Articles from 1950
In January, 1950, a British scientist named Klaus Fuchs (1911 – 1988) was arrested for passing atomic secrets on to Soviet agents.
In his confession Fuchs admitted that the transfer of information began in 1942, shortly after he joined the [British Ministry of Supply] as a German Refugee.
PATHFINDER MAGAZINE was a pretty terrific news organ and to thumb through any of the issues spanning 1910 through 1922 you’ll get the sense that it had a heavy hand in influencing TIME, NEWSWEEK and any number of other magazines that came later. Established in Washington, D.C. in 1894, PATHFINDER earned its reputation as a genuine source for domestic and international news.
This article was written by its last publisher, Graham Patterson, and it served as both a history of that weekly as well as an obituary for its founder, George Mitchell – which is entirely fitting because the whole enterprise folded four and half years later. By the time its final issue rolled off the press in 1952 it had become the second largest news magazine in America – with a circulation numbering 1,200,000. With a record like that it seems odd that it went under at all.
Click here to read our collection of articles from PATHFINDER MAGAZINE.
[In Washington] the U.S. defense effort snowballed. Looking beyond the Korea showdown, the U.S. had to plan against new Russian surprises… There would be no appeasement, even at the risk of W.W. III. U.S. intelligence indicated a ten year Russian military plan designed to bleed America white. The aim would be to keep the U.S. in a semi-mobilized state for years.
Click here to read an article about the American POW experience during the Korean War.
This column will give you a quick understanding as to how 1950 ended:
Russian diplomats made valiant efforts. In Moscow, [Stalin’s adviser] Andrei Gromyko called Western envoys, urging Big Four talks to ‘unify’ Germany. In the U.N., Andrei Vishinsky protested Russia’s ‘devotion’ to peace and to the belief that capitalism and Communism could live in the same world… But while the Reds talked, Chinese Communists had swept into the Korea War. The Soviet military budget had soared . Russia’s submarine fleet had multiplied, it’s air force had expanded to 14,000 combat planes, its army was millions strong, and still growing.
Click here to read an article about the American POW experience during the Korean War.
There wouldn’t be any warning.
Long-range Soviet bombers attempt to knock out our key industrial targets by atomic bombing. Some fly the 4,000, miles from Murmansk across the roof of the world to our East Coast; others strike from bases in Eastern Siberia at California and the Midwest… Simultaneously, organized sabotage breaks out in aviation plants, shipyards, power stations, etc., to complement the work of the bombers.
When it became clear to all that the Soviets had the bomb – and Washington was the target – the egg-heads in D.C. decided it was time to disperse various government offices to the suburbs:
Given any warning at all, the National Security Resources Board now seems confident it can preserve at least a skeleton Government. But as for the run-of-the-mine Federal employee, he’ll have to take his chances amid the irradiated rubble…
By the autumn of 1950 it became clear to the old hands at the Pentagon that the police action on the Korean peninsula was beginning to resemble a real war. With that in mind, thirteen military training camps that had been been barren for the past five years, were dusted off in order that they might once more begin training Americans for war. Two weeks later China threw her hat in the ring.
During this same period, the U.S. Navy took 62 ships that had been mothballed in order to launch the Inchon Landings…
Man, those Chinese are good soldiers… You can’t see ’em; you can’t hear ’em. You don’t know they’re there until they’re on top of you… They’re experts at camouflage and the best damn night-fighters I’ve ever seen. We could walk a company over the hill and see nothing. Then we’d look around and they’d be swarming on us like flies. It was just like they’d sprouted from the ground.
