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The venereal diseases prevention posters made by war propaganda departments have got very little attention from the modern media. It is very interesting to learn how armies deal with gonorrhea and syphilis in 20th century before the invention of antibiotics. That review will help to modern readers to understand better the psychology of Europeans during the Second War War.1.UNITED STATES OF AMERICAThe USA military has always taught new troops the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases. Every soldier at some time in his basic training was forced to sit through what was used to call a "Susie Rotten-crotch" film where a soldier is shown out meeting a local female, only to appear at sick call with gonorrhea or syphilis shortly afterwards. The U.S. Government and its agencies prepared posters during WWII in an attempt to keep servicemen free of VD. The following posters were aimed at specific services and show that they were each considered vulnerable and addressed.Arthur Szyk caricature: Fool the AxisIn the above 1942 warning poster about VD, the three Axis leaders are shown with hypodermic needles, ready to give shots to soldiers with sexually transmitted diseases. The text of the poster is "Fool the Axis – use prophylaxis, prophylaxis prevents venereal disease!" During the war the medical corps had a prophylaxis kit that would sometimes be issued to soldiers going into town.The American artist who created the poster, Russian born Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) attended art school in Paris before enlisting in the Russian Army in 1914. He served for six months and saw front-line action. After World War I he fought as an officer in a Polish guerilla regiment against the Bolsheviks and eventually located in Paris with his new wife. With the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 he began producing cartoons and eventually moved to New York City. During the war he created numerous covers for Collier's magazine. Hitler put a price tag on Arthur Szyk’s head. The American press called Szyk a "one-man army against fascism." The Times of London declared his art work to "be among the most beautiful...ever produced by the hand of man."A second poster (1943) , shows the same three enemy buffoons discussing the disease marked "VD" with actual microscopic pictures of the microbes. The syphilis spirochete, chancroid gram-negative bacilli, and gonorrhea gram-negative diplococci are all depicted as Tojo says "American soldier could catch it with ease" and Hitler answers, "but prophylaxis prevents disease."During World War II, the leaders of the Axis powers (Hitler, Mussolini, and Hideki Tojo) were depicted by Allies as monsters. The enemy leaders were caricatured as gorillas, skeletons, rats, or whatever the Allied warriors could dream up. This was all part of the process of wartime depersonalization, and the resultant new image of him as vermin good only for killing. Nazis propagandists used exactly the same effective tactics of dehumanisation of the enemy for the killing purpose.She is our Sunshine…After seeing Arthur Szyk’s work this poster seems rather lame, but once again it vilifies Hitler and the Japanese and points out that a lovely bathing beauty, “Miss GI Pickup of ‘44” will infect “you, you, an you” with VD.Here we see that Walt Disney has joined the war against VD. Donald Duck has been drafted and is thinking of having sex with a beautiful woman but finds himself without the safety of a Prophylaxis.Axis AgentsThis poster also uses the theme that it helps the Axis when you are infected with a venereal disease. It implies that it is almost treasonous to have sex with a prostitute because it hurts the war effort.Pages from War Department Pamphlet No. 21-15U.S. Government produced a number of pamphlets, flyers, leaflets and other published literature in an attempt to reduce the rate of VD among the troops. The booklet, War Department Pamphlet No. 21-15, depicts American troops hitting the beaches from a landing craft on some foreign shore and warns that VD might take them out of the picture. One wonders about the effectiveness of this illustration as positive propaganda. Given the choice of attacking a machine gun nest at Normandy or getting a needle in the butt at a comfortable aid station in the United Kingdom, the latter seems somewhat preferable. This 16-page War Department brochure is entitled Sex Hygiene and VD – Venereal Disease was first printed in 1940 under the direction of the Surgeon General of the Army with an introduction by Secretary of War Marshall. It was issued to every new recruit and discusses sexuality in general and attempts to educate the young soldier on all of the emotions and desires he might encounter away from home. It