WHO WAS JOHN BIRCH?

JOHN BIRCH KILLED IN CHINA 70 YEARS AGO 

Xi'an Shaanxi, China (JFK+50) Seventy years ago today, August 25, 1945, John Birch*, an American missionary before World War II and a captain in the United States Army during the war, was shot and bayoneted to death here in Communist China.

Captain Birch was leading a group of Americans, Chinese Nationalists and Koreans to a prison where Allied personnel were incarcerated when they were stopped by the Communist Chinese military.  Birch was ordered by a Chinese officer to surrender his pistol but he refused and became involved in a verbal dispute which resulted in  his being shot and bayoneted multiple times.

His death, at the age of 27, came just ten days after the end of World War II. According to the John Birch Society website...

"John Birch was a simple, but highly intelligent man, who worked hard to serve God, spread God's word, and fought for the freedom to do so."

The John Birch Society was founded by a former candy manufacturer and Republican party official named Robert Welch** in 1958.  According to the JBS website, the organization "is dedicated to restore and preserve freedom under the U.S. Constitution...united by a strong belief in personal freedom and limited government."

The Southern Poverty Law Center does not believe the Society is quite so noble. Don Terry writes...

"The John Birch Society publishes the (Communist) Manifesto and sells it for six bucks a pop at gatherings of its conspiracy theory-loving, U.N.-hating, federal government-despising, Ron Paul-supporting, environmentalist-bashing, Glenn Beck-watching true believers...."

According to the SPLC, the John Birch Society continues its crusade against communists and "insiders" who are, in the Society's view, "bent on handing the country over to the socialists at the U.N."

The Society may have had as many as 100,000 members in its hey-day during the 1960s, "but few know for sure how many Birchers exist today."

*John Morrison Birch (1918-1945) was born in India and raised in New Jersey and Georgia in the Fundamentalist Baptist faith.  His parents were missionaries.  He graduated from Georgia Baptist (Mercer) University with highest honors in 1939.  JMB completed missionary training in Fort Worth, TX and was sent to China where he joined the USAF in 1943 and became a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). 

**Robert W. Welch, Jr. (1899-1985) was born in North Carolina and graduated from UNC, USNA and Harvard Law School.  He founded Oxford Candy Company in NYC & later joined his brother, James O. Welch, in making "Sugar Daddies."  RWJ retired in 1956.

SOURCES

"Bringing Back Birch," by Don Terry, Southern Poverty Law Center, March 1, 2013, www.splcenter.org/

"John Birch," The John Birch Society, www.jbs.org/ 

John Birch

JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY FOUNDED IN 1958

JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY FOUNDED 55 YEARS AGO 

Indianapolis, Indiana (JFK+50) 55 years ago today, December 9, 1958, the John Birch Society was founded by retired business executive Robert Welch and a group of 12 like-minded individuals here in Indianapolis.

Indianapolis, Indiana

Photo by Roy G. White

July 1963

Headquarters of the JBS was to be located in Belmont, Massachusetts.

The stated purpose of the John Birch Society was to 'promote less government, more responsibility, and a better world.'

Mr. Welch writes in 'The Blue Book of The John Birch Society,' published in 1961,...

"Our enemy is the Communists, and we do not intend to lose sight of that fact for a minute.  We are fighting the Communists---nobody else."

The Society was named after John M. Birch, a Baptist missionary.  Mr. Birch, who served in the US Air Force in WWII and as an intelligence officer in China, was shot and killed by Communists in 1945.  John Birch is considered to be the first casualty of the Cold War.

                  Robert Welch 

Robert Welch charged that Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy all "actively aided the Communist conspiracy." 

The Society also opposed the Civil Rights Movement, US aid to foreign countries, and the United Nations.

By the early 1960s, the JBS came under fire for the methods it recommended for its members to fight communism.  Those methods included impeaching the Chief Justice of the United States and dropping out of the UN.

In April 1961, Major General Edwin Walker, commander of the U.S. 24th Infantry in Europe and stationed in West Germany, was accused of indoctrinating his troops with right-wing literature from the John Birch Society.  

President Kennedy relieved him of his position.  

Walker came back home to become a leading figure in the "fight against the liberal establishment."  He lived in Dallas, Texas and made an unsuccessful bid for governor.

On April 10, 1963, a shot was fired into the General's home as he sat working at his desk.  The bullet came through the front window and entered the wall just inches above Walker's head.  

Although the perpetrator of the shooting remained unknown, the Warren Commission concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald was the shooter.

        Major General Edwin Walker

Today the John Birch Society is headquartered in Grand Chute, Wisconsin and has local chapters in each of the 50 states.

The organization, which publishes The New American, has been described as right wing, ultraconservative and is considered by many to be part of the patriot movement.

SOURCES

www.en.wikipedia.org/

The World Book Encyclopedia, Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, Chicago, 1967.