And the police arrested him and sent him to the concentration camp, and, according to the orders of the Reichsführer [Himmler], no one could get out once he was in. Nothing could be done; neither Dr. Ebner nor I nor anybody else could do anything about it. I went to Auschwitz, looked up Höss, and said: ‘Storfer is here?’ ‘Yes, yes [he replied], he is in one of the labor gangs.’ With Storfer afterward, well, it was normal and human; we had a normal, human encounter. He told me all his grief and sorrow. I said, ‘Well, my dear old friend [Ja, mein Lieber guter Storfer], we certainly got it! What rotten luck!’ And I also said, ‘Look, I really cannot help you, because according to orders of the Reichsführer nobody can get you out. I can’t get you out. Dr. Ebner can’t get you out. I hear you made a mistake, that you went into hiding or wanted to bolt, which, after all, you did not need to do.’ [Eichmann meant that Storfer, as a Jewish functionary, had immunity from deportation.] I forget what his reply to this was. And then I asked him how he was. And he said, yes, he wondered if he couldn’t be let off work; it was heavy work. And then I said to Höss, ‘Work—Storfer won’t have to work!’ Höss said, ‘Everyone works here.’ So I said, ‘O.K. I’ll make out a chit to the effect that Storfer has to keep the gravel paths in order with a broom’—there were little gravel paths there—‘and that he has the right to sit down with his broom on one of the benches.’ I said, ‘Will that be all right, Mr. Storfer? Will that suit you?’ Whereupon he was very pleased, and we shook hands, and then he was given the broom and sat down on the bench. It was a great inner joy to me that I could at least see the man with whom I had worked for so many long years, and that we could speak with each other.” Six weeks after this normal, human encounter, Storfer was dead—not gassed, apparently, but shot. Is this a textbook case of bad faith combined with outrageous stupidity? Or is it simply the case of the eternally unrepentant criminal (Dostoevski once mentions in his diaries that in Siberia, among scores of murderers, rapists, and burglars, he never met a single man who would admit that he had done wrong)—of the wrongdoer who cannot afford to face reality because his crime has become part and parcel of it? Yet Eichmann’s case is different from the case of the ordinary criminal, who can shield himself effectively against the reality of a non-criminal world only within the narrow limits of his gang. Eichmann needed only to recall the past in order to feel sure that he was not lying and that he was not deceiving himself, for he and the world he lived in had once been in perfect harmony. Eighty million Germans had been shielded against reality and factuality by exactly the same self-deception, lies, and stupidity that had now become ingrained in Eichmann’s nature. These lies changed from year to year, and they frequently contradicted each other; moreover, they were not necessarily the same for the various branches of the Party hierarchy or the people at large. But the practice of self-deception had become so widespread—almost a moral prerequisite for survival—that even now, eighteen years after the collapse of the Nazi regime, when most of the specific content of its lies has been forgotten, it is sometimes difficult not to believe that mendacity has become an integral part of the German national character. During the war, the lie that was most effective with the whole of the German people was the slogan calling the war “the battle of destiny for the German people” (“der Schicksalskampf des deutschen Volkes”). This slogan, which was coined either by Hitler or by Goebbels, made self-deception easier on three counts, for it suggested, first, that the war was no war; second, that it was started by destiny and not by Germany; and, third, that it was a matter of life and death for the Germans, who must annihilate their enemies or be annihilated. Eichmann’s astounding willingness, both in Argentina and in Jerusalem, to admit his crimes was due less to his own criminal capacity for self-deception than to the aura of systematic mendacity that had constituted the general, and generally accepted, atmosphere of the Third Reich. “Of course” he had played a role in the extermination of the Jews; of course if he “had not transported them, they would not have been delivered to the butcher.” He went on to ask, “What is there to ‘admit’?” Now, he proceeded, he “would like to find peace with [his] former enemies”—a sentiment he shared not only with Himmler (who had expressed it during the last year of the war) and with the Labor Front leader Robert Ley (who, before he committed suicide in Nuremberg, had proposed the establishment of a “conciliation committee” consisting of the Nazis responsible for the massacres and the Jewish survivors) but also, unbelievably, with many ordinary Germans, who were heard to express themselves in exactly the same terms at the end of the war. This outrageous cliché was no longer issued to them from above; it was a self-fabricated stock phrase, as devoid of reality as those clichés by which the people had lived for twelve years. Eichmann’s mind was filled to the brim with such sentences. His memory proved to he very unreliable about what actually happened. In a rare moment of exasperation, Judge Landau asked the accused, “What can you remember?” (if you don’t remember the discussions at the so-called Wannsee Conference, which dealt with the various methods of killing Jews); the answer, of course, was that Eichmann remembered the turning points in his own career rather well but that they did not necessarily coincide with the turning points in the story of Jewish extermination, or, as a matter of fact, with the turning points in history. (He always had trouble remembering the exact date of the outbreak of the war or of the invasion of Russia.) But the point of the matter is that he had not forgotten a single one of the sentences that at one time or another had served to give him what he repeatedly called a “sense of elation.” Hence, whenever, during the cross-examination, the judges tried to appeal to his conscience, they were met with “elation,” and they were outraged as well as disconcerted when they learned that the accused had at his disposal a different elating cliché for each period of his life and each of his activities. In his mind, there was no contradiction between “I will jump into my grave laughing,” appropriate for the end of the war, and “I am ready to hang myself in public as a warning example for all anti-Semites on this earth,” which now, under vastly different circumstances, fulfilled exactly the same function—that of giving him a lift.   These habits of Eichmann’s created considerable difficulty during the trial—less for Eichmann himself than for those who had come to prosecute him, to defend him, to judge him, or to report on him. For all this, it was essential that one take him seriously, and this was very hard to do, unless one sought the easiest way out of the dilemma between the unspeakable horror of the deeds and the undeniable ludicrousness of the man who perpetrated them, and declared him a clever, calculating liar—which he obviously was not. His own convictions in this matter were far from modest: “One of the few gifts fate bestowed upon me is a capacity for truth insofar as it depends upon myself.” This gift he had claimed even before the prosecutor wanted to ascribe to him crimes he had not committed. In the disorganized, rambling notes he made in Argentina, in preparation for the interview with Sassen, when he was still, as he pointed out at the time, “in full possession of my physical and psychological freedom,” he had issued a fantastic warning to “future historians [to] be objective enough not to stray from the path of truth recorded here”—fantastic because every line of these scribblings shows his utter ignorance of everything that was not directly, technically, bureaucratically connected with his job, and also shows an extraordinarily faulty memory. Despite all the efforts of the prosecution, everybody could see that this man was not a “monster,” but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown. And since this suspicion would have been fatal to the whole enterprise, and was also rather hard to sustain, in view of the sufferings he and his like had caused so many millions of people, his worst clowneries were hardly noticed. What could you do with a man who first declared, with great emphasis, that the one thing he had learned in an ill-spent life was that one should never take an oath (“Today no man, no judge could ever persuade me to make a sworn statement. I refuse it; I refuse it for moral reasons. Since my experience tells me that if one is loyal to his oath, one day he has to take the consequences, I have made up my mind once and for all that no judge in the world or other authority will ever be capable of making me swear an oath, to give sworn testimony. I won’t do it voluntarily and no one will be able to force me”), and then, after being told explicitly that if he wished to testify in his own defense he might “do so under oath or without an oath,” declared without further ado that he would prefer to testify under oath? Or who, repeatedly and with a great show of feeling, assured the court, as he had assured the police examiner, that the worst thing he could do would be to try to escape his true responsibilities, to fight for his neck, to plead for mercy—and then, upon instruction of his counsel, submitted a handwritten document that contained a plea for mercy? As far as Eichmann was concerned, these were questions of changing moods, not of inconsistencies, and as long as he was capable of finding, either in his memory or on the spur of the moment, an elating stock phrase to go with them, he was quite content. ♦
Eichmann in Jerusalem
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1963/02/16/eichmann-in-jerusalem-i
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25474487
What Difference Did Computers Make? on JSTOR
2022-11-02
Jon Agar
<div><div><div><div><p> journal article</p></div><div><div><p>Social Studies of Science</p><div><p>, pp. 869-907 (39 pages)</p></div><p>Published By: Sage Publications, Ltd.</p></div><div></div></div><div><p>/stable/25474487</p></div><p></p><div><div></div></div></div><div><div><div><p></p></div></div><div><div><p>This paper asks the question: what difference did access to computers make to the first generation of scientists to use them? While we do know something about the use of computers in particular scientific specialities, a comparative perspective across disciplines is revealing. So this paper casts the net wider, not only revisiting microphysics and X-ray crystallography, but also examining natural history and the implicit social science of government administration. It focuses on the period when computers were first introduced, since the novelty of the techniques caused scientists to reflect on the changes. This has the advantage, too, of bringing to light the important relationship between routinization of scientific work prior to computerization and computerization itself.</p></div><div><p>Social Studies of Science is the leading international journal dealing with the crucial issues in the relationship between science and society.</p></div><div><p>
SAGE Publications is an academic and professional publisher. We publish books, journals and software under the SAGE, Corwin
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 journal article
 What Difference Did Computers Make?

 Jon Agar

 Social Studies of Science
 Vol. 36, No. 6 (Dec., 2006), pp. 869-907 (39 pages)
 Published By: Sage Publications, Ltd.
 https://www. jstor .org /stable/25474487
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 Abstract

 This paper asks the question: what difference did access to computers make to the first generation of scientists to use them? While we do know something about the use of computers in particular scientific specialities, a comparative perspective across disciplines is revealing. So this paper casts the net wider, not only revisiting microphysics and X-ray crystallography, but also examining natural history and the implicit social science of government administration. It focuses on the period when computers were first introduced, since the novelty of the techniques caused scientists to reflect on the changes. This has the advantage, too, of bringing to light the important relationship between routinization of scientific work prior to computerization and computerization itself.

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 Social Studies of Science is the leading international journal dealing with the crucial issues in the relationship between science and society.

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 SAGE Publications is an academic and professional publisher. We publish books, journals and software under the SAGE, Corwin Press, Paul Chapman Publishing, Pine Forge Press, SAGE Reference, SAGE Science and Scolari (US and Europe websites) imprints.

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 Social Studies of Science © 2006 Sage Publications, Ltd.

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journal article    Social Studies of Science  , pp. 869-907 (39 pages)  Published By: Sage Publications, Ltd.      /stable/25474487                  This paper asks the question: what difference did access to computers make to the first generation of scientists to use them? While we do know something about the use of computers in particular scientific specialities, a comparative perspective across disciplines is revealing. So this paper casts the net wider, not only revisiting microphysics and X-ray crystallography, but also examining natural history and the implicit social science of government administration. It focuses on the period when computers were first introduced, since the novelty of the techniques caused scientists to reflect on the changes. This has the advantage, too, of bringing to light the important relationship between routinization of scientific work prior to computerization and computerization itself.   Social Studies of Science is the leading international journal dealing with the crucial issues in the relationship between science and society.   
SAGE Publications is an academic and professional publisher. We publish books, journals and software under the SAGE, Corwin
Press, Paul Chapman Publishing, Pine Forge Press, SAGE Reference, SAGE Science and Scolari (US and Europe websites) imprints.     This item is part of a JSTOR Collection.  For terms and use, please refer to our
What Difference Did Computers Make? on JSTOR
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25474487
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computing_1950%E2%80%931979
Timeline of computing 1950–1979
2002-09-13
None
<div><div>
<p>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
</div><div>
<p>This article presents a detailed <b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline">timeline</a> of events in the history of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing">computing</a> from 1950 to 1979</b>. For narratives explaining the overall developments, see the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing">history of computing</a>.
</p>
<h2></h2>
<table>
<tbody><tr>
<th>Date
</th>
<th>Place
</th>
<th>Event
</th></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>Sweden
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BARK_(computer)">BARK</a> was finished in Sweden. Next to come was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BESK">BESK</a> in 1953.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEAC_(computer)">SEAC</a> (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer) demonstrated at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_of_Standards_and_Technology">US NBS</a> in Washington, DC – was the first fully functional <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored-program_computer">stored-program computer</a> in the U.S.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>UK
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_ACE">Pilot ACE</a> computer, with 800 vacuum tubes, and mercury delay lines for its main memory, became operational on 10 May 1950 at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Physical_Laboratory,_UK">National Physical Laboratory</a> near London. It was a preliminary version of the full <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACE_(computer)">ACE</a>, which had been designed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing">Alan Turing</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWAC_(computer)">SWAC</a> (Standards Western Automatic Computer) demonstrated at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCLA">UCLA</a> in Los Angeles; fastest computer in the world until <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAS_machine">IAS machine</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>GER
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse">Konrad Zuse</a> leased his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z4_(computer)">Z4</a> machine to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETH_Zurich">ETH Zurich</a> for five years. Z4 was a relay-based machine. The corresponding contract was signed in the fall of 1949, and the machine reassembled in Zurich after its arrival in July 1950.
<p>The Z4 was replaced by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERMETH">ERMETH</a>, a computer developed at the ETH in Switzerland from 1953 to 1956, one of the first electronic computers on the European continent.
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Oct 
</td>
<td>UK
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Test">Turing Test</a> – The British mathematician and computer pioneer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing">Alan Turing</a> published a paper describing the potential development of human and computer intelligence and communication. The paper would come later to be called the Turing Test.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIME">TIME</a></i> magazine cover story on the Harvard "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Mark_III">Mark III</a>: Can man build a superman?" includes a quote from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Aiken">Howard Aiken</a>, commenting on "calculators" (computers) then under construction: "We'll have to think up bigger problems if we want to keep them busy."
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The first commercially successful electronic computer, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_I">UNIVAC</a>, was also the first general-purpose computer – designed to handle both numeric and textual information. Designed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Presper_Eckert">J. Presper Eckert</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mauchly">John Mauchly</a>, whose corporation subsequently passed to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Rand">Remington Rand</a>. The implementation of this machine marked the real beginning of the computer era. Remington Rand delivered the first UNIVAC machine to the U.S. Bureau of Census. This machine used magnetic tape for input.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Whirlwind">Whirlwind</a>, the first real-time computer was built at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT">MIT</a> by the team of Jay Forrester for the US Air Defense System, became operational.
<p>This computer is the first to allow <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_computing">interactive computing</a>, allowing users to interact with it using a keyboard and a cathode-ray tube. The Whirlwind design was later developed into <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi_Automatic_Ground_Environment">SAGE</a>, a comprehensive system of real-time computers used for early warning of air attacks.
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>UK
</td>
<td>J. Lyons, a United Kingdom food company, famous for its tea, made history by running the first business application on an electronic computer. A payroll system was run on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_I">Lyons Electronic Office</a> (LEO) a computer system designed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Wilkes">Maurice Wilkes</a> who had previously worked on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDSAC">EDSAC</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>UK
</td>
<td>The oldest known recordings of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_music">computer generated music</a> were played by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferranti_Mark_1">Ferranti Mark 1</a> computer.
<p>The Mark 1 is a commercial version of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Mark_1">Manchester Mark 1</a> machine from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_University_of_Manchester">University of Manchester</a>. The music program was written by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Strachey">Christopher Strachey</a>.
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDVAC">EDVAC</a> (electronic discrete variable computer). The first computer to use magnetic tape.
<p>EDVAC could have new programs loaded from the tape. Proposed by John von Neumann, it was installed at the Institute for Advance Study, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, US.
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>Australia
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSIRAC">CSIRAC</a> used to play music – the first time a computer was used as a musical instrument.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-0_System">A-0</a> high-level compiler is invented by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper">Grace Murray Hopper</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM">IBM</a> introduces the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_701">IBM 701</a>, the first computer in its <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_700/7000_series">700 and 7000 series</a> of large scale machines with varied scientific and commercial architectures, but common electronics and peripherals. Some computers in this series remained in service until the 1980s.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAS_machine">IAS machine</a> completed at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Advanced_Study">Institute for Advanced Study</a>, Princeton, US (by Von Neumann and others).
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>1952
</td>
<td>France
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnie_des_Machines_Bull">Bull</a> introduces the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull_Gamma_3">Gamma 3</a>. A dual-mode decimal and binary computer that sold over 1200 units, becoming the first computer produced in over 1000 units.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>USSR
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BESM">BESM-1</a> is completed. Only one BESM-1 machine was built. The machine used approximately 5,000 vacuum tubes.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>UK
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Manchester">University of Manchester</a> team complete the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_computer#First_transistor_computer">first transistorised computer</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen">Arthur Andersen</a> was hired to program the payroll for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric">General Electric</a> (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE">GE</a>)'s Appliance Park manufacturing facility near Louisville, Kentucky. As a result, GE purchased <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_I">UNIVAC I</a> which became the first-ever commercial computer in the US. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Glickauf">Joe Glickauf</a> was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen">Arthur Andersen</a>'s project leader for the GE engagement.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>World
</td>
<td>Estimate that there are 100 computers in the world.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-core_memory">Magnetic-core memory</a> developed.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FORTRAN">FORTRAN</a> (FORmula TRANslation), the first high-level programming language development, was begun by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Backus">John Backus</a> and his team at IBM.
<p>The development continued until 1957. It is still in use for scientific programming. Before being run, a FORTRAN program needs to be converted into a machine program by a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiler">compiler</a>, itself a program.
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_650">IBM 650</a> is introduced. A relatively inexpensive decimal machine with drum storage, it becomes the first computer produced over 2000 units.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_NORC">NORC</a> was delivered by IBM to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Navy">US Navy</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>First conference on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence">artificial intelligence</a> held at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bendix_G-15">Bendix G-15</a> computer was introduced by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bendix_Corporation">Bendix Corporation</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>NED
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_Dijkstra">Edsger Dijkstra</a> invented an efficient algorithm for shortest paths in graphs as a demonstration of the abilities of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ARMAC&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1">ARMAC</a> computer. The example used was the Dutch railway system. The problem was chosen because it could be explained quickly and the result checked. Although this is the main thing many people will remember Dijkstra for, he also made important contributions to many areas of computing – in particular he should be remembered for his work on problems relating to concurrency, such as the invention of the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_(programming)">semaphore</a></i>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>First <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-matrix_printer">dot matrix printer</a> marketed by IBM.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>1957
</td>
<td>France
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull_Gamma_60">Gamma 60</a> is announced by Bull, becoming the first computer featuring an architecture specially designed for parallelism.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>FORTRAN development finished. See 1954.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><blockquote><p>I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year.<sup>[<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PCR"></a></i>]</sup></p><p>— <cite>Editor in charge of business books for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prentice_Hall">Prentice Hall</a></cite></p></blockquote>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Programming language <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)">LISP</a> (interpreted) developed, Finished in 1960. LISP stands for 'LISt Processing'. Used in AI development. Developed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_(computer_scientist)">John McCarthy</a> at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology">Massachusetts Institute of Technology</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>USSR
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun">Setun</a>, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_ternary">balanced ternary</a> computer developed in 1958 at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_State_University">Moscow State University</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit">integrated circuit</a> invented by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kilby">Jack Kilby</a> at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments">Texas Instruments</a>.
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Noyce">Robert Noyce</a>, who later set up <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel">Intel</a>, also worked separately on the invention. Intel later went on to perfect the microprocessor. The patent was applied for in 1959 and granted in 1964. This patent was not accepted by Japan so Japanese businesses could avoid paying any fees, but in 1989 – after a 30-year legal battle – Japan granted the patent; so all Japanese companies paid fees up until the year 2001 – long after the patent became obsolete in the rest of the world.
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>World
</td>
<td>Computers introduced between 1959 and 1964, often regarded as <i>second-generation</i> computers, were based on discrete transistors and printed circuits – resulting in smaller, more powerful and more reliable computers.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>1959
</td>
<td>UK
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Strachey">Christopher Strachey</a>, who became Oxford University's first professor of computation, filed a patent application for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing">time-sharing</a>.<sup><a href="#cite_note-1">[1]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-2">[2]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-3">[3]</a></sup> He passed the concept on to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider">J. C. R. Licklider</a> at a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Federation_for_Information_Processing#History">UNESCO-sponsored conference on Information Processing</a> in Paris that year.<sup><a href="#cite_note-4">[4]</a></sup>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL">COBOL</a> (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) developed by Grace Murray Hopper as the successor to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOW-MATIC">FLOW-MATIC</a>, finished in 1961.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>USSR
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_family_of_computers">Minsk</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainframe_computer">mainframe computer</a> development and production begun in the USSR. Stopped in 1975.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSFET">MOSFET</a> (MOS transistor) invented by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Atalla">Mohamed Atalla</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawon_Kahng">Dawon Kahng</a> at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs">Bell Labs</a>.
<p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSFET">MOSFET</a> (metal–oxide–semiconductor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-effect_transistor">field-effect transistor</a>), also known as the MOS transistor, was invented by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Atalla">Mohamed Atalla</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawon_Kahng">Dawon Kahng</a> at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs">Bell Labs</a>. It enabled <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_large-scale_integration">high-density integrated circuits</a>, and is the most widely used semiconductor device in computers.<sup><a href="#cite_note-5">[5]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-6">[6]</a></sup>
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon">silicon</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit">integrated circuit</a> developed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Noyce">Robert Noyce</a> at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Semiconductor">Fairchild Semiconductor</a>, using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Hoerni">Jean Hoerni</a>'s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planar_process">planar process</a>.
<p>In contrast to Kilby's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanium">germanium</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit">integrated circuit</a>, Noyce developed a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon">silicon</a> integrated circuit, using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Hoerni">Jean Hoerni</a>'s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planar_process">planar process</a>.<sup><a href="#cite_note-7">[7]</a></sup>
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Douglas E. Eastwood and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_McIlroy">Douglas McIlroy</a> of Bell Labs created Macro <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_Assembly_Program">SAP</a>, the first programming language with advanced <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macro_(computer_science)">macro</a> capabilities. The following year McIlroy published a seminal paper in the fields of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_macro_processor">macro processors</a> and programming language extensibility.
</td></tr></tbody></table>
<h2></h2>
<table>
<tbody><tr>
<th>Date
</th>
<th>Place
</th>
<th>Event
</th></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US<br/>EUR
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL">ALGOL</a>, first structured, procedural, programming language to be released.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>UK
</td>
<td>The first <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiler-compiler">compiler-compiler</a> is released.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_programming_language">APL programming language</a> released by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_E._Iverson">Kenneth Iverson</a> at IBM.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_(satellite)#The_AN/UYK-1_(TRW-130)_Computer">AN/UYK-1</a> (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRW_Inc.#Semiconductors_and_computers">TRW-130</a>) computer was designed with rounded edges to fit through the hatch of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_missile_submarine">ballistic missile submarines</a>, as part of the first <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_navigation_system">satellite navigation system</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_(satellite)">Transit</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>1961
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Molecular_Electronic_Computer&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1">Molecular Electronic Computer</a>, the first integrated circuits general-purpose computer (built for demonstration purposes, programmed to simulate a desk calculator), was built by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments">Texas Instruments</a> for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force">US Air Force</a>.<sup><a href="#cite_note-8">[8]</a></sup>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>UK
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Computer">ATLAS</a> is completed by the University of Manchester team.
<p>This machine introduced many modern architectural concepts: spooling, interrupts, pipelining, interleaved memory, virtual memory and paging. It was the most powerful machine in the world at the time of release.
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Work begun on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINC">LINC</a>, the brainchild of the MIT physicist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_A._Clark">Wesley A. Clark</a> in May 1961. It was the first functional prototype of a computer scaled down to be optimized and priced for the individual user (about $43,600 – equivalent to $439,200 in 2023). Used for the first time at the National Institutes of Mental Health in Bethesda, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryland">Maryland</a> in 1963. Many consider it to be the first personal computer, despite the big dimension of some elements, e.g. the memory rack.<sup><a href="#cite_note-9">[9]</a></sup>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar!">Spacewar!</a>, an early and highly influential computer game, is written by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT">MIT</a> student <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Russell_(computer_scientist)">Steve Russell</a>.
<p>The game ran on a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Equipment_Corporation">DEC</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-1">PDP-1</a>. Competing players fired at each other's space ships using an early version of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joystick">joystick</a>.
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_(computing)">Mouse</a> conceived by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart">Douglas Engelbart</a>.<sup>[<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed"></a></i>]</sup>
<p>The mouse was not to become popular until 1983 with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer">Apple Computer</a>'s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa">Lisa</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Macintosh">Macintosh</a> and not adopted by IBM until 1987 – although compatible computers such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad">Amstrad</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC1512">PC1512</a> were fitted with mice before this date.
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>1964
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Baran">Paul Baran</a> invents what would later be called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_switching">packet switching</a>.<sup><a href="#cite_note-10">[10]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-:1-11">[11]</a></sup> Baran published a series of briefings and papers about dividing information into "message blocks" and sending it over distributed networks between 1960 and 1964.<sup><a href="#cite_note-12">[12]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-13">[13]</a></sup>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Computers built between 1964 and 1972 are often regarded as <i>third-generation</i> computers; they are based on the first integrated circuits – creating even smaller machines. Typical of such machines were the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_2116A">HP 2116A</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Nova">Data General Nova</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Programming language <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL/I">PL/I</a> released by IBM.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Launch of IBM System/360 – the first series of compatible computers, reversing and stopping the evolution of separate "business" and "scientific" machine architectures; all models used the same basic instruction set architecture and register sizes, in theory allowing programs to be migrated to more or less powerful models as needs changed. The basic unit of memory, the "byte", was defined as 8 bits, with larger units such as "words" defined with sizes that were multiples of 8, with many consequences. Many competing computers at the time used word sizes that were multiples of 6. The marketing term "IBM Compatible" was often used, at this time, to indicate that the architecture used <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-bit_computing">8-bit</a> bytes. Over 14,000 were shipped by 1968.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MAC">Project MAC</a> begun at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT">MIT</a> by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Licklider">J.C.R. Licklider</a>: several terminals all across campus will be connected to a central computer, using a timesharing mechanism. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board">Bulletin boards</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email">email</a> are popular applications.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabre_(computer_system)">Sabre (computer system)</a> launched.<sup><a href="#cite_note-Kirschenbaum2013-14">[14]</a></sup>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Equipment_Corporation">DEC</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-8">PDP-8</a> Mini Computer was released. It was the first minicomputer, built by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It cost US$18,500 (equivalent to about $178,900 in 2023).
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law">Moore's law</a> published by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Moore">Gordon Moore</a>. Originally suggesting processor complexity doubled every year.
<p>It was published in the 35th Anniversary edition of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics_(magazine)"><i>Electronics</i> magazine</a>. The law was revised in 1975 to suggest a doubling in complexity every two years.
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic">Fuzzy logic</a> designed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotfi_Zadeh">Lotfi Zadeh</a> (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,_Berkeley">University of California, Berkeley</a>), it is used to process approximate data – such as 'about 100'.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Programming language <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC">BASIC</a> (Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) developed at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_College">Dartmouth College</a>, US, by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_E._Kurtz">Thomas E. Kurtz</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_George_Kemeny">John George Kemeny</a>.
<p>BASIC was not implemented on microcomputers until 1975. This was the first language designed to be used in a time-sharing environment, such as DTSS (Dartmouth Time-Sharing System), or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCOS_(operating_system)">GCOS</a>.
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>UK
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Davies">Donald Davies</a> independently invents <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_switching">packet switching</a> used in modern <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_network">computer networking</a>.<sup><a href="#cite_note-NIHF2007-15">[15]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-:1-11">[11]</a></sup> Davies conceived of and named the concept for data communication networks in 1965 and 1966.<sup><a href="#cite_note-Roberts1978-16">[16]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-17">[17]</a></sup> Many of the wide-area packet-switched networks built in the 1970s, including the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET">ARPANET</a>, were similar "in nearly all respects" to his original 1965 design.<sup><a href="#cite_note-:2-18">[18]</a></sup>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The first <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercomputer">supercomputer</a>, the Control Data <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600">CDC 6600</a>, was developed.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard">Hewlett-Packard</a> entered the general-purpose computer business with its <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_2100">HP-2116A</a> for computation, offering power formerly found only in much larger computers. It supported a wide variety of languages, among them <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL">ALGOL</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC">BASIC</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FORTRAN">FORTRAN</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US/CH
</td>
<td>Development of programming language <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language)">Pascal</a> begun, continued in Switzerland from 1968 to 1971.<sup><a href="#cite_note-19">[19]</a></sup> Based on ALGOL. Developed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth">Niklaus Wirth</a> as a pedagogic tool.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk">floppy disk</a> is invented at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM">IBM</a> under the direction of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Shugart">Alan Shugart</a>, for use as a microprogram load device for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System/370">System/370</a> and peripheral controllers.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>UK
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics_World#Computers">Wireless World</a> magazine's low cost Digital Computer published in 5 parts. 8-Bit serial design demonstrator using germanium transistors.<sup><a href="#cite_note-20">[20]</a></sup>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel">Intel</a> founded by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Noyce">Robert Noyce</a> and a few friends.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Programming language <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)">LOGO</a> developed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Feurzeig">Wally Feurzeig</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Papert">Seymour Papert</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_Solomon">Cynthia Solomon</a> at MIT.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Release of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard_9100A">Hewlett-Packard 9100A</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_calculator">programmable calculator</a> (first <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_calculator">scientific calculator</a>) from HP.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><blockquote><p>But what ... is it good for?<sup>[<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PCR"></a></i>]</sup></p><p>— <cite>Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM commenting on the microchip.</cite></p></blockquote>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>GER
</td>
<td>First computer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_mouse">ball mouse</a> offered by Telefunken.<sup><a href="#cite_note-Bülow_2009_Rollkugel-21">[21]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-OldMouse_Telefunken-22">[22]</a></sup> The device named <i></i> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RKS_100-86">RKS 100-86</a> is based on "reversing" an earlier <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackball">trackball</a>-like device (also named <i></i>) embedded into radar flight control desks, which had been developed around 1965 by a team led by at Telefunken for the German <i></i> as part of their <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Telefunken_TR_86&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1">TR 86</a> process computer system with its <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Telefunken_SIG_100&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1">SIG 100-86</a><sup><a href="#cite_note-23">[23]</a></sup> vector graphics terminal.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart">Douglas Engelbart</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos">demonstrates</a> interactive computing at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_Joint_Computer_Conference">Fall Joint Computer Conference</a> in San Francisco: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_mouse">mouse</a>, on-screen windows, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext">hypertext</a> and full-screen <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_processing">word processing</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET">ARPANET</a>, funded by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Defense">United States Department of Defense</a> for research into networking, first computer-to-computer login occurred on November 21, 1969, between Stanford and UCLA. It was opened to non-military users later in the 1970s including many universities.
<p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPL_network">NPL network</a> began operating in the same year.
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Development of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix">UNIX</a> operating system begun.<sup><a href="#cite_note-ford2014-24">[24]</a></sup>
<p>It was later released as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language)">C</a> source code to aid portability, and subsequently versions are obtainable for many different computers, including the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC">IBM PC</a>. It and its clones (such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux">Linux</a>) are still widely used on network servers and scientific workstations. Originally developed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson_(computer_programmer)">Ken Thompson</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie">Dennis Ritchie</a>.
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The first <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments">Request for Comments</a>, RFC 1 published. The RFCs (network <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_group">working group</a>, Request For Comment) are a series of papers which are used to develop and define protocols for networking; originally the basis for ARPANET, there are now thousands of them applying to all aspects of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet">Internet</a>. Collectively they document everything about the way the Internet and computers on it should behave, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite">TCP/IP</a> networking or how email headers should be written.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>?
</td>
<td>Introduction of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-232">RS-232</a> (serial interface) standard by EIA (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Industries_Association">Electronic Industries Association</a>), one of the oldest serial interfaces still (uncommonly) in use today.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General">Data General</a> shipped a total of 50,000 Novas at US$8,000 each. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Nova">Nova</a> was one of the first <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16-bit_computing">16-bit</a> minicomputers and led the way toward word lengths that were multiples of the 8-bit byte. It was first to employ medium-scale integration (MSI) circuits from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Semiconductor">Fairchild Semiconductor</a>, with subsequent models using large-scale integrated (LSI) circuits. Also notable was that the entire central processor was contained on one 15-inch <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board">printed circuit board</a>.
</td></tr></tbody></table>
<h2></h2>
<table>
<tbody><tr>
<th>Date
</th>
<th>Place
</th>
<th>Event
</th></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>First <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM#History">dynamic RAM</a> chip introduced by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel">Intel</a>. It was called the 1103 and had a capacity of 1 Kbit, 1024 bits.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Programming language <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language)">Forth</a> developed. A simple, clean, stack-based design, which later inspired <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript">PostScript</a> and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_virtual_machine">Java virtual machine</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint">CTC</a> ships the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200">Datapoint 2200</a>, a mass-produced programmable terminal. Its multi-chip CPU provided the basis for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8008">Intel 8008</a>. A monitor and cassette drives were built-in, and the entire system fit the approximate footprint of an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM">IBM</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selectric">Selectric</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter">typewriter</a>. Users quickly began to use the system as a standalone computer – one of the earliest to arguably qualify as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer">personal computer</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Release of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_9800_series">HP 9800 series</a>, a series of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_computer">desktop computers</a> from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard">Hewlett-Packard</a>, replacing their first model, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard_9100A">Hewlett-Packard 9100A</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenbak-1">Kenbak-1</a> ships. This small, cheap (US$750) personal computer, built using pre-microprocessor TTL technology, is one clear candidate for "first personal computer", and is so considered by the Computer History Museum and the American Computer Museum.<sup><a href="#cite_note-25">[25]</a></sup>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Tomlinson">Ray Tomlinson</a> develops the first program that can send <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email">email</a> messages, via the Arpanet, between people using different computers. (Programs existed previously that could send such messages between users logging onto the same computer.)
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004">Intel 4004</a>, the first commercially available <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor">microprocessor</a>, is released. It contains the equivalent of 2,300 transistors and was a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-bit_computing">4-bit</a> processor. It is capable of around 60,000 instructions per second (0.06 MIPS), running at a maximum clock speed of 740 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertz">kHz</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments">Texas Instruments</a> releases the first easily portable electronic calculator.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-inch_floppy_disk">8-inch floppy disk</a> introduced.<sup><a href="#cite_note-CornellTimeline-26">[26]</a></sup>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari">Atari</a> founded by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Bushnell">Nolan Bushnell</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Dabney">Ted Dabney</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong">Pong</a> released – widely recognised as the first popular arcade video game. It was invented by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Alcorn">Allan Alcorn</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>?
</td>
<td>Computers built after 1972 are often called <i>fourth-generation</i> computers, based on LSI (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Scale_Integration">Large Scale Integration</a>) of circuits (such as microprocessors) – typically 500 or more components on a chip. Later developments include <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLSI">VLSI</a> (Very Large Scale Integration) of integrated circuits 5 years later – typically 10,000 components. The fourth generation is generally viewed as running right up until the present,<sup>[<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#Chronological_items"></a></i>]</sup> since although computing power has increased the basic technology has remained virtually the same.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Programming language <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language)">C</a> developed at The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Laboratories">Bell Laboratories</a> in the US.
<p>Dennis Ritchie, one of the inventors of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix">Unix</a> operating system, simplifies <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCPL">BCPL</a> into a language he calls B, then iterates B into C. It is a very popular language, especially for systems programming – as it is flexible and fast. C was considered a refreshing change in the computing field because it helped introduce <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured_programming">structured programming</a>. Inspired by C, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B">C++</a>, was introduced in the 1980s, and in turn helped usher in the era of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming">object-oriented programming</a>.
</p>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>First handheld scientific calculator released by Hewlett-Packard; this makes the engineer's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule">slide rule</a> obsolete.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8008">8008</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor">microprocessor</a> released by Intel.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The first international connections to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET">ARPANET</a> are established. ARPANET later became the basis for what is now called the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet">Internet</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway">NOR</a>
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsk_Data">Norsk Data</a> launches the Nord-5, the first <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/32-bit_computing">32-bit</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superminicomputer">supermini</a> computer.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>In 1972–1973, IBM Los Gatos Scientific Center developed a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_computer">portable computer</a> prototype called SCAMP (Special Computer APL Machine Portable) based on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PALM_processor">IBM PALM processor</a> with a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philips">Philips</a> compact cassette drive, small <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode-ray_tube">CRT</a> and full function keyboard. SCAMP <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emulator">emulated</a> an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1130">IBM 1130</a> minicomputer in order to run APL\1130.<sup><a href="#cite_note-www03.ibm.com-27">[27]</a></sup> Because it was the first to emulate APL\1130 performance on a portable, single-user computer, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Magazine">PC Magazine</a></i> in 1983 designated SCAMP a "revolutionary concept" and "the world's first personal computer".<sup><a href="#cite_note-www03.ibm.com-27">[27]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-friedl198311-28">[28]</a></sup> The prototype is in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithsonian_Institution">Smithsonian Institution</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>1973
</td>
<td>UK
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Cocks">Clifford Cocks</a> invents a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography">public-key cryptography</a> algorithm equivalent to what would become (in 1978) the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_(algorithm)">RSA algorithm</a> while working at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Communications_Headquarters">Government Communications Headquarters</a> (GCHQ).<sup><a href="#cite_note-29">[29]</a></sup>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto">Xerox Alto</a>, a powerful personal computer with bitmapped <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface">graphical user interface</a>, deployed at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Palo_Alto_Research_Center">Xerox Palo Alto Research Center</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France">FRA</a>
</td>
<td>Microcomputer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micral_N">Micral N</a>, developed in 1973 by Frenchman <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Gernelle">François Gernelle</a>, of the company R2E. it will be officially recognized as "the first microcomputer marketed in the world" by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak">Steve Wozniak</a> (the designer of the Apple 1) who was in 1986 a member of the jury of an international competition in the United States.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Development of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite">TCP/IP</a> protocol suite began by a group headed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinton_Cerf">Vinton Cerf</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Kahn">Robert E. Kahn</a>. These are the protocols used for computer networks such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet">Internet</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France">FRA</a>
</td>
<td>Programming language <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolog">Prolog</a> developed at the University of Luminy-Marseilles in France by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Colmerauer">Alain Colmerauer</a>. It introduced the new paradigm of logical programming and is often used for expert systems and AI programming.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Typewriter">TV Typewriter</a>, designed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Lancaster">Don Lancaster</a>, displayed alphanumeric information on an ordinary television set. It used US$120 worth of electronics components. The original design included two memory boards and could generate and store 512 characters as 16 lines of 32 characters. A 90-minute cassette tape provided supplementary storage for about 100 pages of text.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet">Ethernet</a> developed. This became a popular way of connecting PCs and other computers together – to enable them to share data, and devices such as printers. A group of machines connected together in this way is known as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_area_network">LAN</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>UK
</td>
<td>CLIP-4, the first computer with a parallel architecture.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada">CAN</a>
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCM/70">MCM/70</a>, a candidate for first personal computer, is released by Micro Computer Machines of Canada. It failed commercially, despite weighing just 20 pounds and featuring a plasma display and a ROM-based <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)">APL programming language</a> interpreter.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Introduction of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8080">8080</a>. It ran at a clock frequency of 2 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz">MHz</a> and did 0.64 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_instructions_per_second">MIPS</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola">Motorola</a> announces the MC<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_6800">6800</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-bit_computing">8-bit</a> microprocessor. It is easier to implement than the 8080 because it only needs a single power supply to operate and does not need support chips. Unlike the 8080 it is sold not as much as a general-purpose "number cruncher / computer" CPU but more as a control processor for industrial control and as a peripheral processor.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Engineers <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Peddle">Chuck Peddle</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Mensch">Bill Mensch</a> leave <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola">Motorola</a> after completing work on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_6800">6800</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_processing_unit">CPU</a> and join <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology">MOS Technology</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>Italy
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti">Olivetti</a> released the personal computer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_P6060">Olivetti P6060</a>, the first with an integrated <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk">floppy disk</a> drive. It was designed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pier_Giorgio_Perotto">Pier Giorgio Perotto</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>UK
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Computers_Limited">ICL</a> launches its New Range of mainframes, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICL_2900_Series">ICL 2900 Series</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Instrumentation_and_Telemetry_Systems">MITS</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800">Altair 8800</a>, the first commercially successful hobby computer, is released. An article in <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Electronics">Popular Electronics</a></i> (January 1975), described the computer and invited people to order kits. Despite the limited processing power, input/output system (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights">blinkenlights</a> and toggle switches) and memory (256 bytes), around 200 were ordered on the first day. 10,000 units were eventually shipped at a kit price of US$397 each. Numerous companies produced clones based on the "S-100 bus" (the Altair's main bus).
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>First microcomputer implementation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC">BASIC</a> by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates">Bill Gates</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen">Paul Allen</a>. It was written for the MITS Altair. This led to the formation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft">Microsoft</a> later in the year.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix">Unix</a> marketed (see 1969).
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway">NOR</a>
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway">Norwegian</a> company <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycron">Mycron</a> releases its <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MYCRO-1">MYCRO-1</a>, the first <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-board_computer">single-board computer</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Formation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft">Microsoft</a> by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates">Bill Gates</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen">Paul Allen</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology">MOS Technology</a> releases their <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6501">6501</a> CPU. which is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin-compatible">pin-compatible</a> with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_6800">Motorola's 6800</a>, who soon starts a lawsuit against them. The 6501 is quickly withdrawn from sale and replaced with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502">6502</a> which has a "lawsuit-compatible"<sup><a href="#cite_note-30">[note 1]</a></sup> design, but is otherwise nearly identical to the 6501. The 6502 becomes one of the most popular CPUs for the next 10 years and is used in many computers and game consoles (most notably the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600">Atari 2600</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II">Apple II</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET">Commodore PET</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIC-20">VIC-20</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64">Commodore 64</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro">BBC Micro</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System">Nintendo Entertainment System</a>).
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5100">IBM 5100</a> computer released; with integrated keyboard, display, and mass storage on tape, it resembles the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer">personal computers</a> of a few years later, although it does not use a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor">microprocessor</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>Italy
</td>
<td>The laboratory <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSELT">CSELT</a> released <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSA_(MUltichannel_Speaking_Automaton)">MUSA (MUltichannel Speaking Automaton)</a>, an early experiment of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_Synthesis">Speech Synthesis</a>. It was able to read and sing Italian with multiple voices (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_cappella">a cappella</a>).
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog">Zilog</a> is founded by ex-Intel employees.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer">Apple Computer</a>, Inc. founded, to market the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_I">Apple I</a> single-board computer designed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak">Steve Wozniak</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs">Steve Jobs</a>. It uses the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502">MOS Technology 6502</a> microprocessor.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>First <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_printer">laser printer</a> introduced by IBM – the IBM 3800. The first colour versions came onto the market in 1988.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Introduction of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8085">Intel 8085</a> chip. An improved version of the 8080, with a superset of the 8080s instruction set (only a couple<sup>[<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers"></a></i>]</sup> of extra instructions). Single 5V power supply (while the 8080 needed several different voltages).
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_Z80">Z80</a> chip released by Zilog. It was a superset of the 8080 chip with additional registers and instructions, and using only one power supply voltage. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M">CP/M</a> was originally written for the 8080, but many implementations used the Z80. The Z80 was the processor for home computers like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_computer">Tandy</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80">TRS-80</a> of 1977, the Sinclair <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum">ZX Spectrum</a> of 1982 and many others.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology">MOS Technology</a> introduces the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIM-1">KIM-1</a> microcomputer system as a demonstrator for its <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502">6502</a> CPU.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-1">Cray-1</a> supercomputer was invented by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray">Seymour Cray</a>. He left <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_Data">Control Data</a> in 1972 to form his own company. This machine was known as much for its horseshoe-shaped design as it was for being the first supercomputer to make <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_processing">vector processing</a> practical. 85 were shipped at a cost of US$5 million each.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_International">Commodore</a> buys <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology">MOS Technology</a> in a stock trade. MOS is valued at US$12 million. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Peddle">Chuck Peddle</a> joins Commodore as chief engineer. With the purchase of MOS, Commodore begins work on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET">Commodore PET</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs">Emacs</a> text editing software created.<sup><a href="#cite_note-ford2014-24">[24]</a></sup><sup>[<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Please_clarify"></a></i>]</sup>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>"<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.25_inch_floppy_disks">5.25 inch floppy disks</a> are introduced. When this product reaches the PC market it causes an explosive growth in digital information storage."<sup><a href="#cite_note-CornellTimeline-26">[26]</a></sup>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_International">Commodore</a> introduces the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET">Commodore PET</a>. It comes with 4 KB or 8 KB of RAM, and an integrated cassette deck and 9" monochrome monitor.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><blockquote><p>There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.<sup>[<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PCR"></a></i>]</sup></p><div><p>— <cite><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Olsen">Ken Olsen</a>, founder, president, and chairman of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Equipment_Corporation">Digital Equipment Corporation</a></cite></p></div></blockquote>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II">Apple II</a> computer introduced based on an 8-bit <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology">MOS Technology</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502">6502</a> microprocessor running at 1 MHz with 4 KB of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_Access_Memory">RAM</a>. It had an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_architecture">open architecture</a>, used color graphics, and an audio cassette interface for loading programs and storing data. Later, in July 1978, a floppy disk drive was made available with an elegantly designed interface.<sup><a href="#cite_note-31">[30]</a></sup><sup><a href="#cite_note-null2007-32">[31]</a></sup> One of the first examples of a "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_app">killer app</a>" (for the business world) was released for it – the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc">VisiCalc</a> spreadsheet program – in 1979.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_Corporation">Tandy</a> brought out the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80">TRS-80</a> with "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_I_BASIC">Level I BASIC</a>". Despite simple black-and-white graphics, thanks to the nationwide chain of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Shack">Radio Shack</a> stores, it became a bestseller quickly.<sup>[<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Please_clarify"></a></i>]</sup>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathkit">Heathkit</a> made the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathkit_H-8">H8</a> Home computer kit available. It was based on an Intel 8080a processor and shipped with HDOS (Heathkit Disk Operating System) and Benton Harbor BASIC.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Tandy upgraded the TRS-80 with a much improved <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft">Microsoft</a> 8K "Level II BASIC", and an "expansion interface" which added 32 KB RAM, A floppy disk and a printer interface. With these extras the TRS-80 became a viable small business computer.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Introduction of the 16-bit <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086">Intel 8086</a>, the first <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86">x86</a> microprocessor. The available clock frequencies were 5, 8 and 10 MHz, with an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_instruction_listings">instruction set</a> of about 300<sup>[<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed"></a></i>]</sup> operations. At its introduction, the fastest 8086 available was the 8 MHz version which achieved 0.8 MIPS and contained 29,000 transistors. Over three decades later, x86 remains the most popular and commercially successful <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instruction_set_architecture">instruction set architecture</a> in the history of personal computing.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan">JAP</a>
</td>
<td>The arcade video game <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders">Space Invaders</a></i> is released, sparking a video game craze. In 1979, Atari's <i>Asteroids</i> would prove to be incredibly popular.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Programming language <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)">Ada</a> introduced by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Ichbiah">Jean Ichbiah</a> and team at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell">Honeywell</a> for the US Department of Defense.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Introduction of the Intel 8088, compatible with the 8086 with an 8-bit data bus – but this makes it cheaper to implement in computers. Chosen for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC">IBM PC</a>, Intel processors were found in millions of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible">IBM PC compatible</a> computers.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>UK
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET">Commodore PET</a> released in the United Kingdom. Based on a 1 MHz 6502 processor it displayed monochrome text and had 8 KB of RAM. Priced £569. A version with 16 KB of RAM cost £776, while 32 KB of RAM cost £914.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands">NED</a><br/><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan">JAP</a>
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc">Compact disc</a> was invented.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68000">Motorola 68000</a> Microprocessor launched, the first of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68k">68k</a> family. 5+ years later it was used in machines such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh">Macintosh</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST">Atari ST</a> and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga">Amiga</a>.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>1979
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Shortly after the release of V7 Unix, which included <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP">UUCP</a>, a protocol for communication over standard telephone lines, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis developed and released <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet">Usenet</a>, a global discussion group system. Now, it uses <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet">Internet</a> protocols and is still popular.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Four disgruntled <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari">Atari</a> programmers leave and form <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision">Activision</a>, the first third-party video game software publisher. Activision promotes both the game and the programmer, changing the way software is marketed.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td>Texas Instruments releases the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-99/4">TI-99/4 microcomputer</a>. This system generally used <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette">audio cassettes</a> to store information, along with ROM modules, similar to gaming units, to hold commercial software. Additionally, TI made available a speech synthesizer, based on their own <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS5220">chip</a>, for the TI-99/4 and its successor, the 4A.
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc">VisiCalc</a> spreadsheet software released.<sup><a href="#cite_note-Kirschenbaum2013-14">[14]</a></sup>
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>
</td>
<td>US
</td>
<td><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar">WordStar</a> word processing software released.<sup><a href="#cite_note-Kirschenbaum2013-14">[14]</a></sup>
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<td>Atari releases the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit_family">Atari 400/800</a>, a high-performance game-oriented home computer based on the 6502 microprocessor.
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<ul><li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_revolution">Information revolution</a></li></ul>
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<ul><li><a href="http://trillian.randomstuff.org.uk/~stephen/history/"><i>A Brief History of Computing,</i></a> by Stephen White. A computer history site; the present article is a modified version of his timeline, used with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:History_of_computing/Permission">permission</a>.</li></ul>
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 * 1 1950s
 * 2 1960s
 * 3 1970s
 * 4 See also
 * 5 Notes
 * 6 References
 * 7 External links
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 Timeline of computing 1950–1979

