WWII Japanese Paper-Balloon Attacks: Part 2B

      By 1944, Japan had already sent several weather balloons towards North America. These initial balloons contained radio transmitters and weather equipment designed to record and send back real time weather information to Japan. Although the Americans did not know it at the time, these balloons had traveled more than 2,000 miles before they quit transmitting and then miraculously continued the next four thousand miles to the North American mainland. 

 

      Since weather gathering equipment was well known by military intelligence during WWII, the Japanese balloons were looked at more as a curiosity than as any important military event. However, that began to change after November 4,1944 when a rubberized silk balloon reached Fourth Air Force. Located just north of San Francisco, California, the Fourth Air Force was in charge of the defense of the West Coast. Even though the balloon was thought to have been Japanese, military intelligence probably rightly assumed it was just another weather balloon released by a Japanese submarine somewhere in the Pacific, but near the West Coast. However, in December, Fourth Air Force began taking the balloons more of a threat as reports started coming in from the Western Defense Command. 

 

     On December 6, 1944, reports from ranchers in and around Wyoming of unexplained explosions forced Fourth Air to look for explanations and for some kind of proof that what the farmers and rancher heard, was real. The proof came on December 19,1944 with the discovery of a bomb crater near Thermopiles, Wyoming. The investigation was turned over to Army and Navy military intelligence who found the first evidence of Japanese paper balloons causing the explosions on December 31,1944 when another balloon was discovered, this one in the state of Oregon. 

 

     The balloon in Oregon had also detonated, but instead of disintegrating and destroying all evidence, as in Wyoming, this Oregon crater contained pieces of both the balloon and parts of the Japanese high-explosives. Within the next two weeks, four more balloon bombs were discovered and analyzed. Military Intelligence concluded the balloons were the first wave of a new Japanese offensive weapon. The Fourth Air Force then notified the War Department of the new Japanese attacks. Within hours, on January 4,1945, George C. Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff made the Western Defense Command coordinator for all balloon intelligence activities. 

 

     Twenty-five officers of the U.S. Army and Navy began investigating every reported unexplained explosion in North America, including those in Canada and in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. While gathering information about the balloons proved difficult, early reports indicated the balloons were dropping either incendiary or antipersonnel bombs, or both. Even so, other more hideous reports indicated the Japanese were in the process of developing bacteriological and chemical warfare bombs, and some reports indicate the War Department felt it likely that as the Japanese lost islands in the Pacific, the Japanese would likely use the balloons to carry biologic and chemicals into North America. Obviously, the War Department concluded, something needed to be done about free floating Japanese paper balloons that had the potential of setting huge expanses of Western timberland on fire. Therefore, the Western Defense Command created two military projects, Firefly and Lightning, to defend against the invisible balloon threat.  

 

     Project Firefly used aircraft and almost three thousand troops stationed at critical junctions throughout Western America to fight potential forest fires that might otherwise affect America’s ability to continue fighting the war. While Firefly addressed known hazards, the Lightning Project quietly advised agricultural officers, veterinarians, and farmers to be on the lookout for unexplained or strange diseases in livestock and crops, and to report them immediately. Furthermore, the Army then sent decontamination chemicals and sprays to strategic points in the Western States. Along with the reactive projects, the Army and Navy also attempted to intercept the balloons before they reached North America.

  

     Throughout much of 1945, the Army and Navy dispatched more than 500 aircraft to search for reported balloons. Although defense of North America was paramount, collecting and analyzing the balloons was also important. Therefore, a new kind of ammunition, called “headlight tracer” aloud the balloons to be shot down without destroying them. However, only two balloons were ever shot down, one with conventional ammunition destroyed a ballon in Nevada while the other was safely brought down in California. Other balloons were found in the Aleutians and in Canada. In one case, a slow moving unarmed USN aircraft brought down a balloon using nothing more than its prop wash as it repeatedly flew by the balloon. 

  

      By April, Navy Aircraft spotted a large number of balloons and on April 13, shot down nine balloons flying between 30,000 and 37,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean. Although that one day was an exceptional day, it also demonstrates how difficult it was to find balloons on any other day. Weather, inaccurate spotters, and high altitudes made intercepting balloons very difficult even for the best pilots. Furthermore, even the best new RADAR techniques proved ineffective at locating the balloons at virtually any altitude. About the only thing that seemed to be certain was where the balloons came from. 

  

     After several balloons surfaced without blowing up, the Army successfully disarmed the balloons and began an in-depth analysis. While the balloons were obviously Japanese in origin, the question became, where were they constructed and launched? Early thoughts were that they were possibly being launched from Japanese midget submarines, however, that theory was discarded after America began reading the new Japanese naval codes. The next theory was that the Japanese were using ships or possibly an island near America to launch the balloons, but that too proved wrong. Eventually, ballast sand was sent to a geologist in Canada who analyzed microscopic features of the sand. He determined the sand came from a specific beach in Japan. On May 25, 1945, aerial photographs taken along the beach near Sendai, Japan, showed what looked like partially inflated balloons, railways, taxiways, and what looked like heavily defended positions that otherwise had no other reasonable explanation. Although the launching pads had been found, there was no immediate plan to destroy them. However, although no one in the US or Canada knew it at the time, it really did not matter that the location was known because by late April, 1945, the Japanese paper-balloon offensive was over; the highest level Japanese military officials ended the project without converting the balloons to either biological or chemical weapons. 

  

     Part three of this series will discuss the successes and failures of the Japanese attacks from both the Japanese and the US and Canada points of view. Although we touched upon the worst case scenarios in this chapter, part four will revisit the worst case scenarios to set the stage for part five of this series, examining what might happen if similar balloon attacks would take place today. 

WWII: Terror From The Sky: Part Two "A"

Many military historians believe the Japanese Balloon attacks on North America was their military response to General Doolittle's 1942 Tokyo Raid. The Doolittle raid enraged the Japanese military command, and they searched for ways to reciprocate the feeling of vulnerability they felt as the Doolittle bombers dropped their ordinance. The Japanese military learned about the high altitude winds while sending balloons across China. They also knew about early balloon tests being done by the British. Both the Japanese and the British used the first balloons for propaganda delivery. Unfortunately for the British, early British balloons wandered into Sweden and Switzerland airspace before dropping the leaflets asking the finders to surrender. It was unfortunate because both Sweden and Switzerland were neutral at the time, and the entire incident became a British embarrassment. 

By 1943, the Japanese were concerned about creating their own international incidents; not with the Swedes or Swiss, but with the Russians. The Japanese had signed a nonaggression pact with the Russians at the start of the war, and although the Russians were now defending themselves against Hitler's "Operation Barbarossa," the Japanese did not want to encourage their own two front war by angering the Russians with balloons accidentally dropping munitions or propaganda on Eastern Russia. 

