ABSTRACT
For most of his public life, John Ken neth Galbraith has been a sane man on a ship of fools. When he was in charge of price controls during World War II, he kept the economy from going into inflationary over drive. Instead of thanking him for performing a necessary wartime ser vice, a substantial number of busi ness and congressional leaders named him a communist and ex tremist. One business association headed its monthly newsletter with the banner “Galbraith Must Go,” and eventually he did go. When he was responsible for assessing the effect of Allied bombing in Germany after the war, he found that the massive bomb ing of cities and factories had little effect on production. The equipment in bombed factories was moved to schools, churches, and hospitals, and production rose to its peak in the last year of the war under the direction of Albert Speer. Galbraith learned in conversations with Speer how badly the German economy had been or ganized. The Nazi leaders were a gang of inept mobsters who had taken over a country and had no idea how to run it. The U.S. Air Force gen erals did not want to hear that the massive bombing raids had little ef fect on the German war effort, and they did all they could to keep the truth from coming out. Galbraith remarked to Orvil Anderson, deputy chief of the Army Air Force in Eu rope, “General, this is just a matter of intellectual honesty.” The general replied, “Goddamn it, Ken, you carry intellectual honesty to extremes.” Galbraith did carry intellectual hon esty to extremes, and the published report had a large element of truth in it. He then went to Japan and found that the Japanese had decided to surrender two weeks before atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the high command was determined to demonstrate the effects of its new weapons. These incidents instructed Galbraith about the terrific struggles for power going on in public life, which did not exclude mendacity when mendacity served a higher pur pose, namely, one’s own interest.