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 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
 Find sources: "Timeline of computing 1950–1979" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( December 2008 ) (Learn how and when to remove this message) 
 
 History of computing 
 
 Hardware 
 * Hardware before 1960 
 * Hardware 1960s to present 
 Software 
 * Software 
 * Software configuration management 
 * Unix 
 * Free software and open-source software
 Computer science 
 * Artificial intelligence 
 * Compiler construction 
 * Early computer science 
 * Operating systems 
 * Programming languages 
 * Prominent pioneers 
 * Software engineering 
 Modern concepts 
 * General-purpose CPUs 
 * Graphical user interface 
 * Internet 
 * Laptops 
 * Personal computers 
 * Video games 
 * World Wide Web 
 * Cloud 
 By country 
 * Bulgaria 
 * Eastern Bloc 
 * Poland 
 * Romania 
 * South America 
 * Soviet Union 
 * Yugoslavia 
 Timeline of computing 
 * before 1950 
 * 1950–1979 
 * 1980–1989 
 * 1990–1999 
 * 2000–2009 
 * 2010–2019 
 * 2020–present 
 * more timelines ... 
 Glossary of computer science 
 * Category 
 

 This article presents a detailed timeline of events in the history of computing from 1950 to 1979. For narratives explaining the overall developments, see the history of computing.

 1950s [ edit ]

 Date Place Event         
 Feb 1950 Sweden BARK was finished in Sweden. Next to come was BESK in 1953.        
 Apr 1950 US SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer) demonstrated at US NBS in Washington, DC – was the first fully functional stored-program computer in the U.S.      
 May 1950 UK The Pilot ACE computer, with 800 vacuum tubes, and mercury delay lines for its main memory, became operational on 10 May 1950 at the National Physical Laboratory near London. It was a preliminary version of the full ACE, which had been designed by Alan Turing.     
 Aug 1950 US SWAC (Standards Western Automatic Computer) demonstrated at UCLA in Los Angeles; fastest computer in the world until IAS machine.       
 Konrad Zuse leased his Z4 machine to the ETH Zurich for five years. Z4 was a relay-based machine. The corresponding contract was signed in the fall of 1949, and the machine reassembled in Zurich after its arrival in July 1950.     
 Sep 1950 GER         
 The Z4 was replaced by ERMETH, a computer developed at the ETH in Switzerland from 1953 to 1956, one of the first electronic computers on the European continent.      
          
 Oct 1950 UK Turing Test – The British mathematician and computer pioneer Alan Turing published a paper describing the potential development of human and computer intelligence and communication. The paper would come later to be called the Turing Test.     
 1950 US TIME magazine cover story on the Harvard "Mark III: Can man build a superman?" includes a quote from Howard Aiken, commenting on "calculators" (computers) then under construction: "We'll have to think up bigger problems if we want to keep them busy."     
 30 Mar 1951 US The first commercially successful electronic computer, UNIVAC, was also the first general-purpose computer – designed to handle both numeric and textual information. Designed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, whose corporation subsequently passed to Remington Rand. The implementation of this machine marked the real beginning of the computer era. Remington Rand delivered the first UNIVAC machine to the U.S. Bureau of Census. This machine used magnetic tape for input. 
 Whirlwind, the first real-time computer was built at MIT by the team of Jay Forrester for the US Air Defense System, became operational.       
 21 Apr 1951 US         
 This computer is the first to allow interactive computing, allowing users to interact with it using a keyboard and a cathode-ray tube. The Whirlwind design was later developed into SAGE, a comprehensive system of real-time computers used for early warning of air attacks.     
          
 17 Nov 1951 UK J. Lyons, a United Kingdom food company, famous for its tea, made history by running the first business application on an electronic computer. A payroll system was run on Lyons Electronic Office (LEO) a computer system designed by Maurice Wilkes who had previously worked on EDSAC.    
 The oldest known recordings of computer generated music were played by the Ferranti Mark 1 computer.       
 Sep 1951 UK         
 The Mark 1 is a commercial version of the Manchester Mark 1 machine from the University of Manchester. The music program was written by Christopher Strachey.      
          
 EDVAC (electronic discrete variable computer). The first computer to use magnetic tape.       
 1951 US         
 EDVAC could have new programs loaded from the tape. Proposed by John von Neumann, it was installed at the Institute for Advance Study, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, US.      
          
 1951 Australia CSIRAC used to play music – the first time a computer was used as a musical instrument.       
 1951 US The A-0 high-level compiler is invented by Grace Murray Hopper.        
 April 1952 US IBM introduces the IBM 701, the first computer in its 700 and 7000 series of large scale machines with varied scientific and commercial architectures, but common electronics and peripherals. Some computers in this series remained in service until the 1980s.     
 June 1952 US IAS machine completed at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, US (by Von Neumann and others).       
 1952 France Bull introduces the Gamma 3. A dual-mode decimal and binary computer that sold over 1200 units, becoming the first computer produced in over 1000 units.      
 1952 USSR BESM-1 is completed. Only one BESM-1 machine was built. The machine used approximately 5,000 vacuum tubes.       
 1953 UK The University of Manchester team complete the first transistorised computer.        
 1953 US Arthur Andersen was hired to program the payroll for General Electric (GE)'s Appliance Park manufacturing facility near Louisville, Kentucky. As a result, GE purchased UNIVAC I which became the first-ever commercial computer in the US. Joe Glickauf was Arthur Andersen's project leader for the GE engagement.    
 1953 World Estimate that there are 100 computers in the world.        
 1953 US Magnetic-core memory developed.        
 FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation), the first high-level programming language development, was begun by John Backus and his team at IBM.       
 1954 US         
 The development continued until 1957. It is still in use for scientific programming. Before being run, a FORTRAN program needs to be converted into a machine program by a compiler, itself a program.      
          
 1954 US The IBM 650 is introduced. A relatively inexpensive decimal machine with drum storage, it becomes the first computer produced over 2000 units.       
 December 1954 US The NORC was delivered by IBM to the US Navy.        
 1956 US First conference on artificial intelligence held at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.       
 1956 US The Bendix G-15 computer was introduced by the Bendix Corporation.        
 1956 NED Edsger Dijkstra invented an efficient algorithm for shortest paths in graphs as a demonstration of the abilities of the ARMAC computer. The example used was the Dutch railway system. The problem was chosen because it could be explained quickly and the result checked. Although this is the main thing many people will remember Dijkstra for, he also made important contributions to many areas of computing – in particular he should be remembered for his work on problems relating to concurrency, such as the invention of the semaphore.
 1957 US First dot matrix printer marketed by IBM.        
 1957 France The Gamma 60 is announced by Bull, becoming the first computer featuring an architecture specially designed for parallelism.       
 1957 US FORTRAN development finished. See 1954.        
 I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year.[ needs context ]      
 1957 US         
 — Editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall        
 1958 US Programming language LISP (interpreted) developed, Finished in 1960. LISP stands for 'LISt Processing'. Used in AI development. Developed by John McCarthy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.      
 1958 USSR Setun, a balanced ternary computer developed in 1958 at Moscow State University.        
 The integrated circuit invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments.        
 12 Sep 1958 US         
 Robert Noyce, who later set up Intel, also worked separately on the invention. Intel later went on to perfect the microprocessor. The patent was applied for in 1959 and granted in 1964. This patent was not accepted by Japan so Japanese businesses could avoid paying any fees, but in 1989 – after a 30-year legal battle – Japan granted the patent; so all Japanese companies paid fees up until the year 2001 – long after the patent became obsolete in the rest of the world. 
          
 1959 World Computers introduced between 1959 and 1964, often regarded as second-generation computers, were based on discrete transistors and printed circuits – resulting in smaller, more powerful and more reliable computers.     
 1959 UK Christopher Strachey, who became Oxford University's first professor of computation, filed a patent application for time-sharing.[1][2][3] He passed the concept on to J. C. R. Licklider at a UNESCO-sponsored conference on Information Processing in Paris that year.[4]     
 1959 US COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) developed by Grace Murray Hopper as the successor to FLOW-MATIC, finished in 1961.       
 1959 USSR Minsk mainframe computer development and production begun in the USSR. Stopped in 1975.       
 The MOSFET (MOS transistor) invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs.        
 1959 US         
 The MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor), also known as the MOS transistor, was invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs. It enabled high-density integrated circuits, and is the most widely used semiconductor device in computers.[5][6]     
          
 The silicon integrated circuit developed by Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor, using Jean Hoerni's planar process.       
 1959 US         
 In contrast to Kilby's germanium integrated circuit, Noyce developed a silicon integrated circuit, using Jean Hoerni's planar process.[7]       
          
 1959 US Douglas E. Eastwood and Douglas McIlroy of Bell Labs created Macro SAP, the first programming language with advanced macro capabilities. The following year McIlroy published a seminal paper in the fields of macro processors and programming language extensibility.     
 

 1960s [ edit ]

 Date Place Event            
 1960 US ALGOL, first structured, procedural, programming language to be released.           
 EUR            
 1960 UK The first compiler-compiler is released.           
 1961 US APL programming language released by Kenneth Iverson at IBM.           
 1961 US The AN/UYK-1 (TRW-130) computer was designed with rounded edges to fit through the hatch of ballistic missile submarines, as part of the first satellite navigation system, Transit.         
 1961 US The Molecular Electronic Computer, the first integrated circuits general-purpose computer (built for demonstration purposes, programmed to simulate a desk calculator), was built by Texas Instruments for the US Air Force.[8]         
 ATLAS is completed by the University of Manchester team.           
 1962 UK            
 This machine introduced many modern architectural concepts: spooling, interrupts, pipelining, interleaved memory, virtual memory and paging. It was the most powerful machine in the world at the time of release.         
             
 1962 US Work begun on the LINC, the brainchild of the MIT physicist Wesley A. Clark in May 1961. It was the first functional prototype of a computer scaled down to be optimized and priced for the individual user (about $43,600 – equivalent to $439,200 in 2023). Used for the first time at the National Institutes of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland in 1963. Many consider it to be the first personal computer, despite the big dimension of some elements, e.g. the memory rack.[9]     
 Spacewar!, an early and highly influential computer game, is written by MIT student Steve Russell.          
 1962 US            
 The game ran on a DEC PDP-1. Competing players fired at each other's space ships using an early version of a joystick.          
             
 Mouse conceived by Douglas Engelbart.[ citation needed ]           
 1963 US            
 The mouse was not to become popular until 1983 with Apple Computer's Lisa and Macintosh and not adopted by IBM until 1987 – although compatible computers such as the Amstrad PC1512 were fitted with mice before this date.         
             
 1964 US Paul Baran invents what would later be called packet switching.[10][11] Baran published a series of briefings and papers about dividing information into "message blocks" and sending it over distributed networks between 1960 and 1964.[12][13]        
 1964 US Computers built between 1964 and 1972 are often regarded as third-generation computers; they are based on the first integrated circuits – creating even smaller machines. Typical of such machines were the HP 2116A and Data General Nova.        
 1964 US Programming language PL/I released by IBM.           
 1964 US Launch of IBM System/360 – the first series of compatible computers, reversing and stopping the evolution of separate "business" and "scientific" machine architectures; all models used the same basic instruction set architecture and register sizes, in theory allowing programs to be migrated to more or less powerful models as needs changed. The basic unit of memory, the "byte", was defined as 8 bits, with larger units such as "words" defined with sizes that were multiples of 8, with many consequences. Many competing computers at the time used word sizes that were multiples of 6. The marketing term "IBM Compatible" was often used, at this time, to indicate that the architecture used 8-bit bytes. Over 14,000 were shipped by 1968.
 1964 US Project MAC begun at MIT by J.C.R. Licklider: several terminals all across campus will be connected to a central computer, using a timesharing mechanism. Bulletin boards and email are popular applications.         
 1964 US Sabre (computer system) launched.[14]           
 1965 US DEC PDP-8 Mini Computer was released. It was the first minicomputer, built by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It cost US$18,500 (equivalent to about $178,900 in 2023).         
 Moore's law published by Gordon Moore. Originally suggesting processor complexity doubled every year.          
 1965 US            
 It was published in the 35th Anniversary edition of Electronics magazine. The law was revised in 1975 to suggest a doubling in complexity every two years.          
             
 1965 US Fuzzy logic designed by Lotfi Zadeh (University of California, Berkeley), it is used to process approximate data – such as 'about 100'.          
 Programming language BASIC (Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) developed at Dartmouth College, US, by Thomas E. Kurtz and John George Kemeny.          
 1965 US            
 BASIC was not implemented on microcomputers until 1975. This was the first language designed to be used in a time-sharing environment, such as DTSS (Dartmouth Time-Sharing System), or GCOS.         
             
 1965 UK Donald Davies independently invents packet switching used in modern computer networking.[15][11] Davies conceived of and named the concept for data communication networks in 1965 and 1966.[16][17] Many of the wide-area packet-switched networks built in the 1970s, including the ARPANET, were similar "in nearly all respects" to his original 1965 design.[18]      
 1965 US The first supercomputer, the Control Data CDC 6600, was developed.           
 1966 US Hewlett-Packard entered the general-purpose computer business with its HP-2116A for computation, offering power formerly found only in much larger computers. It supported a wide variety of languages, among them ALGOL, BASIC, and FORTRAN.        
 1967 US/CH Development of programming language Pascal begun, continued in Switzerland from 1968 to 1971.[19] Based on ALGOL. Developed by Niklaus Wirth as a pedagogic tool.         
 1967 US The floppy disk is invented at IBM under the direction of Alan Shugart, for use as a microprogram load device for the System/370 and peripheral controllers.          
 Aug 1967 UK Wireless World magazine's low cost Digital Computer published in 5 parts. 8-Bit serial design demonstrator using germanium transistors.[20]          
 1968 US Intel founded by Robert Noyce and a few friends.           
 1968 US Programming language LOGO developed by Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert, and Cynthia Solomon at MIT.          
 1968 US Release of Hewlett-Packard 9100A, the programmable calculator (first scientific calculator) from HP.          
 But what ... is it good for?[ needs context ]           
 1968 US            
 — Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM commenting on the microchip.           
 2 Oct 1968 GER First computer ball mouse offered by Telefunken.[21][22] The device named Rollkugel RKS 100-86 is based on "reversing" an earlier trackball-like device (also named Rollkugel) embedded into radar flight control desks, which had been developed around 1965 by a team led by Rainer Mallebrein at Telefunken Konstanz for the German Bundesanstalt für Flugsicherung [ de ] as part of their TR 86 process computer system with its SIG 100-86[23] vector graphics terminal.     
 9 Dec 1968 US Douglas Engelbart demonstrates interactive computing at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco: mouse, on-screen windows, hypertext and full-screen word processing.         
 ARPANET, funded by the United States Department of Defense for research into networking, first computer-to-computer login occurred on November 21, 1969, between Stanford and UCLA. It was opened to non-military users later in the 1970s including many universities.        
 1969 US            
 The NPL network began operating in the same year.           
             
 Development of UNIX operating system begun.[24]           
 1969 US            
 It was later released as C source code to aid portability, and subsequently versions are obtainable for many different computers, including the IBM PC. It and its clones (such as Linux) are still widely used on network servers and scientific workstations. Originally developed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie.       
             
 7 Apr 1969 US The first Request for Comments, RFC 1 published. The RFCs (network working group, Request For Comment) are a series of papers which are used to develop and define protocols for networking; originally the basis for ARPANET, there are now thousands of them applying to all aspects of the Internet. Collectively they document everything about the way the Internet and computers on it should behave, such as TCP/IP networking or how email headers should be written.     
 1969 ? Introduction of the RS-232 (serial interface) standard by EIA (Electronic Industries Association), one of the oldest serial interfaces still (uncommonly) in use today.         
 1969 US Data General shipped a total of 50,000 Novas at US$8,000 each. The Nova was one of the first 16-bit minicomputers and led the way toward word lengths that were multiples of the 8-bit byte. It was first to employ medium-scale integration (MSI) circuits from Fairchild Semiconductor, with subsequent models using large-scale integrated (LSI) circuits. Also notable was that the entire central processor was contained on one 15-inch printed circuit board.     
 

 1970s [ edit ]

 Date Place Event         
 Oct 1970 US First dynamic RAM chip introduced by Intel. It was called the 1103 and had a capacity of 1 Kbit, 1024 bits.        
 1970 US Programming language Forth developed. A simple, clean, stack-based design, which later inspired PostScript and the Java virtual machine.       
 1971 US CTC ships the Datapoint 2200, a mass-produced programmable terminal. Its multi-chip CPU provided the basis for the Intel 8008. A monitor and cassette drives were built-in, and the entire system fit the approximate footprint of an IBM Selectric typewriter. Users quickly began to use the system as a standalone computer – one of the earliest to arguably qualify as a personal computer.   
 1971 US Release of HP 9800 series, a series of desktop computers from Hewlett-Packard, replacing their first model, the Hewlett-Packard 9100A.       
 1971 US Kenbak-1 ships. This small, cheap (US$750) personal computer, built using pre-microprocessor TTL technology, is one clear candidate for "first personal computer", and is so considered by the Computer History Museum and the American Computer Museum.[25]      
 1971 US Ray Tomlinson develops the first program that can send email messages, via the Arpanet, between people using different computers. (Programs existed previously that could send such messages between users logging onto the same computer.)      
 15 Nov 1971 US The Intel 4004, the first commercially available microprocessor, is released. It contains the equivalent of 2,300 transistors and was a 4-bit processor. It is capable of around 60,000 instructions per second (0.06 MIPS), running at a maximum clock speed of 740 kHz.     
 1971 US Texas Instruments releases the first easily portable electronic calculator.        
 1971 8-inch floppy disk introduced.[26]         
 1972 US Atari founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney.         
 1972 US Pong released – widely recognised as the first popular arcade video game. It was invented by Allan Alcorn.        
 1972 ? Computers built after 1972 are often called fourth-generation computers, based on LSI (Large Scale Integration) of circuits (such as microprocessors) – typically 500 or more components on a chip. Later developments include VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) of integrated circuits 5 years later – typically 10,000 components. The fourth generation is generally viewed as running right up until the present,[ when? ] since although computing power has increased the basic technology has remained virtually the same. 
 Programming language C developed at The Bell Laboratories in the US.        
 1972 US          
 Dennis Ritchie, one of the inventors of the Unix operating system, simplifies BCPL into a language he calls B, then iterates B into C. It is a very popular language, especially for systems programming – as it is flexible and fast. C was considered a refreshing change in the computing field because it helped introduce structured programming. Inspired by C, C++, was introduced in the 1980s, and in turn helped usher in the era of object-oriented programming.  
          