was issued again in 1943 with a slightly changed cover. Some of the introduction is:The Army can protect you from many diseases but you will have to protect yourself from syphilis and gonorrhea. The only sure way is to stay away from women. Don’t forget that any woman who lets you use her, or who consents easily, is not safe.If you wait until you marry, you’re safe and keep your self respect. You also play fair with the girl back home whom you expect to play fair with you. There’s no substitute for moralsShe may look Clean –ButIn this poster we see a mix of Army, Navy and a civilian together. In a way, civilians were part of the war effort because they built the weapons and kept the economy moving. So this poster warns all three of the dangers of having sex with a prostitute. It can hurt the war effort.USA Propaganda posters promoting the use of condoms :U.S. Government WWII Posters for the Military Services. USA propaganda posters promoting the awareness of syphilis and gonorrhea:These posters look funny and very naive to me. It's doubtful that they could avert young men from the idea to have a sex with women because of illness.2. UNITED KINGDOMThe British Army, which had no clear strategy other than the ineffective one of placing sections of Naples out of bounds, reacted to the soaring VD rate by blaming it on the Germans. A circular that arrived in all units by Christmas warned: “From reports that have been received it is apparent that prostitution in occupied Italy and Naples in particular, has reached a pitch greater than has ever been witnessed in Italy before. So much is this so that it has led to a suggestion that the encouragement of prostitution is part of a formulated plan arranged by the pro-Axis elements, primarily to spread venereal disease among Allied troops. The British were defeated by the prostitutes and decided that it must be part of a devious Nazi plot.The British military historian John Costello talks about the problem with prostitutes and venereal disease in Love, Sex and War:Changing Values, 1939-45, William Collins, London, 1985.Prostitutes were made synonymous with venereal disease not just by the Germans, but also by the British and United States army commands, who declared war on the women who had been blamed for the million and a half syphilis and gonorrhea casualties suffered by the Allied armies in World War I. The German armed forces applied the lessons learned twenty years earlier when the Kaiser's army strictly regulated the 'sexual logistics' of the troops and thereby cut its VD casualty rate to half that of the French army by 1918. Corpsmen collected the fees at the medically supervised military brothels behind the front lines, imposing a strict ten-minute time-limit per man during the evening 'rush hour' and providing prophylactic treatments as well as keeping a detailed log of the visitor's rank and regiment so that fines could be levied from those who failed to report contracted venereal infections.VD - Hello boy friend, coming MY way?A colorful 1943 VD poster produced in Great Britain by Reginald Mount depicts a female with the face of a skull in bright pink bonnet. The text is "VD - Hello boy friend, coming MY way? The 'easy' girl friend spreads Syphilis and Gonorrhea, which unless properly treated may result in blindness, insanity, paralysis, premature death. If you have run the risk, get skilled treatment at once. Treatment is free and confidential."In World War I the venereal infection rates of the British army were 7 times higher than the Germans, principally because national prudery prevented the British high command from acknowledging that there was any problem at all until 1915, when the Canadian and New Zealand prime ministers forced the chiefs of staff to issue free contraceptives to the troops.Venereal DiseasesThis British WWI poster is interesting because at the time they list only two forms of venereal disease. Now there are about a half dozen known to exist. Notice they do not list antibiotics. They were unknown at the time. In November 1918, bottles of potassium permanganate lotion and tubes of calomel cream were given to soldiers stationed overseas to use for self-disinfection. Still, the British had 150,000 admissions to the hospital for VD in France during the war. Many of the patients had self-inflicted VD. That is, they chose to catch it hoping it would keep them out of the front lines. In later wars, troops would sometimes shoot themselves in the foot to become hors de combat.3. THE SOVIET UNIONSoviet Union did not have venereal diseases such as syphilis or gonorrhea before the outbreak of the WW2. The moral standards of Soviet citizens were exceptionally high, Russians were very healthy before the WW2, they had lived according to the religious principles and state laws. Prostitution was prohibited and criminalized in USSR, it was absolutely no brothels, not even one. Germans changed it, they opened brothels and legalised prostitution. The WW2 was a total disaster for USSR, the whole country got sick of the war had never been recovered since then.Inhabitants of the Russian city of Kursk have never had any syphilis before the war but during the German occupation hundreds of local women were infected with syphilis by German soldiers. Women didn't get any treatment but were imprisoned and killed as a punishment.