Overview

Traversing the no-man's-land of political loyalty and betrayal, Broken Soldiers documents the fierce battle for the minds and hearts of American prisoners during the Korean War. In scorching detail, Raymond Lech describes the soldiers' day-to-day experiences in prisoner-of-war camps and the shocking treatment some of them received at the hands of their own countrymen after the war. Why, he asks, were only fourteen American soldiers tried as collaborators when thousands of others who admitted to some of the same offenses were not?   Drawing on some 60,000 pages of court-martial transcripts Lech secured through the Freedom of Information Act, Broken Soldiers documents the appalling treatment and the sophisticated propagandizing to which American POWs fell victim during the Korean conflict. Three thousand American soldiers perished in North Korean camps over the winter of 1950-51, most from starvation. Through the unsentimental testimony of survivors, Lech describes how these young men, filthy and lice-infested, lost an average of 40 percent of their body weight. Many also lost their powers of resistance and their grip on soldierly conduct.   After six months of starvation, the emaciated, disoriented prisoners were subjected to a relentless campaign to educate them to the virtues of communism. Bombarded with propaganda, the Americans were organized into study groups and forced to discuss and write about communism and Marxism, even to broadcast harangues against capitalist aggression and appeals for an end to the war.   Lech traces the spiral of debilitation and compromise, showing how parroting certain phrases came to seem a small price to pay for physical safety. Threatened with starvation and indefinite confinement in Korea, many POWs succumbed to pressure to mouth communist slogans and provide information far in excess of the regulation ""name, rank, and service number.""   Of the thousands of American soldiers who, while prisoners in North Korea, spoke and wrote favorably of communism and disparaged their country, a handful were charged with collaborating with the enemy. Why were so few singled out? Why did each branch of the armed services judge parallel circumstances differently, and why were American soldiers not realistically prepared for capture? A powerful indictment of justice miscarried, Broken Soldiers  raises troubling questions that remain unanswered decades after the events.              

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Lech ... reconstructs the POW experience in Korea and its aftermath, exposing the brutality of the captors and the inconsistency of US military justice. He supplies the most comprehensive account to date of the subject. -- Library Journal Recounts eyewitness testimony of capture, psychological and physical torture, and life in the camps, giving readers excellent insight into the circumstances of a Korean POW. Few readers realize that during the first year of captivity, over 40 percent of the prisoners died -- a greater percentage than in any modern war except for the Eastern Front in World War II... The ultimate reference work on this topic. -- Library Journal The most comprehensive account to date of the subject... This book will appeal to military specialists and general readers alike. -- Choice The author's exhaustive research succeeds in building a new and devastating definition of the term 'brainwashing'... Firsthand descriptions by those who were released are nothing less than horrifying: barbarous Nazi concentration camps exceeded Korean detention centers only in the number of inmates. To make matters worse, those who came home suffered still more indignity. Endless interrogation by Combined Intelligence Center agents determined to turn up evidence of collaboration with the enemy led far too often to courts-martial... Rear Admiral Dan Gallery was appalled by what he saw as unmitigated stupidity. 'We pleaded with twenty-two of our men, ' Come home, all is forgiven!' When one of them did come home, we courtmartialed him. How stupid can we get?' -- Proceedings (U.S. Naval Institute)

Lech ... reconstructs the POW experience in Korea and its aftermath, exposing the brutality of the captors and the inconsistency of US military justice. He supplies the most comprehensive account to date of the subject. -- Library Journal Recounts eyewitness testimony of capture, psychological and physical torture, and life in the camps, giving readers excellent insight into the circumstances of a Korean POW. Few readers realize that during the first year of captivity, over 40 percent of the prisoners died -- a greater percentage than in any modern war except for the Eastern Front in World War II... The ultimate reference work on this topic. -- Library Journal The most comprehensive account to date of the subject... This book will appeal to military specialists and general readers alike. -- Choice The author's exhaustive research succeeds in building a new and devastating definition of the term 'brainwashing'... Firsthand descriptions by those who were released are nothing less than horrifying: barbarous Nazi concentration camps exceeded Korean detention centers only in the number of inmates. To make matters worse, those who came home suffered still more indignity. Endless interrogation by Combined Intelligence Center agents determined to turn up evidence of collaboration with the enemy led far too often to courts-martial... Rear Admiral Dan Gallery was appalled by what he saw as unmitigated stupidity. 'We pleaded with twenty-two of our men, ' Come home, all is forgiven!' When one of them did come home, we courtmartialed him. How stupid can we get?' -- Proceedings (U.S. Naval Institute)

"""Lech reconstructs the POW experience in Korea and its aftermath, exposing the brutality of the captors and the inconsistency of US military justice. He supplies the most comprehensive account to date of the subject."" -- Library Journal ""A well-balanced history of the war that treats the issues fairly and comprehensively...""--Journal of Contemporary History ""This is a unique and important book, a top-notch investigation into the POW issue in the Korean War, which had been kept under wraps. Based largely on materials Lech was able to pry out of the government using the Secrets Act, Broken Soldiers amounts to a world scoop on the subject.""--David C. Smith, coeditor of American Women in a World at War: Contemporary Accounts from World War II"

Author Information

Raymond B. Lech is an independent scholar and a past national director of the Navy League of the United States. He is the author of All the Drowned Sailors.

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