Robert W. Welch, Jr.

Robert Henry Winborne Welch Jr.
Born	December 1, 1899(1899-12-01)
Died	January 6, 1985 (aged 85)
Citizenship	American
Occupation	Businessman
Employer	James O. Welch Company
Known for	Founding the John Birch Society
Religious beliefs	Unitarian
Spouse(s)	Marian Probert Welch

Robert Henry Winborne Welch Jr. (December 1, 1899 – January 6, 1985) was an American businessman, political activist and author. He was independently wealthy following his retirement and used that wealth to sponsor anti-communist causes. He co-founded the conservative group the John Birch Society (JBS) in 1958.

Contents 1 Early Life 2 Business career 3 Early political activism 4 John Birch Society 5 Personal Life 6 Quotes 7 The Politician 8 See also 9 References 10 External links

Early Life

Robert was born in rural Chowan County, North Carolina. As a child he was considered "gifted" receiving his early education at home from his mother, a school teacher. He enrolled in high school at the age of ten and was admitted to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the age of twelve. Robert was a fundamentalist Baptist and, by his own admission, was "insufferable" in his attempts to convert his fellow students. He later became a Unitarian, remaining so for most his life. Robert would later attend the United States Naval Academy and Harvard Law School but would drop out of both institutions before graduating. He would later assert this was because of his opposition to the political leanings of the instructors.

Business career

Robert decided to manufacture candy as a way to earn a living, describing it as "the one field in which it seemed least impossible to get started without either capital or experience." He founded the Oxford Candy Company in Brooklyn, New York, which was a one-man operation until he hired his brother James to assist him. James Welch left to start his own candy company in 1925.

Robert was inspired one day while making a batch of caramel to pour out a flat piece and put a stick in the candy so it could be eaten like a lollipop. He named this candy a Papa Sucker and licensed the idea to the Brach's candy company in Chicago.

The Oxford Candy Company went out of business during the Great Depression, but his brother's company, the James O. Welch Company, survived, and Robert was hired by his brother. The company began making caramel lollipops, renamed Sugar Daddies, and Welch developed other well known candies such as Sugar Babies, Junior Mints, and Pom Poms. Robert retired a wealthy man in 1956.

Early political activism

From his teenage years, Robert had been an opponent of Communism. He was a strong believer in various conspiracies in which he believed a wide range of individuals and organizations were part of an international Communist plot. In his own words, the American people consisted of four groups: "Communists, communist dupes or sympathizers, the uninformed who have yet to be awakened to the communist danger, and the ignorant."

Robert joined the Republican Party and then ran and lost an election for the post of Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts in 1950. In 1952, he supported Robert Taft's unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination, and was a prominent campaign contributor to Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy's re-election campaign.

John Birch Society

Robert founded the John Birch Society (JBS) in December 1958.^[1] Its original membership consisted of only eleven men but Robert's wealth allowed the organization to have a wide impact and sponsor a number of publications. At its height, the organization claimed it had approximately 100,000 members, but its political views limited its ability to form alliances with other groups (even other anti-Communists like Richard Nixon and, to a lesser extent, Ronald Reagan, were denounced by the Society as being too liberal) and diminished its real impact. In October 1965, William F. Buckley, Jr. denounced Robert in his magazine National Review as promoting bizarre conspiracy theories far removed from common sense, and for working with racists like University of Illinois Classics Professor Revilo P. Oliver. While not attacking the members of the society, Buckley attacked Robert in order to prevent his outlandish views from tarnishing the entire conservative movement. Professor Oliver was ousted from the society in a purge of antisemitic and racist members in the early 1960s.

Robert accused Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower of being communist sympathizers and possibly Soviet agents of influence. He alleged that President Eisenhower was a "conscious, dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy",^[2] and that Eisenhower's brother Milton was the President's superior in the communist apparatus. President Eisenhower never responded publicly to Robert's claims.

Robert's communist accusations led to the landmark Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. case, which established that the New York Times v. Sullivan press protections do not apply to defamed private individuals.

In the 1960s, Robert began to believe that even the Communists were not the top level of his perceived conspiracy and began saying that Communism was just a front for a Master Conspiracy, which had roots in the Illuminati; the essay "The Truth in Time" is an example[1]. He referred to the Conspirators as "The Insiders," seeing them mainly in internationalist financial and business families such as the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, and organizations such as the Bilderbergers, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission. He did avoid the Antisemitism, anti-Freemasonry, and anti-Catholicism of other Conspiracy theorists, saying that such prejudices would "neutralize" anti-Communist, anti-Conspiracy efforts. According to one source, Welch converted to Catholicism in the months before his death.^[3]

Welch was the editor and publisher of the monthly magazine American Opinion and the weekly "The Review of the News". He also wrote The Road to Salesmanship (1941), May God Forgive Us (1951), "The Politician" (about Eisenhower) and The Life of John Birch (1954). A collection of his essays were also edited into a book "The New Americanism".

Welch and other Birch leaders, including Oliver, appear as characters in William Buckley's novel "Getting It Right."

Personal Life

Welch was married to Marian Probert Welch and had two sons. He died on January 6, 1985. James Welch, who had publicly distanced himself from his brother's political views, died less than a month later.

Quotes

"Madison and Hamilton and Jay and their compatriots of the Convention prepared and adopted a Constitution in which they nowhere even mentioned the word democracy, not because they were not familiar with such a form of government, but because they were." – Robert Welch, in a speech at the Constitution Day luncheon of We, The People in Chicago, on September 17, 1961 (reprinted in the June 30, 1986 issue of The New American magazine)

"The American Republic was bound—is still bound—to follow in the centuries to come the same course to destruction as did Rome. But our real ground of complaint is that we have been pushed down the demagogic road to disaster by conspiratorial hands, far sooner and far faster than would have been the results of natural political evolution. ... We are being insidiously, conspiratorially, and treasonously led by deception, by bribery, by coercion, and by fear, to destroy a republic that was the envy and model for all of the civilized world." – Robert Welch, ibid.