(Ehrenburg I.G., ““The New order” in Kursk”)“Fritzs are professional rapists, fornicators with solid experience, hereditary baboons. They have polluted the whole of Europe.” - wrote Soviet journalist Ilya Ehrenburg in 1943Red Army soldiers had no syphilis neither gonorrhea utill they advanced to liberate occupied USSR that was 4 years under the Nazi yok. When they moved to the Central Europe especially to Germany the situation got worse. In Romania Soviet soldiers were very surprised to meet local girls that demanded money for sex. This phenomenon was very alien to the Russian mind, obviously Russian soldiers refused to pay and consequently had a big trouble (fight, police complaints) from Romanian prostitutes and their husbands that were pimps. In Germany Soviet soldiers met another foreign style, German women freely offered sex for pleasure however later was discovered that many of those women had honorea and syphilis.. A lot of Soviet soldiers got it that was really trouble for Soviet authorities.USSR. The leaflet #1857The leaflets prepared by the Soviet Union for Germany were occasionally sexual in nature, insulting, usually long winded, and sometimes contained a safe conduct pass. Soviet leaflet #1857 contains all of these attributes. This Russian leaflet is aimed to destroy the morale of the German soldier by informing him that while he is at the front Hitler replaces them by foreigners who are taking their jobs, their land and their women. The leaflet is entitled Auslaender nehmen Deinen Platz ein! "Foreigners are taking your place." The first paragraph mentions the various nationalities that have been sent to Germany to work on the farms and in the factories; French, Italians, Slovaks, Dutch, and more. Two pictures are depicted on the front, a soldier holding his rifle at the top of the leaflet with the caption "While he squats in the bunker," and a female in the arms of another man at the bottom with the text, "his wife amuses herself with a foreigner." There is a photograph of her husband in uniform on the wall behind them. This was a common image on many Russian leaflets. The back is all text. Two letters are depicted from lonely German wives to their husbands at the front. The letters are designed to intensify the feeling of uneasiness among the German soldiers. One says that the foreigner plows his field now that he is away at the front. It says that foreigners sleep in the beds of German women, and many of them are the wives of soldiers. The second letter says that Berlin is now so international that the German language is hardly ever spoken or written. On the reverse, the leaflet tells in no uncertain terms, "Yes soldier, you should know: there are women who like to get involved with foreigners. You should also know: People who are gathered from all parts of the world will infect German women with venereal diseases of every kind. Family life will break up…should you, soldier, ever come home, you might be received by your wife with a black curly-headed Italian half-breed in her arms, and it will be your joy to raise this illegitimate child…" The leaflet offers hope. After the appeal "German soldier! Must this be? No! Your place is at home…Don’t take the war any longer! Your family is waiting for you!" The message encourages the German soldier to leave the war. Hitler is blamed for everything. He has forced the German people into the war and taken everything that makes life worthwhile. The leaflet ends with "No longer take part in the war! Your family waits for you!" There is a passierschein safe conduct pass in German and Russian at the bottom of the leaflet.4. NAZI GERMANYBy 1942, the Wehrmacht was running over 500 “Wehrmachtsbordellen,” and the setting-up, running, and supply of these establishments was the responsibility of the Area Commander (Ortskommanturen). Disease control was the responsibility of the area medical officer, and the girls would be checked twice a week by local doctors. There were “special rules” for Officer's facilities, for which a hotel character was to be maintained. Every Army brothel was required to have a prophylactic station (Sanierstube). They were to be marked with a small blue light marked with the Red Cross.German WWII Soldier’s Certificate to Visit a