By 1942, the Japanese had a pretty good understanding about the Jet Stream and how it functioned throughout the year, and how it moved. By 1944, the Japanese had determined not only when the optimum time of year would be to launch the balloons, but also the best balloon size. Too small a balloon would never reach the 30-40 thousand feet in the stratosphere needed. Too large a balloon would take too many resources to make any large scale attack possible. In the end, Japanese scientists discovered a 61 foot balloon would be perfect for the trip. However, there were other problems.

During the day, the energy of the sun heats up balloons so that the balloon becomes more buoyant and floats higher into the sky. At night, the balloon cools and sinks. If it sank below approximately 28,000 feet, the balloon would leave the jet stream, slow its passage across the Pacific Ocean to the point it could not reach landfall before dropping its explosives. Consequently, the Japanese faced some extreme difficulties to overcome if they wanted the project to succeed. But these were the only problems. 

At first, the Japanese tried making their sixty-one foot Japanese balloon out of rubber. However, the rubber version had several problems: It took too long to rise to the required hight. Once it did make it to the correct altitude, the rubber had a tendency to leak. Last, the weight of the rubber cut down the weight of payload the ballon could carry. Consequently, the Japanese looked for other suitable materials to use to make their balloons.  Therefore, after much trial and error, the Japanese military planners settled on using paper, and the Japanese Paper Balloons were created. 

Now it should be pointed out that the Japanese Paper Balloons were covered in a resin, and the huge structures were glued together using a paste made of potatoes. Since the Japanese had plenty of paper and potato products, it made the overall cost of the balloons fairly cheap to produce. Eventually, the problem became how to manufacture the balloons, not what the balloons should be made of. The other problem was how to keep the balloon within the magic height needed to stay in the Jet Stream during the four days and nights needed to make the trip.  Finally, the Japanese came up with an ingenious solution to the problems.

Using a series of solenoids, altimeters, sandbags, and miniature explosives, and a large baffle, the Japanese managed to get their balloons to bob up and down through the Jet Stream no matter if it was day or night. As the balloon went up in height during the day, when the sun heated the gas inside the balloon, the altimeter released helium from the base of the balloon so it would not go to high. At night, as the gasses cooled, the balloon sank. When it reached approximately 28,000 feet, the altimeter fired off a small explosive that released a sandbag that acted as ballast. The balloon then ascended back into the Jet Stream and the balloon continued on its merry way. 

Japanese teenage girls built the paper balloons. Using their bare hands and silk gloves, they lovingly created the balloon's envelope. Other girls glued the panels, and still others looked for leaks. The balloon was then pressurized and checked for leaks. If no leaks were found, the balloon was put into service. If a leak was found, the young girls cried in shame and the leaks were fixed. The Japanese girls thought they were doing something important and honorable. It was not until the end of the war that they learned the truth. By then, their shame was complete. The girls and the Japanese people never learned during the war of the attack on Hawaii. Instead, they believed the Americans were the aggressors. Consequently, they worked very hard to do their part for the war. 

In all, those Japanese girls made 9,200 balloons before the project was cancelled. Of those balloons, most experts believe about ten percent, or 920, made a successful four day journey across Pacific to land on the North America. Of the 920, only 268 balloons were ever located. The Balloons were found in the Western half of the United States, Canada, and Alaska. Some historians and military personal believe the missing six hundred balloons may continue to pose a danger to people because most of the balloons had a payload of about 45 pounds of explosives including at least one incendiary bomb. 

in the Spring of 1945, a family took a trip into the mountains for a picnic. While there, the father of the family was parking the car as his wife and their five children walked to the picnic area. In the bushes, one of the children spotted something strange and went into the bushes for a closer look. He called for his mother. She and the other four children went up for a closer look too. As the father, a pastor at the local church pulled his car around, he heard and saw an explosion. Running to his wife and children, he found a crater and pieces of his family.  Onlookers agreed, there was nothing to be done except attempt to save one of the children by getting her to the closest hospital. 

Five days later, a mass funeral was held for the wife and five children. The pastor was not there. He was too grief stricken and was hospitalized for the trauma. As of this writing, they are the only known members to have died directly from any Japanese attack. However, experts warn that other balloons may continue to pose a risk to anyone accidentally stumbling across a balloon because the explosives may be truly unstable. Furthermore, if any of the balloons do exist, and they explode during the dry season, massive forest fires might erupt, precisely the what the Japanese military had hoped would happen when they released the balloons in 1944 and 45. 

This was a very short historical overview of the Japanese Paper Balloons. For further information, I suggest you review the following documents:

Robert C. Mikesh, Japan's World War II Balloon Bom Attacks on North America, (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 1972). 

Robert Webber, Silent Siege -- III: Japanese Attacks on North America in World War II -- Ships Sunk, Air Raids, Bombs Dropped, Civilians Killed, (Webb Research Group, Medford, Oregon, 1992).

Also available are two videos:

"The Japanese Paper Balloon Bomb," United States National Archives, ARC: 13084. This is original video of a real Japanese paper balloon bomb and how it worked, filmed during the war in 1945. It shows all the parts and how they worked together to keep the balloon aloft.  It is the military training film from the Department of Defense and can be ordered from WWW.acrchives.gov.

Michael White's, "On a Wind and a Prayer: The true story of the Japanese Balloon Bomb attacks on North America during World War II." Released in 2005 on Michael White Films and distributed by PBS, the DVD runs approximately 60 minutes and is a more modern look back at the balloon attacks and uses interviews with several historians and military experts to take a fresh look at the attacks from both the American and Japanese sides of the war. Filmed in color and using special effects, the video does a great job of making the balloon attacks accessible for the average lay person who knows little about the attacks. 

While the documents mentioned above give a very good overview of the attack, they also explain in great detail why the US and Canada military was so concerned about them. Additionally, with the exception of the archival footage, they also discuss a greater fear, the use of chemical and biological agents by way of balloon attack. 

By 1945, the Japanese were firmly on the defensive. The US military was getting closer and closer to the main Japanese islands, and US and Canada Intelligence Operations were convinced the Japanese would use whatever they could to extend the war, including that of biological and chemical agents. What the US and Canada military tried to do about it, is the subject of the next blog. 

WWII: Terrorism From The Sky? (Part 1)

WWII: Terrorism From The Sky?  (Part One)

In the winter and spring of 1944-45, the Japanese military sent 9,200 paper balloons to bomb North America. The best historical evidence guesses state approximately ten percent, or 920 made it across the Pacific Ocean and onto North America. However, according to United States National Archive records, only 268 balloon incidents were recorded, leaving more than six hundred balloons unaccounted. Historians familiar with the attack, however, now call the attacks the only intercontinental ballistic missile attack ever on North America,  in the time of war. Additionally, they state those six hundred unaccounted for balloons may continue to pose a risk to anyone unfortunate enough to find them. Each balloon was loaded with approximately 45 pounds of explosives. Because they would now be very unstable, they continue to be dangerous, and may still explode, and would either kill the people who find them, or may start fires in dry areas. Furthermore, no one knows how many of the balloons continue to pose a risk. However, it is likely the balloons, if they really do exist, are probably in very difficult terrain to transverse, making it less likely very many people would be injured by any potential blast. Last, while it is  likely few major problems would happen from any of the unaccounted for balloons, it is also just as likely educated terrorists have heard the story and  may attempt to duplicate the Japanese military efforts some time in the near future. 

