Charles Willoughby

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Charles Willoughby (1918)

Charles Andrew Willoughby (born March 8, 1892 in Heidelberg , † October 25, 1972 in Naples , Florida ) was an American major general who served as chief intelligence officer for the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) during the occupation of Japan and the Korean War. General Douglas MacArthur was. He did not hide his fascist views. In Japan, he recruited several war criminals for the services of the United States and thus evaded prosecution. After his retirement he worked as a lobbyist and advisor to General Francisco Franco .

Life path

Charles Willoughby claimed that as the son of Adolf Karl Tscheppe-Weidenbach, son of a Freiherr T. Tscheppe-Weidenbach from Baden and Emma, ​​nee Willoughby from Baltimore was born in Heidelberg. In the Heidelberg civil status register, however, the birth of Adolf August Weidenbach, son of ropemaker August Weidenbach and Emma, ​​born March 8, 1892, is recorded. Longhouses, registered. The Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Briefadeligen lists a general Erich Tülff von Tschepe and Weidenbach , (with a "p"), who, however, only received the title of baron in 1913. He had five children, none of whom were born in 1892.

soldier

At the age of 18 he emigrated to the USA in 1910, where he took the (alleged) family name of his mother Willoughby . In the same year he entered the American army as a simple soldier. He was promoted to sergeant in the Fifth Infantry relatively quickly . Willoughby kept a German accent throughout his life.

In 1913 he entered Gettysburg College directly as a senior , from which he graduated as a Bachelor of Arts the following year . He then became a lieutenant in the reserve in the Officer's Volunteer Corps. He then taught at the private Howe School in Indiana and Racine College in Wisconsin .

First World War

Willoughby became an officer in the regular army on November 27, 1916, while being promoted to first lieutenant. As a member of the American Expeditionary Forces , he came to France in June 1917, where he was promoted to captain on June 30th. First he served in the 1st Division of the 16th Infantry, then he enlisted in the air force. After training as a pilot by French teachers, he became the assistant to Major Carl Spaatz , who at the time was head of the Aviation Training Center in Issoudun . Willoughby took over the management of the Aviation Branch School in Chateroux until May 1918. He was then sent back to Washington, where he was to set up the first airmail service, the Aerial Mail Service . In December 1918 he was transferred back to the infantry, where he initially worked in Ft. Benning ( Georgia ) was used.

Interwar period

After the war, he was transferred to the 24th Infantry in New Mexico in 1919 . After two years, he was transferred to San Juan ( Puerto Rico ) in February 1921 until May 1923. There he was also used for the first time in the field of military intelligence. During a visit to Morocco in the early stages of the Rif War , he got to know and appreciate Franco when he was in command of the first battalion of the Spanish Foreign Legion , which was under construction . From July 1923 posts in Venezuela, Colombia and as a military attaché in Ecuador followed. Willoughby was at the time, and remained for the rest of his life, an admirer of Mussolini and his ideas.

From May 1927 he was back with the infantry at Fort DA Russell . After his permanent promotion to major on June 6, 1928, Willoughby attended the command schools Infantry School and Command and General Staff College ( Ft. Leavenworth ) from 1929 . After 1931 he was also a trainer there. From 1935 he attended the US Army War College ( Washington, DC ), which he graduated in June 1936. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the same year, and he was promoted to colonel ( temporary ) on June 1, 1938. First he was an instructor at the Infantry School, then in New York involved in the publication of the Military Dictionary and several dictionaries.

With MacArthur

As of June 1940, Willoughby was assigned to the Headquarters, Philippine Department , Manila as G-4 (Logistics) Assistant Chief of Staff , also because of his good knowledge of Spanish . There he befriended Commandant Douglas MacArthur quickly . When the new United States Far Eastern Command was created under this in 1941 , he took Willoughby with him as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence . He escaped from Corregidor to Australia after the Japanese invasion of the Philippines with MacArthur.

On April 19, 1942, MacArthur announced the appointment of Col. Charles A. Willoughby as G-2 , Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence , of the GHQ, Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA). In addition, he was promoted to brigadier general (temporarily) on June 20, 1942. For Willoughby the problem arose that he first had to set up an intelligence service apparatus, which was successful. In the occupied Philippines, the Allied Intelligence Bureau (AIB) was supposed to do underground and propaganda work. From September onwards, the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) and the Central Bureau , responsible for radio and mail surveillance, helped plan the war. The Order of Battle Section sought to determine the positions of Japanese units. Willoughby proved to be a talent for organization, but was often wrong with his assessments of Japanese intentions and troop strengths. His attempts to hide the mistakes later on suggest a narcissistic personality with no capacity for self-criticism. He has been described by employees as arrogant, cocky and paranoid.

Japan

After Japan's surrender , Willoughby remained in his G-2 position under MacArthur, who was now Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers . His tasks were now more in the area of ​​counter-espionage, for which he was poorly trained. He therefore relied heavily on the 441st Counter Intelligence Corps ( CIC ). The Canadian ambassador Herbert Norman , Igor Gouzenko and Agnes Smedley , a member of Richard Sorge's ring , were exposed as communist agents .

