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Summary
Summary
A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into an unseen war that decisively shaped today's world
During the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of foreign adventures whose effects are still shaking the world.
John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen Dulles, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In this book, Stephen Kinzer places their extraordinary lives against the background of American culture and history. He uses the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it does in the world?
The Brothers explores hidden forces that shape the national psyche, from religious piety to Western movies--many of which are about a noble gunman who cleans up a lawless town by killing bad guys. This is how the Dulles brothers saw themselves, and how many Americans still see their country's role in the world.
Propelled by a quintessentially American set of fears and delusions, the Dulles brothers launched violent campaigns against foreign leaders they saw as threats to the United States. These campaigns helped push countries from Guatemala to the Congo into long spirals of violence, led the United States into the Vietnam War, and laid the foundation for decades of hostility between the United States and countries from Cuba to Iran.
The story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America. It illuminates and helps explain the modern history of the United States and the world.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013
Author Notes
Stephen Kinzer is the author of Reset , Overthrow , All the Shah's Men , and numerous other books. An award-winning foreign correspondent, he served as the New York Times 's bureau chief in Turkey, Germany, and Nicaragua and as the Boston Globe's Latin America correspondent. He is a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, contributes to The New York Review of Books , and writes a column on world affairs for The Guardian . He lives in Boston.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Born into Eastern establishment privilege, these two men strode into the uppermost strata of the U.S. government with a virulent anti-communist bent that infused US foreign policy during the Cold War. The siblings were temperamental opposites. Foster was a social misfit and one-woman man who memorized biblical passages, while his younger brother, Allen, was a libertine with a taste for servants and prone to fits of debauchery. But brotherly camaraderie is tangential here as Kinzer (Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future), an award-winning journalist, focuses squarely on how the men became architects of the emerging superpower. Restrained from their most ambitious foreign adventures under the Truman administration, their fortunes changed when the next president, Dwight Eisenhower, appointed Foster to lead the State Department and Allen the CIA. Consumed by their quest to avert Soviet domination across the globe, their fingerprints were all over some of the most sordid episodes of the Cold War: bringing down duly elected governments in Guatemala and Iran; sowing the seeds of the Vietnam War; assassinating Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba; and attempting to overthrow Fidel Castro. This approachable history is a candid appraisal of how the Dulles's grandiose geopolitical calculations set in motion events that continue to reverberate in American foreign policy today. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
An author tending toward criticism of American foreign affairs (Overthrow, 2006), Kinzer casts a jaundiced eye on siblings who conducted them in the 1950s. Framing his assessment as a dual biography of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA director Allen Dulles, Kinzer roots their anti-Communist policies in their belief in American exceptionalism and its Wilsonian application to promote democracy in the world. Less abstractly, the Dulles brothers were politically connected Wall Street lawyers, servants of corporate power, according to Kinzer. Their personalities, however, were starkly different. John Foster was serious-minded and maritally faithful. Gregarious Allen was a serial cheater. With such character portraits as backdrop, Kinzer arraigns the Dulles brothers' operations against several countries. Detailing American actions in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, and Cuba, Kinzer crafts a negative perspective on the legacy of the Dulles brothers, whom he absolves slightly from blame because their compatriots widely approved of their providential sense of America's role in world affairs. A historical critique sure to spark debate.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