Since the 1960s, many terrorist events have taken place. Although it is impossible to say with any certainty, it seems likely that many terrorist attacks had their planning roots in historical events. Many terror leaders are educated individuals. During their education, many became professionals in their fields of studies. Furthermore, even the most scientific fields require history lessons. Since many terrorist are well read, it is also likely that the terror planners probably develop their plans based on historical records. For example, while no one knows for certain where the idea for the September 11, 2001 came from, it seems likely that someone planning that event probably knew about the bomber that flew into the side of the Empire State Building near the end of WWII. To give you a better understanding of why that event is important to understand, here is a short overview of what happened:

On July 28, 1945, the United States Army-Air Corps B-25 Bomber, “Old John Feather Merchant,” flying from New Bedford, Mass., to LaGuardia Airport in New York, through heavy fog, was diverted to Newark Airport because of that heavy fog. Instead, the aircraft accidentally crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building when the pilots tried to avoid hitting the Chrysler Building. The aircraft fuel then exploded and caused a fire that burned everything to the 75th floor. The plane itself was destroyed, with the force of the impact so great that one engine smashed all the way through the building and ended up in the penthouse of the building across the street. Investigators found small parts of the aircraft in and on top of other nearby buildings. To give you a better understanding of the forces involved, one only needs to look at the famous records of the Guinness Book of World Records, which claimed one woman has the world record for surviving an elevator fall of seventy-five stories when the second engine of the B-25 snapped the elevator cable for the car she had been riding in. According to the notes, once the cable snapped, the elevator car went into a free fall until the automatic breaks kicked in. Then the engine fell down the shaft and landed on top of the elevator car. Even so, the woman survived and was eventually pulled from the wreckage by rescuers. Although she was lucky, some did not  survive. In the end, fourteen people died: three in the aircraft, and eleven more who worked for the War Relief Services department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference. The accident also caused about a million dollars in damage to the Empire State Building. 

Although this aircraft accident was a historical event, Tom Clancy wrote about a fictional attack on the White House several years before 9-11 too. Could Clancy’s writings also have been the catalyst for the September 11 attacks? No one knows for sure, but it seems likely that either the historical event or fictional event may have led to the 9-11 attacks. If so, this example of the WWII Japanese balloon attacks on U.S. and Canada soils may provide a useful historical guide for anyone attempting to predict future attacks by anyone who knows the historical record.

Part Two of “Terror From The Sky: Balloons” will give a short history of the Japanese Balloon Attacks and the North America military response to the balloons. 

Part Three will discuss the successes and failures of the Japanese attacks from both the Japanese and the US and Canada points of view. 

Part Four will address the worst case scenarios which includes germ warfare, and explains why the US and Canada WWII military intelligence organizations were so nervous about the Japanese balloon attacks and why they pressed so hard to keep the American Free Press from reporting the story.

Part Five will examine what might happen if new attacks takes place on American soil today and examines the questions raised by the previous posts.

A critical response to: Bruce L. Benson’s, "Enterprise of Customary Law"

          Although Bruce L. Benson’s, Enterprise of Customary Law was an informative paper full of useful information, it failed to address several key issues concerning mercantile law. For example, by conveniently omitting the role of religion in mercantile law, Benson missed an important lynchpin that should have been addressed. Additionally, by completely ignoring the banking and mercantile roles of both the Catholic and Jewish religions, Benson then missed the opportunity to better discuss how and why middlemen developed. Instead, Benson restated the over simplified thesis that middle men developed because extreme distances meant it was unlikely buyers and sellers would meet in person, and therefore would never develop lasting and trusting relationships. However, that oversimplification ignores the relationship between the Christian and Jewish faiths and the role of the government. Additionally, by ignoring those relationships, Benson failed to show how that relationship not only changed over time, and how it directly led to the demonizing of the Jewish people. 

Benson could have addressed that demonizing issue quite easily by stating the basic premiss of exchange was an exchange where both parties expected something of more value than what was given up, Benson stated those distances made exchanges more difficult. While true, the argument completely ignores the question of why middle men should spring up at all? Christian laws made lending money at a profit illegal. However, the laws were circumvented by merchants and others using Jewish merchants and bankers. 

Benson’s text only coved the first two chapters of his book, and for al I know, Benson could have ultimately addressed the issue later, but by failing to make mention the role religion played in the mercantile industry during the first two chapters, not only did Benson miss an important opportunity to discuss the Jewish question, but also the opportunity to show how the mercantile exchanges of Church medallions ultimately bifurcated the Church, while simultaneously causing the Jewish people to be seen as evil within the Christian and Muslim worlds, ultimately leading to the many atrocities against the Jewish people. 

However that was not the only historical issue Benson also failed to make note of. In his treatment of England, Benson failed to recognize the mercantile role in the war between Spain’s Philip II, and Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen of England. By completely failing to show how merchants in the latter half of the sixteenth century not only led to the destruction of the Spanish Armada, and ultimately led to the emergence of England as an important naval power and mercantile trader; Benson failed to adequately explain how both changed the world outside Europe. 

In conclusion, Benson claimed Merchant Law “evolved into a universal legal system through a process of natural selection.” Although he correctly stated merchants transacted business across international boundaries, however, without also examining the roles of both the Church and State, Benson’s first two chapters failed to make use of helpful and important discussions that should have been addressed. Instead, Benson chose to keep the discussion secular. While can be good from a scientific review, from a historical perspective it weakened his overall conclusion because, as demonstrated by Philip II, who declared bankruptcy several times while Elizabeth I did not, merchants supported Elizabeth I and simultaneously turned their collective backs on Philip II. Therefore, by not addressing the historical significances that change the world, Benson missed opportunities he should have exploited. 

WWII Code Breakers: The Unsung Heroes of Bletchley Park

It began with the Poles. Polish Codebreakers began breaking the German unbreakable enigma codes by December 1932. According to official histories at Bletchley Park, the three Polish mathematicians who first broke the German military Enigma codes over that 1932 Christmas, continued to break the codes until as late as 1938, when the Germans changed the number of coded wheels on their Enigma machines. When that happened, the three Polish mathematicians knew they did not have the amount of resources needed to overcome the mathematical obstacles. So by July, 1939, the Poles decided to quietly get information about how the German military codes to British and French codebreakers. With the British and French codebreakers in Warsaw, the Poles explained their techniques of how to overcome the Enigma machines. 

They also explained what they knew about the current German Enigma machine and gave their counterparts sheets of paper, called Zygalski sheets, that worked like mathematical cheat sheets, designed to force a solution for every setting of the Enigma machine. The Poles explained, using the Zygalski sheets,  given enough time and numbers of people running the equations, every German code could eventually be broken. However the problem was that given the way the Zygalski sheets were set up, it could take years of work just to break one code of the new German Enigma machines. 