ProstituteThis certificate was issued to WWII German soldiers who wished to have sex with a prostitute in a brothel. They turned in their identification tag and received this certificate. They would write the name of the prostitute at the lower right and upon leaving the brothel turned in the certificate to a medic and had their identification tag returned and received treatment if it was deemed necessary. The text is:Entry to the brothel is permitted only with this ID card!Name of the sanitation roomContinuous numberDateAfter leaving the brothel you are ordered to visit the sanitation room at once for protective treatment. Your identification tag will be returned only after successful sanitation.Name of the prostitute:____________________Other forms of these passes might contain the following instructions: a Certificate of subsequent prophylactic treatment; Number and unit on dog tag; Field-post number of recipient; The above received prophylactic treatment at ____ hours under a control number of prophylactic station no. ____ and is thus certified by: Rank, name; and This document is to be kept for 3 months and is to be presented in the event of sickness.Brothel rules obliged visitors to disinfect female genitals after sexual acts. According to testimonies of soldiers they didn't really like that procedure . Here are two testimonies of German soldiers:Obergrenadier Martin Eichenseer of Stabs Kompanie, G.R. 916:"The first time I went I was a lad of 17-½ and still somewhat of a virgin, I never had intercourse but had done other things with the local girls. With my pockets filled with the 'regulation equipment', I went to the brothel in St. Laurent. I was very nervous and did not know what to expect. When my turn came I went into a room with a very good-looking girl about my age from Slovakia. She had dark hair and big breasts. Sex with her was great even though I didn't know what she was saying. We weren't supposed to pay them in the Army brothels but I gave her some money anyway. The worst part was when she spread her legs and I had to spray her with the can of disinfectant. Only then would she sign my card. You had to bring back the empty can with the pass. If you didn't spray or bring it back you got two weeks extra labor and guard for punishment.The next time I went I was excited at seeing this Slovak girl again but to my disgust I got this German woman who was in her late thirties, although I wouldn't mind her now, ha ha. She was big-breasted but flabby and had "a lot of wear on her tires" if you know what I mean. I just couldn't do it. She finally told me to close my eyes and she performed oral sex on me. It wasn't too bad as I thought of the other girl. She signed my pass and I left. On the way back I realized I still has a full can. In order not to get in trouble I sprayed it empty in the woods. I would have gone again but the war got in the way."Obergefreiter Josef Brass, Nr. 1 Kompanie, Pionier Bn. 352:"In Russia we didn't get to go to any but in France they were quite plentiful. The women were about average in appearance but certainly knew how to please a man. But as young and virile as we were then it didn't take much. Many of the younger men, 17-19 years old, didn't go because they were embarrassed by the things they were required to do, such as disinfecting the woman's genitals. I always felt that the army procedures were a bit too much but then again no-one I know of ever got a disease from an Army brothel. And if you did they knew which girl gave it to you and who ever else she had sex with and everyone could get cured. Some of us did go to the local civilian ones, the girls were prettier and acted like they enjoyed it. However if you got V.D. from one of them it was bad luck. You got cured then sent East to serve in a Penal Battalion for two weeks to three months. Being a "500" (slang for military prisoners) was no easy life and chances were slim you would make it back. In any event the Army tried to give us the best it could under the circumstances.5. ITALYThe Italian campaign more than any other in World War II confronted the British and American military commanders with their impotence when it came to coping with endemic prostitution. A foretaste of the problem was given by British medical officers in Sicily, who were treating 40 thousand VD cases a month, 20 times more than the number treated in England. As one report advised, “prostitution is almost universal among all but the highest class of Sicilian women.”Government-regulated brothels also existed in all of the large towns. Control had broken down, although General Patton wasted no time trying to restore it by putting US Army medical teams into Palermo's six large houses of prostitution. This did not endear him to General Montgomery, his arch rival, whose pride as