 1972 US First handheld scientific calculator released by Hewlett-Packard; this makes the engineer's slide rule obsolete.        
 1 Apr 1972 US 8008 microprocessor released by Intel.         
 1972 US The first international connections to ARPANET are established. ARPANET later became the basis for what is now called the Internet.       
 1972 NOR Norsk Data launches the Nord-5, the first 32-bit supermini computer.        
 1972 US In 1972–1973, IBM Los Gatos Scientific Center developed a portable computer prototype called SCAMP (Special Computer APL Machine Portable) based on the IBM PALM processor with a Philips compact cassette drive, small CRT and full function keyboard. SCAMP emulated an IBM 1130 minicomputer in order to run APL\1130.[27] Because it was the first to emulate APL\1130 performance on a portable, single-user computer, PC Magazine in 1983 designated SCAMP a "revolutionary concept" and "the world's first personal computer".[27][28] The prototype is in the Smithsonian Institution.
 1973 UK Clifford Cocks invents a public-key cryptography algorithm equivalent to what would become (in 1978) the RSA algorithm while working at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).[29]      
 1973 US Xerox Alto, a powerful personal computer with bitmapped graphical user interface, deployed at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.       
 1973 FRA Microcomputer Micral N, developed in 1973 by Frenchman François Gernelle, of the company R2E. it will be officially recognized as "the first microcomputer marketed in the world" by Steve Wozniak (the designer of the Apple 1) who was in 1986 a member of the jury of an international competition in the United States.     
 1973 US Development of the TCP/IP protocol suite began by a group headed by Vinton Cerf and Robert E. Kahn. These are the protocols used for computer networks such as the Internet.       
 1973 FRA Programming language Prolog developed at the University of Luminy-Marseilles in France by Alain Colmerauer. It introduced the new paradigm of logical programming and is often used for expert systems and AI programming.      
 1973 US The TV Typewriter, designed by Don Lancaster, displayed alphanumeric information on an ordinary television set. It used US$120 worth of electronics components. The original design included two memory boards and could generate and store 512 characters as 16 lines of 32 characters. A 90-minute cassette tape provided supplementary storage for about 100 pages of text.    
 1973 US Ethernet developed. This became a popular way of connecting PCs and other computers together – to enable them to share data, and devices such as printers. A group of machines connected together in this way is known as a LAN.      
 1974 UK CLIP-4, the first computer with a parallel architecture.         
 1974 CAN The MCM/70, a candidate for first personal computer, is released by Micro Computer Machines of Canada. It failed commercially, despite weighing just 20 pounds and featuring a plasma display and a ROM-based APL programming language interpreter.      
 1 Apr 1974 US Introduction of the 8080. It ran at a clock frequency of 2 MHz and did 0.64 MIPS.        
 1974 US Motorola announces the MC6800 8-bit microprocessor. It is easier to implement than the 8080 because it only needs a single power supply to operate and does not need support chips. Unlike the 8080 it is sold not as much as a general-purpose "number cruncher / computer" CPU but more as a control processor for industrial control and as a peripheral processor.    
 1974 US Engineers Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch leave Motorola after completing work on the 6800 CPU and join MOS Technology.        
 1975 Italy Olivetti released the personal computer Olivetti P6060, the first with an integrated floppy disk drive. It was designed by Pier Giorgio Perotto.       
 9 Oct 1974 UK ICL launches its New Range of mainframes, the ICL 2900 Series.        
 1975 US The MITS Altair 8800, the first commercially successful hobby computer, is released. An article in Popular Electronics (January 1975), described the computer and invited people to order kits. Despite the limited processing power, input/output system (blinkenlights and toggle switches) and memory (256 bytes), around 200 were ordered on the first day. 10,000 units were eventually shipped at a kit price of US$397 each. Numerous companies produced clones based on the "S-100 bus" (the Altair's main bus).  
 1975 US First microcomputer implementation of BASIC by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. It was written for the MITS Altair. This led to the formation of Microsoft later in the year.       
 1975 US Unix marketed (see 1969).         
 1975 NOR Norwegian company Mycron releases its MYCRO-1, the first single-board computer.        
 1975 US Formation of Microsoft by Bill Gates and Paul Allen.         
 1975 US MOS Technology releases their 6501 CPU. which is pin-compatible with Motorola's 6800, who soon starts a lawsuit against them. The 6501 is quickly withdrawn from sale and replaced with the 6502 which has a "lawsuit-compatible"[note 1] design, but is otherwise nearly identical to the 6501. The 6502 becomes one of the most popular CPUs for the next 10 years and is used in many computers and game consoles (most notably the Atari 2600, Apple II, Commodore PET, VIC-20, Commodore 64, BBC Micro, and Nintendo Entertainment System). 
 1975 US IBM 5100 computer released; with integrated keyboard, display, and mass storage on tape, it resembles the personal computers of a few years later, although it does not use a microprocessor.       
 1975 Italy The laboratory CSELT released MUSA (MUltichannel Speaking Automaton), an early experiment of Speech Synthesis. It was able to read and sing Italian with multiple voices (a cappella).       
 Nov 1975 US Zilog is founded by ex-Intel employees.         
 1 Apr 1976 US Apple Computer, Inc. founded, to market the Apple I single-board computer designed by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. It uses the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor.       
 1976 US First laser printer introduced by IBM – the IBM 3800. The first colour versions came onto the market in 1988.        
 1976 US Introduction of the Intel 8085 chip. An improved version of the 8080, with a superset of the 8080s instruction set (only a couple[ quantify ] of extra instructions). Single 5V power supply (while the 8080 needed several different voltages).      
 1976 US Z80 chip released by Zilog. It was a superset of the 8080 chip with additional registers and instructions, and using only one power supply voltage. CP/M was originally written for the 8080, but many implementations used the Z80. The Z80 was the processor for home computers like the Tandy TRS-80 of 1977, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum of 1982 and many others.    
 1976 US MOS Technology introduces the KIM-1 microcomputer system as a demonstrator for its 6502 CPU.        
 1976 US Cray-1 supercomputer was invented by Seymour Cray. He left Control Data in 1972 to form his own company. This machine was known as much for its horseshoe-shaped design as it was for being the first supercomputer to make vector processing practical. 85 were shipped at a cost of US$5 million each.     
 1976 US Commodore buys MOS Technology in a stock trade. MOS is valued at US$12 million. Chuck Peddle joins Commodore as chief engineer. With the purchase of MOS, Commodore begins work on the Commodore PET.      
 1976 US Emacs text editing software created.[24][ clarification needed ]        
 1976 "5.25 inch floppy disks are introduced. When this product reaches the PC market it causes an explosive growth in digital information storage."[26]       
 1977 US Commodore introduces the Commodore PET. It comes with 4 KB or 8 KB of RAM, and an integrated cassette deck and 9" monochrome monitor.       
 There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.[ needs context ]        
 1977 US          
 — Ken Olsen, founder, president, and chairman of Digital Equipment Corporation        
 5 Jun 1977 US Apple II computer introduced based on an 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor running at 1 MHz with 4 KB of RAM. It had an open architecture, used color graphics, and an audio cassette interface for loading programs and storing data. Later, in July 1978, a floppy disk drive was made available with an elegantly designed interface.[30][31] One of the first examples of a "killer app" (for the business world) was released for it – the VisiCalc spreadsheet program – in 1979.  
 Aug 1977 US Tandy brought out the TRS-80 with "Level I BASIC". Despite simple black-and-white graphics, thanks to the nationwide chain of Radio Shack stores, it became a bestseller quickly.[ further explanation needed ]      
 Sep 1977 US Heathkit made the H8 Home computer kit available. It was based on an Intel 8080a processor and shipped with HDOS (Heathkit Disk Operating System) and Benton Harbor BASIC.       
 1978 US Tandy upgraded the TRS-80 with a much improved Microsoft 8K "Level II BASIC", and an "expansion interface" which added 32 KB RAM, A floppy disk and a printer interface. With these extras the TRS-80 became a viable small business computer.      
 8 Jun 1978 US Introduction of the 16-bit Intel 8086, the first x86 microprocessor. The available clock frequencies were 5, 8 and 10 MHz, with an instruction set of about 300[ citation needed ] operations. At its introduction, the fastest 8086 available was the 8 MHz version which achieved 0.8 MIPS and contained 29,000 transistors. Over three decades later, x86 remains the most popular and commercially successful instruction set architecture in the history of personal computing.  
 1978 JAP The arcade video game Space Invaders is released, sparking a video game craze. In 1979, Atari's Asteroids would prove to be incredibly popular.       
 1979 US Programming language Ada introduced by Jean Ichbiah and team at Honeywell for the US Department of Defense.        
 1 Jun 1979 US Introduction of the Intel 8088, compatible with the 8086 with an 8-bit data bus – but this makes it cheaper to implement in computers. Chosen for the IBM PC, Intel processors were found in millions of IBM PC compatible computers.      
 1979 UK Commodore PET released in the United Kingdom. Based on a 1 MHz 6502 processor it displayed monochrome text and had 8 KB of RAM. Priced £569. A version with 16 KB of RAM cost £776, while 32 KB of RAM cost £914.      
 1979 NED Compact disc was invented.         
 JAP          
 1979 US The Motorola 68000 Microprocessor launched, the first of the 68k family. 5+ years later it was used in machines such as the Macintosh, the Atari ST and the Amiga.       
 1979 US Shortly after the release of V7 Unix, which included UUCP, a protocol for communication over standard telephone lines, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis developed and released Usenet, a global discussion group system. Now, it uses Internet protocols and is still popular.     
 1979 US Four disgruntled Atari programmers leave and form Activision, the first third-party video game software publisher. Activision promotes both the game and the programmer, changing the way software is marketed.      
 1979 US Texas Instruments releases the TI-99/4 microcomputer. This system generally used audio cassettes to store information, along with ROM modules, similar to gaming units, to hold commercial software. Additionally, TI made available a speech synthesizer, based on their own chip, for the TI-99/4 and its successor, the 4A.    
 1979 US VisiCalc spreadsheet software released.[14]         
 1979 US WordStar word processing software released.[14]         
 Nov 1979 US Atari releases the Atari 400/800, a high-performance game-oriented home computer based on the 6502 microprocessor.        
 

 See also [ edit ]

 * Information revolution

 Notes [ edit ]

 1. ^ See 6502 microprocessor history

 References [ edit ]

 1. ^ "Computer Pioneers – Christopher Strachey". IEEE Computer Society. Archived from the original on 2019-05-15 . Retrieved 2020-01-23 .
 2. ^ "Reminiscences on the Theory of Time-Sharing". jmc.stanford.edu. Archived from the original on 2018-10-23 . Retrieved 2020-01-23 .
 3. ^ "Computer – Time-sharing and minicomputers". Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on 2015-01-02 . Retrieved 2020-01-23 .
 4. ^ Gillies, James M.; Gillies, James; Gillies, James and Cailliau Robert; Cailliau, R. (2000). How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web. Oxford University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-19-286207-5.
 5. ^ "1960: Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) Transistor Demonstrated | the Silicon Engine | Computer History Museum". Archived from the original on 2019-10-27 . Retrieved 2019-07-30 .
 6. ^ "Who Invented the Transistor?". 4 December 2013. Archived from the original on 13 December 2013 . Retrieved 30 July 2019 .
 7. ^ "1959: Practical Monolithic Integrated Circuit Concept Patented | the Silicon Engine | Computer History Museum". Archived from the original on 2019-10-24 . Retrieved 2019-07-30 .
 8. ^ Molecular Electronic Computer brochure | 102646283 | Computer History Museum. Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI). 1961. Archived from the original on 2018-03-14 . Retrieved 2018-03-13 . {{cite book}} : |website= ignored ( help )
 9. ^ "history-computer.com: LINC". Archived from the original on 2018-01-14 . Retrieved 2018-01-19 .
 10. ^ "Inductee Details – Paul Baran". National Inventors Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on 6 September 2017 . Retrieved 6 September 2017 .
 11. ^ a b "The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable". Washington Post. 2015-05-30. Archived from the original on 2015-05-30 . Retrieved 2020-02-18 . "Historians credit seminal insights to Welsh scientist Donald W. Davies and American engineer Paul Baran"
 12. ^ Baran, Paul (2002). "The beginnings of packet switching: some underlying concepts" (PDF) . IEEE Communications Magazine. 40 (7): 42–48. doi:10.1109/MCOM.2002.1018006. ISSN 0163-6804. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-10-16 . Retrieved 2021-10-16 . "Essentially all the work was defined by 1961, and fleshed out and put into formal written form in 1962. The idea of hot potato routing dates from late 1960."
 13. ^ Monica, 1776 Main Street Santa; California 90401-3208. "Paul Baran and the Origins of the Internet". www.rand.org. Archived from the original on 2018-09-23 . Retrieved 2020-02-15 .{{cite web}} : CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list ( link )
 14. ^ a b c Kirschenbaum, Matthew (July 2013), "10 Most Influential Software Programs Ever", Slate, US, archived from the original on 2015-08-29 , retrieved 2015-08-15
 15. ^ "Inductee Details – Donald Watts Davies". National Inventors Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on 6 September 2017 . Retrieved 6 September 2017 .
 16. ^ Roberts, Dr. Lawrence G. (November 1978). "The Evolution of Packet Switching". Archived from the original on 2016-03-24 . Retrieved 5 September 2017 . "Almost immediately after the 1965 meeting, Donald Davies conceived of the details of a store-and-forward packet switching system" ; Roberts, Dr. Lawrence G. (May 1995). "The ARPANET & Computer Networks". Archived from the original on 2016-03-24 . Retrieved 13 April 2016 . "Then in June 1966, Davies wrote a second internal paper, "Proposal for a Digital Communication Network" In which he coined the word packet,- a small sub part of the message the user wants to send, and also introduced the concept of an "Interface computer" to sit between the user equipment and the packet network."
 17. ^ Davies, Donald (2001), "A Historical Study of the Beginnings of Packet Switching", Computer Journal, British Computer Society [ dead link ]
 18. ^ Roberts, Dr. Lawrence G. (November 1978). "The Evolution of Packet Switching" (PDF) . IEEE Invited Paper. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-12-31 . Retrieved 2017-09-17 . "In nearly all respects, Davies' original proposal, developed in late 1965, was similar to the actual networks being built today."
 19. ^ Stefan Betschon: Der Zauber des Anfangs – Schweizer Computerpioniere. In: Ingenieure bauen die Schweiz. Franz Betschon et al. (editors), pp. 376–399, Verlag Neue Zuercher Zeitung, Zurich 2013, ISBN 978-3-03823-791-4
 20. ^ Crank, Brian (August 1967). "Wireless World Digital Computer" (PDF) . Wireless World. 73 (8): 366–372.
 21. ^ "Auf den Spuren der deutschen Computermaus" [In the footsteps of the German computer mouse] (in German). Heise Verlag. 2009-04-28. Archived from the original on 2013-11-27 . Retrieved 2013-01-07 .
 22. ^ "Telefunken's 'Rollkugel'". oldmouse.com. Archived from the original on 2013-08-08 . Retrieved 2013-08-17 .
 23. ^ "SIG-100 video terminal and mouse". Archived from the original on 2013-08-27 . Retrieved 2013-08-17 .
 24. ^ a b Ford, Paul (April 2014), The Great Works of Software, archived from the original on 2015-08-17 , retrieved 2015-08-15 – via Medium
 25. ^ "The man who made 'the world's first personal computer'", BBC News, 6 November 2015, archived from the original on 23 March 2018 , retrieved 21 July 2018
 26. ^ a b Cornell University Library (2003). "Digital Preservation and Technology Timeline". Digital Preservation Management. US. Archived from the original on 2015-08-06 . Retrieved 2017-12-07 .
 27. ^ a b IBM Archives Archived 2003-02-10 at archive.today
 28. ^ Friedl, Paul J. (November 1983). "SCAMP: The Missing Link In The PC's Past?". PC. pp. 190–197. Archived from the original on 27 October 2021 . Retrieved 8 January 2015 .
 29. ^ "British Document Outlines Early Encryption Discovery". archive.nytimes.com. Archived from the original on 2021-05-08 . Retrieved 2021-05-12 . "The set of algorithms, equations and arcane mathematics that make up public key cryptography are a crucial technology for preserving computer privacy in and making commerce possible on the Internet. Some hail its discovery as one of the most important accomplishments of 20th-century mathematics because it allows two people to set up a secure phone call without meeting beforehand. Without it, there would be no privacy in cyberspace."
 30. ^ Weyhrich, Steven (28 December 2001). "Apple II History Chapter 5, The Disk II". Archived from the original on 1 December 2006 . Retrieved 27 November 2008 .
 31. ^ Christopher Null (April 2007), "50 Best Tech Products of All Time", PC World, US, archived from the original on 2015-07-22 , retrieved 2015-08-15

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
This article presents a detailed  timeline of events in the history of computing from 1950 to 1979. For narratives explaining the overall developments, see the history of computing.
 
 
Date
Place
Event
 
Sweden
 BARK was finished in Sweden. Next to come was BESK in 1953.
 
US
 SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer) demonstrated at US NBS in Washington, DC – was the first fully functional stored-program computer in the U.S.
 
UK
The Pilot ACE computer, with 800 vacuum tubes, and mercury delay lines for its main memory, became operational on 10 May 1950 at the National Physical Laboratory near London. It was a preliminary version of the full ACE, which had been designed by Alan Turing.
 
US
 SWAC (Standards Western Automatic Computer) demonstrated at UCLA in Los Angeles; fastest computer in the world until IAS machine.
 
GER
 Konrad Zuse leased his Z4 machine to the ETH Zurich for five years. Z4 was a relay-based machine. The corresponding contract was signed in the fall of 1949, and the machine reassembled in Zurich after its arrival in July 1950.
The Z4 was replaced by ERMETH, a computer developed at the ETH in Switzerland from 1953 to 1956, one of the first electronic computers on the European continent.
 
Oct 
UK
 Turing Test – The British mathematician and computer pioneer Alan Turing published a paper describing the potential development of human and computer intelligence and communication. The paper would come later to be called the Turing Test.
 
US
  TIME  magazine cover story on the Harvard "Mark III: Can man build a superman?" includes a quote from Howard Aiken, commenting on "calculators" (computers) then under construction: "We'll have to think up bigger problems if we want to keep them busy."
 
US
The first commercially successful electronic computer, UNIVAC, was also the first general-purpose computer – designed to handle both numeric and textual information. Designed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, whose corporation subsequently passed to Remington Rand. The implementation of this machine marked the real beginning of the computer era. Remington Rand delivered the first UNIVAC machine to the U.S. Bureau of Census. This machine used magnetic tape for input.
 
US
 Whirlwind, the first real-time computer was built at MIT by the team of Jay Forrester for the US Air Defense System, became operational.
This computer is the first to allow interactive computing, allowing users to interact with it using a keyboard and a cathode-ray tube. The Whirlwind design was later developed into SAGE, a comprehensive system of real-time computers used for early warning of air attacks.
 
UK
J. Lyons, a United Kingdom food company, famous for its tea, made history by running the first business application on an electronic computer. A payroll system was run on Lyons Electronic Office (LEO) a computer system designed by Maurice Wilkes who had previously worked on EDSAC.
 
UK
The oldest known recordings of computer generated music were played by the Ferranti Mark 1 computer.
The Mark 1 is a commercial version of the Manchester Mark 1 machine from the University of Manchester. The music program was written by Christopher Strachey.
 
US
 EDVAC (electronic discrete variable computer). The first computer to use magnetic tape.
EDVAC could have new programs loaded from the tape. Proposed by John von Neumann, it was installed at the Institute for Advance Study, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, US.
 
Australia
 CSIRAC used to play music – the first time a computer was used as a musical instrument.
 
US
The A-0 high-level compiler is invented by Grace Murray Hopper.
 
US
 IBM introduces the IBM 701, the first computer in its 700 and 7000 series of large scale machines with varied scientific and commercial architectures, but common electronics and peripherals. Some computers in this series remained in service until the 1980s.
 
US
 IAS machine completed at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, US (by Von Neumann and others).
 
1952
France
 Bull introduces the Gamma 3. A dual-mode decimal and binary computer that sold over 1200 units, becoming the first computer produced in over 1000 units.
 
USSR
 BESM-1 is completed. Only one BESM-1 machine was built. The machine used approximately 5,000 vacuum tubes.
 
UK
The University of Manchester team complete the first transistorised computer.
 
US
 Arthur Andersen was hired to program the payroll for General Electric (GE)'s Appliance Park manufacturing facility near Louisville, Kentucky. As a result, GE purchased UNIVAC I which became the first-ever commercial computer in the US. Joe Glickauf was Arthur Andersen's project leader for the GE engagement.
 
World
Estimate that there are 100 computers in the world.
 
US
 Magnetic-core memory developed.
 
US
 FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation), the first high-level programming language development, was begun by John Backus and his team at IBM.
The development continued until 1957. It is still in use for scientific programming. Before being run, a FORTRAN program needs to be converted into a machine program by a compiler, itself a program.
 
US
The IBM 650 is introduced. A relatively inexpensive decimal machine with drum storage, it becomes the first computer produced over 2000 units.
 
US
The NORC was delivered by IBM to the US Navy.
 
US
First conference on artificial intelligence held at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
 
US
The Bendix G-15 computer was introduced by the Bendix Corporation.
 
NED
 Edsger Dijkstra invented an efficient algorithm for shortest paths in graphs as a demonstration of the abilities of the ARMAC computer. The example used was the Dutch railway system. The problem was chosen because it could be explained quickly and the result checked. Although this is the main thing many people will remember Dijkstra for, he also made important contributions to many areas of computing – in particular he should be remembered for his work on problems relating to concurrency, such as the invention of the  semaphore .
 
US
First dot matrix printer marketed by IBM.
 
1957
France
The Gamma 60 is announced by Bull, becoming the first computer featuring an architecture specially designed for parallelism.
 
US
FORTRAN development finished. See 1954.
 
US
  I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year.[   ]  — Editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall   
 
US
Programming language LISP (interpreted) developed, Finished in 1960. LISP stands for 'LISt Processing'. Used in AI development. Developed by John McCarthy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
 
USSR
 Setun, a balanced ternary computer developed in 1958 at Moscow State University.
 
US
The integrated circuit invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments.
 Robert Noyce, who later set up Intel, also worked separately on the invention. Intel later went on to perfect the microprocessor. The patent was applied for in 1959 and granted in 1964. This patent was not accepted by Japan so Japanese businesses could avoid paying any fees, but in 1989 – after a 30-year legal battle – Japan granted the patent; so all Japanese companies paid fees up until the year 2001 – long after the patent became obsolete in the rest of the world.
 
World
Computers introduced between 1959 and 1964, often regarded as second-generation computers, were based on discrete transistors and printed circuits – resulting in smaller, more powerful and more reliable computers.
 
1959
UK
 Christopher Strachey, who became Oxford University's first professor of computation, filed a patent application for time-sharing. [1]   [2]   [3]  He passed the concept on to J. C. R. Licklider at a UNESCO-sponsored conference on Information Processing in Paris that year. [4] 
 
US
 COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) developed by Grace Murray Hopper as the successor to FLOW-MATIC, finished in 1961.
 
USSR
 Minsk mainframe computer development and production begun in the USSR. Stopped in 1975.
 
US
The MOSFET (MOS transistor) invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs.
The MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor), also known as the MOS transistor, was invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs. It enabled high-density integrated circuits, and is the most widely used semiconductor device in computers. [5]   [6] 
 
US
The silicon integrated circuit developed by Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor, using Jean Hoerni's planar process.
In contrast to Kilby's germanium integrated circuit, Noyce developed a silicon integrated circuit, using Jean Hoerni's planar process. [7] 
 
US
Douglas E. Eastwood and Douglas McIlroy of Bell Labs created Macro SAP, the first programming language with advanced macro capabilities. The following year McIlroy published a seminal paper in the fields of macro processors and programming language extensibility.
   
 
 
Date
Place
Event
 
USEUR
 ALGOL, first structured, procedural, programming language to be released.
 
UK
The first compiler-compiler is released.
 
US
 APL programming language released by Kenneth Iverson at IBM.
 
US
The AN/UYK-1 (TRW-130) computer was designed with rounded edges to fit through the hatch of ballistic missile submarines, as part of the first satellite navigation system, Transit.
 
1961
US
The Molecular Electronic Computer, the first integrated circuits general-purpose computer (built for demonstration purposes, programmed to simulate a desk calculator), was built by Texas Instruments for the US Air Force. [8] 
 
UK
 ATLAS is completed by the University of Manchester team.
This machine introduced many modern architectural concepts: spooling, interrupts, pipelining, interleaved memory, virtual memory and paging. It was the most powerful machine in the world at the time of release.
 
US
Work begun on the LINC, the brainchild of the MIT physicist Wesley A. Clark in May 1961. It was the first functional prototype of a computer scaled down to be optimized and priced for the individual user (about $43,600 – equivalent to $439,200 in 2023). Used for the first time at the National Institutes of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland in 1963. Many consider it to be the first personal computer, despite the big dimension of some elements, e.g. the memory rack. [9] 
 
US
 Spacewar!, an early and highly influential computer game, is written by MIT student Steve Russell.
The game ran on a DEC PDP-1. Competing players fired at each other's space ships using an early version of a joystick.
 
US
 Mouse conceived by Douglas Engelbart.[   ]
The mouse was not to become popular until 1983 with Apple Computer's Lisa and Macintosh and not adopted by IBM until 1987 – although compatible computers such as the Amstrad PC1512 were fitted with mice before this date.
 
1964
US
 Paul Baran invents what would later be called packet switching. [10]   [11]  Baran published a series of briefings and papers about dividing information into "message blocks" and sending it over distributed networks between 1960 and 1964. [12]   [13] 
 
US
Computers built between 1964 and 1972 are often regarded as third-generation computers; they are based on the first integrated circuits – creating even smaller machines. Typical of such machines were the HP 2116A and Data General Nova.
 
US
Programming language PL/I released by IBM.
 
US
Launch of IBM System/360 – the first series of compatible computers, reversing and stopping the evolution of separate "business" and "scientific" machine architectures; all models used the same basic instruction set architecture and register sizes, in theory allowing programs to be migrated to more or less powerful models as needs changed. The basic unit of memory, the "byte", was defined as 8 bits, with larger units such as "words" defined with sizes that were multiples of 8, with many consequences. Many competing computers at the time used word sizes that were multiples of 6. The marketing term "IBM Compatible" was often used, at this time, to indicate that the architecture used 8-bit bytes. Over 14,000 were shipped by 1968.
 
US
 Project MAC begun at MIT by J.C.R. Licklider: several terminals all across campus will be connected to a central computer, using a timesharing mechanism. Bulletin boards and email are popular applications.
 
US
 Sabre (computer system) launched. [14] 
 
US
 DEC PDP-8 Mini Computer was released. It was the first minicomputer, built by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It cost US$18,500 (equivalent to about $178,900 in 2023).
 
US
 Moore's law published by Gordon Moore. Originally suggesting processor complexity doubled every year.
It was published in the 35th Anniversary edition of  Electronics magazine. The law was revised in 1975 to suggest a doubling in complexity every two years.
 
US
 Fuzzy logic designed by Lotfi Zadeh (University of California, Berkeley), it is used to process approximate data – such as 'about 100'.
 
US
Programming language BASIC (Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) developed at Dartmouth College, US, by Thomas E. Kurtz and John George Kemeny.
BASIC was not implemented on microcomputers until 1975. This was the first language designed to be used in a time-sharing environment, such as DTSS (Dartmouth Time-Sharing System), or GCOS.
 
UK
 Donald Davies independently invents packet switching used in modern computer networking. [15]   [11]  Davies conceived of and named the concept for data communication networks in 1965 and 1966. [16]   [17]  Many of the wide-area packet-switched networks built in the 1970s, including the ARPANET, were similar "in nearly all respects" to his original 1965 design. [18] 
 
US
The first supercomputer, the Control Data CDC 6600, was developed.
 
US
 Hewlett-Packard entered the general-purpose computer business with its HP-2116A for computation, offering power formerly found only in much larger computers. It supported a wide variety of languages, among them ALGOL, BASIC, and FORTRAN.
 
US/CH
Development of programming language Pascal begun, continued in Switzerland from 1968 to 1971. [19]  Based on ALGOL. Developed by Niklaus Wirth as a pedagogic tool.
 
US
The floppy disk is invented at IBM under the direction of Alan Shugart, for use as a microprogram load device for the System/370 and peripheral controllers.
 
UK
 Wireless World magazine's low cost Digital Computer published in 5 parts. 8-Bit serial design demonstrator using germanium transistors. [20] 
 
US
 Intel founded by Robert Noyce and a few friends.
 
US
Programming language LOGO developed by Wally Feurzeig, Seymour Papert, and Cynthia Solomon at MIT.
 
US
Release of Hewlett-Packard 9100A, the programmable calculator (first scientific calculator) from HP.
 
US
  But what ... is it good for?[   ]  — Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM commenting on the microchip.  
 
GER
First computer ball mouse offered by Telefunken. [21]   [22]  The device named   RKS 100-86 is based on "reversing" an earlier trackball-like device (also named  ) embedded into radar flight control desks, which had been developed around 1965 by a team led by at Telefunken for the German   as part of their TR 86 process computer system with its SIG 100-86  [23]  vector graphics terminal.
 
US
 Douglas Engelbart demonstrates interactive computing at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco: mouse, on-screen windows, hypertext and full-screen word processing.
 
US
 ARPANET, funded by the United States Department of Defense for research into networking, first computer-to-computer login occurred on November 21, 1969, between Stanford and UCLA. It was opened to non-military users later in the 1970s including many universities.
The NPL network began operating in the same year.
 
US
Development of UNIX operating system begun. [24] 
It was later released as C source code to aid portability, and subsequently versions are obtainable for many different computers, including the IBM PC. It and its clones (such as Linux) are still widely used on network servers and scientific workstations. Originally developed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie.
 
US
The first Request for Comments, RFC 1 published. The RFCs (network working group, Request For Comment) are a series of papers which are used to develop and define protocols for networking; originally the basis for ARPANET, there are now thousands of them applying to all aspects of the Internet. Collectively they document everything about the way the Internet and computers on it should behave, such as TCP/IP networking or how email headers should be written.
 
?
Introduction of the RS-232 (serial interface) standard by EIA (Electronic Industries Association), one of the oldest serial interfaces still (uncommonly) in use today.
 
US
 Data General shipped a total of 50,000 Novas at US$8,000 each. The Nova was one of the first 16-bit minicomputers and led the way toward word lengths that were multiples of the 8-bit byte. It was first to employ medium-scale integration (MSI) circuits from Fairchild Semiconductor, with subsequent models using large-scale integrated (LSI) circuits. Also notable was that the entire central processor was contained on one 15-inch printed circuit board.
   
 
 
Date
Place
Event
 
US
First dynamic RAM chip introduced by Intel. It was called the 1103 and had a capacity of 1 Kbit, 1024 bits.
 
US
Programming language Forth developed. A simple, clean, stack-based design, which later inspired PostScript and the Java virtual machine.
 
US
 CTC ships the Datapoint 2200, a mass-produced programmable terminal. Its multi-chip CPU provided the basis for the Intel 8008. A monitor and cassette drives were built-in, and the entire system fit the approximate footprint of an IBM Selectric typewriter. Users quickly began to use the system as a standalone computer – one of the earliest to arguably qualify as a personal computer.
 
US
Release of HP 9800 series, a series of desktop computers from Hewlett-Packard, replacing their first model, the Hewlett-Packard 9100A.
 
US
 Kenbak-1 ships. This small, cheap (US$750) personal computer, built using pre-microprocessor TTL technology, is one clear candidate for "first personal computer", and is so considered by the Computer History Museum and the American Computer Museum. [25] 
 
US
 Ray Tomlinson develops the first program that can send email messages, via the Arpanet, between people using different computers. (Programs existed previously that could send such messages between users logging onto the same computer.)
 
US
The Intel 4004, the first commercially available microprocessor, is released. It contains the equivalent of 2,300 transistors and was a 4-bit processor. It is capable of around 60,000 instructions per second (0.06 MIPS), running at a maximum clock speed of 740 kHz.
 
US
 Texas Instruments releases the first easily portable electronic calculator.
 
 8-inch floppy disk introduced. [26] 
 
US
 Atari founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney.
 
US
 Pong released – widely recognised as the first popular arcade video game. It was invented by Allan Alcorn.
 
?
Computers built after 1972 are often called fourth-generation computers, based on LSI (Large Scale Integration) of circuits (such as microprocessors) – typically 500 or more components on a chip. Later developments include VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) of integrated circuits 5 years later – typically 10,000 components. The fourth generation is generally viewed as running right up until the present,[   ] since although computing power has increased the basic technology has remained virtually the same.
 
US
Programming language C developed at The Bell Laboratories in the US.
Dennis Ritchie, one of the inventors of the Unix operating system, simplifies BCPL into a language he calls B, then iterates B into C. It is a very popular language, especially for systems programming – as it is flexible and fast. C was considered a refreshing change in the computing field because it helped introduce structured programming. Inspired by C, C++, was introduced in the 1980s, and in turn helped usher in the era of object-oriented programming.
 
US
First handheld scientific calculator released by Hewlett-Packard; this makes the engineer's slide rule obsolete.
 
US
 8008 microprocessor released by Intel.
 
US
The first international connections to ARPANET are established. ARPANET later became the basis for what is now called the Internet.
 
 NOR
 Norsk Data launches the Nord-5, the first 32-bit supermini computer.
 
US
In 1972–1973, IBM Los Gatos Scientific Center developed a portable computer prototype called SCAMP (Special Computer APL Machine Portable) based on the IBM PALM processor with a Philips compact cassette drive, small CRT and full function keyboard. SCAMP emulated an IBM 1130 minicomputer in order to run APL\1130. [27]  Because it was the first to emulate APL\1130 performance on a portable, single-user computer,  PC Magazine  in 1983 designated SCAMP a "revolutionary concept" and "the world's first personal computer". [27]   [28]  The prototype is in the Smithsonian Institution.
 
1973
UK
 Clifford Cocks invents a public-key cryptography algorithm equivalent to what would become (in 1978) the RSA algorithm while working at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). [29] 
 
US
 Xerox Alto, a powerful personal computer with bitmapped graphical user interface, deployed at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
 
 FRA
Microcomputer Micral N, developed in 1973 by Frenchman François Gernelle, of the company R2E. it will be officially recognized as "the first microcomputer marketed in the world" by Steve Wozniak (the designer of the Apple 1) who was in 1986 a member of the jury of an international competition in the United States.
 
US
Development of the TCP/IP protocol suite began by a group headed by Vinton Cerf and Robert E. Kahn. These are the protocols used for computer networks such as the Internet.
 
 FRA
Programming language Prolog developed at the University of Luminy-Marseilles in France by Alain Colmerauer. It introduced the new paradigm of logical programming and is often used for expert systems and AI programming.
 
