Do you believe that the free European nations, if they did not have their present commitments in the Far and Middle East, would be able to defend Western Europe as of now? General BRADLEY. If France was not busy in Indochina she could do more to furnish forces to the collective security of Europe, but I do not think that would be enough in itself. They would still need our help. Mr. BENTLEY. Even with German participation, it would still be insufficient? General BRADLEY. Yes, I think it would be, at the present time. I have always had the hope that someday-I do not know whether it will take 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years, if they are given that much time-these countries will be able to raise and support forces which will be not necessarily a complete deterrent to war, but at least a very discouraging factor for anyone starting aggression. Mr. BENTLEY. From a military standpoint, what ratio of the defensive to the offensive forces, is considered satisfactory to maintain a satisfactory defense, roughly speaking? Could you answer that, sir? General BRADLEY. Well, any answer I would give you would be subject to various interpretations. Normally with a small attack, you say to take a position, you need about 3 to 1. However, in a large situation, the person who seizes the initiative, or has the initiative, may be able to cause a lot of trouble with even inequality in forces or inferior forces, if conditions permit them to have the initiative. I would say it would be very difficult to get a formula which would permit a person to take the offensive or be safe on the defensive, because of the wide frontages and mobility, and so forth. I might cite as an example, right after the Battle of the Bulge, socalled, in 1945, even though we were greatly superior to the Germans, we lost the initiative for a couple of weeks. They called the signals instead of ourselves. We quickly regained it, but even with inferior forces, for the time being, they had the initiative. Mr. BENTLEY. Thank you, General, and Mr. Chairman. Mr. LANHAM. Mr. Chairman, I, too appreciate the reversal of the order this morning although I always enjoy the questioning by those at the head of the table. General, I notice in the first paragraph, you say: I know of no intelligence which reveals any change of attitude on the part of the Soviet Union or which would give us any reason to diminish, or slow down, or stretch out our preparedness effort. Now, is it not true that this cut in the Mutual Security Program and in the agreements made at the NATO Council cut down our preparedness effort and stretch it out? General BRADLEY. Yes, sir; but I understand that is not for military reasons, but for other reasons. Mr. LANHAM. Are not military reasons probably more important, and our military safety, than any other reasons could possibly be? General BRADLEY. Well again, that depends on time. If you are in a war, I would say "Yes." In conditions such as we are going through now, the military advisers to you and your Gov ernment have always said, "We realize there are elements that have to be taken into consideration other than just purely military ones." Those are economic, political, psychological, and so forth. We try to furnish the military advice and somebody else tries to furnish the other type of advice, and based on all of these elements, the Government makes the decisions. I am sure your committee does not depend entirely on what we military people say. You have to take into consideration all the elements involved before you write up your report and make a recommendation to the House. Mr. LANHAM. Now the agreements on the military buildup that were made at Paris, to what extent do they change the goals as set by President Eisenhower when he was NATO commander? I have read the suggestion that it is really an abandonment of the goals he set or a greatly lowered set of goals. General BRADLEY. The military committee, as you know, which is composed of the senior military representatives of each country, who sit in these meetings, with the help of the various commanders concerned, like President Eisenhower, when he was in command there, and now General Ridgway, try to determine the amount of forces of various types that we think are necessary for a proper defense of Western Europe or NATO, since we are talking about NATO. The forces required right now are probably beyond the capabilities of the countries to raise and support because at the end of the last war, these nations found themselves without adequate forces. Many of them had had their warmaking industries destroyed, they had lost all of their equipment so that they were starting more or less from scratch. A lot of our trouble has been in raising sufficient funds to buy the initial tables-of-organization equipment and get them started again. It is a sort of a capital expenditure. Even after you get it, of course, it will have to be maintained. As I said a few minutes ago, I think that these countries eventually will attain these goals, and we hope that will be as soon as possible. The mere fact that we have slowed up does not mean to me that we have entirely abandoned eventually getting the forces necessary to deter aggression and furnish reasonable security. It has been interpreted that way, as you say, by some people as an abandonment. I hope this is not an abandonment but merely a slowdown to fit in with the economic situation of the various countries. Mr. LANHAM. Do you think that the goals now set are realistic and will probably be attained? General BRADLEY. I think the goals that have been worked out by the various commanders and by the military people are those that are needed. I do not know how soon they can be attained, but I would certainly hate to see us abandon them as goals. We set them up as requirements. Some people think that you ought to change your requirements to meet the capabilities, and we do not think that. Mr. LANHAM. Well, that is what you have done, is it not, General, at Paris? General BRADLEY. They have not yet said that the requirement paper which we put up is wrong. There has been a lot of pressure by various people for the military people to change those requirements, but we have not done so. We still say, "We still need these figures. If you cannot furnish them, we are taking that much calculated risk in the meantime," but we have not changed our requirements. Mr. LANHAM. The situation has apparently degenerated rather rapidly in Indochina. Can you give us some idea of the military situation there? General BRADLEY. Yes, sir; I can. I have a map here which shows that, if the committee would like to see it. This is a map showing the recent action, and if you want that related to the other areas, I will have to bring in another map. (Discussion off the record.) Mr. ROOSEVELT. General, do you want this recorded? Mr. VORYS. Will you give us a proper pronunciation of Laos? We were told by the radio commentators that it was L-o-u-s-e, and now we have Secretary Dulles saying L-a-o-s-e. General BRADLEY. Sir, I am not an authority on that. If it is all right with you, I will call it L-o-u-s-e. Chairman CHIPERFIELD. General, Mr. Roosevelt raises a question. Do you want this taken down? General BRADLEY. It does not make any difference. I doubt if this helps your record much, because it is so hard to read anything if you do not have the map in front of you. I would suggest you leave it off. (The