The Politician

Republican mainstream unhappiness with the John Birch Society (JBS) intensified after Welch circulated a letter calling President Dwight D. Eisenhower a possible "conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy." Welch went further in a book titled The Politician, written in 1956 and published by the JBS in 1963. He said also that President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in advance, but said nothing because he wanted to get his country in the war.

The book spawned much debate in the 1960s over whether the author really intended to call Eisenhower a Communist. G. Edward Griffin, a friend of Welch, claims that he meant collectivist not communist. The charge's sensationalism led many conservatives and Republicans to shy away from the group. The book was slightly toned down in the published version compared to the unpublished version. Welch later tried to distance himself from the work by saying that it was not originally meant to be published because it was just a confidential letter among friends.^{[citation needed]}

In the published edition that excises the allegations mentioned above, there is a footnote on page 278 (footnote 2) and its text appears on pages cxxxviii–cxxxix at the back of the book.^[4] That text is as follows:

• "At this point in the original manuscript, there was one paragraph in which I expressed my own personal belief as to the most likely explanation of the events and actions with this document had tried to bring into focus. In a confidential letter, neither published nor offered for sale and restricted to friends who were expected to respect the confidence but offer me in exchange their own points of view, this seemed entirely permissible and proper. It does not seem so for an edition of the letter that is now to be published and given, probably, fairly wide distribution. So that paragraph, and two explanatory paragraphs, connected with it, have been omitted here. And the reader is left entirely free to draw his own conclusions."^[5]

• On page 278 of The Politician, Welch summarized, from his perspective, the only two possible interpretations of President Eisenhower's motives: "The role he has played, as described in all the pages above, would fit just as well into one theory as the other; that he is a mere stooge or that he is a Communist assigned the specific job of being a political front man."

• On page 279, Welch discusses the 3 stages by which Communists came to control the U.S. Presidency. In stages 1 and 2, FDR and Truman were "used" by Communists. In Truman's case, according to Welch, he was used "with his knowledge and acquiescence as the price he consciously paid for their making him President."

• Then, with respect to Eisenhower, from page 279 of the 1963 published edition of The Politician: "In the third stage the Communists have installed in the Presidency a man who, for whatever reasons, appears intentionally to be carrying forward Communist aims... With regard to this third man, Eisenhower, it is difficult to avoid raising the question of deliberate treason."

The original formulation of this comment from the 1958 unpublished version of The Politician is as follows:

• "In the third stage, in my own firm opinion, the Communists have one of their own actually in the Presidency. For this third man, Eisenhower, there is only one possible word to describe his purposes and his actions. That word is treason."^[6]

There are many other passages in both the 1963 published edition and the 1958 unpublished version of The Politician wherein Welch makes clear that he considered Eisenhower to be a Communist and a traitor. Below are a few examples from the unpublished version (aka "private letter") which was mailed by Welch to friends and acquaintances in the summer of 1958.^{[citation needed]}

• "In my opinion the chances are very strong that Milton Eisenhower is actually Dwight Eisenhower's superior and boss within the Communist Party."^[7]

• "We think that an objective survey of Eisenhower's associates and appointments shows clever Communist brains, aided by willing Communist hands, always at work to give the Communists more power, and to weaken the anti-Communist resistance."^[8]

• In discussing Eisenhower's appointment of Philip C. Jessup, Robert Welch refers to Eisenhower as "he and his fellow Communists."^[9]

• In discussing Eisenhower's appointment of James B. Conant, Robert Welch refers to "the appointment of Conant...made by a Communist President..."^[10]

• "For Eisenhower and his Communist bosses and their pro-Communist appointees are gradually taking over our whole government right under the noses of the American people."^[11]

• Welch refers to Eisenhower's actions in Europe which "show his sympathies with the Communist cause and friendship for the Kremlin tyrants..."^[12]

• "For the sake of honesty, however, I want to confess here my own conviction that Eisenhower's motivation is more ideological than opportunistic. Or, to put it bluntly, I personally think that he has been sympathetic to ultimate Communist aims, realistically willing to use Communist means to help them achieve their goals, knowingly accepting and abiding by Communist orders, and consciously serving the Communist conspiracy for all of his adult life."^[13]

• "But my firm belief that Dwight Eisenhower is a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy is based on an accumulation of detailed evidence so extensive and so palpable that it seems to me to put this conviction beyond any reasonable doubt."^[14]

Actual scanned copies of pages 266-269 from the 1958 unpublished edition of The Politician may be seen here: Politician, pages 266-269

• "To paraphrase Elizabeth Churchill Brown, 'the only enemies the American people have to fear are the enemies in their midst.' The most conspicuous and injurious of these enemies today, I believe, is named Dwight David Eisenhower. He is either a willing agent or an integral and important part of a conspiracy of gangsters determined to rule the world at any cost."^[15]

See also

• John Birch Society
• Robert Welch University
• Janson, Donald & Eismann, Bernard "The John Birch Society" pages 25–54 from The Far Right, New York: McGraw-Hill Inc, 1963.
• Larry McDonald successor to Robert Welch as president of John Birch Society and on board KAL 007 when shot down by Soviets

References

External links

• The John Birch Society
• The New American
• FBI FILES ON BIRCH SOCIETY