ANYONE wanting to know why the United States is hated across much of the world need look no farther than this book. "The Brothers" is a riveting chronicle of government-sanctioned murder, casual elimination of "inconvenient" regimes, relentless prioritization of American corporate interests and cynical arrogance on the part of two men who were once among the most powerful in the world. John Foster Dulles and his brother, Allen, were scions of the American establishment. Their grandfather John Watson Foster served as secretary of state, as had their uncle Robert Lansing. Both brothers were lawyers, partners in the immensely powerful firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, whose New York offices were for decades an important link between big business and American policy making. John Foster Dulles served as secretary of state from 1953 to 1959; his brother ran the C.I.A. from 1953 to 1961. But their influence was felt long before these official appointments. In his detailed, well-constructed and highly readable book, Stephen Kinzer, formerly a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now a columnist for The Guardian, shows how the brothers drove America's interventionist foreign policy. Kinzer highlights John Foster Dulles's central role in channeling funds from the United States to Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Indeed, his friendship with Hjalmar Schacht, the Reichsbank president and Hitler's minister of economics, was crucial to the rebuilding of the German economy. Sullivan & Cromwell floated bonds for Krupp A. G., the arms manufacturer, and also worked for I. G. Farben, the chemicals conglomerate that later manufactured Zyklon B, the gas used to murder millions of Jews. Of course, the Dulles brothers' law firm was hardly alone in its eagerness to do business with the Nazis - many on Wall Street and numerous American corporations, including Standard Oil and General Electric, had "interests" in Berlin. And Allen Dulles at least had qualms about operating in Nazi Germany, pushing through the closure of the Sullivan & Cromwell office there in 1935, a move his brother opposed. Allen Dulles spent much of World War II working for the Office of Strategic Services, running the American intelligence operation out of the United States Embassy in Bern, Switzerland. His shadowy networks extended across Europe, and his assets included his old friend Thomas McKittrick, the American president of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, a key point in the transnational money network that helped keep Germany in business during the war. The O.S.S. was dissolved in 1945 by President Truman, but was soon reborn as the C.I.A. Kinzer notes that Truman did not support plots against foreign leaders but his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, had no such scruples. By 1953, with Allen Dulles running the C.I.A. and his brother in charge of the State Department, the interventionists' dreams could come to fruition. Kinzer lists what he calls the "six monsters" that the Dulles brothers believed had to be brought down: Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Sukarno in Indonesia, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo and Fidel Castro in Cuba. Only two of these, Ho Chi Minh and Castro, were hard-core Communists. The rest were nationalist leaders seeking independence for their countries and a measure of control over their natural resources. Ironically, Ho Chi Minh and Castro, strengthened perhaps by their Marxist faith, proved the most resilient. But the world still lives with the consequences of bringing down Mossadegh, who might have guided Iran, and thus world history, along a very different path. The 1953 GI.A.-sponsored coup that brought Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to power was seared into Iran's national consciousness, fueling a reservoir of fury that was released with the Islamic revolution of 1979. The Iranian section of Kinzer's book is especially strong. Here he calls attention to the cancellation by the Iranian Parliament of a contract for what was said to be "the largest overseas development project in modern history" with Overseas Consultants Inc., an American engineering conglomerate. But it seems likely that it was the Iranian Parliament's vote to nationalize the oil industry that sealed Mossadegh's fate. (Allen Dulles represented the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation, one of whose clients was the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.) The Dulles brothers' defenders argue that they and their legacy must be evaluated in the context of their era - the height of the Cold War, a time when the Soviet threat was real and growing, when Eastern Europe languished under Communist dictatorships sponsored by Moscow, and China had been "lost" to the Reds (although that term itself implies a curious claim of prior ownership). Moscow's proxies were advancing in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. The brothers' Manichaean worldview proved to be a poor tool for dealing with the complexities of the postcolonial era. Leaders like Lumumba and Mossadegh might well have been open to cooperation with the United States, seeing it as a natural ally for enemies of colonialism. However, for the Dulles brothers, and for much of the American government, threats to corporate interests were categorized as support for communism. "For us," John Foster Dulles once explained, "there are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who are Christians and support free enterprise, and there are the others." Rejected by the United States, the new leaders turned to Moscow. The brothers' accomplishments in the geopolitical arena were not mirrored in their personal lives. Although Allen Dulles was a flagrant womanizer and John Foster remained devoted to his wife, they were, Kinzer observes, "strikingly similar in their relationships with their children. Both were distant, uncomfortable fathers." John Foster's three children were raised by nannies "and discouraged from intruding on their parents' world." Allen's only son joined the Marines in a vain effort to impress his father, who "never found him 'tough' enough." He was sent to Korea and