then following remarks were not reported.) Chairman CHIPERFIELD. Mr. Prouty. (Discussion off the record.) Mr. PROUTY. If World War III should break out tomorrow is it your opinion that our strategic Air Force could cripple Russian industry? General BRADLEY. I think they could cripple it very materially. Mr. PROUTY. If we can destroy Russia's industrial capacity and assuming that Russia did overrun Europe, she would not acquire an industrial complex equal to ours and she could have a very difficult time organizing a sound economic, industrial and military structure there. General BRADLEY. Maybe I misunderstood your question awhile ago when you used the word "destroyed." That, of course, is subject to relativity. You never destroy everything. We found that out when we bombed Germany. You can destroy a certain percentage of an industry. You never can destroy all of it, nor can you destroy all of the supplies they have stockpiled somewhere. I think my figures are about correct. Let us take steel, for example. As I remember it, Russia is now approaching a capacity of some 50 million tons a year. It was then 30 and I think they are building toward 50. Whereas the steel capacity of all of Western Europe, including Germany and England, runs, as I remember it, over 60 million. You have about 240 million people in these countries which might be overrun. Unless you can stop them from coming over and taking over that 60 some-odd million tons capacity and keep them from taking con trol of the know-how and industrial capacity, you have not accomplished your purpose merely by knocking out the industrial capacity of Russia, itself. Furthermore, if you let them overrun all of Europe and we would soon find ourselves so isolated that our standard of living would certainly be very quickly affected. We would lose a source of a lot of our raw materials and so forth. We just feel we cannot afford to let Russia or any other country overrun our friends in Western Europe. We feel we must build up these security forces to a point where we can prevent that. Do it by two ways: One, going after their industry and ability to carry on war, and next by stopping that initial onrush. We feel we must do both. Mr. PROUTY. Do you feel economic or political factors should be considered in the awarding of offshore procurement contracts? General BRADLEY. I do, yes, sir. I think all of these elements come into it. I have always been in favor of a certain amount of help being given to these people to rebuild their industries, their warmaking industies that is their equipment-making industries, so that they can eventually take this over themselves. We cannot keep on shipping end item equipment over there forever and also maintaining it. They must start making some of this and they must certainly start making the necessary spare parts to maintain it. That is a military angle. From the economic angle, this offshore procurement and helping them to get these industries started keeps them in my opinion from tending toward communism. When we first started aid to France and these other countries about 6 years ago, the situation was deteriorating rather rapidly. A man in France has to pay a whole week's salary to buy a pair of shoes and other things correspondingly. He soon decides, "Well, we are not getting along very well under this system, let's try some other. Let's try communism a while." They do not realize that once you have tried communism, you can never pull back. At any rate, he is ready to try something else to better his economic situation. In getting industry started, you also encourage these people in their own countries and their former governments, and keep some of them from going Communist, where otherwise they might do it. I think it is quite important from more angles than just military. Mr. PROUTY. I would just like to make this observation. I do not think your views are in accord with the policy of the Defense Department, with respect to offshore procurement. General BRADLEY. I do not know wherein it differs. I know I have been feeling that way for some time. Maybe somebody else feels differently. In giving my answer to that question, I am giving only my own personal opinion. Chairman CHIPERFIELD. Mrs. Kelly Mrs. KELLY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General, from your statement I gather that there is a complete reversal this year in the method that was arrived at for this program. You say here on the 29th of April, the Joint Chiefs of Staff received a memorandum from the Acting Secretary of Defense, and so forth. 33064-53- -16 It was my understanding last year that the recommendations came from the field in to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then they cut as it went down. This year, you received a recommendation under which you must fit in the programs. Am I correct? General BRADLEY. I am sorry. I have probably created a wrong impression. What happened was, back earlier in the year, we were told to draw up a program based on a larger figure. We based that larger figure on the information we obtained from the field. Now when we got this directive on the 29th of April, I think that was the date, cutting down that amount, we did not have time to go back to the field so what we did was to take the other figure which was recommended and cut it down in proportion to the new figure which they gave us as being available, or what they were going to put into this bill for this year. We did not have time to go back to the field, but it was based on the factual reports upon which we had based the previous recommendation back in January. Mrs. KELLY. What was that difference; could you tell us that? STATEMENT OF GEN. GEORGE C. STEWART, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MILITARY ASSISTANCE, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE General STEWART. It was about a billion dollars on the military side. Mrs. KELLY. Could we get the recommendations that you hoped to have in this program? General BRADLEY. Yes. Actually what we did, Mrs. Kelly, because of the short time in which we had to do it, having worked the first figures out very carefully, with a percentage going to each country and to each service, what we did was take a percentage reduction of all those figures in Europe, because we had already decided on the relative readiness of the services in the various countries. Now, if we cut down the amount, we decided the best way to do it was to give the same percentage to these various countries in titles, on a percentage basis. Mrs. KELLY. You cut on a percentage across the board? General BRADLEY. We had the relative percentages in the various countries for the various services. If we could not do all we hoped to do this year, we would just take the percentage. It was based on the same information that we used in working up the first figure in January. Mrs. KELLY. You are speaking of the Mutual Security Program, is that correct, and not the defense of the United States? General BRADLEY. We are speaking of the Mutual Security Program. Mrs. KELLY. Are you satisfied that this calculated risk could be taken in view of the situation in Europe today? General BRADLEY. From a military point of view I would like to see us do just as much as we possibly can. In fact, I wish we could do more than we are doing here. Mrs. KELLY. You say we could damage Russia. In case of a sneak attack are we prepared in the United States? |