Then, after Warsaw fell to the Germans in 1939, the Polish mathematicians managed to flee to Chateau de Vignolles, near Paris. They continued their work and sent copies of Zygalski sheets to British hands. Alan Turing took the sheets to a private home, about an hour by train from the outskirts of London, called Bletchley Park. From there, he quietly gathered some of the most brilliant minds available. They join him there and worked the problem of how to break the new Enigma machine codes. Unfortunately, just as progress was being made,  the Germans made a major change to the Enigma machine on May 1,1941. The new changes rendered the Zygalski sheet method of breaking the German codes completely useless. The new enigma machines had added two extra wheels and extra plug-ins too. Now the cheat sheets were worthless because instead of tens of thousands of combinations, there were now tens of millions of combinations.

The the Germans took Paris. Once again, the Polish mathematicians escaped, this time to the south of France. However, as the Germans took over France, the Poles had no choice. They ultimately reached London in August 1943, long after the Americans joined in the fight to defeat Germany and the Polish help was no longer needed or wanted for security reasons. 

Seeds of the UK and US relationship germinated at Bletchley Park almost a year before the US officially entered the war in December, 1941. In February of 1941, the Americans brought a “Purple” machine to Bletchley Park. The “Purple” machine was specifically used to break the Japanese diplomatic messages and it was hoped the machine would also be useful in breaking the German codes. (Note: Many conspiracy theorists claimed over the years that this “Purple” machine had broken the Japanese diplomatic and military codes in plenty of time to warn the Generals and Admirals in the Pacific of the impending Japanese attacks. This included military in Hawaii, but conspiracy theorists claim President F.D Roosevelt intentionally held the information back to allow the Japanese to attack. They state FDR did this so the American people would be outraged and want to go to war against Japan and the Germans. Of course, military historians have disproven the accusations enough times that the matter should be put to rest, but every so often someone else comes along to muddy the waters again. Consequently, I will not address these conspiracy theories in this short history, other to say the historical record proves these charges are unfounded.)

While the “Purple” machine did help the Bletchley Park wizards figure out how to break the Japanese codes, major advances did not take place until 1943 because it was not until then that the two important machines had been built and were being used successfully. The first was called the “Turing Bombe.” 

These six machines, called Bombe’s, looked like upright pianos with wheels turning and whirling than any great new code breaking machines, but in reality each Bombe contained twelve to twenty-four Enigma machines that automatically and systematically tried every one of the wheel combinations that the German military could use for their Enigma machines. Although the machines were very fast, there were literally thousands, and later millions of possible combinations for each of the messages the Germans sent, so that meant it might take up to six or seven hours just to figure out the correct wheel combination for just one important message. However, the Bletchley Park wizards did have several things in their favor. 

The first was that the Enigma machines were set up every month on the first day of the month, and the Germans never used the same set up twice. Second, the Germans always used the same format for their messages. This meant German messages for one unit always started out with the time, then the weather and so on. However, not every unit used the same format for their messages. Therefore, once the format was recognized for each military unit, then the messages could be deciphered using scientific guesses which sometimes worked out, but more often did not. For many months, it meant Bletchley Park had some messages it was able to break, but other times they struggled for any messages they could break.

However all that soon changed. The biggest break in 1943 occurred when a German code sender accidentally sent out the same message twice, using two different wheel combinations on the machine. He sent the message out in the clear, or uncoded, the first time, and then realized his mistake and sent the message a second time correctly encoded on the machine. When he did that, the Bletchley Park wizards broke the code, using the first message as a crib. With the crib, the code breakers knew at once how the wheels would then be changed every day until the end of the month. The result was spectacular for British Intelligence, for that month anyway. 

Additionally, about that time, British and American Naval forces had made their own important scores. It turns out that German Submarine commanders were required to make position checks. They sent the position checks using their own Enigma machines. However, on several occasions, British and American ships had “special information” telling them where to find the waiting submarines. Instead, the UK and US Navies were waiting for the German subs to surface. When they did, the navies successfully forced the German Subs to surface. Once surfaced, the Marines got on board the submarines and secure Enigma machines and the code books telling the German operators how to change the wheels every day for three to four months ahead of time. The naval attacks were daring and dangerous, but successfully managed to snare enough intelligence from the submarines to keep Bletchley Park breaking codes until well into 1944. 

In the autumn of 1943, despite the huge numbers of US codebreakers needed to break Japanese military codes in the US, the US managed to send three companies of US Army Signal Security Agency forces to the UK. One company was set to Y Station at Bexley, with the other two companies, including over 200 staff with two women, to Bletchley Park. At first the Americans were looked at by the British as a curiosity, but after the Americans began proving themselves, the British soon accepted the Americans as their equals. By then, Bletchley Park had almost 20,000 people working in the compound. The codebreakers were forced to find housing wherever they could in the surrounding villages. Only one family lived in Bletchley Park, and that was the family of the man who was head of security. 

By 1944, as additional military and civilian personnel arrived at Bletchley Park, it became harder to keep everything hush-hush. However, because the codebreakers, intelligence staff, and the linguists knew better than to ask any questions or to answer any questions, security remained so tight that one female driver, who had transported people to and from the area villages said she did not know who she was driving, or what  was done in Bletchley Park during the war, until 1972 when the first book about the Enigma and Bletchley Park was released! Even then, the security remained so tight that it took the Queen’s signature to allow the book’s publication.

The buildings, known as huts, were numbered and positioned so that no one had any idea what was going on in the other huts. Everything was on a need to know basis. For example hut eight was where the German linguists translated the broken codes from German to English, but they had no idea how Bletchley Park broke the German codes. Nor did they know what happened to the messages after they translated them. Instead, all they knew was that there was a little window between their hut and the hut next door. The window had a board and a box connected by some ropes along with a bell. When the message was decoded and then translated, they put the message in the box, rang the bell and it disappeared into the next building. Where it went, the linguists had no idea. All they knew for sure was that they were making a difference.

Where it went depended on what the message was. In 1943, for example, the British and Americans were fighting the Germans in North Africa. In North Africa,  armies fought and died on petrol. This was important because the German transported petroleum from Italy to North Africa by ships. However, they also transported blankets, food, and supplies for Allied POWs. Allied Command knew it was important to sink the ships with fuel, but not the ships with food and blankets for POWs. However, they also knew they could not just sink the ships with German military supplies like ammunition and petrol because the Germans would get wise about it in a hurry and would probably then change their codes making the Bletchley Park effort worthless. Luckily for the British, the Germans allowed the Italians to set up the ship transportation and Italian communication skills were not nearly as regimented as the Germans would have liked. Consequently, as their harbor pilots navigated ships out of their harbors, their radio communications were intercepted and retransmitted to Bletchley Park, where the code breakers quickly broke the Italian codes. Then, to cover up the fact that the British had broken the coded messages, the ships would be “spotted” by allied aircraft in the area. The German captains would then radio in they had been “spotted” and minutes later, as they were trying to race to the protection of the North African ports, British or American fighters and bombers would attack the specified ships that carried weapons, fuel, and ammunition. Ships carrying POW supplies would not be spotted  by Allied aircraft, and the majority of those ships carrying the POW supplies would make it safely across the Mediterranean Sea. The same thing happened with the broken German codes. If valuable targets were found in the broken German codes, cover stories, including fictitious spies and double agents, were created to convince the Germans they had been betrayed by people, not their own codes.

