Fourth Arm II.

This is coolbert: Fourth Arm II.

When the cold war began, almost immediately after the end of World War Two [WW2], the various western powers, especially the United States [U.S.], institutionalized their various fourth arm forces as permanent agencies of the government.

This was particularly true within the CIA. Covert action became almost as large as the information gathering and analysis effort [intelligence] within the CIA.

Once concept that stirred a lot of interest was "rolling back communism".

In the eyes of U.S. policy makers, the communist powers, dominated by the Soviet Union and under their direction, were the aggressors, and the forces of the "free world", were the defenders.

Movers and shakers within the government saw the situation analogous to the situation that had existed at the end of the Battle of France in 1940. A powerful military backed force ruled all of eastern Europe, a power that wanted to expand westward.

Direct confrontation militarily, because of atomic weapons, was out of the question. Fourth arm activities were seen, much as it was seen in 1940, as being a means of gaining entry to denied territory and stirring up things as much as possible. This would cause the Soviets and their lackeys to be put on the defensive, much as Hitler and his forces had been put on the defensive by SOE and OSS during WW2.

One area where this emphasis on "rolling back communism" can be seen was in the creation of the U.S. Army Special Forces [SF].

Those troops that were trained to conduct guerilla warfare behind enemy territory. Most of the initial troops enlisted into SF were persons of eastern European background. Able to speak the local languages, and were also in many cases persons that had combat experience, even in fighting the Soviet Army during WW2! The concept was that these troops would be parachuted into eastern European countries to raise battalions of disaffected persons and fight the communists using partisan warfare.

The fourth arm activities of course ran the gamut from traditional espionage, subversion, guerilla warfare, sabotage, psychological operations, etc.

These were all tried by the covert agencies of the western powers against eastern European targets.

It should be recalled, as was mentioned in part I, that these fourth arm activities had a mixed bag of results in WW2. Some results were excellent, some very poor, and in some instances, entailed a heavy loss of life on the part of involved agents.

The results of fourth arm activity in eastern Europe were almost uniformly negative, sometimes disastrously so. In fact, so bad were the results that men that are in know, authorities on the subject, have been quoted that in the period from 1945-1955, a ten year span, it would have better if the CIA had done nothing!!!

To be continued.

coolbert.