well as his Puritanism was offended when it was announced that the brothels were open for business again – under US Army management. The invasion of Italy proper magnified the scale of the problem. But it was the capture of Naples in October 1943 that pitched the American and British commands into a two-year battle with an army of prostitutes – a battle Allied chaplains and doctors of both armies would later concede they lost.6. THE PROPHYLAXIS KIT AND INSTRUCTIONSThe Prophylactic Kit:Instructions:During the war, medics are generally supplied with prophylactic kits in bulk. These can be used to treat soldiers, or are often just given to the men to take with them on leave. The kits can contain different items, but during WWII soldiers were often issued an “Individual Chemical Prophylactic Packet” designed to allow him to perform prophylactic treatment on himself if he feared he might have had sex with an infected woman. The individual packet contained a tube containing 5 grams of ointment (30% calomel + 15% sulfathiazole), a direction sheet explaining how to apply the ointment, a soap impregnated cloth and cleansing tissue. Sometimes the men were issued condoms (usually 3 to a pack) and sometimes they were given sulfa or other pills to carry “just in case.”It must be told that syphilis is horrible ancient contagious disease; it starts from the little painless pimple and in the last stage it brings the body to the full disfiguration, tumors, blindness and paralysis. The untreated person slowly but surely, during few years, painfully get rotten alive. If I would be the WW2 propagandist I would scare guys with these real pictures of patients with the last stage of syphilis:The Italians called it ‘the French disease’ and the French called it ‘the Neapolitan disease’. The Russians knew it as ‘the Polish disease’ and the Poles called it the ‘German disease’. To the people of Flanders and North Africa it was ‘the Spanish disease’, while to the Spanish it was known as ‘las bubas’. The British called it ‘the pox’, but you will know it as syphilis. Syphilis - Wikipedia7. OTHER POSTERSVenereal disease (VD) was epidemic in the early twentieth century; estimates were that 1/10 people would contract syphilis at some point in their lives and even more would get gonorrhea. In spite of these startling facts, VD remained a taboo topic because of the stigma associated with these diseases.However, in the 1930s, popular attitudes about venereal disease changed dramatically in the United States. Syphilis and gonorrhea became topics that people commonly encountered in their everyday life—in all types of media, at work and school, and in a multitude of public spaces.1.MercuryBefore antibiotics were introduced in 1943. VD were treated with mercury and sulfa. If you got strep throat or some other infection you took the sulfa and were warned to wash it down with a lot of ginger ale. The antibiotics like penicillin came in with WWII and were a great boon to mankind in general. In the bad old days one of the treatments was mercury, and that is a poison itself. After hundreds of years of suffering, the introduction of penicillin in the 1940s meant that infections such as syphilis, gonorrhoea and chlamydia could finally be cured. But today, with less than half of young people regularly practising safe sex, syphilis is on the rise once more. In 2017 there were 7,137 cases reported in England, a 20 per cent increase from 2016, and a shocking 148 per cent increase from 2008. Before you decide to risk it, spare a thought for our ancestors and the horrors of syphilis they had to endure – and always wrap it up.The poster was produced for the Ministry of Health promoting the first national campaign about venereal diseases. It was aimed at warning service men against the health risks of promiscuous sexual behavior. Women at the time were finding themselves in contrasting situations of sometimes-unprecedented liberty and discipline, often combined with sexual ignorance. Having to stay faithful while the men were away fighting, in charge of the household for the first time, freed from the presence of a male in their family household for perhaps the first time. There was limited information available to them on bodily functions, sex or birth control.2.Almost all of the artwork we see warns the soldiers to stay away from loose women. Here, that poster warns women to stay away from these “over-sexed, over-paid, and over-here” horny American GIs landing in Great Britain in 1944 in preparation for D-Day.3.A Sorry Ending to a FurloughIn 1946 as the war ended and hundreds of thousands of troops were still overseas, the military tried again to keep them safe from disease. An artist by the name of Ferree painted a poster that depicted a sad GI sitting on his cot. The text is, "VD- a sorry