Customer Reviews

The Politician

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book was considered one of the most controversial
non-religious manuscripts of its day. The author felt it
was too "hot" for publication in 1956, when Eisenhower was
a very popular president. A few copies circulated among
some of Robert Welch's friends, and some updates were made
in the next few years. The national press "uncovered" a
copy after Welch's new organization, The John Birch Society,
proved to be a growing threat to the status quo. Hostile
reviews began appearing across the country of an unpublished
manuscript!
People began asking for the book.

Mr. Welch decided in 1963 to publish The Politician in self
defense. Once the book was printed, demand by bookstores
suddenly dried up, and reviewers quit mentioning it.
Hundreds of thousands of copies were eventually sold, but
that is another story...

The chapter on Operation Keelhaul is worth the price of the
book. Eisenhower's role in the forced repatriation of
refugees and anti-communists to the Soviet Union at the end
of WWII is well documented. It is a nauseating account of
treachery and politics in the twentieth century.

The maneuverings leading up to the 1952 GOP presidential
nomination are also revealed in the book, along with many
other historical details of the Eisenhower years not
commonly known. Hundreds of footnotes list primary sources,
mostly major newspaper stories, to verify the narrative.

The value of the book is not limited to students of the
1950's. Great insight into present day U.S. foreign policy
is hidden within the story of Ike. The uncanny similarity
of Clinton's globalism to Bush's "New World Order" makes
more sense after reading this groundbreaking book.

In the years before the American Right ceased to function as a true counter establishment force the John Birch Society sent shivers down the spine of left wing politicians and their pawns. Our author Robert Welch, the Society's founder and leader, was not shy in pointing out the role played by Establishment types, Republicans as well as Democrats, in America's decline. This book centers on the Eisenhower Administration and the advance of Communism and leftism that it collaborated with. It is not for the feint of heart but when one surveys the wreckage which Ike left behind (all herein documented) anti-Communist Russians, German prisoners of war, the political destruction of McCarthey, Taft and the South it seems in retrospect that the old Belmont candy manufacturer might have been on to something. This is an important political document of the Amrican Right (old school) and deserves a reading or a re-reading today.

Robert Welch published this book in 1963. Now, almost 50 years later, Welch was "dead on" in his predictions for the U.S. if we continued the policy of appeasement with the Communists. And for those who think Reagan defeated the Communists, think again. Something much worse is coming...and it's called the New World Order.
In this book the author explains in great detail why he believes Pres. Eisenhower was a pro-communist or at minimum a communist dupe. There is no denying the evidence the author lays out, but it is still hard for me to see IKE that way. Maybe my heart doesn't want to believe it. As of this moment my belief is Pres. Eisenhower felt we had to find some common ground with the Soviet Union, and find a way to live in peace in this nuclear age. Nevertheless it's hard to dispute the author's thesis.
The book unfortunately is not an interesting read. It is a continual diatribe against IKE. After the first 50 pages it starts to get real old. This would have been a great book if the author's thesis was denouncing communism and not just Eisenhower alone. Robert Welch's insight into Communism and his predictions for the future of the U.S. was absolutely correct. He predicted the huge trade imbalance, and foreign nations dumping dollars for gold which as we all know forced Nixon to close the gold window. Also, the cheap goods that we receive in exchange for dollars, those dollars are then used by Communist nations to buy American companies and also buy influence in our foreign policy. We were sold out by our own politicians.
This book is a must read to understand the past and where we are headed!

As one previous reviewer stated, this work is very much a 'gem'.

The view given to us, the people, of Dwight David Eisenhower, both as Supreme Allied Commander and ultimately as President of the United States, is so far from the truth as to astound the reader.

A champion of freedom he was not, a staunch anti-communist, even less so. What the History Channel, our faux conservative friends and sadly, most veterans of the WWII era would have us believe of this man is the stuff of fantasy. In plain english Mr. Welch lays out Ike's adult life in service to the international bankers and collectivists from his faithful meeting with the daughter of fellow-traveler FDR to his numerous attempts to transfer our national sovereignty into the clutches of international bodies while he himself occupied the Oval Office.