almost died when shrapnel tore out part of his skull. He spent years being treated for his wounds. Allen's older daughter suffered from depression throughout her life. Neither John Foster nor Allen attended the wedding of their "independentminded" sister, Eleanor, when she married a divorced older man who came from an Orthodox Jewish family. There are also reminders in Kinzer's book of dark events in the history of American intelligence. Sixty years ago, Frank Olson, a C.I.A. officer, was reported to have jumped to his death during mindcontrol experiments "in which psychoactive drugs were administered to unknowing victims." But last year, Kinzer reports, Olson's family filed suit, claiming he had actually been murdered after visiting secret C.I.A. prisons in Europe. More detailed archival references here and elsewhere would have been useful. Although Kinzer provides a lengthy bibliography and extensive notes on books, articles and other materials available on the Internet, the references for the primary sources, which should detail archives, collections and precise file numbers, are meager. Eventually, the United States government tired of Allen Dulles's schemes. President Johnson privately complained that the C.I.A. had been running "a goddamn Murder Inc. in the Caribbean," an entirely accurate assessment - except the beneficiaries were American corporations rather than organized crime. Nowadays, the Dulles brothers have faded from America's collective memory. The bust of John Foster, once on view at the airport west of Washington that bears his name, has been relocated to a private conference room. Outside the world of intelligence aficionados, Allen Dulles is little known. Yet both these men shaped our modern world and America's sense of its "exceptionalism." They should be remembered, Kinzer argues, precisely because of their failures: "They are us. We are them." ADAM LEBOR'S latest nonfiction book is "Tower of Basel: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank That Runs the World."
Kirkus Review
Longtime foreign correspondent Kinzer (International Relations/Boston Univ.; Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future, 2010, etc.) portrays the dark side of Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration through the activities of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen, the director of the CIA. The author reveals the pair's responsibility for the wave of assassinations, coups and irregular wars during Eisenhower's administrations as the outcome of three generations of their family's involvement in America's increasingly active foreign policy, and he documents the way the brothers created the political shape of the Cold War in the 1950s, with John Foster providing the arrogant and pompous public face for the covert operations organized by brother Allen. Kinzer also shows how Eisenhower's knowledge of the costs of open war between states led him to support their covert operations to "strike backto fight, but in a different way." The author discusses John Foster's assimilation of the undeclared war against Soviet communism into a Manichaean framework of the eternal struggle of good vs. evil. He also examines how, during the 1930s, he was seen by some as "the chief agent for the banking circles which rescued Hitler from the financial depths." Later, Allen recruited Nazi leaders to help shape postwar Europe against the Soviets during the war's final stages. For Kinzer, the brothers epitomized the presumption that America has the right to "guide the course of history" because it is "more moral and farther-seeing than other countries." In addition to providing illuminating biographical information, the author clearly presents the Dulles family's contributions to the development of a legal and political structure for American corporations' international politics. A well-documented and shocking reappraisal of two of the shapers of the American century.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
INTRODUCTION When John Foster Dulles died on May 24, 1959, a bereft nation mourned more intensely than it had since the death of Franklin Roosevelt fourteen years before. Thousands lined up outside the National Cathedral in Washington to pass by his bier. Dignitaries from around the world, led by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany and President Chiang Kai-shek of Taiwan, came to the funeral. It was broadcast live on the ABC and CBS television networks. Many who watched agreed that the world had lost, as President Eisenhower said in his eulogy, "one of the truly great men of our time." Two months later, Eisenhower signed an executive order decreeing that in tribute to this towering figure, the new super-airport being built at Chantilly, Virginia, would be named Dulles International. Enthusiasm for this idea waned after Eisenhower left the White House in 1961. The new president, John F. Kennedy, did not want to name an ultra-modern piece of America's future after a crusty Cold War militant. As the airport neared completion, the chairman of the Federal Aviation Authority announced that it would be named Chantilly International. He left open the possibility that a terminal might be named for Dulles. That sent partisans into action. One of them was Dulles's brother, Allen, who had run the Central Intelligence Agency for nearly a decade. Pressure on Kennedy grew, and he finally relented. On November 17, 1962, with both Eisenhower and Allen Dulles watching, he presided over the official opening of Dulles