However, in 1943, the biggest secret was yet to be exposed. This secret was so secret that it was not ultimately exposed to the world until 1983! Its name? Colossus.

No matter what IBM and Bill Gates may claim, Colossus was the world’s first fully programable electronic computer. Built at the Post Office research department at Dollis Hill and named after the cartoonist designer of fantastic machines, Heath Robinson, it was slow and unreliable, but its design was good enough to prove the idea. Tommy Flowers, a brilliant Post Office Electronics Engineer used the idea and then built Colossus. 

Colossus used telephone switchers and radio tubes. It arrived at Bletchley Park in December 1943, just in time to break the new German “Lorenz” code. Lorenz no longer used dits and dots. Instead, it used teletype machines for communications and the old style computations were again worthless. Instead, because Colossus could read paper tape at 5,000 characters per second on wheels that traveled at 30 miles an hour, its computer capabilities meant it could also break codes in hours, that had originally taken weeks or months. On average, Colossus was so fast that it was able to break the new German Lorenz codes in six hours or less. 

As fast as the first generation of Colossus was, it was upgraded and replaced in early June 1944, just in time for Eisenhower to make his decision for the D-Day invasion on June 4,1944. The replacement, called the Mark II Colossus, proved Hitler and his General Staff had swallowed the deceptions orchestrated for them that Patton would attack land his army in the northern France. Instead, as the world now knows, it was Montgomery who led the invasion in an area to the south, known as Normandy. 

Eventually ten Colossus computers were made and used during WWII. However, Colossus remained a secret until 1986. As it turns out, Colossus was breaking codes long after WWII was over and was reading Soviet Union diplomatic codes until 1968, when it was replaced with then faster “supercomputers.” 

In 1968, ten Colossus Mark II’s were dismantled and destroyed because neither the UK or US could allow the Soviet Union to know its codes were vulnerable to Western attack. Consequently, all that remained after 1968 was one set of secret prints which detailed some of how Colossus was constructed. Even so, much of the information was lost forever. 

However, in July, 2011, the Queen and King of England visited Bletchley Park. While there, they Colossus and its rebuilder, Tony Sales. It took Tony Sales eighteen years with the help of hundreds of graduate students. The now retired and knighted computer genus, Tony Sales now is the curator of the computer museum that houses Colossus. It is a working display in its original Bletchley Park home, and open to the public.

Bletchley Park is also open to the general public for guided and unguided tours. It was here that the codes were broken. Many of the buildings are run down and falling down, but the excitement is still there for anyone looking to see for themselves where the brilliant mathematical minds went in the UK during WWII. The Polish mathematicians have not been forgotten either. In one end of a courtyard is a Polish monument. Next to it are the names of the three men that helped jumpstart the decryption techniques needed to break the German Enigma codes. 

So what would have happened had the codes not been broken? Would the war have been lost? Most likely, no. However, historians calculate that if the codes had not been broken, the war probably would have lasted another two years and a half. In that time, Hitler’s scientists might have succeeded in building jet aircraft, better rockets, and even a crude atomic weapon or two. Furthermore, in two an a half years of total warfare, no one knows what might have happened. 

Even so, the people of Bletchley Park were heros that need to be remembered. Their efforts saved untold lives and considerably shortened the war. Well Done. 

Globalization and Economic Interdependency

          Ever increasing globalization and economic interdependence will not lead to a safer world so long as shortages of goods and services remain. Even so, some modern political theorists believe that the end of the Cold War and recent trends towards globalization - i.e. growing international economic interdependence and reliance on international organizations - will make traditional instruments of power, such as military force, alliances, espionage, propaganda, and economic and diplomatic pressure, less important in international relations. These modern political base this idea on Montesquieu’s original argument that commercial republicanism can be a key tool to overcome expansionistic foreign policies. 

While some, like Walzer and Montesquieu thought humankind could somehow end conflict using commercialism and moral behavior and thus stop being reliant on the traditional instruments of power, other political thinkers like Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Kaplan all tended to disagree, saying interdependence and international organizations are not enough to end the threat of conflicts.

For example, Hobbes stated, “...I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death”

 This referred to Hobbes belief that human happiness was dependent the attempts to gain power to offset future needs and desires. Our own United States Declaration of Independence refers to this idea with the phrase, “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

 Furthermore, if happiness were possible on its own, then the phrase preamble would be meaningless. Therefore, since state leaders are human too, then they too must also have the inclination to pursue happiness through the acquisition of power. Consequently, not having a world government makes no difference. State leaders rely on power politics to pursue their own self-interests.

Machiavelli agreed, claiming in The Prince that most leaders try to gain more power,  adding the effort to is not necessarily a moral one. However, in The Prince Machiavelli also argued that once the power was gained, “He who does not properly manage this business will soon lose what he has acquired, and whilst he does hold it he will have endless difficulties and troubles.”

 This meant that vice and cruelty may be necessary to achieve a moral end because strict moral arguments lead to war and civil conflict. In other words, morals have little place in politics. They limit the possible state responses and only states with leaders willing to use anything in its arsenal, including traditional instruments of power, will remain strong enough, and survive long enough, to end up with a moral society. 

Kaplan makes a similar argument and points out all foreign policy should be treated as a permanent form of crisis management. Furthermore, he states it is not realistic to expect relations among states to become more harmonic even as technology advances, no matter what technology is available. Instead, while technology can be used in ways to verify what other States are doing, but not explain why they are doing what they are doing. Furthermore, even knowing what other states is doing is no guarantee that a solution to a crisis can be found because Kaplan claims there are often no complete solutions to international problems “only confusion and unsatisfactory choices.”

          However, not everyone completely agrees. Walzer, for example goes even further and says states must sometimes behave in immoral ways to end up with a moral outcome. He states while Realists claim that morality does not exist, Walzer says there must be morals. Even in time of war, we discuss and debate morality in the forms of “the rules of war,”  and therefore, if there were no rules of war, then discussions and debates about morality would be unnecessary because they simply would not exist. Consequently, morals must exist. Rules and conventions of war prove that morality exists. Furthermore, if morals exist in total war, then they must also exist in times of peace. This idea led Walzer to claim as the world becomes more civilized, and governments become more interdependent, then conflicts will be decided in ever more moral ways.

           Montesquieu, advocated a different view. He stated commercial republicanism and commercial interdependence were the keys needed to overcome expansionistic foreign policies. Of course, Hitler’s role in WWII proves otherwise, but Montesquieu would have responded by stating Hitler’s early great successes left him arrogant and ungovernable, leading to his willfully attacking other states, all because his power was left uncheck by the German people.