ending to a Furlough. Prophylaxis prevents venereal disease!"4.You Kept Fit and Defeated the HunThe colorful poster depicts a smiling “doughboy” with an American eagle on his shoulder standing on the helmets of defeated Germans. The text is:You kept fit and defeated the Hun.Now set a high standard.A clean America!Stamp out venereal diseases.5.We’ve fought in the open—bubonic plague, yellow fever, tuberculosis. Now Venereal DiseaseH. Dewitt Welsh crea. ted this WWI poster and it was published by the H. C. Miner Lithograph Company of New York. A semi-dressed female figure, representing Venereal Disease, is shown pouring blood from a wine glass. Chained to her left wrist is a vulture, standing on a skull. Beneath her are three macabre figures representing6.Soldier, the country counts on youVD was also a problem among the French. In 1916, Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen printed a poster for French soldiers fighting in WWI. The title was "Soldat, La Patrie Compte Sur Toi." The poster depicted a woman and man embracing, followed by the physically debilitated soldier on his hospital bed. A skull and crossed bones appear at the bottom of the poster. Due to prevailing taboos, no mention of syphilis or gonorrhea is made, but the words on the tombstone make a connection between morality and patriotism. The message reads:Soldier, the country counts on you - keep healthy. Resist the temptation of the street where a sickness as dangerous as the war awaits you… It carries its victims to decay and death, without honor, without happiness. . .7.Disease is disguised - Don't gamble with VD!This poster was produced in 1946 when the U.S. military was trying to enforce a policy of non-fraternization in the occupation zones between the USA troops and European women. It depicts a dark and ominous female hiding behind the mask of a healthy beautiful woman. The text is "DISEASE IS DISGUISED - DON'T GAMBLE WITH VD!" The poster was designed by Forsyth.8.Loaded?I like this poster because the girls are attractive and almost coy; not “trampy” at all. And, a Colt 1911 .45 automatic pistol is shown at the top. Notice that the pistol is cocked and ready for firing.9.Going home? Don't be delayed by VDThis 1946 poster shows a U.S. soldier at the end of the war waiting to return home. A map of Europe is in background. He is held in place by a rope that spells "VD" and is around his body. The text is, "GOING HOME? DON'T BE DELAYED BY VD." The artist is Schiffers. In every recent war American troops overseas are tested for disease before they are returned home. Any soldier found to have VD would be held until such time as a doctor pronounced him cured. He would be allowed to board ship at that time.10.AlmostIn one of the most attractive and poignant 1946 posters an American soldier (probably airborne by his bloused boots) stands at the dock and watches a troopship taking his buddies home to the U.S.A. He is held back by a ghostly hand marked "V D." The text is "ALMOST!" The artist is Schiffers. It was not an easy task to tell a man who had not been home for several years that he was "red-lined." There were several cases of doctors or medics being threatened, and it was one case where a G.I. pulled a knife on a First Sergeant after being told that he was held over in Southeast Asia.The entire concept of producing posters and leaflets of the subject of sexually transmitted diseases had to be approached with great care. Before the WW1 such things were not even discussed by proper gentlemen and ladies. In times of warfare when men are away on distant shores under stress, and women find themselves home alone perhaps for the first time, the subject must be broached. We have seen that some of the posters ask the men in uniform to use precautions as a form of patriotism so that they can continue to fight for their nation. Others imply that catching such a disease is almost treason in a time of war.8. BLACK VENEREAL DISEASE CAMPAIGNSThe black leaflets pretend to be helpful and offer hints on medical care, but are written in such a way as to demoralize the front line soldier worrying about his wife or girlfriend back home.Venereal disease has been mentioned in several PSYOP campaigns. It sometimes appears in white propaganda as a way to keep an Army healthy and moving forward. It is more valuable as black propaganda where it is used in several ways. Sometimes, one combatant tries to convince an occupied people that their invaders consider their women immoral and infected. At other times, one combatant will try to convince and enemy that their ally looks down upon their women. This was especially true in the Philippines during WWII where the Japanese implied on several occasions that the Americans saw the Filipino women as whores to be used and discarded. In other