US
The TV Typewriter, designed by Don Lancaster, displayed alphanumeric information on an ordinary television set. It used US$120 worth of electronics components. The original design included two memory boards and could generate and store 512 characters as 16 lines of 32 characters. A 90-minute cassette tape provided supplementary storage for about 100 pages of text.
 
US
 Ethernet developed. This became a popular way of connecting PCs and other computers together – to enable them to share data, and devices such as printers. A group of machines connected together in this way is known as a LAN.
 
UK
CLIP-4, the first computer with a parallel architecture.
 
 CAN
The MCM/70, a candidate for first personal computer, is released by Micro Computer Machines of Canada. It failed commercially, despite weighing just 20 pounds and featuring a plasma display and a ROM-based APL programming language interpreter.
 
US
Introduction of the 8080. It ran at a clock frequency of 2 MHz and did 0.64 MIPS.
 
US
 Motorola announces the MC6800 8-bit microprocessor. It is easier to implement than the 8080 because it only needs a single power supply to operate and does not need support chips. Unlike the 8080 it is sold not as much as a general-purpose "number cruncher / computer" CPU but more as a control processor for industrial control and as a peripheral processor.
 
US
Engineers Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch leave Motorola after completing work on the 6800 CPU and join MOS Technology.
 
Italy
 Olivetti released the personal computer Olivetti P6060, the first with an integrated floppy disk drive. It was designed by Pier Giorgio Perotto.
 
UK
 ICL launches its New Range of mainframes, the ICL 2900 Series.
 
US
The MITS Altair 8800, the first commercially successful hobby computer, is released. An article in  Popular Electronics  (January 1975), described the computer and invited people to order kits. Despite the limited processing power, input/output system (blinkenlights and toggle switches) and memory (256 bytes), around 200 were ordered on the first day. 10,000 units were eventually shipped at a kit price of US$397 each. Numerous companies produced clones based on the "S-100 bus" (the Altair's main bus).
 
US
First microcomputer implementation of BASIC by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. It was written for the MITS Altair. This led to the formation of Microsoft later in the year.
 
US
 Unix marketed (see 1969).
 
 NOR
 Norwegian company Mycron releases its MYCRO-1, the first single-board computer.
 
US
Formation of Microsoft by Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
 
US
 MOS Technology releases their 6501 CPU. which is pin-compatible with Motorola's 6800, who soon starts a lawsuit against them. The 6501 is quickly withdrawn from sale and replaced with the 6502 which has a "lawsuit-compatible" [note 1]  design, but is otherwise nearly identical to the 6501. The 6502 becomes one of the most popular CPUs for the next 10 years and is used in many computers and game consoles (most notably the Atari 2600, Apple II, Commodore PET, VIC-20, Commodore 64, BBC Micro, and Nintendo Entertainment System).
 
US
 IBM 5100 computer released; with integrated keyboard, display, and mass storage on tape, it resembles the personal computers of a few years later, although it does not use a microprocessor.
 
Italy
The laboratory CSELT released MUSA (MUltichannel Speaking Automaton), an early experiment of Speech Synthesis. It was able to read and sing Italian with multiple voices (a cappella).
 
US
 Zilog is founded by ex-Intel employees.
 
US
 Apple Computer, Inc. founded, to market the Apple I single-board computer designed by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. It uses the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor.
 
US
First laser printer introduced by IBM – the IBM 3800. The first colour versions came onto the market in 1988.
 
US
Introduction of the Intel 8085 chip. An improved version of the 8080, with a superset of the 8080s instruction set (only a couple[   ] of extra instructions). Single 5V power supply (while the 8080 needed several different voltages).
 
US
 Z80 chip released by Zilog. It was a superset of the 8080 chip with additional registers and instructions, and using only one power supply voltage. CP/M was originally written for the 8080, but many implementations used the Z80. The Z80 was the processor for home computers like the Tandy TRS-80 of 1977, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum of 1982 and many others.
 
US
 MOS Technology introduces the KIM-1 microcomputer system as a demonstrator for its 6502 CPU.
 
US
 Cray-1 supercomputer was invented by Seymour Cray. He left Control Data in 1972 to form his own company. This machine was known as much for its horseshoe-shaped design as it was for being the first supercomputer to make vector processing practical. 85 were shipped at a cost of US$5 million each.
 
US
 Commodore buys MOS Technology in a stock trade. MOS is valued at US$12 million. Chuck Peddle joins Commodore as chief engineer. With the purchase of MOS, Commodore begins work on the Commodore PET.
 
US
 Emacs text editing software created. [24]  [   ]
 
"5.25 inch floppy disks are introduced. When this product reaches the PC market it causes an explosive growth in digital information storage." [26] 
 
US
 Commodore introduces the Commodore PET. It comes with 4 KB or 8 KB of RAM, and an integrated cassette deck and 9" monochrome monitor.
 
US
  There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.[   ]   —  Ken Olsen, founder, president, and chairman of Digital Equipment Corporation    
 
US
 Apple II computer introduced based on an 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor running at 1 MHz with 4 KB of RAM. It had an open architecture, used color graphics, and an audio cassette interface for loading programs and storing data. Later, in July 1978, a floppy disk drive was made available with an elegantly designed interface. [30]   [31]  One of the first examples of a "killer app" (for the business world) was released for it – the VisiCalc spreadsheet program – in 1979.
 
US
 Tandy brought out the TRS-80 with "Level I BASIC". Despite simple black-and-white graphics, thanks to the nationwide chain of Radio Shack stores, it became a bestseller quickly.[   ]
 
US
 Heathkit made the H8 Home computer kit available. It was based on an Intel 8080a processor and shipped with HDOS (Heathkit Disk Operating System) and Benton Harbor BASIC.
 
US
Tandy upgraded the TRS-80 with a much improved Microsoft 8K "Level II BASIC", and an "expansion interface" which added 32 KB RAM, A floppy disk and a printer interface. With these extras the TRS-80 became a viable small business computer.
 
US
Introduction of the 16-bit Intel 8086, the first x86 microprocessor. The available clock frequencies were 5, 8 and 10 MHz, with an instruction set of about 300[   ] operations. At its introduction, the fastest 8086 available was the 8 MHz version which achieved 0.8 MIPS and contained 29,000 transistors. Over three decades later, x86 remains the most popular and commercially successful instruction set architecture in the history of personal computing.
 
 JAP
The arcade video game  Space Invaders  is released, sparking a video game craze. In 1979, Atari's Asteroids would prove to be incredibly popular.
 
US
Programming language Ada introduced by Jean Ichbiah and team at Honeywell for the US Department of Defense.
 
US
Introduction of the Intel 8088, compatible with the 8086 with an 8-bit data bus – but this makes it cheaper to implement in computers. Chosen for the IBM PC, Intel processors were found in millions of IBM PC compatible computers.
 
UK
 Commodore PET released in the United Kingdom. Based on a 1 MHz 6502 processor it displayed monochrome text and had 8 KB of RAM. Priced £569. A version with 16 KB of RAM cost £776, while 32 KB of RAM cost £914.
 
 NED  JAP
 Compact disc was invented.
 
US
The Motorola 68000 Microprocessor launched, the first of the 68k family. 5+ years later it was used in machines such as the Macintosh, the Atari ST and the Amiga.
 
1979
US
Shortly after the release of V7 Unix, which included UUCP, a protocol for communication over standard telephone lines, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis developed and released Usenet, a global discussion group system. Now, it uses Internet protocols and is still popular.
 
US
Four disgruntled Atari programmers leave and form Activision, the first third-party video game software publisher. Activision promotes both the game and the programmer, changing the way software is marketed.
 
US
Texas Instruments releases the TI-99/4 microcomputer. This system generally used audio cassettes to store information, along with ROM modules, similar to gaming units, to hold commercial software. Additionally, TI made available a speech synthesizer, based on their own chip, for the TI-99/4 and its successor, the 4A.
 
US
 VisiCalc spreadsheet software released. [14] 
 
US
 WordStar word processing software released. [14] 
 
US
Atari releases the Atari 400/800, a high-performance game-oriented home computer based on the 6502 microprocessor.
   
 
  Information revolution  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   A Brief History of Computing,  by Stephen White. A computer history site; the present article is a modified version of his timeline, used with permission.
Timeline of computing 1950–1979
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computing_1950%E2%80%931979
https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/history-artificial-intelligence/
The History of Artificial Intelligence - Science in the News
2017-08-28
SITNFlash
<div><article>
	<div>
	<p><em>by Rockwell Anyoha</em></p>
<h2>Can Machines Think?</h2>
<p>In the first half of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, science fiction familiarized the world with the concept of artificially intelligent robots. It began with the “heartless” Tin man from the <em>Wizard of Oz</em> and continued with the humanoid robot that impersonated Maria in <em>Metropolis</em>. By the 1950s, we had a generation of scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers with the concept of artificial intelligence (or AI) culturally assimilated in their minds. One such person was Alan Turing, a young British polymath who explored the mathematical possibility of artificial intelligence. Turing suggested that humans use available information as well as reason in order to solve problems and make decisions, so why can’t machines do the same thing? This was the logical framework of his 1950 paper, <a href="https://www.csee.umbc.edu/courses/471/papers/turing.pdf">Computing Machinery and Intelligence</a> in which he discussed how to build intelligent machines and how to test their intelligence.</p>
<h2>Making the Pursuit Possible</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, talk is cheap. What stopped Turing from getting to work right then and there? First, computers needed to fundamentally change. Before 1949 computers lacked a key prerequisite for intelligence: they couldn’t store commands, only execute them. In other words, computers could be told what to do but couldn’t remember what they did. Second, computing was extremely <a href="http://ethw.org/Early_Popular_Computers,_1950_-_1970">expensive</a>. In the early 1950s, the cost of leasing a computer ran up to $200,000 a month. Only prestigious universities and big technology companies could afford to dillydally in these uncharted waters. A proof of concept as well as advocacy from high profile people were needed to persuade funding sources that machine intelligence was worth pursuing.</p>
<h2>The Conference that Started it All</h2>
<p>Five years later, the proof of concept was initialized through Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, and Herbert Simon’s, <a href="https://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Software/LogicTheorist.html"><em>Logic Theorist</em></a>. The Logic Theorist was a program designed to mimic the problem solving skills of a human and was funded by Research and Development (RAND) Corporation. It’s considered by many to be the first artificial intelligence program and was presented at the <a href="https://aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/1911/1809"><em>Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence</em></a> (DSRPAI) hosted by John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky in 1956. In this historic conference, McCarthy, imagining a great collaborative effort, brought together top researchers from various fields for an open ended discussion on artificial intelligence, the term which he coined at the very event. Sadly, the conference fell short of McCarthy’s expectations; people came and went as they pleased, and there was failure to agree on standard methods for the field. Despite this, everyone whole-heartedly aligned with the sentiment that AI was achievable. The significance of this event cannot be undermined as it catalyzed the next twenty years of AI research.</p>
<h2>Roller Coaster of Success and Setbacks</h2>
<p>From 1957 to 1974, AI flourished. Computers could store more information and became faster, cheaper, and more accessible. Machine learning algorithms also improved and people got better at knowing which algorithm to apply to their problem. Early demonstrations such as Newell and Simon’s <em>General Problem Solver</em> and Joseph Weizenbaum’s <a href="http://www.alicebot.org/articles/wallace/eliza.html"><em>ELIZA</em></a> showed promise toward the goals of problem solving and the interpretation of spoken language respectively. These successes, as well as the advocacy of leading researchers (namely the attendees of the DSRPAI) convinced government agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to <a href="http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_darpa.htm">fund</a> AI research at several institutions. The government was particularly interested in a machine that could transcribe and translate spoken language as well as high throughput data processing. Optimism was high and expectations were even higher. In 1970 Marvin Minsky told Life Magazine, “from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being.” However, while the basic proof of principle was there, there was still a long way to go before the end goals of natural language processing, abstract thinking, and self-recognition could be achieved.</p>
<p><a href="https://i0.wp.com/sitn.hms.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Anyoha-SITN-Figure-2-AI-timeline-2.jpg"></a></p>
<p>Breaching the initial fog of AI revealed a mountain of obstacles. The biggest was the lack of computational power to do anything substantial: computers simply couldn’t store enough information or process it fast enough. In order to communicate, for example, one needs to know the meanings of many words and understand them in many combinations. Hans Moravec, a doctoral student of McCarthy at the time, stated that “computers were still millions of times too weak to exhibit intelligence.”  As patience dwindled so did the funding, and research came to a slow roll for ten years.</p>
<p>In the 1980’s, AI was reignited by two sources: an expansion of the algorithmic toolkit, and a boost of funds. John Hopfield and David Rumelhart popularized “deep learning” techniques which allowed computers to learn using experience. On the other hand Edward Feigenbaum introduced <a href="https://saltworks.stanford.edu/assets/vf069sz9374.pdf">expert systems</a> which mimicked the decision making process of a human expert. The program would ask an expert in a field how to respond in a given situation, and once this was learned for virtually every situation, non-experts could receive advice from that program. Expert systems were widely used in industries. The Japanese government heavily funded expert systems and other AI related endeavors as part of their <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/12/business/japan-gain-reported-in-computers.html"><em>Fifth Generation Computer Project</em></a> (FGCP). From 1982-1990, they invested $400 million dollars with the goals of revolutionizing computer processing, implementing logic programming, and improving artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, most of the ambitious goals were not met. However, it could be argued that the indirect effects of the FGCP inspired a talented young generation of engineers and scientists. Regardless, funding of the FGCP ceased, and AI fell out of the limelight.</p>
<p>Ironically, in the absence of government funding and public hype, AI thrived. During the 1990s and 2000s, many of the landmark goals of artificial intelligence had been achieved. In 1997, reigning world chess champion and grand master Gary Kasparov was defeated by IBM’s <em>Deep Blue</em>, a chess playing computer program. This highly publicized match was the first time a reigning world chess champion loss to a computer and served as a huge step towards an artificially intelligent decision making program. In the same year, speech recognition software, developed by Dragon Systems, was implemented on <em>Windows</em>. This was another great step forward but in the direction of the spoken language interpretation endeavor. It seemed that there wasn’t a problem machines couldn’t handle. Even human emotion was fair game as evidenced by <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2001/kismet">Kismet</a>, a robot developed by Cynthia Breazeal that could recognize and display emotions.</p>
<h2>Time Heals all Wounds</h2>
<p>We haven’t gotten any smarter about how we are coding artificial intelligence, so what changed? It turns out, the fundamental limit of computer storage that was holding us back 30 years ago was no longer a problem. <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mooreslaw.asp">Moore’s Law</a><a href="http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mooreslaw.asp">,</a> which estimates that the memory and speed of computers doubles every year, had finally caught up and in many cases, surpassed our needs. This is precisely how Deep Blue was able to defeat Gary Kasparov in 1997, and how Google’s <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40042581"><em>Alpha Go</em></a> was able to defeat Chinese Go champion, Ke Jie, only a few months ago. It offers a bit of an explanation to the roller coaster of AI research; we saturate the capabilities of AI to the level of our current computational power (computer storage and processing speed), and then wait for Moore’s Law to catch up again.</p>
<h2>Artificial Intelligence is Everywhere</h2>
<p>We now live in the age of “<a href="http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-big-data-is-empowering-ai-and-machine-learning-at-scale/">big data</a>,” an age in which we have the capacity to collect huge sums of information too cumbersome for a person to process. The application of artificial intelligence in this regard has already been quite fruitful in several industries such as technology, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/f9bc7cd8-3fbc-11e7-9d56-25f963e998b2">banking</a>, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2016/11/21/artificial-intelligence-ai-and-the-future-of-marketing-6-observations-from-inbound-2016/#49dbe92d441d">marketing</a>, and <a href="http://www.studiodaily.com/2017/04/artificial-intelligence-comes-hollywood/">entertainment</a>. We’ve seen that even if algorithms don’t improve much, big data and massive computing simply allow artificial intelligence to learn through brute force. There may be <a href="https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2017/05/moore-s-law-2017-an-uphill-battle/">evidence</a> that Moore’s law is slowing down a tad, but the increase in data certainly hasn’t lost any <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/02/04/worlds-internet-traffic-to-surpass-one-zettabyte-in-2016/">momentum</a>. Breakthroughs in computer science, mathematics, or neuroscience all serve as potential outs through the ceiling of Moore’s Law.</p>
<h2>The Future</h2>
<p>So what is in store for the future? In the immediate future, AI language is looking like the next big thing. In fact, it’s already underway. I can’t remember the last time I called a company and directly spoke with a human. These days, machines are even calling me! One could imagine interacting with an expert system in a fluid conversation, or having a conversation in <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/06/googles-smarter-a-i-powered-translation-system-expands-to-more-languages/">two different languages</a> being translated in real time. We can also expect to see <a href="http://www.driverless-future.com/?page_id=384">driverless cars</a> on the road in the next twenty years (and that is conservative). In the long term, the goal is general intelligence, that is a machine that surpasses human cognitive abilities in all tasks. This is along the lines of the sentient robot we are used to seeing in movies. To me, it seems inconceivable that this would be accomplished in the next 50 years. Even if the capability is there, the ethical questions would serve as a strong barrier against fruition. When that time comes (but better even before the time comes), we will need to have a serious conversation about machine policy and ethics (ironically both fundamentally human subjects), but for now, we’ll allow AI to steadily improve and run amok in society.</p>
<p><em>Rockwell Anyoha is a graduate student in the department of molecular biology with a background in physics and genetics. His current project employs the use of machine learning to model animal behavior. In his free time, Rockwell enjoys playing soccer and debating mundane topics.</em></p>
<p>This article is part of a <a href="http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/?page_id=12739&amp;preview=true">Special Edition on Artificial Intelligence</a>.</p>
<h3>For more information:</h3>
<p>Brief Timeline of AI</p>
<p><a href="https://www.livescience.com/47544-history-of-a-i-artificial-intelligence-infographic.html">https://www.livescience.com/47544-history-of-a-i-artificial-intelligence-infographic.html</a></p>
<p>Complete Historical Overview</p>
<p><a href="http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/csep590/06au/projects/history-ai.pdf">http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/csep590/06au/projects/history-ai.pdf</a></p>
<p>Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence</p>
<p><a href="https://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/1904/1802">https://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/1904/1802</a></p>
<p>Future of AI</p>
<p><a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602830/the-future-of-artificial-intelligence-and-cybernetics/">https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602830/the-future-of-artificial-intelligence-and-cybernetics/</a></p>
<p>Discussion on Future Ethical Challenges Facing AI</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170307-the-ethical-challenge-facing-artificial-intelligence">http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170307-the-ethical-challenge-facing-artificial-intelligence</a></p>
<p>Detailed Review of Ethics of AI</p>
<p><a href="https://intelligence.org/files/EthicsofAI.pdf">https://intelligence.org/files/EthicsofAI.pdf</a></p>
	</div>
	
</article>||||I|||| Skip to content

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 August 28, 2017
 Blog , Special Edition on Artificial Intelligence

 The History of Artificial Intelligence

 by Rockwell Anyoha

 Can Machines Think?

 In the first half of the 20th century, science fiction familiarized the world with the concept of artificially intelligent robots. It began with the “heartless” Tin man from the Wizard of Oz and continued with the humanoid robot that impersonated Maria in Metropolis. By the 1950s, we had a generation of scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers with the concept of artificial intelligence (or AI) culturally assimilated in their minds. One such person was Alan Turing, a young British polymath who explored the mathematical possibility of artificial intelligence. Turing suggested that humans use available information as well as reason in order to solve problems and make decisions, so why can’t machines do the same thing? This was the logical framework of his 1950 paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence in which he discussed how to build intelligent machines and how to test their intelligence.

 Making the Pursuit Possible

 Unfortunately, talk is cheap. What stopped Turing from getting to work right then and there? First, computers needed to fundamentally change. Before 1949 computers lacked a key prerequisite for intelligence: they couldn’t store commands, only execute them. In other words, computers could be told what to do but couldn’t remember what they did. Second, computing was extremely expensive. In the early 1950s, the cost of leasing a computer ran up to $200,000 a month. Only prestigious universities and big technology companies could afford to dillydally in these uncharted waters. A proof of concept as well as advocacy from high profile people were needed to persuade funding sources that machine intelligence was worth pursuing.

 The Conference that Started it All

 Five years later, the proof of concept was initialized through Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, and Herbert Simon’s, Logic Theorist. The Logic Theorist was a program designed to mimic the problem solving skills of a human and was funded by Research and Development (RAND) Corporation. It’s considered by many to be the first artificial intelligence program and was presented at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence (DSRPAI) hosted by John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky in 1956. In this historic conference, McCarthy, imagining a great collaborative effort, brought together top researchers from various fields for an open ended discussion on artificial intelligence, the term which he coined at the very event. Sadly, the conference fell short of McCarthy’s expectations; people came and went as they pleased, and there was failure to agree on standard methods for the field. Despite this, everyone whole-heartedly aligned with the sentiment that AI was achievable. The significance of this event cannot be undermined as it catalyzed the next twenty years of AI research.

 Roller Coaster of Success and Setbacks

 From 1957 to 1974, AI flourished. Computers could store more information and became faster, cheaper, and more accessible. Machine learning algorithms also improved and people got better at knowing which algorithm to apply to their problem. Early demonstrations such as Newell and Simon’s General Problem Solver and Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA showed promise toward the goals of problem solving and the interpretation of spoken language respectively. These successes, as well as the advocacy of leading researchers (namely the attendees of the DSRPAI) convinced government agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to fund AI research at several institutions. The government was particularly interested in a machine that could transcribe and translate spoken language as well as high throughput data processing. Optimism was high and expectations were even higher. In 1970 Marvin Minsky told Life Magazine, “from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being.” However, while the basic proof of principle was there, there was still a long way to go before the end goals of natural language processing, abstract thinking, and self-recognition could be achieved.

 Breaching the initial fog of AI revealed a mountain of obstacles. The biggest was the lack of computational power to do anything substantial: computers simply couldn’t store enough information or process it fast enough. In order to communicate, for example, one needs to know the meanings of many words and understand them in many combinations. Hans Moravec, a doctoral student of McCarthy at the time, stated that “computers were still millions of times too weak to exhibit intelligence.” As patience dwindled so did the funding, and research came to a slow roll for ten years.

 In the 1980’s, AI was reignited by two sources: an expansion of the algorithmic toolkit, and a boost of funds. John Hopfield and David Rumelhart popularized “deep learning” techniques which allowed computers to learn using experience. On the other hand Edward Feigenbaum introduced expert systems which mimicked the decision making process of a human expert. The program would ask an expert in a field how to respond in a given situation, and once this was learned for virtually every situation, non-experts could receive advice from that program. Expert systems were widely used in industries. The Japanese government heavily funded expert systems and other AI related endeavors as part of their Fifth Generation Computer Project (FGCP). From 1982-1990, they invested $400 million dollars with the goals of revolutionizing computer processing, implementing logic programming, and improving artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, most of the ambitious goals were not met. However, it could be argued that the indirect effects of the FGCP inspired a talented young generation of engineers and scientists. Regardless, funding of the FGCP ceased, and AI fell out of the limelight.

 Ironically, in the absence of government funding and public hype, AI thrived. During the 1990s and 2000s, many of the landmark goals of artificial intelligence had been achieved. In 1997, reigning world chess champion and grand master Gary Kasparov was defeated by IBM’s Deep Blue, a chess playing computer program. This highly publicized match was the first time a reigning world chess champion loss to a computer and served as a huge step towards an artificially intelligent decision making program. In the same year, speech recognition software, developed by Dragon Systems, was implemented on Windows. This was another great step forward but in the direction of the spoken language interpretation endeavor. It seemed that there wasn’t a problem machines couldn’t handle. Even human emotion was fair game as evidenced by Kismet, a robot developed by Cynthia Breazeal that could recognize and display emotions.

 Time Heals all Wounds

 We haven’t gotten any smarter about how we are coding artificial intelligence, so what changed? It turns out, the fundamental limit of computer storage that was holding us back 30 years ago was no longer a problem. Moore’s Law, which estimates that the memory and speed of computers doubles every year, had finally caught up and in many cases, surpassed our needs. This is precisely how Deep Blue was able to defeat Gary Kasparov in 1997, and how Google’s Alpha Go was able to defeat Chinese Go champion, Ke Jie, only a few months ago. It offers a bit of an explanation to the roller coaster of AI research; we saturate the capabilities of AI to the level of our current computational power (computer storage and processing speed), and then wait for Moore’s Law to catch up again.

 Artificial Intelligence is Everywhere

 We now live in the age of “big data,” an age in which we have the capacity to collect huge sums of information too cumbersome for a person to process. The application of artificial intelligence in this regard has already been quite fruitful in several industries such as technology, banking, marketing, and entertainment. We’ve seen that even if algorithms don’t improve much, big data and massive computing simply allow artificial intelligence to learn through brute force. There may be evidence that Moore’s law is slowing down a tad, but the increase in data certainly hasn’t lost any momentum. Breakthroughs in computer science, mathematics, or neuroscience all serve as potential outs through the ceiling of Moore’s Law.

 The Future

 So what is in store for the future? In the immediate future, AI language is looking like the next big thing. In fact, it’s already underway. I can’t remember the last time I called a company and directly spoke with a human. These days, machines are even calling me! One could imagine interacting with an expert system in a fluid conversation, or having a conversation in two different languages being translated in real time. We can also expect to see driverless cars on the road in the next twenty years (and that is conservative). In the long term, the goal is general intelligence, that is a machine that surpasses human cognitive abilities in all tasks. This is along the lines of the sentient robot we are used to seeing in movies. To me, it seems inconceivable that this would be accomplished in the next 50 years. Even if the capability is there, the ethical questions would serve as a strong barrier against fruition. When that time comes (but better even before the time comes), we will need to have a serious conversation about machine policy and ethics (ironically both fundamentally human subjects), but for now, we’ll allow AI to steadily improve and run amok in society.

 Rockwell Anyoha is a graduate student in the department of molecular biology with a background in physics and genetics. His current project employs the use of machine learning to model animal behavior. In his free time, Rockwell enjoys playing soccer and debating mundane topics.

 This article is part of a Special Edition on Artificial Intelligence.

 For more information:

 Brief Timeline of AI

 https://www.livescience.com/47544-history-of-a-i-artificial-intelligence-infographic.html

 Complete Historical Overview

 http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/csep590/06au/projects/history-ai.pdf

 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence

 https://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/1904/1802

 Future of AI

 https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602830/the-future-of-artificial-intelligence-and-cybernetics/

 Discussion on Future Ethical Challenges Facing AI

 http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170307-the-ethical-challenge-facing-artificial-intelligence

 Detailed Review of Ethics of AI

 https://intelligence.org/files/EthicsofAI.pdf

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 August 28, 2017April 23, 2020artificial intelligence , history

 302 thoughts on “ The History of Artificial Intelligence ”

 1. John Scott says:
 December 2, 2017 at 7:00 pm

 During the Times Heals all wounds you say that “holding us back 30 years ago was no longer a problem. , which estimates that the ” the , is supposed to have the words Moore’s Law infront of it the article was a great thing though thank you for the information and apologies for being nitpicky.

 Reply
 1. Brady says:
 October 10, 2022 at 7:00 pm

 yeah noticed lots of small mistakes but overall great informational article

 Reply
 1. mateo vitola says:
 November 29, 2022 at 9:26 am

 can i use this article for reasearch?

 Reply
 2. ... says:
 May 7, 2018 at 8:19 pm

 this helped me a lot with my research report, thank you.

 Reply
 1. jose says:
 February 5, 2020 at 3:33 pm

 np, it took me a while to publish this im glad someone found it helpful.

 Reply
 3. clash says:
 May 7, 2018 at 8:21 pm

 This website helped me a lot with my research report about the invention of AI, thank you!

 Reply
 4. Eren Jaeger says:
 May 10, 2018 at 8:13 am

 This website actually helped me quite a bit on my Research Paper! Thanks! 😀

 Reply
 1. behrad says:
 November 25, 2020 at 3:04 pm

 helped me too, it’s an amazing website 🙂

 Reply
 2. Clementino Lyon says:
 April 23, 2022 at 1:36 am

 iam a new student of AI and i need your help during my research reports/thesis

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 Reply
 5. Pingback: Is the Tipping Point for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Here?
 6. Anthony E. says:
 September 30, 2018 at 12:23 pm

 Intelligence is not common to everyone. If you are smart enough to figure out problems and solve without much stress, then you are intelligent. AI is still no match for human intelligence but its quite unbelievable hearing scientists create supercomputers that operate faster than the human brain.

 Reply
 1. Gabby says:
 November 11, 2019 at 9:30 am

 Agree with you. Computers can think, count, solve complex mathematical problems and equations, but compared to human intelligence,AI is like a small child. It can work only in programmed situations; it cannot understand what improvisation and creativity are. At least for now. Recently I read an article of a company that develops innovative technologies (https://skywell.software/blog/artificial-intelligence-vs-human-intelligence/), even they assure that artificial intelligence is far from ours.

 Reply
 7. May says:
 October 10, 2018 at 5:06 am

 Thanks for the article. According to the byline, the author studies “the use of machine learning to model animal behavior”, it would be great, if there were some examples in the text. It is interesting how such work is carried out when it comes to animals. Maybe any more articles or videos to have a look?))

 Reply
 8. Mariia says:
 December 28, 2018 at 8:48 am

 Thanks, Rockwell!
 It’s really interesting to see AI-development from the retrospective touch of view. For me, is very interesting to investigate the use of AI in different areas. I want to add some articles, where people can find interesting information about AI to your list:
 https://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/machine-learning-for-risk-management-4837
 https://www.n-ix.com/machine-learning-in-finance-why-what-how/
 https://www.hbs.edu/socialenterprise/blog/post/machine-learning-for-social-impact

 Reply
 1. Claire says:
 June 5, 2022 at 3:26 pm

 Thank you for the links Mariia!

 Reply
 9. mathilde says:
 January 14, 2019 at 8:45 am

 i love you from france

 Reply
 10. mathilde says:
 January 14, 2019 at 8:47 am

 I need help for me english work on history of artificial intelligence

 Reply
 1. Joana says:
 January 6, 2020 at 4:20 am

 Hi! Maybe this blog will help you – , there are more info about kinds of artificial intelligence. Just interesting to read.

 Reply
 11. Meng Wong says:
 April 2, 2019 at 5:21 pm

 Thanks for the article explaining the history of Artificial Intelligence from head to toe. But there is a mistake in it.
 “This is precisely how Deep Blue was able to defeat Gary Kasparov in 1997, and how Google’s Alpha Go was able to defeat Chinese Go champion, Kie Je, only a few months ago.” The name should be “Ke Jie” not “Kie Je”. Hope this can be corrected soon.

 Reply
 1. admin says:
 April 3, 2019 at 4:48 pm

 Fixed – thank you!

 Reply
 12. treyn says:
 April 17, 2019 at 8:44 am

 Great article. What are the units on the y-axis of the timeline graphic?

 Reply
 13. samuel fairchild says:
 April 20, 2019 at 10:24 pm

 In the section The Future it states “Even if the capability is there, the ethically would serve as a strong barrier against fruition. ” Maybe switch ‘ethically’ to ‘ethical questions’ or ‘ethical feasibility.’ Sorry for nit picking, otherwise great article.

 Reply
 1. admin says:
 April 21, 2019 at 7:12 am

 Good catch – fixed. Thank you!

 Reply
 14. Agatha says:
 May 5, 2019 at 12:12 pm

 What was used before artificial intelligence?

 Reply
 15. Romexsoft says:
 July 31, 2019 at 5:51 am

 Thanks, Rockwell Anyoha!
 Interesting information. I want to add some article, where people can find interesting information about AI to your list: https://www.romexsoft.com/blog/improve-medical-diagnosis-using-machine-learning/

 Reply
 16. Sonia Chang says:
 October 29, 2019 at 6:32 pm

 The information is great, it’s been a long time since last time I read a long story. I have more understanding about AI. Thanks.

 Reply
 17. Vitaly says:
 November 28, 2019 at 9:22 am

 Hi Rockwell, thank you for you post!
 I saw in comments that people sharing information about machine learning but your article about AI.
 So I’ve decided to share with this post about the difference between AI, Machine Learning and Data Science. https://www.cleveroad.com/blog/data-science-vs-machine-learning-vs-ai

 Reply
 18. Helen B says:
 December 9, 2019 at 11:05 am

 It’s really interesting to see AI-development from the retrospective touch of view. For me, is very interesting to investigate the use of AI in different areas. I want to add some articles, where people can find interesting information about AI to your list:
 https://www.gravum.com/web-development-blog/a-guide-to-ai-machine-learning-and-deep-learning/
 https://www.gravum.com/web-development-blog/the-future-of-fintech-is-ai/

 Reply
 19. Andy says:
 December 23, 2019 at 10:54 am

 Great article, thank you.

 Reply
 1. Ben Dover says:
 March 5, 2020 at 12:59 pm

 I saw you erased my last comment i am suing all of you for being sexist

 Reply
 20. Pingback: Dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI) - Devathon Blog
 21. Ashley says:
 February 19, 2020 at 3:11 am

 Thanks for sharing your experience! Really enjoyed the reading.
 These days, AI is not new social media trends as well. Having become popular in 2017, they still enjoy the demand.
 Also, I would like to share with you an interesting and up-to-date software company blog: https://mlsdev.com/
 There is always topical and checked information. Take a look!

 Reply
 22. Jenny says:
 March 12, 2020 at 3:59 am

 Hello!

 That was a great read indeed. Very informative. Thanks for sharing it. 🙂

 The evolution of AI is so impactful that soon it will be like we are living in a sci-fi movie! Maybe we’re already doing so to some extent! AI evolution in eCommerce (https://www.unifiedinfotech.net/blog/evolution-of-ai-in-ecommerce-industry/) is already creating a lot of buzz in the market. You can’t even forget about the healthcare sector right?

 Now, when AI is combined with other futuristic technologies like Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Neural Network, IoT – wonders are happening and more to come yet!

 Reply
 23. Victoria Naichuk says:
 March 17, 2020 at 4:30 am

 Hello, Rockwell!