His conduct regarding Operation Keelhaul, the Austrian Peace Treaty, Radio Free Europe ("Free" being in the Orwellian sense of the word) , etc., etc., betrays his having a conscience. He filled the halls of government with known communists and acted accordingly to protect them and by force of law blocked those who had the nerve to ask questions. The evidence is overwhelming; no man worked less stop deliverance of Free Europe in to the hands of the Soviets, nor worked harder to stymie revolutions led by those brave souls who wished to be free of their condition. Ike was a Socialist in the elistist fashion, knowing it to be a system corporate management and control, not the Starbucks hippie liberal apathetical or lower/welfare class "Obama is going to pay my bills!" complete misunderstanding of the system.

Exempli Gratia:

Aired at 12:15 PM on May 3, 1953 in the "Sunday Comments of Ferdinand Peroutka" on the Czechoslovak station of RFE, were these words:

"Eisenhower's Program, on the other hand , even though America's factories have not been nationalized, stands for the concept of world socialism. There is no better way to describe it. This is socialism...The aim of the program outlined by the President of the United States is to socialize life."

To my mind Ike was the progenitor of the 'controlled-right', being as it was a construct for and by the left, manned by faux conservatives. Even when they 'win' it is loss for their constituents in some fashion if one looks closely. The false right gives concession after concession to the leftists in action while pretending to shout them down using carefully crafted rhetoric with design to portray conservatives and their arguments as "racist", "parochial", "worn-out", or "fascist", duly disarming the constituent's ability to confront the leftist with the proper argument but instead with the compromised one cooked up in some Establishment think tank.

Read the book, it will change your mind. Unless, of course, you fancy yourself a Republican schooled in the art of genuflecting before men in uniform, for whom nothing can be done.

Controversial anti-Eisenhower biography dared attack Allen Dulles and the Central Intelligence Agency -- prompting CIA "Conservatives" William F. Buckley and James Burnham to viciously declare Robert Welch and his Old Right John Birch Society anathema.

WFB is dead.

The JBS celebrates its 50th Anniversary this October.

The original version of "The Politician", completed in December 1954, was a "private letter" by Robert Welch consisting of a few thousand words. By 1958, it ballooned to 80,000 words (287 pages). Ultimately, this version was "loaned" to "hundreds" of people before the published edition came out in 1963 with major editing.

Army Intelligence in New York acquired a copy of the "private letter" in January 1959 and described it as favoring "only those elements of society who oppose the democratic processes by which we elect Presidents, and as such, aids the cause of international Communism..."

The FBI's Boston Field Office obtained a copy and forwarded it to FBI HQ. The Bureau described Welch's book as "a vicious attack" upon President Eisenhower and his Administration.

J. Edgar Hoover and top officials of the FBI subsequently concluded that the John Birch Society (founded and headed by Robert Welch) was "irrational", "extremist", "irresponsible" and part of the "lunatic fringe" in our country due to material that the JBS disseminated which contained the same premises and conclusions as offered in The Politician regarding the purported treason and disloyalty of American leadership since World War II.

In testimony before the Warren Commission, J. Edgar Hoover stated:

"I think the extreme right is just as much a danger to the freedom of this country as the extreme left. There are groups, organizations, and individuals on the extreme right who make these very violent statements, allegations that General Eisenhower was a Communist, disparaging references to the Chief Justice and at the other end of the spectrum you have these leftists who make wild statements charging almost anybody with being a Fascist or belonging to some of these so-called extreme right societies. Now, I have felt, and I have said publicly in speeches, that they are just as much a danger, at either end of the spectrum. They don't deal with facts. Anybody who will allege that General Eisenhower was a Communist agent, has something wrong with him. A lot of people read such allegations because I get some of the weirdest letters wanting to know whether we have inquired to find out whether that is true. I have known General Eisenhower quite well myself and I have found him to be a sound, level-headed man."

For the benefit of readers who are unfamiliar with The Politician, below are two sections from the original "private letter" that were later deleted from the published version:

Page 266: According to Welch, President Eisenhower was "knowingly accepting and abiding by Communist orders, and consciously serving the Communist conspiracy, for all his adult life."

Page 267: "But my firm belief that Dwight Eisenhower is a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy is based on an accumulation of detailed evidence so extensive and so palpable that it seems to me to put this conviction beyond any reasonable doubt."