Moscow is taken. Some things are beyond comprehension. Don’t forget your resolve, “no peace,” and you have still the hope of regaining your honor. If you are in sorrow don’t forget your friends ready to fly to you and too happy if they can be any help: command them.
My dear friend, no peace, and if you get to Kazan, still no peace!
Philip II to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, 1 July 1588
A letter encouraging a reluctant servant to perform a thankless task of extraordinary magnitude.
Philip of Spain was the most powerful king in Europe at the time, ruler of an empire on which the sun never set—but Queen Elizabeth of England defied him. First he had asked her to marry him, then he ordered her assassination, and finally he contrived his Great Enterprise: the invasion of England by his “Great and Most Fortunate Navy”—the Spanish Armada—carrying 27,000 men in a hundred and thirty warships that were to collect en route, as the invasion force, a further 30,000 waiting in the Spanish Netherlands. Philip gave the command to an experienced admiral, the Marqués de Santa Cruz, but he died before the fleet set off, and the king ordered the Duke of Medina Sidonia to take his place. The duke, no sailor, knew the plan was faulty, so he tried to back out: “Your Majesty, believe me when I assure you that we are very weak…how do you think we can attack so great a country as England with such a force as ours is now?”
This is Philip’s reply. The armada sailed on 28 May 1588 and was a disaster.
Duke and cousin.
I have received the letter written in your hand, dated 24 June. From what I know of you, I believe you have brought all these matters to my attention solely because of your zeal to serve me and the desire to succeed in your command. The certainty that this is so prompts me to be franker with you than I should be with another….If this were an unjust war, one could indeed take the tempest as a sign from Our Lord to cease offending Him; but being as just as it is, one cannot believe that He will disband it, but will rather grant it more favor than we could hope….I have dedicated this enterprise to God….Pull yourself together, then, and do your part.
Philip.
Harun al-Rashid to Nikephoros I, AD 802
Harun al-Rashid was the fifth and most famous Abbasid caliph—formally the Emir al-Muamimin, or Commander of the Faithful, ruling the vast Islamic empire from Baghdad. He is the caliph who appears in The Thousand and One Nights. When he is defied by the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros, who refuses to pay tribute, the caliph sends this laconic reply—promising war.
In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, from Harun the Commander of the Faithful to Nikephoros the dog of the Byzantines: O son of an infidel woman, I have read your letter, and the reply is what you will see, without you having to hear it. Farewell!
Rasputin to Nicholas II, 17 July 1914
Perhaps the most outspoken letter ever written to a tsar by a peasant. In July 1914, Europe slides toward war. Tsar Nicholas is reluctant to fight, yet fears that Russia cannot avoid conflict and remain a great power. His wife, Alexandra, is with him but he excludes her from discussions, fearing her hysteria. Their sacred adviser, the peasant Rasputin, is far from the capital, recovering from an attempt to kill him, but when Alexandra discovers Russia is close to war, she telegraphs him, begging him to appeal to the tsar. This is the letter Rasputin sends by telegram, warning of catastrophe if Russia should fight. Nicholas was outraged by Rasputin’s impertinence—yet he was right. And Nicholas kept the letter until his own murder in 1918.
Dear friend
I’ll say again a menacing cloud is over Russia, lots of sorrow and grief, it’s dark and there’s not a ray of hope. A sea of tears, immeasurable, and as to blood? What can I say? There are no words, indescribable horror. I know they all want war from you, evidently not realizing that this means ruin. Hard is God’s punishment when he takes away reason, it’s the beginning of the end. You are the Tsar Father of the people, don’t allow the madmen to triumph and destroy themselves and the people. Yes, they’ll conquer Germany, but what of Russia? If one thinks then truly never for all of time has one suffered like Russia, drowned in her own blood. Great will be the ruin, grief without end.
Grigory
Blood
Paiankh to Nodjmet, c.1070 BC
Murder by letter. The military dictator of Thebes, Paiankh ruled with his wife, Nodjmet. In an early case of state killing, while Paiankh is away fighting rebellious Nubia, he has left his wife, Nodjmet, in charge. When she senses treason at home she asks his advice. Paiankh’s reply is unequivocal and chilling: disappear them!
Have these two watchmen brought to my house and get to the bottom of their words in short order, then have them killed and thrown into the water by night.
Vladimir Lenin to the Bolsheviks of Penza, 11 August 1918
Here is the real Lenin as the Soviet people never saw him.
Vladimir Lenin became Soviet premier when he led the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917. During his rule and after his death he was promoted in propaganda as a benign grandfatherly patriarch, his body preserved and revered in a mausoleum like a saint. On the contrary, Lenin prided himself on his harshness and often said, “A revolution without firing squads is meaningless.” When he heard that Stalin had killed people he said, “That’s exactly the type we need.” As soon as Lenin took power he created the ruthless Cheka, the secret police, to enforce his terror; and as his regime struggles to win the civil war, he sends letters like this, ordering random killings. This letter was only revealed after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. His body still remains on show in Red Square.
Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because “the last decisive battle” with the kulaks is now underway everywhere. An example must be demonstrated.
Hang (and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers.
Publish their names.
Seize all their grain from them.
Designate hostages in accordance with yesterday’s telegram.
Do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of kilometers around the people might see, tremble, know, shout: they are strangling and will strangle to death the bloodsucking kulaks.
Telegraph receipt and implementation.
Yours, Lenin.
Find some truly hard people.
Josef Stalin to Kliment Voroshilov, 3 July 1937
In February 1937, Stalin unleashed the Great Terror, directed mainly at his own comrades in the Communist Party. Around a million innocent people were eventually shot, millions more imprisoned. In public he remains elusive as the arrests and executions intensify, but privately he is directing every detail, and many of his letters to his henchmen, encouraging the slaughter, survive: “Isn’t it time to squeeze this gentleman and force him to report on this dirty business?” he writes during the torture of one prisoner. At other times he sends peremptory letters like this one to a trusted acolyte: “Comrade Malenkov. Moskvin must be arrested. J.St.” When his killers become exhausted, he urges them on: “The sharper the teeth the better. J.St.”
He convinces his comrades that the arrested are guilty by showing them confessions, secured by torture. Here he sends these testimonies to a henchman with this covering letter:
Dear Klim, did you read the testimonies…? How do you like the bourgeois puppies of Trotsky…? They wanted to wipe out all the members of the Politburo…isn’t it weird? How low can people sink? J.St.
Mao Zedong to the Red Guards of Tsinghua University Middle School, 1 August 1966
Here is the letter unleashing the chaos and cruelty of the Cultural Revolution. Since seizing power in 1949, Mao had killed millions of “class enemies” by shooting and by famine but now, direc
ting a campaign behind the scenes backed by henchmen like his wife, Jiang Qing, and his defense minister, Lin Biao, Mao turns the guns on his own over-mighty officials who had tried to restrain his power. His weapons are the young student radicals and thugs of the Red Guards, whom he uses to destroy any rivals by inciting mob violence or, as he calls it, “bombarding the headquarters.”
This letter is one of the public signs of his support for the Red Guards: “it is right to rebel against reactionaries.” He suggests that “after their mistakes have been pointed out,” their victims should be offered the chance to become “new men.” This is sinister double-talk: many were tortured, killed, or “re-educated” in the countryside.
Red Guard Comrades
I have received both the big-character posters which you sent on 28 July as well as the letter which you sent me, asking for an answer. The big-character posters express your anger at and denunciation of all landlords, bourgeois, imperialists, revisionists and their running dogs who exploit and oppress the workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals and revolutionary parties and groupings. You say it is right to rebel against reactionaries: I enthusiastically support you….Here I want to say that I myself as well as my revolutionary comrades-in-arms all take the same attitude. No matter where they are, in Peking or anywhere in China, I will give enthusiastic support to all who take an attitude similar to yours in the Cultural Revolution movement. Another thing, while supporting you, at the same time we ask you to pay attention to uniting with all who can be united with. As for those who have committed serious mistakes, after their mistakes have been pointed out you should offer them a way out of their difficulties by giving them work to do, and enabling them to correct their mistakes and become new men. Marx said: the proletariat must emancipate not only itself but all mankind. If it cannot emancipate all mankind, then the proletariat itself will not be able to achieve final emancipation. Will comrades please pay attention to this truth too.
China descended into four years of state-sanctioned anarchy, with Chairman Mao emerging omnipotent. He promoted Lin Biao as his chosen heir, but then he started to turn on his second-in-command. Marshal Lin planned Mao’s assassination before attempting to flee to Russia and was killed on 13 September 1971 when his plane crashed. In the ensuing search for enemies, Mao wrote this short note advising deputy chief bodyguard Zhang Yao-ci how to survive. The reference to “operas and films” shows Mao withdrawing support from his radical wife Jiang Qing, who controlled the arts—and ending the Cultural Revolution. The letter reveals the bleak state of paranoia and terror at the court of one of the twentieth century’s monsters—in his own words.
Don’t cultivate connections;
Don’t visit people;
Don’t give dinners or gifts;
Don’t invite people to operas or films;
Don’t have photographs taken with people.
Josip Broz Tito to Josef Stalin, 1948
The letter that terrified the most terrifying leader of modern times. When a schism grows between the Communist allies—the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia—Soviet leader Stalin expects the smaller country to bow before his power. Instead, the Yugoslav president Marshal Tito defies Stalin, who is incensed. He sends assassins to murder Tito, but they repeatedly fail. Finally the Yugoslavian sends this note to Stalin, who supposedly kept it with a few other special letters in his personal safe where it was found after his death. It worked. Stalin stopped sending assassins.
Stop sending people to kill me! We’ve already captured five of them one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle….If you don’t stop sending killers, I’ll send a very fast working one to Moscow and I certainly won’t have to send another.
