Two surprising things I learned from reading The Candy Bombers by Andrei Cherny --
1. Walter Bedell Smith, a CIA director and Ambassador to the Soviet Union in the postwar era, was Eisenhower's chief of staff during WWII. In that capacity, Cherny reveals, he proposed dividing up Nazi gold as war loot, saying "Can't some of us quietly arrange some of our own bonuses?"
2. James Forrestal, the first Secretary of Defense, suffered from mental illness that could be traced to Forrestal's insistence on witnessing the first landings on Iwo Jima. From shipboard, Forrestal watched three days of butchery on the beaches, then landed on the fourth day, walking ashore over the bodies and torn body parts of American soldiers. Cherny argues persuasively that the experience was so traumatic for Forrestal that it caused a kind of combat fatigue, ultimately driving the Defense Secretary to suicide.
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