          However, whether you agree or disagree with the great thinkers, as long people and states manage to exploit economic shortages for their own self-interests, the use of alliances, espionage, propaganda, economic and diplomatic pressures, backed by military force to preserve their self-interests will continue unabated. Furthermore, as Machiavelli pointed out, only the meek allow themselves to be dominated. Therefore, to maintain sovereignty, self-preservation demands diligence and the knowledge of what potential enemies are doing. That means so long as economic shortages exist, not even the growing interdependence and trends towards globalization will not be enough to end the reliance of states on traditional instruments of power for use in international relations.

¹ Hobbes, Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668, (editor Edwin Curley, Hackett Publishing company, Inc, Indianapolis, IN, 1994) XI, Sec 2, p. 58.

² Preamble, United States Declaration of Independence, July 4,1776.

³ Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Translated by W.K. Marriott, (Project Gutenberg) p. 73.

⁴ Robert Kaplan, Warrior Politics, (Vintage Books, 2002) pp. 12-13.

⁵ Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 4th ed (Basic Books, NY, New York, 2006). 

⁶ Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, translated and edited by Cohler, Miller, and Stone, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Mass), 11.4. pg. 154. 

How Obama’s Health Care Mimics the Gold Standard Issues of 1933.

          Many of the issues concerning America today are reminiscent of what was going on during the 1930s. For example, while both Obama and Roosevelt came into office during very bad economic times, both presidents were concerned about the welfare of the people. Additionally, both presidents tried to jumpstart the economy trying new techniques. Although both presidents seemed to fail at the time, it may be possible to see the near future by looking at the 1930s past.

Although there had been earlier attempts at organizing farmers, it was not until 1933 that farmers, then newly organized into the Holiday Farmer’s Association of 1933, that they became politically strong enough to make a national difference. Goodwyn described how and why the original groups formed and why their organization became strong enough to pressure President Roosevelt into making changes that ultimately helped move the country out of the Great Depression while making lives easier during the 1930s. 

At the time, the country was on the gold standard. Goodwyn explained how the Gold Standard worked against ordinary farmers and production workers. His simple example, starting with ten pieces of gold, and then doubling the population while simultaneously doubling the production demonstrated how, if the overall amount of available gold was also not also simultaneously doubled, the value of the produced goods then dropped by one half, thereby making it difficult turn any profits over the long term. In other words, as population and the amount of available goods grew, if the amount of available currency did not grow, the prices people paid for those goods would drop because the value of the money would continue to rise in comparison. Therefore, anyone holding onto their gold could buy even more goods over time. Without people buying things, the economy faltered and crashed.

In another example, McElvaine’s Great Depression, explained how President Roosevelt tried in vain to show to explain how a possible farming revolution might have developed as gold prices for the grains fell.  According to McElvaine, Roosevelt felt the best way to counter declining prices was by increasing the value of Gold while simultaneously devaluing soft currencies. Borrowers used soft currencies like silver to repay the loans given in the form of gold. While the process kept the economy moving, Roosevelt’s plan could not move fast enough, and was not large enough, to keep the economy solvent. Furthermore, according to McElvaine, eventually Roosevelt recognized his bankers economic advice centered on their own well being, not the producers and farmers who needed the most help. However, Goodwin had even less kind words, and took the issue a step further by stating that while Federal Government Officials recognized there would be hardships, unlike President Roosevelt, they were apathetic to the needs and issues that concerning everyday people.

Recently, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of President Obama’s Health Care plan. Conservatives have argued the plan will lead the country directly to socialism and bankrupt the economy while Liberals claim the country needs the health care plan to help the people who need it most. 

So how are Roosevelt and Obama similar? The argument over health care reminds me of the arguments about staying on or getting off the Gold Standard. People who had money and worked in banking and the government wanted to stay on the gold standard, while farmers and the poor recognized the hopelessness they would endure if the country remained on the gold standard. Today, President Obama has led the country into a future of heath care solvency. Roosevelt got the country off the Gold Standard, Obama gave the people of America the ability to become healthy. Roosevelt had the bankers, land speculators, and his own government officials fighting him. Obama had the bankers, drug reps, and the government officials fighting him. In both cases, the public was being harmed. In both cases, it took a strong president to protect the people. After all, isn’t that the role of the President of the United States?

"Does Islam play a unique role in modern religious terrorism?"

According to several websites, the total number of Muslim in the world today is close to 1.4 billion people. Additionally, there is no regimented clerical hierarchy, no councils, and no synods to provide standards of orthodoxy. So why is that a problem? It turns out only extremists have spokespeople. Therefore, without a central Muslim orthodoxy, the hundreds of millions of moderate Muslims that reject terrorism have no single unified voice to rally behind. Instead, the only Muslims that actually have a spokespeople tend to be extremists. Furthermore, that tends to create mistrust among the non-Muslim people of the world because non-Muslim people correctly wonder why the moderates refuse to refute the extremists, or at the very least, voice their anger more than they do.

According to Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review Institute, (page 101-115), Islam does play a unique role on modern terrorism. Andrew McCarthy argues that there are features unique to Islam that explain not just the current global outbreak of terrorism, but also why it is particularly vicious, complete with images of beheadings, suicide bombings, and mass-casualty attacks. McCarthy claims the spiritual importance of violent jihad and martyrdom for tens of millions of adherents of militant Islam are not well understood by the West and states this violent movement has been growing in strength for centuries; “It is not simply an outgrowth of recent policies. The threat will cease only if the worldwide Muslim community redirects itself toward moderation and tolerance." (101)

However, not everyone agrees. Fawaz A. Gerges, of the London School of Economics sees the issue differently and says, "No: Islam itself is not the problem in the current wave of global terrorism," (115-130) According to Fawaz A. Gerges, such moderation and tolerance already predominate in the Muslim worldview; most Muslims admire Western values and wish to coexist peacefully with the West. Muslims (religious or otherwise) do not detest Americans or Westerners for "who they are" but rather for "what they do" -- their specific policies, which always seem to place their interests first and the interests of Muslims last. He says, the world is not in the midst of an existential religious war, “Only a tiny minority of Muslims condone or engage in violence. If the West would endeavor to better understand the Muslim world and craft more thoughtful policies, support for militant movements would quickly dry up." (101-102).

However McCarthy responded by saying, "There seems to be an infinite variety of Muslim sects, [and] even if a small percentage are violent, the shear number of Muslims, 1.4 Billion people, makes the religious very dangerous for Muslim and non Muslim alike.” (Page 101-115) If we do the math for example, if only one percent of 1.4 billion have violent tendencies, then that leaves 14,000,000 very dangerous Muslims, if McCarthy is correct. 

Even so, Fawaz A. Gerges responds by stating it is not too late to reach out to Muslim moderates and insists Western policy makers, "Should eschew ideology in favor of a more analytical and constructive approach, one that draws distinctions between the many faces of Islamism."

So the question remains, "Does Islam play a unique role in modern religious terrorism?"