Destruction
Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg to Count Leopold Berchtold, 6 July 1914
This is the letter that launches the slaughter of the First World War. Reading its mannered language from the age of emperors and courts, it is hard to grasp the killing machine that it unleashed. Germany deserves blame, but Austria, Serbia, and Russia also share that responsibility. On 28 June 1914, Serbian terrorists, secretly backed by the Serbian government, kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. In retaliation, Austria wishes to destroy Serbia, but the latter is backed by Russia, and Russia is backed France—and they are both backed by Britain. Many Austrian and German potentates believe that war would deliver the best chance to defeat Russia, but Austria cannot risk it without the support of its more powerful German ally. Austrian Foreign Secretary Leopold Berchtold agrees with his master Emperor Franz Josef that Serbian destruction is essential.
On 5 July, Berchtold sends his chief of staff Count Alexander von Hoyos to Berlin to get German backing. At lunch with the German kaiser Wilhelm II, the Austrian ambassador delivers Franz Josef’s letter that argues “the attack on my poor nephew” was “no longer an affair at Sarajevo of the single bloody deed of an individual but a well-organized conspiracy of which the threads lead to Belgrade.” The kaiser promises Germany’s “faithful support” even if Russia intervenes, a policy confirmed by his chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, in this letter: the early paragraphs concern Austria’s wish to move away from Romania (ruled by a king closely related to the German kaiser) but the last two lines are decisive—the so-called Blank Check. The Germans grossly underestimate the Russian determination to defend Serbia, the French and British determination to back the Russians, and finally the British determination to back their French and Russian allies. By the time the Germans realize the scale of their miscalculation, it is too late. The war, which began on 28 July, would kill around 16 million people.
CONFIDENTIAL—FOR YOUR EXCELLENCY’S PERSONAL INFORMATION AND GUIDANCE
BERLIN 6 JULY 1914
The Austro-Hungarian Ambassador yesterday delivered to the Emperor a confidential personal letter from the Emperor Francis Joseph, which depicts the present situation from the Austro-Hungarian point of view, and describes the measures which Vienna has in view….
I replied to Count Szagyeny today on behalf of His Majesty that His Majesty sends his thanks to the Emperor Francis Joseph for his letter and would soon answer it personally.
In the meantime His Majesty desires to say that he is not blind to the danger which threatens Austria-Hungary and thus the Triple Alliance as a result of the Russian and Serbian Pan-Slavic agitation.
Even though His Majesty is known to feel no unqualified confidence in Bulgaria and her ruler, and naturally inclines more toward our old ally Romania and her Hohenzollern prince, yet he quite understands that the Emperor Francis Joseph, in view of the attitude of Romania and of the danger of a new Balkan alliance aimed directly at the Danube Monarchy, is anxious to bring about an understanding between Bulgaria and the Triple Alliance.
…
His Majesty will, furthermore, make an effort at Bucharest, according to the wishes of the Emperor Francis Joseph, to influence King Carol to the fulfilment of the duties of his alliance, to the renunciation of Serbia, and to the suppression of the Romanian agitations directed against Austria-Hungary.
Finally, as far as concerns Serbia, His Majesty, of course, cannot interfere in the dispute now going on between Austria-Hungary and that country, as it is a matter not within his competence.
The Emperor Francis Joseph may, however, rest assured that His Majesty will faithfully stand by Austria-Hungary, as is required by the obligations of his alliance and of his ancient friendship.
Bethmann-Hollweg
Harry Truman to Irv Kupcinet, 5 August 1963
President Harry Truman ordered the use of America’s new nuclear bombs to accelerate the end of the war against Japan. On 6 and 9 August 1945, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki—causing a vast loss of life—successfully forced Japan to sue for peace. They also heralded the start of a new and terrifying era of nuclear prol
iferation, intensifying in the twenty-first century as less stable states such as Pakistan and North Korea become nuclear powers. Never has the fear of nuclear apocalypse been so real. That makes this letter by the retired president feel very relevant. The then seventy-nine-year-old Truman, living in retirement in Missouri, writes to the columnist Irv “Kup” Kupcinet, who has published an article supporting his actions in the Chicago Sun-Times. The letter reveals the matter-of-fact, no-nonsense style of the unpretentious ex-haberdasher who, as president, kept a sign on his desk that read: THE BUCK STOPS HERE.
Dear Kup:
I appreciated most highly your column of July 30th, a copy of which you sent me.
I have been rather careful not to comment on the articles that have been written on the dropping of the bomb for the simple reason that the dropping of the bomb was completely and thoroughly explained in my Memoirs, and it was done to save 125,000 youngsters on the American side and 125,000 on the Japanese side from getting killed and that is what it did. It probably also saved a half million youngsters on both sides from being maimed for life.
You must always remember that people forget, as you said in your column, that the bombing of Pearl Harbor was done while we were at peace with Japan and trying our best to negotiate a treaty with them. All you have to do is to go out and stand on the keel of the Battleship in Pearl Harbor with the 3,000 youngsters underneath it who had no chance whatever of saving their lives. That is true of two or three other battleships that were sunk in Pearl Harbor. Altogether, there were between 3,000 and 6,000 youngsters killed at that time without any declaration of war. It was plain murder.
Written in History Page 11