 Thank you for sharing this information. From 2017 and until now AI becomes a real trend. This year also back in-game AR. A technology that, with the help of your devices, allows you to see the digital version of different objects overlaid on the real background. The possibilities of AR are endless. It can be implemented in web design as a virtual dressing room for the retail stores when the users can try out products online. Or, this can be used for interior design ideas when you virtually try a piece of furniture or arts in your home to see whether it’ll match. All users need to have is just a web or smartphone camera. I’d like to share with you and your readers more read about AI, AR, and web design trends 2020: https://pixetic.com/blog/web-design-trends-2020/ I hope you will like it)

 Reply
 24. Kate Ta says:
 March 18, 2020 at 6:47 am

 Thank you for your great content!
 Artificial Intelligence has taken the world by a storm. Machine learning and AI have become an essential part of our lives, from “Hey Siri” entering with us on live chat to self-driving cars technology. In fact, the growth of AI should more than double revenue to become a USD 12.5 billion industry.
 If you want to know more, don’t hesitate to see:
 https://agiletech.vn/fastest-growing-industries-2020/
 https://agiletech.vn/artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning-in-2019/

 Reply
 25. Max Kush says:
 March 31, 2020 at 5:45 am

 Good stuff, was useful,
 thanks Rockwell!)

 Reply
 26. Vyshnavi Kadiyala says:
 April 4, 2020 at 8:54 pm

 I am a fifth grader, and I found this topic to be so interesting I decided to do a research project on it and at first I had trouble on finding sources, but once I found this I loved it! Everything in this passage was useful and I also absorbed a lot from it. I would like to say thank you very much to the author for helping me make my research project a success and i look forward to absorbing more into the topic through articles that Rockwell Anyoha hopefully makes. Again thank you very much! With all the information this article provided I was able to create a college leveled essay about Artificial Intelligence!

 Reply
 1. SITNFlash says:
 April 5, 2020 at 7:41 am

 So glad you enjoyed it! Keep up the awesome work:)

 Reply
 27. Crisu says:
 April 14, 2020 at 9:13 am

 Dear Rockwell,
 thank you for your interesting overview!!
 One question: What does the Y-achsis in your graphic stand for?
 Thanks for answering!
 C

 Reply
 28. beans says:
 April 18, 2020 at 7:58 am

 Nice to read this content thanks for sharing

 Reply
 29. Asmita says:
 April 22, 2020 at 12:07 pm

 Nice article. I have read comments citing more articles. There is much more to understand about AI. Thanks

 Reply
 30. Jacob says:
 April 22, 2020 at 2:02 pm

 Punctuation typo in “Time Heals All Wounds” section:
 “`30 years ago was no longer a problem. , which estimates`”

 Reply
 31. bbet99 says:
 April 25, 2020 at 6:45 am

 You’re so cool! I do not believe I’ve read anything like that before. So great to discover somebody with some original thoughts on this subject matter. Seriously.. many thanks for starting this up. This web site is one thing that’s needed on the web, someone with some originality!

 Reply
 1. Mike says:
 March 4, 2021 at 12:47 am

 Totally agree! Especially knowing that artificial intelligence is one of the biggest trends these days. If you like discovering new things, here are a few more major trends https://topdevs.org/blog/top-mobile-app-trends. It is so exciting to know that technology gets improved over time and changes our lives for the better. Hope to be useful 😉

 Reply
 32. Leo says:
 April 29, 2020 at 5:24 am

 Wonder what will happen when AI and the human brain can connect.
 We expect AI to be one of the most emerging technology trend in 2020:
 https://gtm-plus.com/emerging-technology-trends-in-2020/

 P.S.
 Poor Gary Kasparov

 Reply
 33. Mariana says:
 May 5, 2020 at 8:56 am

 A speed of the actions, performed by this kind of AI, is the same as the human brain, but the quality of tasks is much higher. It can be compared to the fact of how people are higher by their intelligence from the animals. Both are smart, by it is clear who is able to do more, in the shortest period of time, and with higher quality, in the result.
 This article is food for thought, by no means.

 Reply
 34. Pushpendra Jaat says:
 May 28, 2020 at 9:19 am

 Good Article and very useful .

 Reply
 35. Romero says:
 May 30, 2020 at 3:17 pm

 science is trying so much by artificial intelligence but still not succeed. but maybe one day they can. thanks for your post

 Reply
 36. Dr Rajendra Prasad says:
 June 10, 2020 at 2:19 am

 A ery good article that explains the history of AI very well. Would have liked a little bit about the history of AI in healthcare so far, to prepare us for the courses ahead.

 Reply
 37. Katerina Shulgina says:
 June 15, 2020 at 8:58 am

 Thank you Rockwell, for the retrospective to Artificial Intelligence. Now machine learning and AI development is a part of the daily work of software engineers for so many different industries

 Reply
 38. Helen says:
 July 30, 2020 at 6:02 am

 Thanks for the great article!!!
 Artificial intelligence advances extremely fast, bringing the vast number of technological approaches into life. I would also like to share some interesting article covering this topic:
 https://existek.com/blog/deep-learning-vs-machine-learning/

 Reply
 39. Julia says:
 August 4, 2020 at 9:44 am

 Thank you for the fascinating retrospective of Artificial Intelligence. Now machine learning and AI development are part of the daily work of software engineers in many industries.
 I thought it might also be interesting to add a practical case study as an example of an AI-based business solution and the value it can create – https://blackthorn-vision.com/machine-vision-solution-for-industrial-inspection.

 Reply
 1. Johnny Ilmo Koo says:
 August 12, 2020 at 10:05 pm

 Thanks for the fantastic article.
 Would it be okay if I translate this into Korean and share your article ? Your original post link will be of course added!!

 Reply
 40. steffan Willian says:
 August 14, 2020 at 3:34 am

 A great piece of information. It takes a while to go through this article, but it is very resourceful. Thanks for sharing. Helped a lot.

 Reply
 41. Greenm says:
 August 18, 2020 at 8:04 am

 A very good article that explains the history of AI very well. Would have liked a little about the history of AI in healthcare so far, to prepare us for the courses ahead. Check more information here https://greenm.io/data-readiness-for-ai-in-healthcare/

 Reply
 42. aladin says:
 August 19, 2020 at 1:45 am

 Good things come to people who wait, but better things come to those who go out and get them (Good luck to all Harvard undergraduate students)

 Reply
 43. Marie Weaver says:
 September 1, 2020 at 10:51 am

 Amazing history of AI, We know that Artificial Intelligence is a computer science that develops programs to mimic human intelligence. The level of intelligence may range from recognizing patterns in data to deriving insights for problem solving.

 Reply
 44. F.Anyango says:
 September 4, 2020 at 6:47 am

 This was extremely helpful with research , thank you .

 Reply
 45. Peter Lee says:
 September 13, 2020 at 11:19 pm

 A great piece of information. And a lot more on the comments. This helps me some get some more ideas for my next article on Artificial Intelligence. Thanks for sharing. It helped a lot.

 Reply
 1. Declan Lawton says:
 June 13, 2022 at 9:13 am

 I totally agree with Peter Lee. This is an excellent blog on AI history. Looking forward to reading such articles ahead to get more inspiration and the knowledge shared.

 Reply
 46. Anna says:
 September 24, 2020 at 8:50 am

 Lovely and very informative article! Good job. Btw, here you can find additional info in this article – https://steelkiwi.com/blog/what-is-machine-learning/

 Reply
 47. HarryWild says:
 September 24, 2020 at 8:53 am

 Wow, very interesting post and comments!)

 Reply
 48. raghavan k says:
 October 13, 2020 at 3:31 am

 Very good information onthe history and progress of AI

 Reply
 49. CS says:
 October 19, 2020 at 8:52 am

 “The History of Artificial Intelligence” wow nice title and article also, thanks for this awesome tutorial. you give the best article to your readers.

 Reply
 50. faraz ahmad says:
 October 31, 2020 at 10:04 am

 I just read this post and found it really informative for my queries. Thank you for this post.

 Reply
 51. samiha_FS says:
 November 4, 2020 at 4:14 am

 This website actually helped me quite a bit on my Research Paper! Thanks!

 Reply
 52. Ava Franklin says:
 November 4, 2020 at 6:03 am

 Interesting article! AI is becoming increasingly important for mobile app development companies.

 Reply
 53. samiha_FS says:
 November 5, 2020 at 3:52 am

 This website helped me a lot with my research report about the invention of AI, thank you!

 Reply
 54. ZaraatTechnologies says:
 November 10, 2020 at 2:19 am

 Wonderful information about the AI, with the help of artificial intelligence the scientists are making the robots that will do behave like humans ,its a great achievement for us ,thanks for sharing this important achievement with us.

 Reply
 55. Aslam Shah says:
 November 14, 2020 at 9:04 pm

 its a very fantastic post , keep sharing

 Reply
 56. Roger Max says:
 November 16, 2020 at 6:06 am

 Hello Rockwell Anyoha
 Thanks for sharing a good information related to AI and included health data and best transparency

 Reply
 57. Addevice says:
 November 19, 2020 at 7:27 am

 I just read this post and found it really informative for my queries. Thank you for this post.

 Reply
 58. LJ Sealey-Ashford says:
 November 21, 2020 at 9:27 am

 Hello!
 This was an awesome article and histogram.

 I hope that you continue to expand more and include information about the use of simulation in the AI process and the General Problem Solver in terms of AI advancement.
 Those two topics will help the readers deeply understand two important foundational concepts behind how AI came to be.

 I appreciate the shared links from everyone too.
 Great article.
 Thank you

 Reply
 59. cihad sümbül says:
 December 1, 2020 at 6:27 am

 Very nice content about artificial intelligence. I really like. Let’s continue. Thanks Rockwell.

 Reply
 60. Caroline Jeanmaire says:
 December 8, 2020 at 1:39 am

 Machines can work as they are programmed, but Yes, now with advancement of technology programming can made that machine react according to circumstances, most probably which means they can think, but it is just program made by humans.

 Reply
 61. Grace says:
 December 10, 2020 at 6:35 am

 It is great information about the history of Artificial Intelligence and it would be helpful for the beginner who wanna make their career in Information Technology. But It could be more interesting if you tell about how to implement it how to make our life more comfortable. but overall thanks for sharing this.

 Reply
 62. Kathrine Jensen says:
 December 12, 2020 at 9:23 am

 A web application or web app is a client-server software application in which the client (or user interface) runs in a web browser. or it is an application program that is stored on a remote server and delivered over the Internet through a browser interface.

 Reply
 63. Arpita Sharma says:
 December 14, 2020 at 6:10 am

 Nice article about the AI, you can also checkout how AI can empower healthcare industries. AI in healthcare

 Reply
 64. Computools says:
 December 14, 2020 at 8:15 am

 Very interesting article. Thank you

 Reply
 65. Nastya says:
 December 16, 2020 at 7:24 am

 One of the most prominent examples of using AI in business is Amazon. It is known not only for its voice-controlled virtual assistant Alexa but also for projects called Amazon Prime and Amazon Go. Amazon Prime’s smart robots deliver items from the warehouse to people’s doorsteps the same day.
 Check my new article data science vs machine learning vs artificial intelligence

 Reply
 66. Rosana Stojceva says:
 December 16, 2020 at 6:15 pm

 Such a good topic for the times, can’t learn enough. As a tech person, I am always looking to expand my horizon, but nowadays there are unlimited possibilities with all the services offered by the cloud providers. I was just reading this article – https://ux-builder.co.uk/news/machine-learning-and-ai-in-modern-web-platforms/ about web services that offer machine learning and AI.

 Reply
 67. Addevice says:
 December 21, 2020 at 3:13 am

 Lovely and very informative article! Good job. Btw, here you can find additional info in this article – https://addevice.io/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-build-a-mobile-app/

 Reply
 68. RATNAKAR Jain says:
 December 23, 2020 at 1:36 am

 It is a great content of AI and I must say this provides a lot of things regarding all I need to improve my knowledge of AI.
 The language is easy to understand.

 Reply
 69. Addevice says:
 December 24, 2020 at 9:45 am

 Very nice content about artificial intelligence. I really like. Let’s continue. Thanks Rockwell.

 Reply
 70. tariq usman says:
 December 26, 2020 at 3:28 am

 Thanks for sharing this post,
 is a very helpful article.
 Artificial Intelligence is a great article! Information nicely explained on truth fictions stances beliefs about Artificial Intelligence. Please keep sharing.

 Reply
 71. Addevice says:
 January 3, 2021 at 4:20 pm

 Thanks for sharing your experience! Really enjoyed the reading.
 These days, AI is not new social media trends as well. Having become popular in 2017, they still enjoy the demand.
 Also, I would like to share with you an interesting and up-to-date software company blog: https://addevice.io/blog/addevice-in-the-top-mobile-development-companies/
 There is always topical and checked information. Take a look!

 Reply
 72. Lionel Turner says:
 January 5, 2021 at 4:10 am

 Hi Rockwell, thank you for your brilliant post!
 I saw in comments that people sharing information about machine learning but your article about AI.
 So I’ve decided to share a post about the key differences between Natural Language Processing and Text Mining. I am sure many will be interested in reading this: https://sloboda-studio.com/blog/natural-language-processing-vs-text-mining/

 Reply
 73. Anand Patel says:
 January 10, 2021 at 8:44 am

 I just would like to offer you a huge thumbs up for your great information you have got right here on this post.
 Thanks for the information

 Reply
 74. Muhammad Rizwan says:
 January 15, 2021 at 2:07 am

 The blog is really helpful

 Reply
 75. Anastasia Stefanyuk says:
 January 22, 2021 at 3:27 am

 Hi! Article was quite catchy and interesting, huge thumbs up for information in it. Maybe in the future we all suffer from terrible consequences of AI usage like in some science fiction movies, but for now I think AI can be really helpful to automate routine or dangerous work. From my point of view nowadays it is always necessary to have a good ai programmer in your development team, if you are working in any IT sphere.

 Reply
 76. Andrew says:
 January 25, 2021 at 10:32 am

 This is very interesting. I heard that there are 4 types of AI: Reactive Machines, Limited Memory, Theory of Mind, and Self Aware. But different scientists think in different ways. By the way, this is a very promising area and a lot of specialists work there now. I also visited this blog of app development company https://madappgang.com/blog/the-australian-and-us-health-and-fitness-app-market-in-2019-insights-analysis/ cause they share a lot of interesting info there. I think about app development every day, cause this is a part of my job, but AI is also very interesting for me.

 Reply
 77. Samkit Palecha says:
 January 26, 2021 at 3:14 pm

 I was going through this article and I couldn’t believe that this was written in 2017. I think it is pretty much useful even in 2021 when AI is yet to take over all of our problems! Website Development Companies should start working on something that would utilize the AI and get users a better experience altogether!

 Reply
 78. davidharper says:
 January 29, 2021 at 5:00 am

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 February 4, 2021 at 8:47 am

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 March 5, 2021 at 4:30 am

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 March 11, 2021 at 12:41 pm

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 March 13, 2021 at 1:19 pm

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 May 1, 2021 at 2:44 pm

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 May 4, 2021 at 2:37 am

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 May 31, 2021 at 12:19 pm

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 July 13, 2021 at 1:44 am

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 October 21, 2021 at 3:41 am

 It is really a good read!
 As an AI geek & tech guy I was reading this article: https://www.thepsi.com/about-salesforce-implementation-service/
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 1. Ben says:
 December 29, 2022 at 7:40 am

 It is a matter of debate whether or not machines can truly “think” in the same way that humans do. Some people believe that machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence systems are capable of thinking, as they can perform tasks that would be considered intelligent if a human were to do them. For example, some AI systems are able to recognize patterns, make decisions, and even learn from their experiences, much like a human being.

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 285. John Gurung says:
 December 16, 2022 at 4:44 am

 Isaac Asimov was one of science fiction writers imagined Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning as early as the 1940s. His ideas on AI are expressed through Robots which take on human or humanoid forms (Androids). The seeds of modern AI were planted by early philosophers who explained human thinking as the mechanical manipulation of symbols. Alan Turing, a British mathematician and computer scientist proposed the concept of Artificial Intelligence in the year 1950 with his work titled “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.”.

 AI with large data, larger RAM and high computing power makes supercomputing synonymous with AI. Quantum computing and artificial intelligence is ideal marriage to achieve significant progress. We can accurately diagnosing diseases, improving online learning and making humans potentially obsolete. We may teach AI not to kill by making laws hardwired in AI algorithms or make human, human health and human rights priority #1 while launching any AI application.

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 286. Desmond says:
 December 29, 2022 at 7:38 am

 It is a matter of debate whether or not machines can truly “think” in the same way that humans do. Some people believe that machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence systems are capable of thinking, as they can perform tasks that would be considered intelligent if a human were to do them. For example, some AI systems are able to recognize patterns, make decisions, and even learn from their experiences, much like a human being.

 However, others argue that true thinking requires consciousness, self-awareness, and other qualities that are uniquely human and that machines do not possess. It is also important to note that there is still much we do not understand about human thought and consciousness, so it is difficult to definitively say whether or not machines can think in the same way that we do. Ultimately, the question of whether or not machines can think is a complex and multifaceted one that depends on how we define “thinking” and what we consider to be the essential qualities of thought.

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by Rockwell Anyoha 
Can Machines Think?
In the first half of the 20th century, science fiction familiarized the world with the concept of artificially intelligent robots. It began with the “heartless” Tin man from the Wizard of Oz and continued with the humanoid robot that impersonated Maria in Metropolis. By the 1950s, we had a generation of scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers with the concept of artificial intelligence (or AI) culturally assimilated in their minds. One such person was Alan Turing, a young British polymath who explored the mathematical possibility of artificial intelligence. Turing suggested that humans use available information as well as reason in order to solve problems and make decisions, so why can’t machines do the same thing? This was the logical framework of his 1950 paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence in which he discussed how to build intelligent machines and how to test their intelligence.
Making the Pursuit Possible
Unfortunately, talk is cheap. What stopped Turing from getting to work right then and there? First, computers needed to fundamentally change. Before 1949 computers lacked a key prerequisite for intelligence: they couldn’t store commands, only execute them. In other words, computers could be told what to do but couldn’t remember what they did. Second, computing was extremely expensive. In the early 1950s, the cost of leasing a computer ran up to $200,000 a month. Only prestigious universities and big technology companies could afford to dillydally in these uncharted waters. A proof of concept as well as advocacy from high profile people were needed to persuade funding sources that machine intelligence was worth pursuing.
The Conference that Started it All
Five years later, the proof of concept was initialized through Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, and Herbert Simon’s,  Logic Theorist . The Logic Theorist was a program designed to mimic the problem solving skills of a human and was funded by Research and Development (RAND) Corporation. It’s considered by many to be the first artificial intelligence program and was presented at the  Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence  (DSRPAI) hosted by John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky in 1956. In this historic conference, McCarthy, imagining a great collaborative effort, brought together top researchers from various fields for an open ended discussion on artificial intelligence, the term which he coined at the very event. Sadly, the conference fell short of McCarthy’s expectations; people came and went as they pleased, and there was failure to agree on standard methods for the field. Despite this, everyone whole-heartedly aligned with the sentiment that AI was achievable. The significance of this event cannot be undermined as it catalyzed the next twenty years of AI research.
Roller Coaster of Success and Setbacks
From 1957 to 1974, AI flourished. Computers could store more information and became faster, cheaper, and more accessible. Machine learning algorithms also improved and people got better at knowing which algorithm to apply to their problem. Early demonstrations such as Newell and Simon’s General Problem Solver and Joseph Weizenbaum’s  ELIZA  showed promise toward the goals of problem solving and the interpretation of spoken language respectively. These successes, as well as the advocacy of leading researchers (namely the attendees of the DSRPAI) convinced government agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to fund AI research at several institutions. The government was particularly interested in a machine that could transcribe and translate spoken language as well as high throughput data processing. Optimism was high and expectations were even higher. In 1970 Marvin Minsky told Life Magazine, “from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being.” However, while the basic proof of principle was there, there was still a long way to go before the end goals of natural language processing, abstract thinking, and self-recognition could be achieved.
   
Breaching the initial fog of AI revealed a mountain of obstacles. The biggest was the lack of computational power to do anything substantial: computers simply couldn’t store enough information or process it fast enough. In order to communicate, for example, one needs to know the meanings of many words and understand them in many combinations. Hans Moravec, a doctoral student of McCarthy at the time, stated that “computers were still millions of times too weak to exhibit intelligence.”  As patience dwindled so did the funding, and research came to a slow roll for ten years.
In the 1980’s, AI was reignited by two sources: an expansion of the algorithmic toolkit, and a boost of funds. John Hopfield and David Rumelhart popularized “deep learning” techniques which allowed computers to learn using experience. On the other hand Edward Feigenbaum introduced expert systems which mimicked the decision making process of a human expert. The program would ask an expert in a field how to respond in a given situation, and once this was learned for virtually every situation, non-experts could receive advice from that program. Expert systems were widely used in industries. The Japanese government heavily funded expert systems and other AI related endeavors as part of their  Fifth Generation Computer Project  (FGCP). From 1982-1990, they invested $400 million dollars with the goals of revolutionizing computer processing, implementing logic programming, and improving artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, most of the ambitious goals were not met. However, it could be argued that the indirect effects of the FGCP inspired a talented young generation of engineers and scientists. Regardless, funding of the FGCP ceased, and AI fell out of the limelight.
Ironically, in the absence of government funding and public hype, AI thrived. During the 1990s and 2000s, many of the landmark goals of artificial intelligence had been achieved. In 1997, reigning world chess champion and grand master Gary Kasparov was defeated by IBM’s Deep Blue, a chess playing computer program. This highly publicized match was the first time a reigning world chess champion loss to a computer and served as a huge step towards an artificially intelligent decision making program. In the same year, speech recognition software, developed by Dragon Systems, was implemented on Windows. This was another great step forward but in the direction of the spoken language interpretation endeavor. It seemed that there wasn’t a problem machines couldn’t handle. Even human emotion was fair game as evidenced by Kismet, a robot developed by Cynthia Breazeal that could recognize and display emotions.
Time Heals all Wounds
We haven’t gotten any smarter about how we are coding artificial intelligence, so what changed? It turns out, the fundamental limit of computer storage that was holding us back 30 years ago was no longer a problem. Moore’s Law , which estimates that the memory and speed of computers doubles every year, had finally caught up and in many cases, surpassed our needs. This is precisely how Deep Blue was able to defeat Gary Kasparov in 1997, and how Google’s  Alpha Go  was able to defeat Chinese Go champion, Ke Jie, only a few months ago. It offers a bit of an explanation to the roller coaster of AI research; we saturate the capabilities of AI to the level of our current computational power (computer storage and processing speed), and then wait for Moore’s Law to catch up again.
Artificial Intelligence is Everywhere
We now live in the age of “big data,” an age in which we have the capacity to collect huge sums of information too cumbersome for a person to process. The application of artificial intelligence in this regard has already been quite fruitful in several industries such as technology, banking, marketing, and entertainment. We’ve seen that even if algorithms don’t improve much, big data and massive computing simply allow artificial intelligence to learn through brute force. There may be evidence that Moore’s law is slowing down a tad, but the increase in data certainly hasn’t lost any momentum. Breakthroughs in computer science, mathematics, or neuroscience all serve as potential outs through the ceiling of Moore’s Law.
The Future
So what is in store for the future? In the immediate future, AI language is looking like the next big thing. In fact, it’s already underway. I can’t remember the last time I called a company and directly spoke with a human. These days, machines are even calling me! One could imagine interacting with an expert system in a fluid conversation, or having a conversation in two different languages being translated in real time. We can also expect to see driverless cars on the road in the next twenty years (and that is conservative). In the long term, the goal is general intelligence, that is a machine that surpasses human cognitive abilities in all tasks. This is along the lines of the sentient robot we are used to seeing in movies. To me, it seems inconceivable that this would be accomplished in the next 50 years. Even if the capability is there, the ethical questions would serve as a strong barrier against fruition. When that time comes (but better even before the time comes), we will need to have a serious conversation about machine policy and ethics (ironically both fundamentally human subjects), but for now, we’ll allow AI to steadily improve and run amok in society.
 Rockwell Anyoha is a graduate student in the department of molecular biology with a background in physics and genetics. His current project employs the use of machine learning to model animal behavior. In his free time, Rockwell enjoys playing soccer and debating mundane topics. 
This article is part of a Special Edition on Artificial Intelligence.
For more information:
Brief Timeline of AI
 https://www.livescience.com/47544-history-of-a-i-artificial-intelligence-infographic.html 
Complete Historical Overview
 http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/csep590/06au/projects/history-ai.pdf 
Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence
 https://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/1904/1802 
Future of AI
 https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602830/the-future-of-artificial-intelligence-and-cybernetics/ 
Discussion on Future Ethical Challenges Facing AI
 http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170307-the-ethical-challenge-facing-artificial-intelligence 
Detailed Review of Ethics of AI
 https://intelligence.org/files/EthicsofAI.pdf
The History of Artificial Intelligence - Science in the News
https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/history-artificial-intelligence/
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/philippine-president-duterte-says-he-is-retiring-politics-2021-10-02/
Philippines' Duterte says he is retiring from politics, but not everyone is convinced
2021-10-02
Karen Lema
<div><div><div><div><ul><li>Summary</li></ul></div><div><ul><li>Duterte declines to enter vice presidential race next year</li><li>Analysts say move may clear way for daughter to run for office</li><li>Sara Duterte-Carpio files for re-election as mayor</li><li>Critics view Duterte's announcement with scepticism</li></ul></div></div><p>MANILA, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said on Saturday he was retiring from politics, a surprise move that fuelled speculation he was clearing the way for a presidential run by his daughter.</p><p>Sara Duterte-Carpio is currently mayor of Davao, the Philippines' third-largest city, and filed on Saturday to contest the role again. She has previously said she would not run for national office next year.</p><p>"Today, I announce my retirement from politics," Duterte said as he accompanied his ally Senator Christopher "Bong" Go of the ruling PDP-Laban party to register Go's candidacy for vice president in next year's election.</p><p>But political analysts were sceptical, noting that last-minute changes were still possible, as in 2015 when Duterte entered the presidential election race at the eleventh hour and won by a huge margin.</p><p>Duterte, 76, had been expected to run for the No. 2 job, a plan most <a href="https://www.sws.org.ph/swsmain/artcldisppage/?artcsyscode=ART-20210927101343">Filipinos oppose</a> as violating the spirit of the constitution, which sets a one-term limit for the president to stop power being abused.</p><div><h3>Latest Updates</h3><p>View 2 more stories </p></div><p>"In obedience to the will of the people, who after all placed me in the presidency many years ago, I now say to my countrymen, I will follow your wish," Duterte said as he urged the public to back his longtime aide.</p><p>Analysts say it is crucial for Duterte to have a loyal successor to insulate him from potential legal action - at home or by the International Criminal Court - over the thousands of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/international-court-approves-investigation-into-philippines-war-drugs-2021-09-15">state killings</a> in his war on drugs since 2016.</p><p>"I would take his announcement with a lot of salt," Carlos Conde, Philippines researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch, told Reuters. "But assuming that he's really going to retire, that doesn't mean he won't get the protection from the ICC that he craves."</p><p>Duterte, a maverick leader famous for his embrace of China and disdain for the United States, traditionally a close ally of the Philippines, remains popular even though his opponents accuse him of being authoritarian and intolerant of dissent.</p><p>Activist and human rights lawyer Neri Colmenares also viewed Duterte's announcement sceptically, saying "he will still dictate (to) his political machinery".</p><p>"Unfortunately for him, he will not be spared from accountability. Retirement from politics will not save him from a prison sentence," said Colmenares, who is also providing legal assistance to drug war victims.</p><figure><figcaption>Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte attends the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) Summit in Singapore, November 15, 2018. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha/File Photo</figcaption></figure><p>Authorities have killed more than 6,100 suspected drug dealers and users since Duterte took office in June 2016. Rights groups say the police summarily executed suspects, which the police deny, saying they acted in self-defence during sting operations.</p><h2>'ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN'</h2><p>More than 60 million Filipinos will vote in May for a new president, vice president and more than 18,000 lawmakers and local government officials.</p><p>Political observers had long suspected Duterte could spring a surprise, such as a presidential bid by his daughter next year.</p><p>Duterte-Carpio's re-election filing, shortly after her father announced his retirement, did little to douse speculation she has her eye on the presidency.</p><p>Mar Masanguid, who backed Duterte's 2016 run and has now founded a group to back Duterte-Carpio, said the signs still pointed to a run, which would mirror her <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/run-sara-run-is-dutertes-daughter-playing-her-fathers-game-2021-04-15">father's last minute bid</a> in 2016.</p><p>"In politics, anything can happen," he said.</p><p>Duterte-Carpio has topped <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/support-dutertes-declines-philippines-election-survey-2021-09-29">opinion surveys</a> on prospective candidates, but said last month she was not a candidate for higher office next year because she and her father had agreed only one of them would run for a national role in 2022.</p><p>The older Duterte's decision not to join the race next year would clear her way.</p><p>"This allows Sara Duterte to run," said Antonio La Vina, professor of law and politics at the Ateneo de Manila University. "She sees through the father's scheme or it is a drama to confuse everyone."</p><p>But La Vina said he could not rule out the possibility the firebrand leader might have a change of heart and be Go's substitute.</p><p>Candidates have until Friday to register, but withdrawals and substitutions are allowed until Nov. 15.</p><p>Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by William Mallard and Catherine Evans</p><p>Our Standards: <a href="https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en/about-us/trust-principles.html">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a></p></div>||||I|||| Skip to main content
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 4 minute read October 2, 2021 5:54 PM UTC Last Updated ago

 Philippines' Duterte says he is retiring from politics, but not everyone is convinced

 By Karen Lema
 * Summary
 * Duterte declines to enter vice presidential race next year
 * Analysts say move may clear way for daughter to run for office
 * Sara Duterte-Carpio files for re-election as mayor
 * Critics view Duterte's announcement with scepticism
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 

 MANILA, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said on Saturday he was retiring from politics, a surprise move that fuelled speculation he was clearing the way for a presidential run by his daughter.

 Sara Duterte-Carpio is currently mayor of Davao, the Philippines' third-largest city, and filed on Saturday to contest the role again. She has previously said she would not run for national office next year.

 "Today, I announce my retirement from politics," Duterte said as he accompanied his ally Senator Christopher "Bong" Go of the ruling PDP-Laban party to register Go's candidacy for vice president in next year's election.

 But political analysts were sceptical, noting that last-minute changes were still possible, as in 2015 when Duterte entered the presidential election race at the eleventh hour and won by a huge margin.

 Duterte, 76, had been expected to run for the No. 2 job, a plan most Filipinos oppose as violating the spirit of the constitution, which sets a one-term limit for the president to stop power being abused.

 Latest Updates

 * Asia Pacific category Senior Taiwan opposition leader to visit China amid continued tensions , article with image
 * Asia Pacific category Philippines coast guard chief says boosts South China Sea presence , article with image

 View 2 more stories

 "In obedience to the will of the people, who after all placed me in the presidency many years ago, I now say to my countrymen, I will follow your wish," Duterte said as he urged the public to back his longtime aide.

 Analysts say it is crucial for Duterte to have a loyal successor to insulate him from potential legal action - at home or by the International Criminal Court - over the thousands of state killings in his war on drugs since 2016.

 "I would take his announcement with a lot of salt," Carlos Conde, Philippines researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch, told Reuters. "But assuming that he's really going to retire, that doesn't mean he won't get the protection from the ICC that he craves."

 Duterte, a maverick leader famous for his embrace of China and disdain for the United States, traditionally a close ally of the Philippines, remains popular even though his opponents accuse him of being authoritarian and intolerant of dissent.

 Activist and human rights lawyer Neri Colmenares also viewed Duterte's announcement sceptically, saying "he will still dictate (to) his political machinery".

 "Unfortunately for him, he will not be spared from accountability. Retirement from politics will not save him from a prison sentence," said Colmenares, who is also providing legal assistance to drug war victims.

 Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte attends the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) Summit in Singapore, November 15, 2018. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha/File Photo

 Authorities have killed more than 6,100 suspected drug dealers and users since Duterte took office in June 2016. Rights groups say the police summarily executed suspects, which the police deny, saying they acted in self-defence during sting operations.

 'ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN'

 More than 60 million Filipinos will vote in May for a new president, vice president and more than 18,000 lawmakers and local government officials.

 Political observers had long suspected Duterte could spring a surprise, such as a presidential bid by his daughter next year.

 Duterte-Carpio's re-election filing, shortly after her father announced his retirement, did little to douse speculation she has her eye on the presidency.

 Mar Masanguid, who backed Duterte's 2016 run and has now founded a group to back Duterte-Carpio, said the signs still pointed to a run, which would mirror her father's last minute bid in 2016.

 "In politics, anything can happen," he said.

 Duterte-Carpio has topped opinion surveys on prospective candidates, but said last month she was not a candidate for higher office next year because she and her father had agreed only one of them would run for a national role in 2022.

 The older Duterte's decision not to join the race next year would clear her way.

 "This allows Sara Duterte to run," said Antonio La Vina, professor of law and politics at the Ateneo de Manila University. "She sees through the father's scheme or it is a drama to confuse everyone."

 But La Vina said he could not rule out the possibility the firebrand leader might have a change of heart and be Go's substitute.

 Candidates have until Friday to register, but withdrawals and substitutions are allowed until Nov. 15.

 Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by William Mallard and Catherine Evans
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 Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Summary     Duterte declines to enter vice presidential race next year Analysts say move may clear way for daughter to run for office Sara Duterte-Carpio files for re-election as mayor Critics view Duterte's announcement with scepticism    MANILA, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said on Saturday he was retiring from politics, a surprise move that fuelled speculation he was clearing the way for a presidential run by his daughter. Sara Duterte-Carpio is currently mayor of Davao, the Philippines' third-largest city, and filed on Saturday to contest the role again. She has previously said she would not run for national office next year. "Today, I announce my retirement from politics," Duterte said as he accompanied his ally Senator Christopher "Bong" Go of the ruling PDP-Laban party to register Go's candidacy for vice president in next year's election. But political analysts were sceptical, noting that last-minute changes were still possible, as in 2015 when Duterte entered the presidential election race at the eleventh hour and won by a huge margin. Duterte, 76, had been expected to run for the No. 2 job, a plan most Filipinos oppose as violating the spirit of the constitution, which sets a one-term limit for the president to stop power being abused.  Latest Updates View 2 more stories   "In obedience to the will of the people, who after all placed me in the presidency many years ago, I now say to my countrymen, I will follow your wish," Duterte said as he urged the public to back his longtime aide. Analysts say it is crucial for Duterte to have a loyal successor to insulate him from potential legal action - at home or by the International Criminal Court - over the thousands of state killings in his war on drugs since 2016. "I would take his announcement with a lot of salt," Carlos Conde, Philippines researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch, told Reuters. "But assuming that he's really going to retire, that doesn't mean he won't get the protection from the ICC that he craves." Duterte, a maverick leader famous for his embrace of China and disdain for the United States, traditionally a close ally of the Philippines, remains popular even though his opponents accuse him of being authoritarian and intolerant of dissent. Activist and human rights lawyer Neri Colmenares also viewed Duterte's announcement sceptically, saying "he will still dictate (to) his political machinery". "Unfortunately for him, he will not be spared from accountability. Retirement from politics will not save him from a prison sentence," said Colmenares, who is also providing legal assistance to drug war victims.  Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte attends the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) Summit in Singapore, November 15, 2018. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha/File Photo  Authorities have killed more than 6,100 suspected drug dealers and users since Duterte took office in June 2016. Rights groups say the police summarily executed suspects, which the police deny, saying they acted in self-defence during sting operations. 'ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN' More than 60 million Filipinos will vote in May for a new president, vice president and more than 18,000 lawmakers and local government officials. Political observers had long suspected Duterte could spring a surprise, such as a presidential bid by his daughter next year. Duterte-Carpio's re-election filing, shortly after her father announced his retirement, did little to douse speculation she has her eye on the presidency. Mar Masanguid, who backed Duterte's 2016 run and has now founded a group to back Duterte-Carpio, said the signs still pointed to a run, which would mirror her father's last minute bid in 2016. "In politics, anything can happen," he said. Duterte-Carpio has topped opinion surveys on prospective candidates, but said last month she was not a candidate for higher office next year because she and her father had agreed only one of them would run for a national role in 2022. The older Duterte's decision not to join the race next year would clear her way. "This allows Sara Duterte to run," said Antonio La Vina, professor of law and politics at the Ateneo de Manila University. "She sees through the father's scheme or it is a drama to confuse everyone." But La Vina said he could not rule out the possibility the firebrand leader might have a change of heart and be Go's substitute. Candidates have until Friday to register, but withdrawals and substitutions are allowed until Nov. 15. Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by William Mallard and Catherine Evans Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Philippines' Duterte says he is retiring from politics, but not everyone is convinced
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/philippine-president-duterte-says-he-is-retiring-politics-2021-10-02/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2021/04/06/mcconnell-tells-businesses-to-stay-out-of-politics--except-with-campaign-donations/
McConnell Tells Businesses To ‘Stay Out Of Politics’ – Except With Campaign Donations
2021-04-06
Andrew Solender
<div><div><h2>Topline</h2>
<p>Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday continued to rail against businesses protesting a new election law in Georgia, urging them not to weigh in on politics but carving out an exception for campaign contributions.</p>
<figure><figcaption><small>Getty Images</small></figcaption></figure>
<h2>Key Facts</h2>
<div>
<div>
<p>McConnell said during a stop at a health clinic in Kentucky that, given the heated divisions that currently American politics, “If I were running a major corporation, I would stay out of politics,” adding that they are “irritating a hell of a lot of Republican fans.”</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>But McConnell hedged, stating that businesses have “a right to participate in the political process,” specifying that he’s “not talking about political contributions” in his warnings, calling them “fine, it’s legal, it’s appropriate. I support that.”</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Instead, McConnell said, companies should not weigh in an “a highly incendiary issue” and “[say], ‘pass what we want you to pass, or we’ll take out major league all-star game to another state’,” a shot at MLB’s decision to relocate the all-star game from Georgia to Colorado.</p>
</div>
<p>Republicans have railed against the MLB decision and criticism from companies like United, Delta and Coca Cola, with federal lawmakers <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/04/04/georgia-lawmakers-demand-removal-of-coca-cola-drinks-in-latest-boycott-over-voting-law/">threatening</a> to go after MLB’s antitrust immunity and Georgia lawmakers calling for the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/04/04/georgia-lawmakers-demand-removal-of-coca-cola-drinks-in-latest-boycott-over-voting-law/">removal of Coca Cola products</a> in the State House.</p>
<p>McConnell on Monday <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2021/04/05/mcconnell-warns-of-serious-consequences-for-businesses-boycotting-georgia-over-law/?sh=6bf6b7464515">warned</a> that companies “behaving like a woke parallel government” through economic boycotts “invite serious consequences.”</p>
</div>
<h2>Chief Critic</h2>
<p>“There may not be another politician alive who's benefited more from corporations spending money on politics than Mitch McConnell,” <a href="https://twitter.com/CREWcrew/status/1379416828619948034?s=20">tweeted</a> ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. McConnell received over $4.3 million in corporate PAC donations in the 2020 cycle, according to <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/mitch-mcconnell/pacs?cid=N00003389&amp;cycle=2020">OpenSecrets</a> – among the most of any Senate candidate.</p>
<h2>Big Number</h2>
<p>$258,880. That’s how much McConnell got from 37 CEOs of S&amp;P 500 companies in the 2020 cycle, according to <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americas-top-ceos-are-opening-up-their-wallets-for-mitch-mcconnells-re-election-campaign-11603820924">Market Watch</a> – more than any other Senate candidate that year. Former Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) received the next most: $229,915 from 30 CEOs.</p>
<h2>Key Background</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/03/27/what-does-georgias-new-voting-law-sb-202-do">Georgia law</a>, passed by the state’s GOP-controlled legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, expands early voting but sets new restrictions on mail-in ballots, including limiting the number of drop boxes and setting new ID requirements. It also takes election oversight powers out of the hands of the secretary of state and puts them into a non-partisan official appointed by the legislature.</p>
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 McConnell Tells Businesses To ‘Stay Out Of Politics’ – Except With Campaign Donations

 Andrew Solender
 Forbes Staff
 I cover Congress and the Biden Administration.
 Following
 Apr 6, 2021,02:07pm EDT
 This article is more than 3 years old.
 Updated Apr 6, 2021, 02:09pm EDT
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 Topline

 Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday continued to rail against businesses protesting a new election law in Georgia, urging them not to weigh in on politics but carving out an exception for campaign contributions.

 WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 23: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) heads to the weekly ... [+] Senate Republicans policy luncheon in the subway of the U.S. Capitol on February 23, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)

 Getty Images

 Key Facts

 McConnell said during a stop at a health clinic in Kentucky that, given the heated divisions that currently American politics, “If I were running a major corporation, I would stay out of politics,” adding that they are “irritating a hell of a lot of Republican fans.”

 But McConnell hedged, stating that businesses have “a right to participate in the political process,” specifying that he’s “not talking about political contributions” in his warnings, calling them “fine, it’s legal, it’s appropriate. I support that.”

 Instead, McConnell said, companies should not weigh in an “a highly incendiary issue” and “[say], ‘pass what we want you to pass, or we’ll take out major league all-star game to another state’,” a shot at MLB’s decision to relocate the all-star game from Georgia to Colorado.

 Republicans have railed against the MLB decision and criticism from companies like United, Delta and Coca Cola, with federal lawmakers threatening to go after MLB’s antitrust immunity and Georgia lawmakers calling for the removal of Coca Cola products in the State House.

 McConnell on Monday warned that companies “behaving like a woke parallel government” through economic boycotts “invite serious consequences.”

 Chief Critic

 “There may not be another politician alive who's benefited more from corporations spending money on politics than Mitch McConnell,” tweeted ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. McConnell received over $4.3 million in corporate PAC donations in the 2020 cycle, according to OpenSecrets – among the most of any Senate candidate.

 Big Number

 $258,880. That’s how much McConnell got from 37 CEOs of S&P 500 companies in the 2020 cycle, according to Market Watch – more than any other Senate candidate that year. Former Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) received the next most: $229,915 from 30 CEOs.

 Key Background

 The Georgia law, passed by the state’s GOP-controlled legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, expands early voting but sets new restrictions on mail-in ballots, including limiting the number of drop boxes and setting new ID requirements. It also takes election oversight powers out of the hands of the secretary of state and puts them into a non-partisan official appointed by the legislature.

 Follow me on Twitter. Send me a secure tip.
 Andrew Solender

 * Editorial Standards
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Topline
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday continued to rail against businesses protesting a new election law in Georgia, urging them not to weigh in on politics but carving out an exception for campaign contributions.
  Getty Images  
Key Facts
McConnell said during a stop at a health clinic in Kentucky that, given the heated divisions that currently American politics, “If I were running a major corporation, I would stay out of politics,” adding that they are “irritating a hell of a lot of Republican fans.”
But McConnell hedged, stating that businesses have “a right to participate in the political process,” specifying that he’s “not talking about political contributions” in his warnings, calling them “fine, it’s legal, it’s appropriate. I support that.”
Instead, McConnell said, companies should not weigh in an “a highly incendiary issue” and “[say], ‘pass what we want you to pass, or we’ll take out major league all-star game to another state’,” a shot at MLB’s decision to relocate the all-star game from Georgia to Colorado.
Republicans have railed against the MLB decision and criticism from companies like United, Delta and Coca Cola, with federal lawmakers threatening to go after MLB’s antitrust immunity and Georgia lawmakers calling for the removal of Coca Cola products in the State House.
McConnell on Monday warned that companies “behaving like a woke parallel government” through economic boycotts “invite serious consequences.”
Chief Critic
“There may not be another politician alive who's benefited more from corporations spending money on politics than Mitch McConnell,” tweeted ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. McConnell received over $4.3 million in corporate PAC donations in the 2020 cycle, according to OpenSecrets – among the most of any Senate candidate.
Big Number
$258,880. That’s how much McConnell got from 37 CEOs of S&amp;P 500 companies in the 2020 cycle, according to Market Watch – more than any other Senate candidate that year. Former Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) received the next most: $229,915 from 30 CEOs.
Key Background
The Georgia law, passed by the state’s GOP-controlled legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, expands early voting but sets new restrictions on mail-in ballots, including limiting the number of drop boxes and setting new ID requirements. It also takes election oversight powers out of the hands of the secretary of state and puts them into a non-partisan official appointed by the legislature.
McConnell Tells Businesses To ‘Stay Out Of Politics’ – Except With Campaign Donations
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2021/04/06/mcconnell-tells-businesses-to-stay-out-of-politics--except-with-campaign-donations/
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/08/1044350811/matthew-mcconaughey-texas-governor-greenlights-politics-twitter
Governor run or no, Matthew McConaughey is full of campaign slogans
2021-10-08
Emma Bowman
<div><div>
 <article><div>
 <h4>Governor run or no, Matthew McConaughey is full of campaign slogans</h4>
 
 
 
</div>
</article>
</div><div>
 <div>
 <div>
 
 
 
 
 
 
</div>
<div>
 <div>
 <p>
 Matthew McConaughey, the star of <em>Dazed and Confused</em> and <em>Dallas Buyers Club</em>, isn't not thinking about throwing his cowboy hat in the race for "CEO" of Texas.
 <b>
 
 Noam Galai/Getty Images for HISTORY
 
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 </div>
<div>
 <p>Matthew McConaughey, the star of <em>Dazed and Confused</em> and <em>Dallas Buyers Club</em>, isn't not thinking about throwing his cowboy hat in the race for "CEO" of Texas.</p>
 <p>
 
 Noam Galai/Getty Images for HISTORY
 
 
 </p></div>
 </div>
 <p>Matthew McConaughey is not <em>not </em>running for governor of Texas.</p> <p>"I am not — until I am," the Oscar winner and best-selling author told NPR host Scott Simon in a live, open-ended forum broadcast on Twitter Spaces on Thursday. "It's got to be personal for me, but it's also got to be the most useful thing for the most amount of people."</p> <p>McConaughey continued to play with the idea of what it would mean to be "CEO of the state," at a time when he views American politics as a "broken business" divided by politicians whose main goals he said are to preserve their own parties.</p> 
 
 <p>Even so, the actor didn't offer much in the way of certainties when he fielded hot-button questions from listeners about his own opinions — except when imparting his signature "bumper sticker" philosophies on life that punctuate his new memoir (or as he likes to call it, an "approach book"), <em>Greenlights</em>.</p> <p>Pressed on his home state's controversial new abortion law that bans the procedure as early as six weeks into pregnancy, he said, "I'm more of a choose guy." </p> <p>A former Amazon employee turned labor rights organizer, Christian Smalls, asked the actor for his take on Amazon workers' push to unionize. </p> 
 
 
 <p>On both counts, McConaughey said that he has some homework to do. He said he's "more concerned with the larger questions of what the hell this politics has become."</p> <p>As for his political party alignment? He won't exactly say, but instead channeled the independent spirit of a Texan who wants to "balance the ship of democracy."</p> <p>"I think we're here to lead, not secede," he said of Texans.</p> <p><em>Click the audio link to listen to the full conversation.</em></p>
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 Matthew McConaughey talks Texas politics and more in Twitter Spaces conversation In a Twitter Spaces chat hosted by NPR, the actor discussed his potential run for Texas governor, where he fits — or doesn't — on the political party spectrum, abortion, Amazon unions and more.

 Culture

 Governor run or no, Matthew McConaughey is full of campaign slogans

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 October 8, 2021 5:05 PM ET

 Emma Bowman

 Twitter

 Governor run or no, Matthew McConaughey is full of campaign slogans

 45:53
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 Matthew McConaughey, the star of Dazed and Confused and Dallas Buyers Club, isn't not thinking about throwing his cowboy hat in the race for "CEO" of Texas. Noam Galai/Getty Images for HISTORY hide caption

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 Noam Galai/Getty Images for HISTORY

 Matthew McConaughey, the star of Dazed and Confused and Dallas Buyers Club, isn't not thinking about throwing his cowboy hat in the race for "CEO" of Texas.

 Noam Galai/Getty Images for HISTORY

 Matthew McConaughey is not not running for governor of Texas.

 "I am not — until I am," the Oscar winner and best-selling author told NPR host Scott Simon in a live, open-ended forum broadcast on Twitter Spaces on Thursday. "It's got to be personal for me, but it's also got to be the most useful thing for the most amount of people."

 McConaughey continued to play with the idea of what it would mean to be "CEO of the state," at a time when he views American politics as a "broken business" divided by politicians whose main goals he said are to preserve their own parties.

 Ask Me Another

 Matthew McConaughey: Commerce And Vanity

 Even so, the actor didn't offer much in the way of certainties when he fielded hot-button questions from listeners about his own opinions — except when imparting his signature "bumper sticker" philosophies on life that punctuate his new memoir (or as he likes to call it, an "approach book"), Greenlights.

 Pressed on his home state's controversial new abortion law that bans the procedure as early as six weeks into pregnancy, he said, "I'm more of a choose guy."

 A former Amazon employee turned labor rights organizer, Christian Smalls, asked the actor for his take on Amazon workers' push to unionize.

 Ask Me Another

 Weird Texas Laws With Matthew McConaughey

 On both counts, McConaughey said that he has some homework to do. He said he's "more concerned with the larger questions of what the hell this politics has become."

 As for his political party alignment? He won't exactly say, but instead channeled the independent spirit of a Texan who wants to "balance the ship of democracy."

 "I think we're here to lead, not secede," he said of Texans.

 Click the audio link to listen to the full conversation.

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Governor run or no, Matthew McConaughey is full of campaign slogans
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Matthew McConaughey, the star of Dazed and Confused and Dallas Buyers Club, isn't not thinking about throwing his cowboy hat in the race for "CEO" of Texas.
 
 
 Noam Galai/Getty Images for HISTORY
 
 
  hide caption 
 
   toggle caption 
  
 
 
 Noam Galai/Getty Images for HISTORY
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Matthew McConaughey, the star of Dazed and Confused and Dallas Buyers Club, isn't not thinking about throwing his cowboy hat in the race for "CEO" of Texas.
 
 
 Noam Galai/Getty Images for HISTORY
 
 
  
 
 Matthew McConaughey is not not running for governor of Texas. "I am not — until I am," the Oscar winner and best-selling author told NPR host Scott Simon in a live, open-ended forum broadcast on Twitter Spaces on Thursday. "It's got to be personal for me, but it's also got to be the most useful thing for the most amount of people." McConaughey continued to play with the idea of what it would mean to be "CEO of the state," at a time when he views American politics as a "broken business" divided by politicians whose main goals he said are to preserve their own parties. 
 
 Even so, the actor didn't offer much in the way of certainties when he fielded hot-button questions from listeners about his own opinions — except when imparting his signature "bumper sticker" philosophies on life that punctuate his new memoir (or as he likes to call it, an "approach book"), Greenlights. Pressed on his home state's controversial new abortion law that bans the procedure as early as six weeks into pregnancy, he said, "I'm more of a choose guy."  A former Amazon employee turned labor rights organizer, Christian Smalls, asked the actor for his take on Amazon workers' push to unionize.  
 
 
 On both counts, McConaughey said that he has some homework to do. He said he's "more concerned with the larger questions of what the hell this politics has become." As for his political party alignment? He won't exactly say, but instead channeled the independent spirit of a Texan who wants to "balance the ship of democracy." "I think we're here to lead, not secede," he said of Texans.  Click the audio link to listen to the full conversation.
Governor run or no, Matthew McConaughey is full of campaign slogans
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/08/1044350811/matthew-mcconaughey-texas-governor-greenlights-politics-twitter
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/28/who-says-covid-origin-investigation-is-being-poisoned-by-politics.html
WHO says Covid origin investigation is being 'poisoned by politics'
2021-05-28
Rich Mendez
<div><div><div><p>Executive Director of the WHO Emergencies Program Mike Ryan speaks at a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland on Feb. 6, 2020.</p><p>Denis Balibouse | Reuters</p></div><div><p>A top World Health Organization official said Friday that investigations into the origins of <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/coronavirus/">Covid-19</a> are being "poisoned by politics."</p><p>U.S. President <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/joe-biden/">Joe Biden</a> announced Wednesday that he's ordered intelligence agencies to conduct "a report on their most up-to-date analysis of the origins of Covid-19, including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident."</p><p>The WHO has come under increasing pressure in recent days from U.S. and European officials to take another look at whether <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/coronavirus/">the coronavirus</a> could have escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, after a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report came to light, revealing that three researchers sought hospital care after falling ill with Covid-like symptoms in November 2019.</p><p>Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's Health Emergencies Program, asked if countries could separate the politics from the science.</p><p>"Putting WHO in a position like it has been put in is very unfair to the science we're trying to carry out, and it puts us as an organization, frankly, in an impossible position to deliver the answers that the world wants," Ryan said at a news briefing.</p><p>The WHO has been repeatedly accused of allowing the Chinese government to avoid a thorough investigation into the origins of Covid-19, which was first discovered in Wuhan in late 2019. At a Senate hearing earlier this week Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., pressed White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci on the WHO's close ties to China.</p><p>"Can we agree that if you took (Chinese) President Xi Jinping and turned him upside down and shook him, the World Health Organization would fall out of his pocket?" Fauci responded by saying that he has no way of knowing China's influence on the agency.</p><p>The hypothesis that Covid-19 came from a Wuhan virology lab was initially dismissed as a right-wing conspiracy theory, but it's been gaining traction in recent weeks.</p><p>The majority of the intelligence community believes that it is equally plausible that the virus originated in a lab and in an animal. Federal health officials continue to maintain their position that it is more likely that the virus has zoonotic origins. The CDC's website still states "we know that it originally came from an animal, likely a bat."</p></div></div></div>||||I|||| Skip Navigation
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 Health and Science

 WHO says Covid origin investigation is being 'poisoned by politics'

 Published Fri, May 28 20211:16 PM EDTUpdated Sun, May 30 20217:07 PM EDT
 Rich Mendez@richmendezcnbc
 WATCH LIVE
 Key Points
 * A top WHO official said Friday that investigations into the origins of Covid-19 are being "poisoned by politics."
 * The WHO has been repeatedly accused of allowing the Chinese government to avoid a thorough investigation into the origins of Covid-19.
 * U.S. health officials continue to maintain that the virus likely has zoonotic, or animal, origins.
 Executive Director of the WHO Emergencies Program Mike Ryan speaks at a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland on Feb. 6, 2020.
 Denis Balibouse | Reuters

 A top World Health Organization official said Friday that investigations into the origins of Covid-19 are being "poisoned by politics."

 U.S. President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he's ordered intelligence agencies to conduct "a report on their most up-to-date analysis of the origins of Covid-19, including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident."

 The WHO has come under increasing pressure in recent days from U.S. and European officials to take another look at whether the coronavirus could have escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, after a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report came to light, revealing that three researchers sought hospital care after falling ill with Covid-like symptoms in November 2019.

 Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's Health Emergencies Program, asked if countries could separate the politics from the science.

 "Putting WHO in a position like it has been put in is very unfair to the science we're trying to carry out, and it puts us as an organization, frankly, in an impossible position to deliver the answers that the world wants," Ryan said at a news briefing.

 The WHO has been repeatedly accused of allowing the Chinese government to avoid a thorough investigation into the origins of Covid-19, which was first discovered in Wuhan in late 2019. At a Senate hearing earlier this week Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., pressed White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci on the WHO's close ties to China.

 "Can we agree that if you took (Chinese) President Xi Jinping and turned him upside down and shook him, the World Health Organization would fall out of his pocket?" Fauci responded by saying that he has no way of knowing China's influence on the agency.

 The hypothesis that Covid-19 came from a Wuhan virology lab was initially dismissed as a right-wing conspiracy theory, but it's been gaining traction in recent weeks.

 The majority of the intelligence community believes that it is equally plausible that the virus originated in a lab and in an animal. Federal health officials continue to maintain their position that it is more likely that the virus has zoonotic origins. The CDC's website still states "we know that it originally came from an animal, likely a bat."

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Executive Director of the WHO Emergencies Program Mike Ryan speaks at a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland on Feb. 6, 2020. Denis Balibouse | Reuters   A top World Health Organization official said Friday that investigations into the origins of Covid-19 are being "poisoned by politics." U.S. President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he's ordered intelligence agencies to conduct "a report on their most up-to-date analysis of the origins of Covid-19, including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident." The WHO has come under increasing pressure in recent days from U.S. and European officials to take another look at whether the coronavirus could have escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, after a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report came to light, revealing that three researchers sought hospital care after falling ill with Covid-like symptoms in November 2019. Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO's Health Emergencies Program, asked if countries could separate the politics from the science. "Putting WHO in a position like it has been put in is very unfair to the science we're trying to carry out, and it puts us as an organization, frankly, in an impossible position to deliver the answers that the world wants," Ryan said at a news briefing. The WHO has been repeatedly accused of allowing the Chinese government to avoid a thorough investigation into the origins of Covid-19, which was first discovered in Wuhan in late 2019. At a Senate hearing earlier this week Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., pressed White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci on the WHO's close ties to China. "Can we agree that if you took (Chinese) President Xi Jinping and turned him upside down and shook him, the World Health Organization would fall out of his pocket?" Fauci responded by saying that he has no way of knowing China's influence on the agency. The hypothesis that Covid-19 came from a Wuhan virology lab was initially dismissed as a right-wing conspiracy theory, but it's been gaining traction in recent weeks. The majority of the intelligence community believes that it is equally plausible that the virus originated in a lab and in an animal. Federal health officials continue to maintain their position that it is more likely that the virus has zoonotic origins. The CDC's website still states "we know that it originally came from an animal, likely a bat."
WHO says Covid origin investigation is being 'poisoned by politics'
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/28/who-says-covid-origin-investigation-is-being-poisoned-by-politics.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2012/11/01/mexico-expatriates-politics/1675001/
Expatriates in Mexico keep an eye on U.S. politics
2012-11-01
David Agren; Special
<div><div><figure></figure><ul><li>A well-organized Democrats Abroad group has company: a strong band of Tea Partiers</li><li>Property taxes for Americans living in the Lake Chapala region run about $200 annually</li><li>Aside from U.S. politics, they still enjoy satellite TV and shopping at Costco</li></ul><p>AJIJIC, Mexico -- The Tea Party gathering in this expatriate colony of retired Americans and Canadians opened with the Pledge of Allegiance and singing of <em>God Bless America.</em></p><p>It continued with an airing of conservative pundit Dinesh D'Souza's documentary, <em>2016: Obama's America,</em> during which audience members sipped bottles of Corona beer and, tsk-tsked at some of the remarks made by Democrats in the film.</p><p>"I want to thank everyone for coming, regardless of their political views," said organizer Karen Cage, an ex-broadcasting manager from the Dallas area.</p><p>An estimated 10,000 U.S. citizens reside in this collection of villages on Mexico's majestic Lake Chapala – where locals boast the perpetual spring-like climate is among the best in the world. They may have left colder winters behind, but not U.S. politics.</p><p>In the Lake Chapala region, one finds a well-organized Democrats Abroad chapter, which serves up political screenings, too, including an episode of HBO's <em>The Newsroom</em> that described the Tea Party as "The American Taliban." Both sides are into the election as if they never left "the States."</p><p>"I've been a Republican since I was 20. I don't know how not to be involved," Cage says.</p><p>It's uncertain which side has more support, although Cage says the local chapter of Republicans Abroad has had organization issues – at least since George P. Bush, the then-president's nephew, stumped for votes here among expats in 2004. Some Democrats say former president George W. Bush is the reason they live at the area known as Lakeside.</p><div><p>"I said, 'If Bush wins re-election, I'm out of here,' " says retired real estate agent Lois Schroff, who sold her Virginia Beach home and moved to Mexico seven years ago.</p><p>Members of both groups do remain civil to each other, and try to avoid disputes by imposing "no-politics" rules when they get together.</p></div><div><p>"We've thrown people out of here for getting into arguments that were too partisan," says Maryan Ramos, a retiree originally from Corpus Christi, Texas.</p><p>"You really can't discuss politics with people down here," says Tea Party member Don Lott, a retired salesman from Forth Worth, Texas. "People are pretty small-minded – on both sides."</p></div><p>Both sides agree on their affection for Mexico, where sunshine is plentiful and property tax bills run about $200 annually. American amenities are also easily available – ranging from U.S. satellite TV service to grocery runs at Costco in nearby Guadalajara.</p><div><p>"Where else could a bunch of old fools go and have so much to do?" says Billy Cooper, a Tea Partier fond of the family-oriented local culture.</p><p>He cites another important reason for liking Mexico: health care that costs him "one-tenth" the price he would pay back in Houston, Cooper says.</p></div><div><p>The formation of a Tea Party chapter in a region of Mexico known for its outward migration to the United States is somewhat improbable given the Republican Party's preference for maintaining strict immigration laws, but Cooper sees no conflict.</p><p>"The Tea Party is all in favor of legal immigration," he says.</p></div><p>Politicking, which is intense in private, is discreet in public and few expats venture opinions on Mexican politics: The Mexican constitution forbids foreigners from meddling in such matters. Canadians winter here as well in almost equal numbers to the Americans. But they aren't as political-- possibly because many believe registering to vote will lead to problems with tax authorities back home, says former Canadian politician and Ajijic resident Rob Parker.</p><p>"They believe they'll be found if they register to vote," he says.</p></div></div>||||I|||| The DEA will seek to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, reports say, a landmark move that would acknowledge its medical uses
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 NEWS

 Expatriates in Mexico keep an eye on U.S. politics

 David Agren, Special for USA TODAY

 * A well-organized Democrats Abroad group has company: a strong band of Tea Partiers
 * Property taxes for Americans living in the Lake Chapala region run about $200 annually
 * Aside from U.S. politics, they still enjoy satellite TV and shopping at Costco

 AJIJIC, Mexico -- The Tea Party gathering in this expatriate colony of retired Americans and Canadians opened with the Pledge of Allegiance and singing of God Bless America.

 It continued with an airing of conservative pundit Dinesh D'Souza's documentary, 2016: Obama's America, during which audience members sipped bottles of Corona beer and, tsk-tsked at some of the remarks made by Democrats in the film.

 "I want to thank everyone for coming, regardless of their political views," said organizer Karen Cage, an ex-broadcasting manager from the Dallas area.

 An estimated 10,000 U.S. citizens reside in this collection of villages on Mexico's majestic Lake Chapala – where locals boast the perpetual spring-like climate is among the best in the world. They may have left colder winters behind, but not U.S. politics.

 In the Lake Chapala region, one finds a well-organized Democrats Abroad chapter, which serves up political screenings, too, including an episode of HBO's The Newsroom that described the Tea Party as "The American Taliban." Both sides are into the election as if they never left "the States."

 "I've been a Republican since I was 20. I don't know how not to be involved," Cage says.

 It's uncertain which side has more support, although Cage says the local chapter of Republicans Abroad has had organization issues – at least since George P. Bush, the then-president's nephew, stumped for votes here among expats in 2004. Some Democrats say former president George W. Bush is the reason they live at the area known as Lakeside.

 "I said, 'If Bush wins re-election, I'm out of here,' " says retired real estate agent Lois Schroff, who sold her Virginia Beach home and moved to Mexico seven years ago.

 Members of both groups do remain civil to each other, and try to avoid disputes by imposing "no-politics" rules when they get together.

 "We've thrown people out of here for getting into arguments that were too partisan," says Maryan Ramos, a retiree originally from Corpus Christi, Texas.

 "You really can't discuss politics with people down here," says Tea Party member Don Lott, a retired salesman from Forth Worth, Texas. "People are pretty small-minded – on both sides."

 Both sides agree on their affection for Mexico, where sunshine is plentiful and property tax bills run about $200 annually. American amenities are also easily available – ranging from U.S. satellite TV service to grocery runs at Costco in nearby Guadalajara.

 "Where else could a bunch of old fools go and have so much to do?" says Billy Cooper, a Tea Partier fond of the family-oriented local culture.

 He cites another important reason for liking Mexico: health care that costs him "one-tenth" the price he would pay back in Houston, Cooper says.

 The formation of a Tea Party chapter in a region of Mexico known for its outward migration to the United States is somewhat improbable given the Republican Party's preference for maintaining strict immigration laws, but Cooper sees no conflict.

 "The Tea Party is all in favor of legal immigration," he says.

 Politicking, which is intense in private, is discreet in public and few expats venture opinions on Mexican politics: The Mexican constitution forbids foreigners from meddling in such matters. Canadians winter here as well in almost equal numbers to the Americans. But they aren't as political-- possibly because many believe registering to vote will lead to problems with tax authorities back home, says former Canadian politician and Ajijic resident Rob Parker.

 "They believe they'll be found if they register to vote," he says.

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A well-organized Democrats Abroad group has company: a strong band of Tea Partiers Property taxes for Americans living in the Lake Chapala region run about $200 annually Aside from U.S. politics, they still enjoy satellite TV and shopping at Costco  AJIJIC, Mexico -- The Tea Party gathering in this expatriate colony of retired Americans and Canadians opened with the Pledge of Allegiance and singing of God Bless America.  It continued with an airing of conservative pundit Dinesh D'Souza's documentary, 2016: Obama's America, during which audience members sipped bottles of Corona beer and, tsk-tsked at some of the remarks made by Democrats in the film. "I want to thank everyone for coming, regardless of their political views," said organizer Karen Cage, an ex-broadcasting manager from the Dallas area. An estimated 10,000 U.S. citizens reside in this collection of villages on Mexico's majestic Lake Chapala – where locals boast the perpetual spring-like climate is among the best in the world. They may have left colder winters behind, but not U.S. politics. In the Lake Chapala region, one finds a well-organized Democrats Abroad chapter, which serves up political screenings, too, including an episode of HBO's The Newsroom that described the Tea Party as "The American Taliban." Both sides are into the election as if they never left "the States." "I've been a Republican since I was 20. I don't know how not to be involved," Cage says. It's uncertain which side has more support, although Cage says the local chapter of Republicans Abroad has had organization issues – at least since George P. Bush, the then-president's nephew, stumped for votes here among expats in 2004. Some Democrats say former president George W. Bush is the reason they live at the area known as Lakeside.  "I said, 'If Bush wins re-election, I'm out of here,' " says retired real estate agent Lois Schroff, who sold her Virginia Beach home and moved to Mexico seven years ago. Members of both groups do remain civil to each other, and try to avoid disputes by imposing "no-politics" rules when they get together.   "We've thrown people out of here for getting into arguments that were too partisan," says Maryan Ramos, a retiree originally from Corpus Christi, Texas. "You really can't discuss politics with people down here," says Tea Party member Don Lott, a retired salesman from Forth Worth, Texas. "People are pretty small-minded – on both sides."  Both sides agree on their affection for Mexico, where sunshine is plentiful and property tax bills run about $200 annually. American amenities are also easily available – ranging from U.S. satellite TV service to grocery runs at Costco in nearby Guadalajara.  "Where else could a bunch of old fools go and have so much to do?" says Billy Cooper, a Tea Partier fond of the family-oriented local culture. He cites another important reason for liking Mexico: health care that costs him "one-tenth" the price he would pay back in Houston, Cooper says.   The formation of a Tea Party chapter in a region of Mexico known for its outward migration to the United States is somewhat improbable given the Republican Party's preference for maintaining strict immigration laws, but Cooper sees no conflict. "The Tea Party is all in favor of legal immigration," he says.  Politicking, which is intense in private, is discreet in public and few expats venture opinions on Mexican politics: The Mexican constitution forbids foreigners from meddling in such matters. Canadians winter here as well in almost equal numbers to the Americans. But they aren't as political-- possibly because many believe registering to vote will lead to problems with tax authorities back home, says former Canadian politician and Ajijic resident Rob Parker. "They believe they'll be found if they register to vote," he says.
Expatriates in Mexico keep an eye on U.S. politics
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2012/11/01/mexico-expatriates-politics/1675001/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120827122410.htm
The role of genes in political behavior
2023-02-06
None
<div><p>Politics and genetics have traditionally been considered non-overlapping fields, but over the past decade it has become clear that genes can influence political behavior, according to a review published online August 27th in <em>Trends in Genetics</em>. This paradigm shift has led to novel insights into why people vary in their political preferences and could have important implications for public policy.</p><div>
<p>"We're seeing an awakening in the social sciences, and the wall that divided politics and genetics is really starting to fall apart," says review author Peter Hatemi of the University of Sydney. "This is a big advance, because the two fields could inform each other to answer some very complex questions about individual differences in political views."</p>
<p>In the past, social scientists had assumed that political preferences were shaped by social learning and environmental factors, but recent studies suggest that genes also strongly influence political traits. Twin studies show that genes have some influence on why people differ on political issues such as the death penalty, unemployment and abortion. Because this field of research is relatively new, only a handful of genes have been implicated in political ideology and partisanship, voter turnout, and political violence.</p>
<p>Future research, including gene-expression and sequencing studies, may lead to deeper insights into genetic influences on political views and have a greater impact on public policy. "Making the public aware of how their mind works and affects their political behavior is critically important," Hatemi says. "This has real implications for the reduction of discrimination, foreign policy, public health, attitude change and many other political issues."</p>
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 The role of genes in political behavior

 Date: August 27, 2012 Source: Cell Press Summary: Politics and genetics have traditionally been considered non-overlapping fields, but over the past decade it has become clear that genes can influence political behavior, according to a review. This paradigm shift has led to novel insights into why people vary in their political preferences and could have important implications for public policy. Share:
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 FULL STORY

 Politics and genetics have traditionally been considered non-overlapping fields, but over the past decade it has become clear that genes can influence political behavior, according to a review published online August 27th in Trends in Genetics. This paradigm shift has led to novel insights into why people vary in their political preferences and could have important implications for public policy.

