The Dismissal of Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker - A special report by Cong. Morris K. Udall

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37. I've been curious for years about why Dulles was never in trouble for his 1930s stuff

It was trying to find out what Dulles was doing at the end of the war that led me to Operation Sunrise.

Meanwhile, I've come up with a few tentative answers as to why nobody ever held the prewar stuff against him.:

- That in the highest levels of the establishment, none of their own is ever held responsible for anything.

- That in the 1940s, very few Americans had European connections or knowledge of foreign diplomacy, so the war forced a dependence on people like Dulles.

- That they were all blackmailing each other and covering each other's asses.

But I'm no longer sure those answers are the whole story. That film of the future Edward VIII teaching the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret in 1933 how to do Nazi salutes has really gotten me wondering how far the rot extended.

And there are other connections, especially in the history of libertarianism, that trace directly back to pro-Nazi organizations in the 1930s. There's an entire Birch Society-Koch family-libertarian nexus that's never been fully explored but that is extremely relevant to what are now mainstream Republican policies.

I think the extent of pro-Nazi sympathies among the ruling class in this country in the 1930s has been systematically underestimated, as has the extent to which the same people underwent some minor cosmetic makeovers and resurfaced in the 1950s.

That is a story that really needs to be told.