cases one combatant will try to destroy the morale of the enemy armed force while they fight at the front by stating that their wives and girlfriends are having illicit sex and being infected at home. Japanese black propaganda leaflet dropped during their advance in the Philippines alleges to be from the United States Army and warns American soldiers that Filipino women were uncleanThe German dropped a similar black leaflet on Allied troops in English language on the Western Front during WWII.British black propaganda 4-page booklet coded H.359The British produced several black leaflets in German language that mentioned VD. One coded H.336 and entitled Merkblatt - Deutsche Nachrichtenhelferin! The leaflet implied that citizens other than German are infected, and also hints that the wife or sweetheart of the soldier might have a "dalliance" while he is away. This certainly did not help the morale of the German soldier or the citizen of a foreign country either allied to Germany or sending workers into the Reich. A second (the image) British black propaganda 4-page booklet coded H.359 and entitled Deutsches madel! Vorsicht…(German Girl! Caution…) attacks the foreign worker (who sometimes volunteered to work in Germany to help the war effort) as a diseased individual.9. THE WHISPERS CAMPAIGNBesides leaflets, in an attempt to raise the morale of occupied Europe and lower the morale of the German military, civilians and their allies, the secret British Underground Committee produced well over 8,000 rumors, (they called them “Sibs” from the Latin sibalare – to hiss). Researcher Lee Richards mentions the whisper campaign and many of these rumors in his book Whispers of War, 2010. In regard to British propaganda rumors about sexual activity within the Third Reich and its occupied territories he lists dozens of moral-destroying rumors:4 July 1941 – German officers know the address of all the prostitutes in Amsterdam that have VD. They use them to get medical leave. It is called “krank durch Freude,” (Illness through joy).19 September 1941 – The girls in the Brest brothels have infected so many U-Boat crews with VD that it is now called “Malady V.”5 May 1942 – Of 50 Spanish workers who just returned from Germany, 37 have venereal disease.February 1943 - All women factory workers in Germany are to have a weekly VD inspection, carried out by medical students.11 June 1943 – The Germans have reduced the punishment for U-Boat crew members catching VD from a court martial to three days confinement.4 August 1944 – In order to slow the spread of VD in the German Army, boys under 16 have been forbidden to enter brothels.10. “THE ISLAND OF THE BLACK SYPH”Some WWII troops believed that there was a secret island off the coast of Greenland where horribly burnt and disfigured American soldiers were sent so as not to destroy the morale of their families in USA . Later during the Korean War, some soldiers were told of an island off the coast of South Korea where men with incurable venereal diseases were sent to die. The same rumours about secret islands existed during the Vietnam War. This rumor, or a reasonable facsimile, seems to have been circulating for at least 60 years.One of the most interesting rumors having to do with venereal disease was that of the mysterious island where service members with the dreaded and incurable "black syph" were sent to spend their last days in exile. Everyone knew someone who had a friend who had heard from a buddy that there was this deadly incurable, antibiotics resistant strain of syphilis. They whispered that rather than send a soldier home with this disease which would demoralize his family and the American public if the truth be known, the infected individual would be sent to this secret island where he would spend his last days in pain and dementia until he died.Private Bill Lupton of the 27th Infantry Regiment “Wolfhounds” talks about his personal introduction to the island in a narration entitled “February 1966” :You men need to use some common sense in dealing with these boom boom girls.Not only are they treacherous but they carry venereal disease,” There is another pause. “Now I know all of you men want to go back to your families safe and sound, and nobody wants to end up on the South Seas Island where they keep men who have venereal disease that will not respond to penicillin.They are not allowed to go back to the States until their syphilis is cured.”An Army veteran who was in Vietnam in 1968 heard the story a bit differently. It was gonorrhea, not syphilis:I heard stories about the Black Clap in 1968, and if you got it you were sent to an island off the coast till you died or a cure was found.A former cavalry man said:“I heard the story of the secret island in 1966 when I was stationed in South Korea. I heard the same story in 1968 when I was in Vietnam. They told us in glorious detail also about the “bullheaded clap.” This is where your dick swelled up and the medics took an “umbrella needle” and ran it up your crank and opened it and then ripped the puss and stuff out of your dick when they withdrew the “expanded umbrella needle.” I only heard that story in South Korea.”