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 "We're seeing an awakening in the social sciences, and the wall that divided politics and genetics is really starting to fall apart," says review author Peter Hatemi of the University of Sydney. "This is a big advance, because the two fields could inform each other to answer some very complex questions about individual differences in political views."

 In the past, social scientists had assumed that political preferences were shaped by social learning and environmental factors, but recent studies suggest that genes also strongly influence political traits. Twin studies show that genes have some influence on why people differ on political issues such as the death penalty, unemployment and abortion. Because this field of research is relatively new, only a handful of genes have been implicated in political ideology and partisanship, voter turnout, and political violence.

 Future research, including gene-expression and sequencing studies, may lead to deeper insights into genetic influences on political views and have a greater impact on public policy. "Making the public aware of how their mind works and affects their political behavior is critically important," Hatemi says. "This has real implications for the reduction of discrimination, foreign policy, public health, attitude change and many other political issues."

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 Materials provided by Cell Press. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

 Journal Reference:

 1. Peter K Hatemi and Rose McDermott. The Genetics of Politics: Discovery, Challenges and Progress. Trends in Genetics, August 27, 2012 DOI: 10.1016/j.tig.2012.07.004

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 Cell Press. "The role of genes in political behavior." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 27 August 2012. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120827122410.htm>.
 Cell Press. (2012, August 27). The role of genes in political behavior. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 6, 2023 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120827122410.htm
 Cell Press. "The role of genes in political behavior." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120827122410.htm (accessed February 6, 2023).

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Politics and genetics have traditionally been considered non-overlapping fields, but over the past decade it has become clear that genes can influence political behavior, according to a review published online August 27th in Trends in Genetics. This paradigm shift has led to novel insights into why people vary in their political preferences and could have important implications for public policy. 
"We're seeing an awakening in the social sciences, and the wall that divided politics and genetics is really starting to fall apart," says review author Peter Hatemi of the University of Sydney. "This is a big advance, because the two fields could inform each other to answer some very complex questions about individual differences in political views."
In the past, social scientists had assumed that political preferences were shaped by social learning and environmental factors, but recent studies suggest that genes also strongly influence political traits. Twin studies show that genes have some influence on why people differ on political issues such as the death penalty, unemployment and abortion. Because this field of research is relatively new, only a handful of genes have been implicated in political ideology and partisanship, voter turnout, and political violence.
Future research, including gene-expression and sequencing studies, may lead to deeper insights into genetic influences on political views and have a greater impact on public policy. "Making the public aware of how their mind works and affects their political behavior is critically important," Hatemi says. "This has real implications for the reduction of discrimination, foreign policy, public health, attitude change and many other political issues."
The role of genes in political behavior
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120827122410.htm
https://www.npr.org/2012/08/22/159522521/wis-state-senator-connects-her-politics-to-her-past
Wis. State Senator Connects Her Politics To Her Past
2012-08-22
David Greene
<div><div>
 <div>
 <div>
 
 
 
 
 
</div>
<div>
 <div>
 <p>
 Wisconsin state Sen. Jessica King stands at the corner of Main Street and Algoma Boulevard in downtown Oshkosh. She won her seat in a senatorial recall campaign last year.
 <b>
 
 John W. Poole/NPR
 
 </b>
 <b><b>hide caption</b></b>
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 <p><b><b>toggle caption</b></b>
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 <p>
 
 John W. Poole/NPR
 
 
</p></div>
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 <p><em>As the presidential election nears,</em> Morning Edition <em>is visiting swing counties in swing states for our series <a href="http://www.npr.org/series/158074682/first-and-main">First and Main</a>. We're listening to voters where they live — to understand what's shaping their thinking this election year. This week, we're spending time in Winnebago County, Wis., where we spoke with two women — one Democrat, one Republican — who embody their state's Midwestern charm and spirit of self-reliance. First, we hear from the Democrat.<br /></em></p> <p>Last year, Jessica King became a Wisconsin state senator, swept into office in a wave of special recall votes. It was part of the larger political drama that saw Wisconsin's governor avoid his own recall.</p> <p>King, 37, made history. In part of her district, she's the first Democrat to serve as state senator since the 1930s.</p> <p>Her secret to representing a Republican area?</p> <p>"I'm realistic. I represent approximately 160,000 people, and you have to ask yourself, 'When's the last time you remember 160,000 people agreeing on anything?' Probably never," she says. "If I can get people to agree with me 7 out of 10 times, I'm probably doing a good job.</p> 
 <p>"Now for those three times that maybe people think, 'Well, my priorities line up differently than the senator's' — well, as long as I do what every fifth-grade math teacher told me to do, which is 'show my work' — show my work, explain it — people then at least respect me."</p> 
 
 <p>At a coffee shop in downtown Oshkosh, Wis., the youngest woman in Wisconsin's state Senate was wearing a business suit and stealing bits of a muffin that was her breakfast.</p> <p>King's story began with a tough childhood.</p> <p>"My father really suffered from today what we call, you know, post-traumatic stress disorder," King says. "My mother actually suffered from schizophrenia."</p> <p>Her dad's PTSD dates to when he served on a destroyer in the Pacific before the Vietnam War.</p> <p>With two parents with disabilities — both hospitalized when their daughter was 4 — King was in and out of foster care. As a teenager, she got her first job, working third shift at a juice box factory. She ultimately went to college and law school and then went into politics. Her father got to see her sworn in last year.</p> <p>"My father's now in a wheelchair. He can't really move; he can't really talk anymore. But he still has a lot of cognition, so I know he knows what's going on," she says. "And he was able to be there that day. And it was a really exciting, excellent day for me."</p> 
 <p><strong>A Divided State</strong></p> <p>No doubt, her political views are rooted in her firsthand experience with social services. She benefited from Wisconsin's social structures, having grown up as a ward of the state. Her father now lives in a public facility.</p> <p>"It is a county-run nursing home," she says. "And I think it's just an incredible example of how, in Wisconsin, we really take care of our people."</p> <p>She says she is proud of Wisconsin. But over the past year, as the fight over whether to recall Gov. Scott Walker consumed the state, she struggled to recognize this place that she loves.</p> <p>"Before 2011, I believe everyone who had heard of Wisconsin or knew where it was thought, 'Well, that's just the nicest place on Earth.' You know, that's the place where you go to summer camp or you go to fish. And gosh, everybody I ever met from Wisconsin was willing to help me out or change a flat tire or help out their neighbor or go the extra mile," she says. "That's it, that's who we are. We're really a happy, good-natured, work ethic; we're ready to show up and be a team."</p> <p>And now?</p> <p>"Well, what I'm saying is, can you imagine what it must take to make the nicest people on Earth have the kind of demonstrations we've had in the last year and a half, right?" she says. "To really be divided?"</p> 
 
 <p><strong>Obstruction And Accountability</strong></p> <p>In a way, that's similar to the Republican message today: This isn't the country that we know and love; we want something different. So we shouldn't vote for President Obama.</p> <p>So how can the president combat that message?</p> <p>"Well, I think people here in Wisconsin, they want to participate, they want to be respected, they want to appreciate that not only their voice but their vote matters," King says. "And I think the best thing that, you know, either of the presidential candidates, whether it be Mitt Romney or President Barack Obama, they will have to demonstrate a place for everyone at the table, define what [everyone's] role is in pursuing a better future and then how their leadership will help build that.</p> <p>"Because I think there's definitely individuals, maybe within the Tea Party, that say, 'You know, I don't matter. You're taking resources from me but I don't get to sit at the table.' And that may be part of their frustration. You know, I don't pretend to know what motivates every individual out there. But I think it's a challenge for both of these candidates in this national race to explain how we all do this together and is somebody shut out."</p> 
 <p>Too many people in Wisconsin feel shut out, King says, and there's a feeling that Washington is more obsessed with gamesmanship and less interested in responding to real concerns.</p> <p>"And I think right now, the No. 1 thing that I feel from the population I serve, the population of Wisconsin, is they're really not supportive of people who are obstructionist," she says. "And I think the thing that is really understood right now is that Congress is functioning in a method of obstruction; they refuse to even attempt to agree. They are very much polarized and pandering. And no one here has time for that.</p> <p>"And ... for whatever Barack Obama's challenges are, and for the challenge that the global economy has thrown our country, I think the issue comes down to: When you're passing out the accountability, as a voter, are you more angry at Congress for being obstructionist than you are at one guy who's just trying to do the right thing?"</p> <p>Still, can King blame voters for holding the president accountable, especially in light of the big changes he talked about while running in 2008?</p> <p>"Like I said, I think voters will measure it out accordingly," she says. "But, then again, you have to balance it back with what the contrast is and what are your options. And when you see people in Washington playing games with something that is very real to them and scares them, they'll remember that. ... And honestly in Wisconsin, the blame game doesn't go too far because at some point you have to be self-accountable for what you do."</p> <p>Of course, in politics, there's a fine line between holding people accountable and playing a blame game.</p> <p>Whatever you call it, King has framed a key question for voters: Did Obama fail to lift the country up? Or did he get stymied by an obstructionist Congress?</p> 
 <p><strong>Finding An Escape Valve</strong></p> <p>As she took a last sip of her iced latte, King got ready to head out for a day of campaigning. She's actually up for re-election already herself.</p> <p>She says she does like finding ways to forget about politics.</p> <p>"I haven't met Mr. Right, but I definitely, you know, I have those things that I care about. And I have a pet rabbit. His name is Irish. He's about six years old and he's really good company. ... You try to find these opportunities to take the stress off a little bit.</p> <p>"So, I found a 1989 Cabriolet that required some tender love and care and it was the car that Barbie had when I was 16. So you know, I find my ways to have my fun. Even ... in this very serious time, everybody needs to have something they enjoy."</p> <p><em>On Thursday, we'll hear from a woman who owns a lakeside fish restaurant and feels a personal connection to Mitt Romney.</em></p>
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 Wisconsin State Senator Jessica King Connects Her Politics To Her Past Jessica King's political views are rooted in her firsthand experience with social services, having grown up as a ward of the state. She was swept into office during the wave of special recall votes in Wisconsin, and says her constituents are fed up with obstructionism in Washington.
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 Wis. State Senator Connects Her Politics To Her Past

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 Wis. State Senator Connects Her Politics To Her Past

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 Wisconsin state Sen. Jessica King stands at the corner of Main Street and Algoma Boulevard in downtown Oshkosh. She won her seat in a senatorial recall campaign last year. John W. Poole/NPR hide caption

 toggle caption
 John W. Poole/NPR

 As the presidential election nears, Morning Edition is visiting swing counties in swing states for our series First and Main. We're listening to voters where they live — to understand what's shaping their thinking this election year. This week, we're spending time in Winnebago County, Wis., where we spoke with two women — one Democrat, one Republican — who embody their state's Midwestern charm and spirit of self-reliance. First, we hear from the Democrat.

 Last year, Jessica King became a Wisconsin state senator, swept into office in a wave of special recall votes. It was part of the larger political drama that saw Wisconsin's governor avoid his own recall.

 King, 37, made history. In part of her district, she's the first Democrat to serve as state senator since the 1930s.

 Her secret to representing a Republican area?

 "I'm realistic. I represent approximately 160,000 people, and you have to ask yourself, 'When's the last time you remember 160,000 people agreeing on anything?' Probably never," she says. "If I can get people to agree with me 7 out of 10 times, I'm probably doing a good job.

 "Now for those three times that maybe people think, 'Well, my priorities line up differently than the senator's' — well, as long as I do what every fifth-grade math teacher told me to do, which is 'show my work' — show my work, explain it — people then at least respect me."

 More In This Series

 First And Main

 Weary Wis. Union Workers Face Another Campaign

 First And Main

 In Wis. Swing County, Voters Criticize 'Handouts'

 At a coffee shop in downtown Oshkosh, Wis., the youngest woman in Wisconsin's state Senate was wearing a business suit and stealing bits of a muffin that was her breakfast.

 King's story began with a tough childhood.

 "My father really suffered from today what we call, you know, post-traumatic stress disorder," King says. "My mother actually suffered from schizophrenia."

 Her dad's PTSD dates to when he served on a destroyer in the Pacific before the Vietnam War.

 With two parents with disabilities — both hospitalized when their daughter was 4 — King was in and out of foster care. As a teenager, she got her first job, working third shift at a juice box factory. She ultimately went to college and law school and then went into politics. Her father got to see her sworn in last year.

 "My father's now in a wheelchair. He can't really move; he can't really talk anymore. But he still has a lot of cognition, so I know he knows what's going on," she says. "And he was able to be there that day. And it was a really exciting, excellent day for me."

 A Divided State

 No doubt, her political views are rooted in her firsthand experience with social services. She benefited from Wisconsin's social structures, having grown up as a ward of the state. Her father now lives in a public facility.

 "It is a county-run nursing home," she says. "And I think it's just an incredible example of how, in Wisconsin, we really take care of our people."

 She says she is proud of Wisconsin. But over the past year, as the fight over whether to recall Gov. Scott Walker consumed the state, she struggled to recognize this place that she loves.

 "Before 2011, I believe everyone who had heard of Wisconsin or knew where it was thought, 'Well, that's just the nicest place on Earth.' You know, that's the place where you go to summer camp or you go to fish. And gosh, everybody I ever met from Wisconsin was willing to help me out or change a flat tire or help out their neighbor or go the extra mile," she says. "That's it, that's who we are. We're really a happy, good-natured, work ethic; we're ready to show up and be a team."

 And now?

 "Well, what I'm saying is, can you imagine what it must take to make the nicest people on Earth have the kind of demonstrations we've had in the last year and a half, right?" she says. "To really be divided?"

 Can you imagine what it must take, to make the nicest people on Earth have the kind of demonstrations we've had in the last year and a half?

 Wisconsin state Sen. Jessica King

 Obstruction And Accountability

 In a way, that's similar to the Republican message today: This isn't the country that we know and love; we want something different. So we shouldn't vote for President Obama.

 So how can the president combat that message?

 "Well, I think people here in Wisconsin, they want to participate, they want to be respected, they want to appreciate that not only their voice but their vote matters," King says. "And I think the best thing that, you know, either of the presidential candidates, whether it be Mitt Romney or President Barack Obama, they will have to demonstrate a place for everyone at the table, define what [everyone's] role is in pursuing a better future and then how their leadership will help build that.

 "Because I think there's definitely individuals, maybe within the Tea Party, that say, 'You know, I don't matter. You're taking resources from me but I don't get to sit at the table.' And that may be part of their frustration. You know, I don't pretend to know what motivates every individual out there. But I think it's a challenge for both of these candidates in this national race to explain how we all do this together and is somebody shut out."

 Too many people in Wisconsin feel shut out, King says, and there's a feeling that Washington is more obsessed with gamesmanship and less interested in responding to real concerns.

 "And I think right now, the No. 1 thing that I feel from the population I serve, the population of Wisconsin, is they're really not supportive of people who are obstructionist," she says. "And I think the thing that is really understood right now is that Congress is functioning in a method of obstruction; they refuse to even attempt to agree. They are very much polarized and pandering. And no one here has time for that.

 "And ... for whatever Barack Obama's challenges are, and for the challenge that the global economy has thrown our country, I think the issue comes down to: When you're passing out the accountability, as a voter, are you more angry at Congress for being obstructionist than you are at one guy who's just trying to do the right thing?"

 Still, can King blame voters for holding the president accountable, especially in light of the big changes he talked about while running in 2008?

 "Like I said, I think voters will measure it out accordingly," she says. "But, then again, you have to balance it back with what the contrast is and what are your options. And when you see people in Washington playing games with something that is very real to them and scares them, they'll remember that. ... And honestly in Wisconsin, the blame game doesn't go too far because at some point you have to be self-accountable for what you do."

 Of course, in politics, there's a fine line between holding people accountable and playing a blame game.

 Whatever you call it, King has framed a key question for voters: Did Obama fail to lift the country up? Or did he get stymied by an obstructionist Congress?

 Finding An Escape Valve

 As she took a last sip of her iced latte, King got ready to head out for a day of campaigning. She's actually up for re-election already herself.

 She says she does like finding ways to forget about politics.

 "I haven't met Mr. Right, but I definitely, you know, I have those things that I care about. And I have a pet rabbit. His name is Irish. He's about six years old and he's really good company. ... You try to find these opportunities to take the stress off a little bit.

 "So, I found a 1989 Cabriolet that required some tender love and care and it was the car that Barbie had when I was 16. So you know, I find my ways to have my fun. Even ... in this very serious time, everybody needs to have something they enjoy."

 On Thursday, we'll hear from a woman who owns a lakeside fish restaurant and feels a personal connection to Mitt Romney.

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 Ahead of the 2012 election, NPR visits an iconic American corner in swing counties around the U.S.

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Wisconsin state Sen. Jessica King stands at the corner of Main Street and Algoma Boulevard in downtown Oshkosh. She won her seat in a senatorial recall campaign last year.
 
 
 John W. Poole/NPR
 
 
  hide caption 
 
   toggle caption 
  
 
 
 John W. Poole/NPR
 
 
 
 
  As the presidential election nears, Morning Edition is visiting swing counties in swing states for our series First and Main. We're listening to voters where they live — to understand what's shaping their thinking this election year. This week, we're spending time in Winnebago County, Wis., where we spoke with two women — one Democrat, one Republican — who embody their state's Midwestern charm and spirit of self-reliance. First, we hear from the Democrat.   Last year, Jessica King became a Wisconsin state senator, swept into office in a wave of special recall votes. It was part of the larger political drama that saw Wisconsin's governor avoid his own recall. King, 37, made history. In part of her district, she's the first Democrat to serve as state senator since the 1930s. Her secret to representing a Republican area? "I'm realistic. I represent approximately 160,000 people, and you have to ask yourself, 'When's the last time you remember 160,000 people agreeing on anything?' Probably never," she says. "If I can get people to agree with me 7 out of 10 times, I'm probably doing a good job. 
 "Now for those three times that maybe people think, 'Well, my priorities line up differently than the senator's' — well, as long as I do what every fifth-grade math teacher told me to do, which is 'show my work' — show my work, explain it — people then at least respect me." 
 
 At a coffee shop in downtown Oshkosh, Wis., the youngest woman in Wisconsin's state Senate was wearing a business suit and stealing bits of a muffin that was her breakfast. King's story began with a tough childhood. "My father really suffered from today what we call, you know, post-traumatic stress disorder," King says. "My mother actually suffered from schizophrenia." Her dad's PTSD dates to when he served on a destroyer in the Pacific before the Vietnam War. With two parents with disabilities — both hospitalized when their daughter was 4 — King was in and out of foster care. As a teenager, she got her first job, working third shift at a juice box factory. She ultimately went to college and law school and then went into politics. Her father got to see her sworn in last year. "My father's now in a wheelchair. He can't really move; he can't really talk anymore. But he still has a lot of cognition, so I know he knows what's going on," she says. "And he was able to be there that day. And it was a really exciting, excellent day for me." 
  A Divided State  No doubt, her political views are rooted in her firsthand experience with social services. She benefited from Wisconsin's social structures, having grown up as a ward of the state. Her father now lives in a public facility. "It is a county-run nursing home," she says. "And I think it's just an incredible example of how, in Wisconsin, we really take care of our people." She says she is proud of Wisconsin. But over the past year, as the fight over whether to recall Gov. Scott Walker consumed the state, she struggled to recognize this place that she loves. "Before 2011, I believe everyone who had heard of Wisconsin or knew where it was thought, 'Well, that's just the nicest place on Earth.' You know, that's the place where you go to summer camp or you go to fish. And gosh, everybody I ever met from Wisconsin was willing to help me out or change a flat tire or help out their neighbor or go the extra mile," she says. "That's it, that's who we are. We're really a happy, good-natured, work ethic; we're ready to show up and be a team." And now? "Well, what I'm saying is, can you imagine what it must take to make the nicest people on Earth have the kind of demonstrations we've had in the last year and a half, right?" she says. "To really be divided?" 
 
  Obstruction And Accountability  In a way, that's similar to the Republican message today: This isn't the country that we know and love; we want something different. So we shouldn't vote for President Obama. So how can the president combat that message? "Well, I think people here in Wisconsin, they want to participate, they want to be respected, they want to appreciate that not only their voice but their vote matters," King says. "And I think the best thing that, you know, either of the presidential candidates, whether it be Mitt Romney or President Barack Obama, they will have to demonstrate a place for everyone at the table, define what [everyone's] role is in pursuing a better future and then how their leadership will help build that. "Because I think there's definitely individuals, maybe within the Tea Party, that say, 'You know, I don't matter. You're taking resources from me but I don't get to sit at the table.' And that may be part of their frustration. You know, I don't pretend to know what motivates every individual out there. But I think it's a challenge for both of these candidates in this national race to explain how we all do this together and is somebody shut out." 
 Too many people in Wisconsin feel shut out, King says, and there's a feeling that Washington is more obsessed with gamesmanship and less interested in responding to real concerns. "And I think right now, the No. 1 thing that I feel from the population I serve, the population of Wisconsin, is they're really not supportive of people who are obstructionist," she says. "And I think the thing that is really understood right now is that Congress is functioning in a method of obstruction; they refuse to even attempt to agree. They are very much polarized and pandering. And no one here has time for that. "And ... for whatever Barack Obama's challenges are, and for the challenge that the global economy has thrown our country, I think the issue comes down to: When you're passing out the accountability, as a voter, are you more angry at Congress for being obstructionist than you are at one guy who's just trying to do the right thing?" Still, can King blame voters for holding the president accountable, especially in light of the big changes he talked about while running in 2008? "Like I said, I think voters will measure it out accordingly," she says. "But, then again, you have to balance it back with what the contrast is and what are your options. And when you see people in Washington playing games with something that is very real to them and scares them, they'll remember that. ... And honestly in Wisconsin, the blame game doesn't go too far because at some point you have to be self-accountable for what you do." Of course, in politics, there's a fine line between holding people accountable and playing a blame game. Whatever you call it, King has framed a key question for voters: Did Obama fail to lift the country up? Or did he get stymied by an obstructionist Congress? 
  Finding An Escape Valve  As she took a last sip of her iced latte, King got ready to head out for a day of campaigning. She's actually up for re-election already herself. She says she does like finding ways to forget about politics. "I haven't met Mr. Right, but I definitely, you know, I have those things that I care about. And I have a pet rabbit. His name is Irish. He's about six years old and he's really good company. ... You try to find these opportunities to take the stress off a little bit. "So, I found a 1989 Cabriolet that required some tender love and care and it was the car that Barbie had when I was 16. So you know, I find my ways to have my fun. Even ... in this very serious time, everybody needs to have something they enjoy."  On Thursday, we'll hear from a woman who owns a lakeside fish restaurant and feels a personal connection to Mitt Romney.
Wis. State Senator Connects Her Politics To Her Past
https://www.npr.org/2012/08/22/159522521/wis-state-senator-connects-her-politics-to-her-past
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/03/04/469049902/spains-first-black-member-of-parliament-and-the-new-politics
Spain's First Black Member Of Parliament And The 'New Politics'
2016-03-04
Lauren Frayer
<div><div>
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<div>
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 <p>
 Rita Bosaho, shown here in January, is the first black member elected to Spain's parliament. Born in Equatorial Guinea and raised in a foster family in Spain, she trained as a nurse before entering politics two years ago.
 <b>
 
 Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
 
 </b>
 <b><b>hide caption</b></b>
 </p>
 <p><b><b>toggle caption</b></b>
 </p></div>
 <p>
 
 Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
 
 
</p></div>
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 </div>
<div>
 <p>Rita Bosaho, shown here in January, is the first black member elected to Spain's parliament. Born in Equatorial Guinea and raised in a foster family in Spain, she trained as a nurse before entering politics two years ago.</p>
 <p>
 
 Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
 
 
 </p></div>
 </div>
 <p>As hundreds of thousands of Arab and African migrants arrive in Europe, Spanish lawmakers meet to discuss the continent's crisis — and all eyes are on one woman. She's the only national politician whose skin is the same color as many of the African migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Spain. But she made a different journey from Africa.</p> <p>"I was born in Equatorial Guinea when it was a Spanish colony," explains Rita Bosaho, Spain's first black member of parliament. "My parents died when I was very young, and I came to live with a foster family in Spain."</p> <p>Bosaho's foster dad was in the military, so they moved around, living in several Spanish cities. She was the only black child in a white foster family — and in all of her schools, until university.</p> <p>Compared with the rest of Europe, Spain is relatively homogenous. It's traditionally sent emigrants abroad, rather than receiving them — especially in the 1970s, when Bosaho was growing up. She's 50 now.</p> <p>"When I was little, I learned to read from a storybook about white explorers and black cannibals in Africa," she says. "I grew up being scared of where I came from."</p> 
 <p>That worried her foster parents, Bosaho says. She credits them with teaching her the values of equality and justice. She became a hospital nurse and volunteered with disadvantaged populations of Roma and other minorities in the rough north barrios of Alicante, on Spain's coast.</p> <p>Then, two years ago, when Spain's new left-wing political party, Podemos, began searching for diverse, accomplished people willing to go into politics, Bosaho signed up.</p> <p>In elections Dec. 20, she won a seat in Spain's parliament — <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/21/podemos-rita-bosaho-becomes-spains-first-female-black-mp">the first person of color</a>, male or female, to do so in modern Spanish history. Bosaho promises to represent the interests of ethnic and racial minorities in Spain.</p> <p>She is still coming to terms with her newfound fame.</p> <p>"I feel humbled and proud, and hope I can empower minorities," she says. "There are lots of people who don't understand that I'm Spanish. They see that I'm black — and think those two things can't go together."</p> <p>But the Spanish population is changing. More than 10 percent are legal immigrants who've become Spanish citizens — though most are white, from Latin America or Eastern Europe.</p> 
 
 
 
 <p>Spain received a wave of Latino immigrants in the 1990s, during its economic boom years, when there were ample jobs in construction and home health care. Spanish law allows citizens of most former Spanish colonies, many of which are in Latin America, to obtain Spanish passports within just two years.</p> <p>Some of those Latinos returned to their countries of origin after Spain's economy began faltering in 2008. Spanish unemployment remains stuck above 20 percent, and many immigrants worry they are over-represented in the jobless ranks while under-represented in politics.</p> 
 <p>At a recent community gathering in Valencia, on Spain's Mediterranean coast, immigrants from several Latin American countries packed into a local Podemos office to meet Bosaho, their new MP.</p> <p>"I'm so proud to see a woman — an African woman, no less — representing us in parliament," says Patricia Villalba, an unemployed 58-year-old originally from Ecuador. "Immigrants should be more visible in Spanish society."</p> <p>Arab and African migrants and refugees typically want to go to more prosperous northern Europe, and while Spain has agreed to accept more than 17,000 refugees under European Union quota plans, just a small fraction of those have arrived from landing zones in Greece and Italy. Madrid's city hall is nevertheless draped in a "Refugees Welcome" banner.</p> <p>Unlike in other parts of Europe, there is no major far-right, anti-immigrant political movement here, though racism exists. In 2014, a banana was hurled at a Brazilian soccer player in Spain's Villareal stadium, and spectators taunted a Spanish team's Senegalese player by making monkey noises.</p> <p>Bosaho's own party, Podemos, is criticized for promising dignity to unemployed protesters in the street but not yet backing that up with policy. Bosaho has yet to author any legislation. But she's changing perceptions about those who do.</p> <p>The stereotype of a Spanish politician "is always a man — the typical white man," says Aitana Christensen Ribera, an 18-year-old high school student who met Bosaho when the lawmaker visited her high school. "And now you have her! That's the new politics."</p> <p>During a question-and-answer session at the high school, another student, Rahma Mohamed, an immigrant from Western Sahara, takes the microphone and asks her MP a personal question.</p> <p>"People in Spain see me differently," she says. "And I worry they value me differently. How can I convince people I'm Spanish, just like them?"</p> <p>Bosaho thanks the student for her question. She thinks for a moment before breaking out into a smile.</p> 
 <p>"You and I — we're exactly the same," Bosaho tells the girl. "We're minorities, we're paying our taxes and we have voices. I think I can help."</p>
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 Spain's First Black Member Of Parliament And The 'New Politics' : Parallels Rita Bosaho is a nurse turned politician, born in Equatorial Guinea but raised by a white foster family in Spain. "I hope I can empower minorities," she says.

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 Politics & Policy

 Spain's First Black Member Of Parliament And The 'New Politics'

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 March 4, 2016 4:52 AM ET
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 Lauren Frayer

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 Spain's First Black Member Of Parliament And The 'New Politics'

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 Rita Bosaho, shown here in January, is the first black member elected to Spain's parliament. Born in Equatorial Guinea and raised in a foster family in Spain, she trained as a nurse before entering politics two years ago. Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images hide caption

 toggle caption
 Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images

 Rita Bosaho, shown here in January, is the first black member elected to Spain's parliament. Born in Equatorial Guinea and raised in a foster family in Spain, she trained as a nurse before entering politics two years ago.

 Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images

 As hundreds of thousands of Arab and African migrants arrive in Europe, Spanish lawmakers meet to discuss the continent's crisis — and all eyes are on one woman. She's the only national politician whose skin is the same color as many of the African migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Spain. But she made a different journey from Africa.

 "I was born in Equatorial Guinea when it was a Spanish colony," explains Rita Bosaho, Spain's first black member of parliament. "My parents died when I was very young, and I came to live with a foster family in Spain."

 Bosaho's foster dad was in the military, so they moved around, living in several Spanish cities. She was the only black child in a white foster family — and in all of her schools, until university.

 Compared with the rest of Europe, Spain is relatively homogenous. It's traditionally sent emigrants abroad, rather than receiving them — especially in the 1970s, when Bosaho was growing up. She's 50 now.

 "When I was little, I learned to read from a storybook about white explorers and black cannibals in Africa," she says. "I grew up being scared of where I came from."

 That worried her foster parents, Bosaho says. She credits them with teaching her the values of equality and justice. She became a hospital nurse and volunteered with disadvantaged populations of Roma and other minorities in the rough north barrios of Alicante, on Spain's coast.

 Then, two years ago, when Spain's new left-wing political party, Podemos, began searching for diverse, accomplished people willing to go into politics, Bosaho signed up.

 In elections Dec. 20, she won a seat in Spain's parliament — the first person of color, male or female, to do so in modern Spanish history. Bosaho promises to represent the interests of ethnic and racial minorities in Spain.

 She is still coming to terms with her newfound fame.

 "I feel humbled and proud, and hope I can empower minorities," she says. "There are lots of people who don't understand that I'm Spanish. They see that I'm black — and think those two things can't go together."

 But the Spanish population is changing. More than 10 percent are legal immigrants who've become Spanish citizens — though most are white, from Latin America or Eastern Europe.

 Europe

 Anti-Establishment MPs Shake Up Spain's New Parliament

 Code Switch

 Spain Fines Team Of Racist, Banana-Throwing Fan, But Is It Enough?

 Spain received a wave of Latino immigrants in the 1990s, during its economic boom years, when there were ample jobs in construction and home health care. Spanish law allows citizens of most former Spanish colonies, many of which are in Latin America, to obtain Spanish passports within just two years.

 Some of those Latinos returned to their countries of origin after Spain's economy began faltering in 2008. Spanish unemployment remains stuck above 20 percent, and many immigrants worry they are over-represented in the jobless ranks while under-represented in politics.

 At a recent community gathering in Valencia, on Spain's Mediterranean coast, immigrants from several Latin American countries packed into a local Podemos office to meet Bosaho, their new MP.

 "I'm so proud to see a woman — an African woman, no less — representing us in parliament," says Patricia Villalba, an unemployed 58-year-old originally from Ecuador. "Immigrants should be more visible in Spanish society."

 Arab and African migrants and refugees typically want to go to more prosperous northern Europe, and while Spain has agreed to accept more than 17,000 refugees under European Union quota plans, just a small fraction of those have arrived from landing zones in Greece and Italy. Madrid's city hall is nevertheless draped in a "Refugees Welcome" banner.

 Unlike in other parts of Europe, there is no major far-right, anti-immigrant political movement here, though racism exists. In 2014, a banana was hurled at a Brazilian soccer player in Spain's Villareal stadium, and spectators taunted a Spanish team's Senegalese player by making monkey noises.

 Bosaho's own party, Podemos, is criticized for promising dignity to unemployed protesters in the street but not yet backing that up with policy. Bosaho has yet to author any legislation. But she's changing perceptions about those who do.

 The stereotype of a Spanish politician "is always a man — the typical white man," says Aitana Christensen Ribera, an 18-year-old high school student who met Bosaho when the lawmaker visited her high school. "And now you have her! That's the new politics."

 During a question-and-answer session at the high school, another student, Rahma Mohamed, an immigrant from Western Sahara, takes the microphone and asks her MP a personal question.

 "People in Spain see me differently," she says. "And I worry they value me differently. How can I convince people I'm Spanish, just like them?"

 Bosaho thanks the student for her question. She thinks for a moment before breaking out into a smile.

 "You and I — we're exactly the same," Bosaho tells the girl. "We're minorities, we're paying our taxes and we have voices. I think I can help."

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Rita Bosaho, shown here in January, is the first black member elected to Spain's parliament. Born in Equatorial Guinea and raised in a foster family in Spain, she trained as a nurse before entering politics two years ago.
 
 
 Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
 
 
  hide caption 
 
   toggle caption 
  
 
 
 Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Rita Bosaho, shown here in January, is the first black member elected to Spain's parliament. Born in Equatorial Guinea and raised in a foster family in Spain, she trained as a nurse before entering politics two years ago.
 