International Airport. "How appropriate it is that this should be named after Secretary Dulles," Kennedy said in his speech. "He was a member of an extraordinary family: his brother, Allen Dulles, who served in a great many administrations, stretching back, I believe, to President Hoover, all the way to this one; John Foster Dulles, who at the age of 19 was, rather strangely, the secretary to the Chinese delegation to The Hague, and who served nearly every Presidential administration from that time forward to his death in 1959; their uncle, who was secretary of state, Mr. Lansing; their grandfather, who was secretary of state, Mr. Foster. I know of few families and certainly few contemporaries who rendered more distinguished and dedicated service to their country." Then, in what became a newsreel clip seen around the world, Kennedy pulled back a curtain and unveiled the airport's symbolic centerpiece: a larger-than-life bust of John Foster Dulles. It was on a pedestal overlooking an evocative reflecting pool at the center of the airport that the architect, Eero Saarinen, hoped would calm travelers' turbulent spirits. Half a century after Dulles's death stunned Americans, few remember him. Many associate his name with an airport and nothing more. Even his bust has disappeared. During renovations in the 1990s, the reflecting pool at Dulles International Airport was filled. The bust was removed. When the renovation was complete, it did not reappear. No one seemed to notice. After several fruitless inquiries, I finally tracked down the bust. A woman who works for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority arranged for me to view it. It stands in a private conference room opposite Baggage Claim Carousel #3. Beside it are plaques thanking the Airports Authority for sponsoring local golf tournaments. Dulles looks big-eyed and oddly diffident, anything but heroic. Dedicated by the president of the United States while the world watched, now shunted into a little-used room opposite baggage claim, this bust reflects what history has done to the Dulles brothers. A biography published three years after John Foster Dulles died asserted that "he provoked an extraordinary mixture of veneration and hatred during his lifetime, and since his death, in spite of a surge of emotion in his favor towards the end, his memory has remained contentious and intriguing." That memory faded quickly. In 1971 a journalist wrote that although the Dulles name had not been completely forgotten, "certainly most of the éclat had gone out of it." John Foster Dulles was, as one biographer wrote, "a secretary of state so powerful and implacable that no government in what was then fervently referred to as the Free World would have dared to make a decision of international importance without first getting his nod of approval." Another biographer called his brother, Allen, "the greatest intelligence officer who ever lived." "Do you realize my responsibilities?" Allen asked his sister when he was at the peak of his power. "I have to send people out to get killed. Who else in this country in peacetime has the right to do that?" These uniquely powerful brothers set in motion many of the processes that shape today's world. Understanding who they were, and what they did, is a key to uncovering the obscured roots of upheaval in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. A book tracing these roots could not have been written in an earlier era. Only long after the Dulles brothers died did the full consequences of their actions become clear. They may have believed that the countries in which they intervened would quickly become stable, prosperous, and free. More often, the opposite happened. Some of the countries they targeted have never recovered. Nor has the world. This story is rich with lessons for the modern era. It is about exceptionalism, the view that the United States is inherently more moral and farther-seeing than other countries and therefore may behave in ways that others should not. It also addresses the belief that because of its immense power, the United States can not only topple governments but guide the course of history. To these widely held convictions, the Dulles brothers added two others, both bred into them over many years. One was missionary Christianity, which tells believers that they understand eternal truths and have an obligation to convert the unenlightened. Alongside it was the presumption that protecting the right of large American corporations to operate freely in the world is good for everyone. The story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America. It illuminates and helps explain the modern history of the United States and the world. Copyright © 2013 by Stephen Kinzer Excerpted from The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
| Introduction | p. 1 |
| Part I Two Brothers | |
| 1 Unmentionable Happenings | p. 7 |
| 2 The Taint of My Environment | p. 37 |
| 3 Dull, Duller, Dulles | p. 63 |
| 4 That Fella from Wall Street | p. 86 |
| Part II Six Monsters | |
| 5 A Whirling Dervish with a College Education | p. 119 |
| 6 The Most Forthright Pro-Communist | p. 147 |
| 7 A Matchless Interplay of Ruthlessness and Guile | p. 175 |
| 8 The Self-Intoxicated President | p. 216 |
| 9 The Tall, Goateed Radical | p. 247 |
| 10 The Bearded Strongman | p. 284 |
| Part III One Century | |
| 11 A Face of God | p. 311 |
| Notes | p. 329 |
| Bibliography | p. 368 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 383 |
| Index | p. 385 |