Source: Gottlieb, Stuart, ed. Debating Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Conflicting Perspectives on Causes, Contexts, and Responses. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2010. (101-130)

A Short History of US and UK Terror Laws

         The governments of both United States and United Kingdom continually write new legislation in their individual terror laws to counteract terrorists as they become more sophisticated. Therefore, any survey of terrorism and counter-terror should begin with a short history course on how and why the laws were written. Additionally, it may be useful to compare and contrast the nation’s terror laws to better understand what was originally done to combat terrorism and why the laws may need to be changed or augmented to remain current.

The United States and the United Kingdom are often seen by States and non-state actors alike as two major Western powers often collaborating on matters of national security. However, it should be noted that all peoples, since the dawn of history, have gathered into groups for protection. Eventually, those groups turned into civilizations, and those civilizations into States and eventually Nation-States. Therefore, one goal of any Nation-State is to maintain security for the protection of its people. However, unlike previous wars, since the 1960s, States have increasingly been attacked by non-state actors. Over time, these non-State groups have learned and adjusted their attacks from simple murders and bombs placed in garbage containers near populated areas to using ever more aggressive and sinister techniques, like flying jet commercial aircraft into the sides of buildings. Nation-States often refer to these non-State actors as Terrorists, while Nation-States call their fight against the terrorist, Counter-Terrorism.

After the September 11,2001 attack, the United States created a legal document called, “The Patriot Act.” Its lofty aims were simple, to create a legal document designed to give law enforcement personnel and government agencies the lawful power to investigate and prosecute individuals and groups whose goal is to harm the United States of America, whether it be its people, territories including embassies, or any other American interest. These may include places like American cemeteries located on foreign soils around the world because that is where Americans go. However, the United States was not the first Nation-State to create such a document following a major terrorist attack. 

Great Britain forged a similar document in 1974. Known as the 1974 Security Act, the UK wrote the document as retaliation for Irish Republican Army attacks in within the UK. Like the Patriot Act, the earlier 1974 Security Act worked to give UK police and military the lawful right to investigate, prosecute, and if possible, prevent future attacks, by eliminating the people responsible. Unlike the Patriot Act, which was required to pass the strict guidelines established by the United States Constitution as interpreted by the US Supreme Court, the 1974 Security Act had no such constraints because England had no written constitution. Nor did the UK have a Supreme Court to review such a law. Instead, the Parliament, as the supreme legislative body, alone decided on how the law should be written and implemented. However, that being said, it must be noted that while England does not have a written constitution that must be followed, the UK did, and does continue to follow its own set of laws in the form of presidents. By following, and building on what went before to craft future laws, the government was less likely to offend the people it was supposed to protect. This policy also moderated any government responses to any action, including terrorist attacks.

However, since 1974, terrorists have learned much from their attacks. They also learned how the government would respond to those attacks. Furthermore, the resulting attacks then forced the British government to adapt their own responses in kind. Additionally, as terrorist attacks became increasingly sophisticated, the government further lagged behind in its ability to catch terrorists before they could attack. Part of the problem was that as the terrorist become more technologically sophisticated, they also become better educated about how to manipulate the laws to make it easier to plan and execute new acts of terror. Therefore, almost by definition, the police agencies remained at a disadvantage, almost hamstrung by their own inability to lawfully pursue suspects. For that reason, and because of legal challenges to the laws, both the US Patriot Act and the UK 1974 Security Act were forced by courts and by ever changing events to undergo major changes since their inceptions. It also seems likely that these laws must continue to evolve as terrorist become increasingly sophisticated in both their attacks, and in their own subterfuge.

Church and State: A Historical Power Struggle

The 1122 Concordat of Worms settled disagreements over the practice of simony, but power struggles continued between western rulers and the papacy.  Popes and monarchs used the law, deceit, disinformation, and when all else failed, threats, violence and outright bullying to gain power. Eventually, rules of laws and presidents overcame secular encroachment of temporal government authority, but before that happened, succeeding popes attempted to use public perceptions to gain an edge. For example, Pope Leo III, understanding how imagery could be misconstrued among the masses erected a picture, thereby angering King Lother III, who said:

“It began with a picture, the picture became an inscription, the inscription seeks to become an authoritative utterance. We shall not endure it, we shall not submit to it; we shall lay down the crown before we consent to have the imperial crown and ourself thus degraded. Let the pictures be destroyed, let the inscriptions be withdrawn, that they may not remain as eternal memorials of enmity between the empire and the papacy.”

The picture in question was a mosaic erected in Lateran Palace.  The picture showed Lother III kneeling at the Pope’s feet. Its inscription claimed Lother III had received the crown from Pope Leo III, thereby implying a new precedent of Papal lordship.  Lother III insisted the picture and inscription be removed from public viewing, and after some argument, the Pope agree. Eventually, the incident was forgotten by everyone except the next king, Frederick of Barbarossa.

When Frederic became King in 1152, he vigorously resisted any attempt of papal subterfuge, even refusing the customary acts. For example, upon his first meeting with the Pope, Frederick refused to hold the Pope’s stirrup, which was customary at the time, but after twenty-four hours, his nobles convinced him the act was purely ceremonial and meant nothing.  However, when Frederick and Pope Hadrian entered Rome and the Roman Senators announced the imperial crown only laid within their terms to bestow on Frederick, Frederick broke into a bitter rant and said,

“I have come. I have made your Prince my vassal and from that time until present have transferred you to my jurisdiction. I am the lawful possessor. Let him who can, snatch the club from the hand of Hercules...”

In other words, Frederick was stating that he had conquered all the empire on his own terms, and he did not need anyone else’s permission for anything, unless of course, someone else had the will and power to take the empire from him. Of course the implications of the speech were not lost on the Pope Hadrian, but that did not stop him from attempting to circumvent the new King Frederick. Pope Hadrian sent two representatives and a letter to Frederick who had gone to the Diet of Besancon.  While translating and reading the letter, one asked rather innocently, “From whom then does he have the empire if not from our Lord the Pope?”

  The question implied Pope Hadrian had given Frederick the empire making letter ambiguous at best, deceitful at worst.  The angry Frederick ordered the papal representatives back to Rome and warned them to take the most direct route so they would have no opportunities to instill unrest within the empire.

  

King Frederick was not wrong to question the Pope Hadrian’s true intentions concerning the letter because as it turned out, Pope Hadrian had hoped the letter would be unchallenged and become a new precedent to the Pope’s claim of lordship over the empire. Furthermore, Hadrian could afford to write such an ambiguous letter because he knew that even if the letter was challenged, he could simply explain it away as a simple misunderstanding.

  

Both the Pope and the King complained bitterly about the incident to German Bishops, each tried to make a case against the other.  In the end, the German Bishops sided with Frederick. Since they did, both Barbarossa and Hadrian decided it would be prudent to adopt a more conciliatory tone.

 Therefore, while the twelfth century ended with a personal defeat for the pontiff and weakening papal authority over all the monarchs. However, things changed abruptly as Aristotle was formally reintroduced to western society.  