He pursued a very limited press policy, trying to highlight the communist threat and suppress any facts that could cast MacArthur in a bad light. After the “ Red Purge ” in 1947, he was certainly within the framework of official politics. MacArthur was aware of the political stance and called Willoughby "my pet fascist".

The archival documents evaluated under the provisions of the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act 1999 have shown that Willoughby ensured that members of the notorious unit 731 under Ishii Shirō and his friends were not prosecuted as war criminals , but for their information, which is still partially confidential today subject to have been paid.

Korean War

The Korean Liaison Office , created by Willoughby, was just one of the many intelligence agencies in South Korea, but it produced nearly 1,200 reports by June 1950. Like the CIA, it initially misjudged the Chinese invasion plans, but changed its views from early November.

When MacArthur was sacked by President Harry S. Truman in 1951 , Willoughby, unjustly criticized by the press for being responsible for some defeats, resigned from the army after forty years of service with the rank of major general.

retirement

He testified before a Senate Committee of Inquiry into the Institute of Pacific Relations on August 9, 1951, and was summoned to the House of Representatives Concern Committee on August 22 of the same year.

Soon after his retirement, Willoughby went to Spain, where he served the fascist General Franco regime as an "advisor" on intelligence issues. Willoughby had been an admirer of Franco, whom he is said to have called "the second greatest general in the world" (after MacArthur), since the 1920s. As a lobbyist, he demanded 100 million US dollars from the American Congress for Franco in 1952.

In May 1958 he commented on the nuclear war discussion, taking the view that it was not necessary to drop the atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, and that victory would have been achieved with conventional weapons.

In his later years he edited Foreign Intelligence Digest magazine. He was also a leader in the right-wing International Committee for the Defense of Christian Culture, which is financed by the Texan oil millionaire H. L. Hunt and has links to anti-communist organizations.

In 1968 Willoughby moved with his wife to Naples, Florida, where he died in 1972.

Awards

Fonts

  • House of Bolivar
  • The Economic and Military Participation of the United States in the World War . Ft. Leavenworth 1931
  • Maneuver in war; Harrisburg 1939
  • Guerrilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines, 1941-1945 . Vantage, New York 1972, ISBN 0-533-00592-2
  • MacArthur, 1941-1951; New York et al. a, 1954 (objective on strategic questions, hagiographic on MacArthur)
  • Shanghai Conspiracy: The Sorge Spy Ring . Western, Boston 1952

as (co-) editor:

Items:

  • Espionage and the American Communist Party . In: American Mercury , Vol 88 (Jan 1959), pp 117-23
  • Khrushchev and the Flight to Sverdlovsk . In: American Mercury , Vol 91 (Aug 1960), pp. 34-43

literature

  • Kenneth J. Campbell: Major General Charles A. Willoughby: A Mixed Performance . Full text (English); Shorter original in: American Intelligence Journal , Vol 18 (1998), pp. 87-91
  • National Archives RG 200: General Charles A. Willoughby Files , box 91 (Location: 130/76/5/3); released 2005
  • Roger Beaumont: The Flawed Soothsayer . In: Espionage 1/4 (1985), pp. 20-37
  • Charles A. Willoughby , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 43/1973 of October 15, 1973, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Web links

Archives:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Frank Kluckhorn: From Heidelberg to Madrid - The Story of General Willoughby . In: The Reporter , August 19, 1952.
  2. ↑ According to the Department of Defense, Office of Public Information Press Branch, this direct entry was possible because Willoughby had already studied in Heidelberg and Paris. However, for reasons of age, this seems unlikely.
  3. ↑ a b c Charles Andrew Willoughby, Major General, United States Army (as of December 14, 2004)
  4. ^ Norman Polmar, Thomas B. Allen: Spy Book . 2nd Edition. New York et al. a. 2004, ISBN 0-375-72025-1 , p. 687
  5. ↑ unproven
  6. ↑ "My favorite fascists". Andrew Gordon: A modern history of Japan , Oxford 2009, ISBN 978-0-19-533922-2 ; P. 237
  7. ↑ especially National Archives RG 200: General Charles A. Willoughby Files, box 91 (Location: 130/76/5/3)
  8. ↑ cf. Edward Drea (et al.): Researching Japanese War Crimes Records: Introductory Essays . Washington 2006, ISBN 1-880875-28-4 ; especially chapter 8: "The Intelligence that wasn't ..."
  9. ^ Elliott Thorpe : East Wind, Rain: The Intimate Account of an Intelligence Officer in the Pacific 1939-49 . Boston 1969, p. 96; (the author was Willoughby's direct competitor in the secret service in Japan)
  10. ↑ Website of the award winners (English)
personal data
SURNAME Willoughby, Charles
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weidenbach, Adolf August (presumed maiden name); Willoughby, Charles Andrew (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American major general and chief of intelligence
DATE OF BIRTH March 8, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Heidelberg
DATE OF DEATH October 25, 1972
Place of death Naples (Florida)