 
 Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
 
 
  
 
 As hundreds of thousands of Arab and African migrants arrive in Europe, Spanish lawmakers meet to discuss the continent's crisis — and all eyes are on one woman. She's the only national politician whose skin is the same color as many of the African migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Spain. But she made a different journey from Africa. "I was born in Equatorial Guinea when it was a Spanish colony," explains Rita Bosaho, Spain's first black member of parliament. "My parents died when I was very young, and I came to live with a foster family in Spain." Bosaho's foster dad was in the military, so they moved around, living in several Spanish cities. She was the only black child in a white foster family — and in all of her schools, until university. Compared with the rest of Europe, Spain is relatively homogenous. It's traditionally sent emigrants abroad, rather than receiving them — especially in the 1970s, when Bosaho was growing up. She's 50 now. "When I was little, I learned to read from a storybook about white explorers and black cannibals in Africa," she says. "I grew up being scared of where I came from." 
 That worried her foster parents, Bosaho says. She credits them with teaching her the values of equality and justice. She became a hospital nurse and volunteered with disadvantaged populations of Roma and other minorities in the rough north barrios of Alicante, on Spain's coast. Then, two years ago, when Spain's new left-wing political party, Podemos, began searching for diverse, accomplished people willing to go into politics, Bosaho signed up. In elections Dec. 20, she won a seat in Spain's parliament — the first person of color, male or female, to do so in modern Spanish history. Bosaho promises to represent the interests of ethnic and racial minorities in Spain. She is still coming to terms with her newfound fame. "I feel humbled and proud, and hope I can empower minorities," she says. "There are lots of people who don't understand that I'm Spanish. They see that I'm black — and think those two things can't go together." But the Spanish population is changing. More than 10 percent are legal immigrants who've become Spanish citizens — though most are white, from Latin America or Eastern Europe. 
 
 
 
 Spain received a wave of Latino immigrants in the 1990s, during its economic boom years, when there were ample jobs in construction and home health care. Spanish law allows citizens of most former Spanish colonies, many of which are in Latin America, to obtain Spanish passports within just two years. Some of those Latinos returned to their countries of origin after Spain's economy began faltering in 2008. Spanish unemployment remains stuck above 20 percent, and many immigrants worry they are over-represented in the jobless ranks while under-represented in politics. 
 At a recent community gathering in Valencia, on Spain's Mediterranean coast, immigrants from several Latin American countries packed into a local Podemos office to meet Bosaho, their new MP. "I'm so proud to see a woman — an African woman, no less — representing us in parliament," says Patricia Villalba, an unemployed 58-year-old originally from Ecuador. "Immigrants should be more visible in Spanish society." Arab and African migrants and refugees typically want to go to more prosperous northern Europe, and while Spain has agreed to accept more than 17,000 refugees under European Union quota plans, just a small fraction of those have arrived from landing zones in Greece and Italy. Madrid's city hall is nevertheless draped in a "Refugees Welcome" banner. Unlike in other parts of Europe, there is no major far-right, anti-immigrant political movement here, though racism exists. In 2014, a banana was hurled at a Brazilian soccer player in Spain's Villareal stadium, and spectators taunted a Spanish team's Senegalese player by making monkey noises. Bosaho's own party, Podemos, is criticized for promising dignity to unemployed protesters in the street but not yet backing that up with policy. Bosaho has yet to author any legislation. But she's changing perceptions about those who do. The stereotype of a Spanish politician "is always a man — the typical white man," says Aitana Christensen Ribera, an 18-year-old high school student who met Bosaho when the lawmaker visited her high school. "And now you have her! That's the new politics." During a question-and-answer session at the high school, another student, Rahma Mohamed, an immigrant from Western Sahara, takes the microphone and asks her MP a personal question. "People in Spain see me differently," she says. "And I worry they value me differently. How can I convince people I'm Spanish, just like them?" Bosaho thanks the student for her question. She thinks for a moment before breaking out into a smile. 
 "You and I — we're exactly the same," Bosaho tells the girl. "We're minorities, we're paying our taxes and we have voices. I think I can help."
Spain's First Black Member Of Parliament And The 'New Politics'
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/03/04/469049902/spains-first-black-member-of-parliament-and-the-new-politics
https://www.cnn.com/2016/04/11/politics/joseph-dunford-joint-chiefs-chairman-politics/index.html
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to troops: Stay out of politics | CNN Politics
2016-04-11
Barbara Starr
<div><section> <article>
 <section>
 <main>
 <div>
 
 
 </div>
 <div>
 <div>
 <h3>Story highlights</h3>
 <div>
 <p>General Joseph Dunford is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff </p>
 <p>Dunford is expected to issue a note to all military forces as soon as this week telling them to stay out of politics</p>
 </div>
</div>
 <p><cite>
 
 CNN
  — 
 </cite>
</p>
 <p>
 Growing concern that top U.S. military leaders are increasingly being asked to comment on proposals by presidential candidates has led the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draft a letter to all troops with one message: Stay out of politics. 
 </p>
 <p>
 Gen. Joseph Dunford is expected to issue a note to all military forces as soon as this week. 
 </p>
 <p>
 Dunford will “remind the troops of the need to remain apolitical in order to sustain Americans’ trust and confidence in them,” said the chairman’s spokesman, Capt. Gregory Hicks. 
 </p>
 <p>
 The U.S. military has a longstanding tradition of remaining out of politics so that commanders are free to give any president their best military advice without it being seen as part of a political agenda.
 </p>
 <p>
 Hicks noted that the issue often comes up during the presidential campaign season. Troops are reminded not to appear in uniform at political events, for example.
 </p>
 <p>
 But this year, the issue has grown more public – and Dunford’s letter is aimed at senior commanders as well as the troops – because of the national security debate on the campaign trail. 
 </p>
 <p>
 Some of the candidates’ ideas, such as Donald Trump’s statements about <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/07/politics/donald-trump-tapper-waterboarding-new-hampshire/">waterboarding terrorists</a> and Sen. Ted Cruz’s proposals for <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/02/politics/sean-macfarland-isis-carpet-bombing-cruz-trump/">“carpet bombing” ISIS, </a>have sparked intense debate and led to top generals receiving questions on the policies when they appear at news conferences and testify on Capitol Hill.
 </p>
 <p>
 Dunford “sees a trend line, he wants to address it,” Hicks said. “Our ethos of an apolitical nature is the foundation of the trust the civilian leadership has in the unfettered and unfiltered advice and counsel of the military.”
 </p>
 <p>
 Dunford was recently asked if NATO was obsolete, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/04/politics/obama-nato-jens-stoltenberg-trump/">a position advocated by Trump</a>. Other generals have been asked about carpetbombing and waterboarding.
 </p>
 <p>
 In some recent instances, top generals have answered questions by the media apparently unaware they were based on statements from candidates. 
 </p>
 <p>
 The Pentagon, like the Intelligence community, is now in the early stages of planning for a presidential transition.
 </p>
 <p>
 A small number of defense officials have been assigned to begin assessing what must be done to prepare for a transition, including what types of briefing materials and intelligence information will be needed. 
 </p>
 <p>
 The military and Intelligence community will begin to brief both the Republican and Democratic nominees after the political conventions. But fully detailed briefings with the highest level of classified information will not happen until after Election Day.
 </p>
 <p>
 Dunford, as well as several other top military leaders, will still be in their jobs when the new president takes office in January 2017, so the chairman thinks it’s imperative that the individual not see any political leanings among those military officials, defense officials said in explaining Dunford’s concerns.
 </p>
 </div>
 </main>
 </section>
</article>
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 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to troops: Stay out of politics

 By Barbara Starr , CNN Pentagon Correspondent
 Published 10:52 AM EDT, Mon April 11, 2016
 Link Copied!
 US Marine General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr. speaks during a hearing of the Senate Armed Service Committee on Capitol Hill November 15, 2012 in Washington, DC.
 BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

 Story highlights

 General Joseph Dunford is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

 Dunford is expected to issue a note to all military forces as soon as this week telling them to stay out of politics

 CNN —

 Growing concern that top U.S. military leaders are increasingly being asked to comment on proposals by presidential candidates has led the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draft a letter to all troops with one message: Stay out of politics.

 Gen. Joseph Dunford is expected to issue a note to all military forces as soon as this week.

 Dunford will “remind the troops of the need to remain apolitical in order to sustain Americans’ trust and confidence in them,” said the chairman’s spokesman, Capt. Gregory Hicks.

 The U.S. military has a longstanding tradition of remaining out of politics so that commanders are free to give any president their best military advice without it being seen as part of a political agenda.

 Hicks noted that the issue often comes up during the presidential campaign season. Troops are reminded not to appear in uniform at political events, for example.

 But this year, the issue has grown more public – and Dunford’s letter is aimed at senior commanders as well as the troops – because of the national security debate on the campaign trail.

 Some of the candidates’ ideas, such as Donald Trump’s statements about waterboarding terrorists and Sen. Ted Cruz’s proposals for “carpet bombing” ISIS, have sparked intense debate and led to top generals receiving questions on the policies when they appear at news conferences and testify on Capitol Hill.

 Dunford “sees a trend line, he wants to address it,” Hicks said. “Our ethos of an apolitical nature is the foundation of the trust the civilian leadership has in the unfettered and unfiltered advice and counsel of the military.”

 Dunford was recently asked if NATO was obsolete, a position advocated by Trump. Other generals have been asked about carpetbombing and waterboarding.

 In some recent instances, top generals have answered questions by the media apparently unaware they were based on statements from candidates.

 The Pentagon, like the Intelligence community, is now in the early stages of planning for a presidential transition.

 A small number of defense officials have been assigned to begin assessing what must be done to prepare for a transition, including what types of briefing materials and intelligence information will be needed.

 The military and Intelligence community will begin to brief both the Republican and Democratic nominees after the political conventions. But fully detailed briefings with the highest level of classified information will not happen until after Election Day.

 Dunford, as well as several other top military leaders, will still be in their jobs when the new president takes office in January 2017, so the chairman thinks it’s imperative that the individual not see any political leanings among those military officials, defense officials said in explaining Dunford’s concerns.

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 CNN Sans ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network.

Story highlights
 
 General Joseph Dunford is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 
 Dunford is expected to issue a note to all military forces as soon as this week telling them to stay out of politics
 
  
 
 CNN
  — 
 
 
 Growing concern that top U.S. military leaders are increasingly being asked to comment on proposals by presidential candidates has led the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to draft a letter to all troops with one message: Stay out of politics. 
 
 
 Gen. Joseph Dunford is expected to issue a note to all military forces as soon as this week. 
 
 
 Dunford will “remind the troops of the need to remain apolitical in order to sustain Americans’ trust and confidence in them,” said the chairman’s spokesman, Capt. Gregory Hicks. 
 
 
 The U.S. military has a longstanding tradition of remaining out of politics so that commanders are free to give any president their best military advice without it being seen as part of a political agenda.
 
 
 Hicks noted that the issue often comes up during the presidential campaign season. Troops are reminded not to appear in uniform at political events, for example.
 
 
 But this year, the issue has grown more public – and Dunford’s letter is aimed at senior commanders as well as the troops – because of the national security debate on the campaign trail. 
 
 
 Some of the candidates’ ideas, such as Donald Trump’s statements about waterboarding terrorists and Sen. Ted Cruz’s proposals for “carpet bombing” ISIS, have sparked intense debate and led to top generals receiving questions on the policies when they appear at news conferences and testify on Capitol Hill.
 
 
 Dunford “sees a trend line, he wants to address it,” Hicks said. “Our ethos of an apolitical nature is the foundation of the trust the civilian leadership has in the unfettered and unfiltered advice and counsel of the military.”
 
 
 Dunford was recently asked if NATO was obsolete, a position advocated by Trump. Other generals have been asked about carpetbombing and waterboarding.
 
 
 In some recent instances, top generals have answered questions by the media apparently unaware they were based on statements from candidates. 
 
 
 The Pentagon, like the Intelligence community, is now in the early stages of planning for a presidential transition.
 
 
 A small number of defense officials have been assigned to begin assessing what must be done to prepare for a transition, including what types of briefing materials and intelligence information will be needed. 
 
 
 The military and Intelligence community will begin to brief both the Republican and Democratic nominees after the political conventions. But fully detailed briefings with the highest level of classified information will not happen until after Election Day.
 
 
 Dunford, as well as several other top military leaders, will still be in their jobs when the new president takes office in January 2017, so the chairman thinks it’s imperative that the individual not see any political leanings among those military officials, defense officials said in explaining Dunford’s concerns.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to troops: Stay out of politics | CNN Politics
https://www.cnn.com/2016/04/11/politics/joseph-dunford-joint-chiefs-chairman-politics/index.html
https://www.vox.com/2016/12/13/13936226/samantha-bee-identity-politics-democrats
Samantha Bee: "identity politics is the dismissive term for what we used to call ‘civil rights’"
2016-12-13
Caroline Framke
<div><div>
 <p>The phrase “identity politics” has <a href="http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/12/2/13718770/identity-politics">been thrown around</a> so haphazardly in the wake of the election that it’s lost more of its meaning with every casually derisive mention. As Democrats grapple with what they can do to gain traction after Donald Trump’s victory, arguments have raged on over whether highlighting “identity politics” — now largely understood to mean any issues specific to women, minorities, and LGBTQ people — cost Democrats the election.</p>
<p>Samantha Bee, for one, thinks <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/23/13685988/democrats-identity-politics">that’s basically bullshit</a>.</p>
<p>“Identity politics is the dismissive term for what we used to call ‘civil rights’ and ‘equality,’” Bee said on her December 12 show. Also, she made sure to add, white and male <em>is</em> an identity, as is being Christian — the two fronts Steve Doocy’s Fox News roundtable and other like-minded media outlets feel are most under attack.</p>
<p>Basically, as <a href="http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/23/13685988/democrats-identity-politics">Vox’s Matt Yglesias put it</a>: “There is no other way to do politics than to do identity politics.”</p>
<p>What’s more, Bee said, standing up for civil rights can, and did, win Democrats elections. “You know what happens when Democrats stand up for transgender rights? They <em>win</em>,” she said, pointing to North Carolina’s gubernatorial race, which was recently called for Democrat Roy Cooper over Republican incumbent Pat McCrory, a staunch supporter of <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/2/23/11100552/charlotte-north-carolina-lgbtq-pat-mccrory">the state’s discriminatory anti-LGBTQ laws</a>.</p>
<p>Bee did acknowledge that Hillary Clinton’s messaging on jobs, while far more present than most coverage gave her credit for, could’ve used some work beyond “trumped-up trickle-down economics.” But the real shame, she insisted, would be losing the people who did vote for Democrats over those who might someday.</p>
<p>“If your panic over a loss makes you abandon both your principles and the people who actually vote for you,” Bee pleaded to Democrats, “you’ll be in the wilderness for a decade — or until Trump’s Cabinet sells the wilderness to oil companies, so really, like a month.”</p>
<p>Full Frontal with Samantha Bee <em>airs Monday nights at 10:30 pm on TBS.</em></p>
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 Samantha Bee: “identity politics is the dismissive term for what we used to call ‘civil rights’”

 The Full Frontal host wants to dismiss the theory that so-called “identity politics” cost Democrats the election.

 By Caroline Framke @carolineframke Dec 13, 2016, 11:15am EST

 Share this story

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 The phrase “identity politics” has been thrown around so haphazardly in the wake of the election that it’s lost more of its meaning with every casually derisive mention. As Democrats grapple with what they can do to gain traction after Donald Trump’s victory, arguments have raged on over whether highlighting “identity politics” — now largely understood to mean any issues specific to women, minorities, and LGBTQ people — cost Democrats the election.

 Samantha Bee, for one, thinks that’s basically bullshit.

 “Identity politics is the dismissive term for what we used to call ‘civil rights’ and ‘equality,’” Bee said on her December 12 show. Also, she made sure to add, white and male is an identity, as is being Christian — the two fronts Steve Doocy’s Fox News roundtable and other like-minded media outlets feel are most under attack.

 Basically, as Vox’s Matt Yglesias put it: “There is no other way to do politics than to do identity politics.”

 What’s more, Bee said, standing up for civil rights can, and did, win Democrats elections. “You know what happens when Democrats stand up for transgender rights? They win,” she said, pointing to North Carolina’s gubernatorial race, which was recently called for Democrat Roy Cooper over Republican incumbent Pat McCrory, a staunch supporter of the state’s discriminatory anti-LGBTQ laws.

 Bee did acknowledge that Hillary Clinton’s messaging on jobs, while far more present than most coverage gave her credit for, could’ve used some work beyond “trumped-up trickle-down economics.” But the real shame, she insisted, would be losing the people who did vote for Democrats over those who might someday.

 “If your panic over a loss makes you abandon both your principles and the people who actually vote for you,” Bee pleaded to Democrats, “you’ll be in the wilderness for a decade — or until Trump’s Cabinet sells the wilderness to oil companies, so really, like a month.”

 Full Frontal with Samantha Bee airs Monday nights at 10:30 pm on TBS.

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The phrase “identity politics” has been thrown around so haphazardly in the wake of the election that it’s lost more of its meaning with every casually derisive mention. As Democrats grapple with what they can do to gain traction after Donald Trump’s victory, arguments have raged on over whether highlighting “identity politics” — now largely understood to mean any issues specific to women, minorities, and LGBTQ people — cost Democrats the election.
Samantha Bee, for one, thinks that’s basically bullshit.
“Identity politics is the dismissive term for what we used to call ‘civil rights’ and ‘equality,’” Bee said on her December 12 show. Also, she made sure to add, white and male is an identity, as is being Christian — the two fronts Steve Doocy’s Fox News roundtable and other like-minded media outlets feel are most under attack.
Basically, as Vox’s Matt Yglesias put it: “There is no other way to do politics than to do identity politics.”
What’s more, Bee said, standing up for civil rights can, and did, win Democrats elections. “You know what happens when Democrats stand up for transgender rights? They win,” she said, pointing to North Carolina’s gubernatorial race, which was recently called for Democrat Roy Cooper over Republican incumbent Pat McCrory, a staunch supporter of the state’s discriminatory anti-LGBTQ laws.
Bee did acknowledge that Hillary Clinton’s messaging on jobs, while far more present than most coverage gave her credit for, could’ve used some work beyond “trumped-up trickle-down economics.” But the real shame, she insisted, would be losing the people who did vote for Democrats over those who might someday.
“If your panic over a loss makes you abandon both your principles and the people who actually vote for you,” Bee pleaded to Democrats, “you’ll be in the wilderness for a decade — or until Trump’s Cabinet sells the wilderness to oil companies, so really, like a month.”
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee airs Monday nights at 10:30 pm on TBS. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 $95/year
 
 
 
 
 
 
 $120/year
 
 
 
 
 
 
 $250/year
 
 
 
 
 
 Other
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Yes, I'll give $120/year
 
 
 
 Yes, I'll give $120/year
 
 
 
 
 We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and
 
 
 Google Pay. You can also contribute via
Samantha Bee: "identity politics is the dismissive term for what we used to call ‘civil rights’"
https://www.vox.com/2016/12/13/13936226/samantha-bee-identity-politics-democrats
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/29/487821128/the-economy-and-politics-of-1968-now-playing-in-reruns
The Economy And Politics Of 1968: Now Playing In Reruns
2016-07-29
Marilyn Geewax
<div><div>
 <div>
 <div>
 
 
 
 
 
 
</div>
<div>
 <div>
 <p>
 Demonstrators in Philadelphia during this week's Democratic convention echo another presidential election year, 1968.
 <b>
 
 John Minchillo/AP
 
 </b>
 <b><b>hide caption</b></b>
 </p>
 <p><b><b>toggle caption</b></b>
 </p></div>
 <p>
 
 John Minchillo/AP
 
 
</p></div>
<div>
 
 
 
 
 
 </div>
<div>
 <p>Demonstrators in Philadelphia during this week's Democratic convention echo another presidential election year, 1968.</p>
 <p>
 
 John Minchillo/AP
 
 
 </p></div>
 </div>
 <p>In so many ways, 1968 was a great year for middle-class Americans' wallets — and terrible for politics.</p> <p>On the one hand, gasoline was cheap and unemployment was low. Real estate values were rising, helping average homeowners build wealth. Good times!</p> <p>Still, many people were not feeling good — at all. In 1968, the tumultuous presidential-election year brought strident clashes at political events, third-party disruptions, calls for "law and order," racial discord and worries about foreign enemies.</p> <p>Sound familiar?</p> <p>In terms of both the economy and politics, we seem to have a summer rerun playing out. Here are some of the parallels on the economic front:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Gas prices</strong>. Baby boomers remember the late 1960s as the good old days for driving because gas cost <a href="https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/showtext.cfm?t=ptb0524">34 cents a gallon</a>. Now we're enjoying even better bargains. AAA says the average gallon costs <a href="http://gasprices.aaa.com/">less than $2.14</a>. Adjusted for inflation, that's 31 cents in 1968 terms.</li> <li><strong>Job creation</strong>. In June 1968, U.S. employers created 251,000 jobs. In June 2016 (the most recent data available), they created <a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf">287,000 jobs</a>. In both years, unemployment rates were low by historic standards — at 3.7 percent in July 1968 and 4.9 percent now.</li> <li><strong>Home prices.</strong> In 1968, the <a href="https://www.census.gov/const/uspriceann.pdf">median home price</a> rose 9 percent from the previous year. In 2016, a <a href="http://us.spindices.com/indices/real-estate/sp-corelogic-case-shiller-20-city-composite-home-price-nsa-index">national index</a> of home prices is up 5 percent from last year, although many cities (such as Portland, Seattle, Denver and Dallas) are up 9 percent or more.</li> </ul> 
 <p>Of course, not everything is the same. These are two big differences:</p> <ul> <li><strong></strong><strong>Paychecks.</strong> In 1968, household incomes were up <a href="https://www2.census.gov/prod2/popscan/p60-065.pdf">about 8 percent</a> from 1967. This year, hourly earnings are up <a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf">2.6 percent</a> from last year. And the 1968 minimum wage was $1.60, or $11 in today's dollars. But the current minimum is just $7.25. Many states have pushed <a href="https://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/america.htm">minimums higher</a>, but none is up to $11 (exception: the District of Columbia at $11.50).</li> <li><strong>Consumers' comfort.</strong> Today's consumers are having a much better year than their 1968 counterparts. That's because inflation is up <a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm">only 1 percent</a> from last year, and interest rates remain at historic lows. For example, 30-year fixed mortgage rates are hovering around 3.5 percent. In 1968, inflation was <a href="https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/68/12/Inflation_Dec1968.pdf">running at about 4 percent</a> and mortgages were at <a href="http://www.forecast-chart.com/rate-mortgage-30.html">7.5 percent</a>.</li> </ul> <p>There's another difference: On Friday, the Commerce Department said gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced in this country. rose at a seasonally adjusted <a href="http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrelease.htm">annual rate of 1.2 percent</a> in the second quarter. In 1968, GDP growth was running at 4.9 percent.</p> <p>So on the surface, growth appears far less robust than in the late 1960s. But the current sluggishness is related to weak business investment. On the consumer side, personal consumption expanded at a 4.2 percent rate, much more in line with 1968.</p> <p>And there's plenty of evidence of that at retail outlets. The National Retail Federation predicts back-to-school spending will hit $75.8 billion — up more than 11 percent from last year's $68 billion. "We are optimistic that overall economic growth and consumer spending will continue to improve," NRF President Matthew Shay said <a href="https://nrf.com/media/press-releases/back-school-and-college-spending-reach-758-billion">in a statement</a>.</p> 
 <p>So when you examine data over many decades, both 1968 and 2016 look like good years for average Americans. They sure beat the Depression of the 1930s, or the inflation nightmare of the 1970s or the frightful foreclosure years of the Great Recession. No year is perfect, but there's no doubt you'd be happier working in the summer of 1968 or 2016, compared with 1974 or 2009.</p> <p>So why such intense political discord, both then and now? These parallels may offer clues:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Voter dissatisfaction</strong>. Many young Democrats were furious about the 1968 presidential nomination of Vice President Hubert Humphrey. They wanted the anti-establishment, anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy, just as many of today's young Democrats wanted Bernie Sanders. Richard Nixon won the GOP nomination with his calls for "law and order." But many voters were so dissatisfied with the two nominees that they supported third-party candidate George Wallace.</li> <li><strong>Racial discord</strong>. In 1968, race relations were severely strained by the April assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and subsequent riots. In 2016, race relations have been roiled by charges of police brutality, as well as deadly attacks on police officers.</li> <li><strong>Foreign threats</strong>. The war in Vietnam was escalating in 1968 amid fears about communism spreading around the world. This year, many voters are worried about the spread of terrorism inspired by ISIS.</li> </ul> <p>Maybe this year's political discontent can best be explained by a theory known as the "revolution of rising expectations." The phrase was popularized in the 1950s to describe global upheavals in the wake of postwar decolonization. The idea was that rising economic expectations can made people restless and more open to insurgencies and revolution than during tough times when people are just trying to survive.</p> <p>In other words, just as the summer of 1968's political tumult came in the midst of good economic times, this year's intense political debates are playing out in an economic environment that's better for average families than at any time in many years.</p>
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 The Economy And Politics Of 1968: Now Playing In Reruns : The Two-Way Both 1968 and 2016 can be seen as good years for the economy. And yet both may be remembered for their extreme political discontent. Shouldn't good economic times make us less cranky? Apparently, not.

 The Two-Way

 Fact Check

 The Economy And Politics Of 1968: Now Playing In Reruns

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 July 29, 2016 10:33 AM ET

 Marilyn Geewax

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 Enlarge this image

 Demonstrators in Philadelphia during this week's Democratic convention echo another presidential election year, 1968. John Minchillo/AP hide caption

 toggle caption
 John Minchillo/AP

 Demonstrators in Philadelphia during this week's Democratic convention echo another presidential election year, 1968.

 John Minchillo/AP

 In so many ways, 1968 was a great year for middle-class Americans' wallets — and terrible for politics.

 On the one hand, gasoline was cheap and unemployment was low. Real estate values were rising, helping average homeowners build wealth. Good times!

 Still, many people were not feeling good — at all. In 1968, the tumultuous presidential-election year brought strident clashes at political events, third-party disruptions, calls for "law and order," racial discord and worries about foreign enemies.

 Sound familiar?

 In terms of both the economy and politics, we seem to have a summer rerun playing out. Here are some of the parallels on the economic front:

 * Gas prices. Baby boomers remember the late 1960s as the good old days for driving because gas cost 34 cents a gallon. Now we're enjoying even better bargains. AAA says the average gallon costs less than $2.14. Adjusted for inflation, that's 31 cents in 1968 terms.
 * Job creation. In June 1968, U.S. employers created 251,000 jobs. In June 2016 (the most recent data available), they created 287,000 jobs. In both years, unemployment rates were low by historic standards — at 3.7 percent in July 1968 and 4.9 percent now.
 * Home prices. In 1968, the median home price rose 9 percent from the previous year. In 2016, a national index of home prices is up 5 percent from last year, although many cities (such as Portland, Seattle, Denver and Dallas) are up 9 percent or more.

 Of course, not everything is the same. These are two big differences:

 * Paychecks. In 1968, household incomes were up about 8 percent from 1967. This year, hourly earnings are up 2.6 percent from last year. And the 1968 minimum wage was $1.60, or $11 in today's dollars. But the current minimum is just $7.25. Many states have pushed minimums higher, but none is up to $11 (exception: the District of Columbia at $11.50).
 * Consumers' comfort. Today's consumers are having a much better year than their 1968 counterparts. That's because inflation is up only 1 percent from last year, and interest rates remain at historic lows. For example, 30-year fixed mortgage rates are hovering around 3.5 percent. In 1968, inflation was running at about 4 percent and mortgages were at 7.5 percent.

 There's another difference: On Friday, the Commerce Department said gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced in this country. rose at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.2 percent in the second quarter. In 1968, GDP growth was running at 4.9 percent.

 So on the surface, growth appears far less robust than in the late 1960s. But the current sluggishness is related to weak business investment. On the consumer side, personal consumption expanded at a 4.2 percent rate, much more in line with 1968.

 And there's plenty of evidence of that at retail outlets. The National Retail Federation predicts back-to-school spending will hit $75.8 billion — up more than 11 percent from last year's $68 billion. "We are optimistic that overall economic growth and consumer spending will continue to improve," NRF President Matthew Shay said in a statement.

 So when you examine data over many decades, both 1968 and 2016 look like good years for average Americans. They sure beat the Depression of the 1930s, or the inflation nightmare of the 1970s or the frightful foreclosure years of the Great Recession. No year is perfect, but there's no doubt you'd be happier working in the summer of 1968 or 2016, compared with 1974 or 2009.

 So why such intense political discord, both then and now? These parallels may offer clues:

 * Voter dissatisfaction. Many young Democrats were furious about the 1968 presidential nomination of Vice President Hubert Humphrey. They wanted the anti-establishment, anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy, just as many of today's young Democrats wanted Bernie Sanders. Richard Nixon won the GOP nomination with his calls for "law and order." But many voters were so dissatisfied with the two nominees that they supported third-party candidate George Wallace.
 * Racial discord. In 1968, race relations were severely strained by the April assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and subsequent riots. In 2016, race relations have been roiled by charges of police brutality, as well as deadly attacks on police officers.
 * Foreign threats. The war in Vietnam was escalating in 1968 amid fears about communism spreading around the world. This year, many voters are worried about the spread of terrorism inspired by ISIS.

 Maybe this year's political discontent can best be explained by a theory known as the "revolution of rising expectations." The phrase was popularized in the 1950s to describe global upheavals in the wake of postwar decolonization. The idea was that rising economic expectations can made people restless and more open to insurgencies and revolution than during tough times when people are just trying to survive.

 In other words, just as the summer of 1968's political tumult came in the midst of good economic times, this year's intense political debates are playing out in an economic environment that's better for average families than at any time in many years.

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Demonstrators in Philadelphia during this week's Democratic convention echo another presidential election year, 1968.
 
 
 John Minchillo/AP
 
 
  hide caption 
 
   toggle caption 
  
 
 
 John Minchillo/AP
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Demonstrators in Philadelphia during this week's Democratic convention echo another presidential election year, 1968.
 
 
 John Minchillo/AP
 
 
  
 
 In so many ways, 1968 was a great year for middle-class Americans' wallets — and terrible for politics. On the one hand, gasoline was cheap and unemployment was low. Real estate values were rising, helping average homeowners build wealth. Good times! Still, many people were not feeling good — at all. In 1968, the tumultuous presidential-election year brought strident clashes at political events, third-party disruptions, calls for "law and order," racial discord and worries about foreign enemies. Sound familiar? In terms of both the economy and politics, we seem to have a summer rerun playing out. Here are some of the parallels on the economic front:   Gas prices. Baby boomers remember the late 1960s as the good old days for driving because gas cost 34 cents a gallon. Now we're enjoying even better bargains. AAA says the average gallon costs less than $2.14. Adjusted for inflation, that's 31 cents in 1968 terms.  Job creation. In June 1968, U.S. employers created 251,000 jobs. In June 2016 (the most recent data available), they created 287,000 jobs. In both years, unemployment rates were low by historic standards — at 3.7 percent in July 1968 and 4.9 percent now.  Home prices. In 1968, the median home price rose 9 percent from the previous year. In 2016, a national index of home prices is up 5 percent from last year, although many cities (such as Portland, Seattle, Denver and Dallas) are up 9 percent or more.  
 Of course, not everything is the same. These are two big differences:     Paychecks. In 1968, household incomes were up about 8 percent from 1967. This year, hourly earnings are up 2.6 percent from last year. And the 1968 minimum wage was $1.60, or $11 in today's dollars. But the current minimum is just $7.25. Many states have pushed minimums higher, but none is up to $11 (exception: the District of Columbia at $11.50).  Consumers' comfort. Today's consumers are having a much better year than their 1968 counterparts. That's because inflation is up only 1 percent from last year, and interest rates remain at historic lows. For example, 30-year fixed mortgage rates are hovering around 3.5 percent. In 1968, inflation was running at about 4 percent and mortgages were at 7.5 percent.  There's another difference: On Friday, the Commerce Department said gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced in this country. rose at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.2 percent in the second quarter. In 1968, GDP growth was running at 4.9 percent. So on the surface, growth appears far less robust than in the late 1960s. But the current sluggishness is related to weak business investment. On the consumer side, personal consumption expanded at a 4.2 percent rate, much more in line with 1968. And there's plenty of evidence of that at retail outlets. The National Retail Federation predicts back-to-school spending will hit $75.8 billion — up more than 11 percent from last year's $68 billion. "We are optimistic that overall economic growth and consumer spending will continue to improve," NRF President Matthew Shay said in a statement. 
 So when you examine data over many decades, both 1968 and 2016 look like good years for average Americans. They sure beat the Depression of the 1930s, or the inflation nightmare of the 1970s or the frightful foreclosure years of the Great Recession. No year is perfect, but there's no doubt you'd be happier working in the summer of 1968 or 2016, compared with 1974 or 2009. So why such intense political discord, both then and now? These parallels may offer clues:   Voter dissatisfaction. Many young Democrats were furious about the 1968 presidential nomination of Vice President Hubert Humphrey. They wanted the anti-establishment, anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy, just as many of today's young Democrats wanted Bernie Sanders. Richard Nixon won the GOP nomination with his calls for "law and order." But many voters were so dissatisfied with the two nominees that they supported third-party candidate George Wallace.  Racial discord. In 1968, race relations were severely strained by the April assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and subsequent riots. In 2016, race relations have been roiled by charges of police brutality, as well as deadly attacks on police officers.  Foreign threats. The war in Vietnam was escalating in 1968 amid fears about communism spreading around the world. This year, many voters are worried about the spread of terrorism inspired by ISIS.  Maybe this year's political discontent can best be explained by a theory known as the "revolution of rising expectations." The phrase was popularized in the 1950s to describe global upheavals in the wake of postwar decolonization. The idea was that rising economic expectations can made people restless and more open to insurgencies and revolution than during tough times when people are just trying to survive. In other words, just as the summer of 1968's political tumult came in the midst of good economic times, this year's intense political debates are playing out in an economic environment that's better for average families than at any time in many years.
The Economy And Politics Of 1968: Now Playing In Reruns
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/29/487821128/the-economy-and-politics-of-1968-now-playing-in-reruns