By the first half of the thirteenth century, new translations of Aristotle developed theories of state that made papal arguments impotent.  The newly developed theories no longer used theological premises and as early as 1202 new kingdoms of national rulers used the Aristotle arguments to stop recognizing any external superiors in temporal affairs.  Unfortunately, those kingdoms also built up bureaucracies and networks of local administrators to administer justice and finance.  And is so often the case, they also relied heavily on mercenaries to “legislate sporadically and attack systematically.” With the new powers, the monarchs mobilized national representative assemblies for whatever the kings wished to pursue and all these things cost money.

Therefore, while the church had used Papal authority to tax thus getting wealthy enough to begin interfering with secular politics, critics of the church, like Thomas Aquinas, pounced and claimed while both the spiritual and the secular had their places under god, it was up to man to determine when it was appropriate to obey either the church or the state because each was superior in its own way.

  

The Aquinas argument was not lost on the new pope. Pope Boniface VIII understood that if the Aquinas was right, and the Church and State were truly on equal footing, then the Church and its representatives were not required to obey the monarch. This made a convenient loophole to not pay taxes to the monarchs. So while Pope Innocent IV had stated Church property was to be used “so that it might come to the aid of all in need,” Pope Boniface VIII use the Aquinas argument to instruct the churches not to pay any taxes levied by any ruler unless first those taxes were first approved by the Pope.

 However Philip the Fair (IV) of France took the opposite view and stated every monarch the right to tax anyone in their reign, including the clergy. In this way, the dispute over the right to tax clergy then became an issue over national sovereignty.

In the past, monarchs imposed taxes on ecclesiastical property throughout the thirteenth century with impunity. They understood it was not necessary to ask permission from the papacy because it was understood that the taxes were to only be used to fund armies needed to fight a just war. Normally just wars were defined as any war in which a Christian monarch was fighting a non-Christian nation to bring that nation under Christian leadership. Doing so, it was argued would then enrich the Church even more because there would then be more Christians to pay taxes and tithes to the Church. However, when two Christian Nations fought each other, and both kings raised funds by taxing everyone, including the clergy, the idea of fighting a religiously motivated just war became difficult to fathom. For example in at least one case Pope Boniface once Boniface declared a war unjust, he was able to flex the papal muscle by instructing the Clergy not to pay the taxes levied against them. However, when the kings then tried to force the Clergy to pay the taxes, Boniface further strengthened the Pope’s power by threatening to excommunicate not only any clergy who paid the taxes, but anyone who tried to collect the taxes too.

  

However, King Philip the Fair of France, much to his credit, did not attempt to enter a theoretical debate over the issue of the Pope’s right or the authority to stop a  monarch from demanding taxes from anyone in his own realm. Instead, in August 1296, Philip forbade the export of all forms of negotiable currency from France. This action effectively stopped any money from making its way to the Papacy. Since the Church relied heavily on French funding for every aspect of the Papacy, Boniface was livid, saying, “He would suffer ruin and death rather than sacrifice any of the liberties of the church.”

    

Furthermore, while Philip the Fair was cutting off French Papal funding, two other groups also had their targets set upon Pope Boniface. The Powerful Colonna family of Rome had two cardinals as family members. The cardinals were angry at Boniface for what they considered inappropriate family favoritism.  The second group, the even more powerful Spiritual Franciscans, “Hated Boniface as the epitome of the clerical worldliness that they despised and denounced.”  Between the two groups, they publicly charged Boniface with heresy, simony, and that he had tricked the former Pope into resigning and then had arranged that Pope’s murder.  The charges were to be considered along with the whole question of succession to the papacy. 

Meanwhile, as the months passed, the papal coffer diminished and eventually Pope Boniface was forced to negotiate with Philip. Now negotiating from a power of weakness Boniface also discovered Philip had sent Pierre Flotte, his chief minister to join the Colonna Cardinals and the Franciscans. Now Boniface had no room to negotiate and was forced to concede in principle that only the King could decide when it was necessary to tax the clergy within his own kingdom. This was an extremely important victory for the monarchs because now monarchy everywhere could now tax the church.

 So while deciding the question of taxes had followed relatively straight forward rules of logic and principles of law, the next crises did not, and instead used deceit and misinformation and violence to decide the question.  

The year was 1300 and the centennial of the church. Pope Boniface declared a year long celebration. It had been three years since the Pope’s humiliating loss over the right to decide if and when the clergy could be taxed. Philip the Fair tried to “assert once and for all his mastery over his own kingdom” when the second crisis between Philip and Boniface began. In 1300, Philip arrested Bishop Saisset. It really did not matter if he was guilty of any crimes.  Instead, the issue began as another question of the rules of law. It ended as another important test of strength between a pope and a monarch.

  

According to Church Canon, a bishop could only be tried by the pope. However, Philip refused to allow the Church to do so and Boniface, with the consent and approval of the College of Cardinals sent a personal letter other documents to attempt to settle the dispute. Furthermore, because Boniface also had other issues that needed to be address, he ordered all the Bishops to Rome for a November meeting to be held the following year. However, in a test of strength, when Philip found out about the bishops meeting, he refused to allow them to go. Instead, Philip burned the papal letter and documents and new forged new ones, making it seem as if the Pontiff had claimed attempted to claim feudal lordship over all France. To further his own power, Philip  created a brand new institution made up of nobles, commons, and clergy. This three prong entity met at the Cathedral of Notre Dame seven months before the bishops were supposed to be in Rome. During the meeting, the chief minister of France, Pierre Flotte repeated the story about Boniface claiming lordship over France knowing that if a lie were repeated often enough, people would accept it as fact. Flotte claimed Boniface had been in direct violation of God with the statements in the letter and accordingly should be branded a heretic. The repeated lies seemed to work. Everyone, it seemed, either believed the lies and forged documents or wanted to believe them. Seven months later, less than half of the French Bishops attended the mandatory meeting that November in Rome. 

To make matters worse, the meeting was a colossal failure. Boniface, in desperation to regain lost papal power, released the Unam Sanctam, “A set of general theological propositions about the nature of the church and the position of the pope within it.”

  The Unam Sanctam, by its very nature made any compromise between Boniface and Philip impossible. Philip, in retaliation, sent his new minister, Guillaume De Nogaret with several hundred mercenaries to kidnap Boniface. The plan initially worked but ultimately failed when the townspeople managed to rescue Boniface three days later. However, Boniface, given neither food nor water when as a prisoner never fully recovered from the ordeal and he ultimately died several months later, leading to a succession of new popes.

  

Eventually, a Frenchman named Clement V became pope.  As Pope, he stated the, “Unam Sanctam was not to be interpreted as any new claim by the papacy to lordship over France.”

 Instead Pope Clement V attempted to placate Philip by publicly commending Philip for his actions. However by this time it no longer mattered. Philip no longer seemed to care how he was viewed by the Catholic Church because Philip instinctively understood power had shifted from the Church to that of the monarchy.

 Therefore, Philip had completed the process earlier kings and emperors had started when they each attempted to use the law, deceit, disinformation, threats, and violence to overcome papal claims to supernatural authority.