Politics — whether local, national or international — never fails to be conducive for dirty tricks departments to work overtime to achieve the ends desired by the perpetrating parties. In such situations, while conviction about ends justifying means reigns, ignorance and desperation can turn catastrophic — even putting the world on the brink.
Many such cases have happened at the international level, standing out on two occasions, one leading to World War II, the other bringing us on the verge of World War III, and a nuclear war ending the world! Fortunately, it never came to that.
But such cases happen more often at the local and national political levels, where mischief is at a premium — much sought-after for political elements seeking their respective desired ends.
Let’s go back to August 31, 1939. This dirty trick was the brainchild of Heinrich Himmler, the head of Gestapo, the secret police in Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe, and the most powerful Nazi after Adolf Hitler. It was put in action by Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler’s chief lieutenant in the SS, and a key player in the Holocaust.
In the wee hours of that day, the Nazis launched a false flag operation — referred to as “Operation Himmler” — wherein the dreaded German Schutzstaffel (SS) agents, posing as Polish soldiers, attacked a radio station in Gleiwitz, a German town near the Polish border. A dozen Jewish inmates from a concentration camp were also brought dressed in Polish army uniforms, poisoned and shot dead in advance in a manner to show they were killed in battle. The drama was part of a plan to justify German invasion of Poland by showing the Polish as aggressors for attacking a radio station inside Germany.
The next day — September 1, 1939 — Adolf Hitler ordered the German army into Poland. Two days later, Great Britain declared war on Germany. World War II had begun. It would claim an estimated 60 million lives by the time it ended in August 1945!
Now, fast-forward 23 years, one month and 27 days to October 27, 1962 — the height of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis in the Bay of Pigs. The incident is detailed in Toby Ord’s The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity.
The US had learned about the Soviets installing nuclear missiles in Cuba that could directly strike the US mainland. The US blockaded Cuba with warships and planned its invasion. Submarine B-59 of the Soviet Union was one of four submarines sent to support the Soviet military, each with a torpedo with a nuclear warhead as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. It was captained by Valentin Savitsky, and lay deep underwater below the US warships, maintaining radio silence to escape detection. But Valentin’s submarine was detected and the US warships pounded it with low-explosive depth charges to force it to the surface.
Under fire and several days of being deep underwater had made living conditions miserable for Savitsky’s crew, exposed to low oxygen, temperatures ranging from 40 degrees Celsius to 60 degrees Celsius, and many falling unconscious. Finally, on the said day, a desperate Captain Savitsky took a decision to use the nuclear torpedo: “Maybe the war has already started up there, while we are doing somersaults here. We’re going to blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all — we will not disgrace our Navy!”
The decision to trigger the nuclear torpedo required consent from the submarine’s political officer who carried the other half of the firing key. Although he consented, a consent from Captain Vasili Arkhipov, the commander of the entire Soviet flotilla, was also needed. He was senior to Savitsky, and in submarine B-59 at the time. He saved the situation — and the world — by not consenting to the suicidal nuclear destruction of the US warships.
The incident provoked Robert McNamara, the US Defence Secretary during the Cuban Missile Crisis, to comment: “No one should believe that had US troops been attacked by nuclear warheads, the US would have refrained from responding with nuclear warheads. Where would it have ended? In utter disaster.”
The first incident shows how treachery could start a catastrophe; the second, how sheer luck of a sane mind’s presence in a radio silent submarine, in which a potentially disastrous decision of using nukes, saved the world.
And yet, we are more exposed to such travesties at the local and national political levels. We need to open our eyes — and minds — to the hidden treacheries at play at the local and national political levels. There are no accounts maintained on who is resorting to dirty tricks, and whether a
Captain Vasili Arkhipov-like person comes as luck personified. It’s left to chance. We remain ever-vulnerable, probably much to the glee of the politically ambitious, for who ends justify the means.