“I will tell you why some of the MIA’s didn’t come back from Vietnam, because the venereal disease they had was so terribly, terribly addictive and it could spread so fast we couldn’t let them come back. And those of you in Vietnam know that.”Most likely, the "black syph" story was invented and promoted by the U.S. military to terrify their young troops, lessen the fraternization with local women, and ultimately lower the rate of VD among the men.Sources:Venereal Disease Visual History ArchiveVenereal Disease PropagandaMiscman.comWehrmacht Brothels / der Erste Zug

Just when the Republican Party was about to be doomed to a kind of permanent cell in purgatory comes a ghost of the Republican past, a scion of honor, a blue blood whose veins run deep in sinews of the Mayflower, a man from the family the Cabot spoke too after having dinner with the Lowell's. So you got it. Weld is a Yankee by birthright. Here is a summary of his Governorship in Massachusetts:FROM THE MAGAZINEBill Weld’s Revolution That Wasn’tMassachusetts’s governor came to office promising drastic reductions in government. Five years later, the bureaucracy is bigger than ever.Jeff JacobyWinter 1996In his January 1991 inaugural address, Governor William Weld put the Massachusetts political establishment on notice that he was about to sweep the old order away. He defined his mandate precisely and clearly: “Last fall the people of Massachusetts voted to disenthrall themselves from the failed dogmas of big government.” And so, said the new governor, the public sector was going to shrink. He promised a leaner, more “entrepreneurial” state, one tending “to steer rather than row,” one that “understands that sometimes the most helpful thing to do is to get out of the way. . . . Fewer rules and more results—that’s my definition of entrepreneurial government.” His newborn administration would set about “reinventing the way state government functions,” dismantling “bureaucracies 50 years out of date, sluggish and centralized, in which hierarchies rule and orders are issued from the top of a power pyramid.”It was revolution Weld was talking, especially for famously liberal Massachusetts, a state that had been governed by Michael Dukakis for 12 of the past 16 years and by a Democratic legislature since the late 1950s. Yet the new governor’s radical remarks only underscored the promises he had made throughout his 1990 campaign. He had launched his candidacy one year earlier with a vow to end “big government,” to slash the state payroll by 10,000, and to cut $1 billion out of the state budget (which then stood at $12.8 billion and would rise, by Election Day, to $13.4 billion). “This state government has taken on a life of its own,” he declared. “[It] has forgotten the simple truth that there’s no such thing as government money; there’s only taxpayers’ money.”Over and over, he repeated these themes. Referring to the $6 billion by which the state budget had grown under Dukakis, Weld said, “I would be very, very surprised if there was 16 percent of that $6 billion that couldn’t be pried away.” Had state spending merely kept pace with inflation since 1983, he calculated, it would have been 25 percent less than it was at the end of Dukakis’s term.To emphasize his determination to reduce spending drastically, Weld endorsed Question 3, a ballot initiative (ultimately unsuccessful) to roll back more than $2 billion in recent tax increases. Budgets, he declared in May 1990, ought to start each year “from scratch. . . . You assume no program is necessary . . . no bureaucrat's job is necessary . . . no line item in the budget is necessary.” He cheerfully told editorial boards he would “blow up” unneeded state agencies and cited robust privatization as the key to shrinking “the beast”—his term for state government. “If the private sector can run something better and cheaper, and it isn’t a core function of government, I say: More power to them.”He was scathing in his indictment of the Democrats who ran the State Senate and House of Representatives. “The Legislature,” he said, “has proven itself incapable of restructuring state government.” By contrast, he was an outsider who would remain an outsider: “I particularly despise the philosophy . . . that you have to go along to get along.” He also despised William Bulger, the vindictive, arm-twisting Senate president. Beacon Hill was “rotten to the core,” snapped Weld, a former federal prosecutor, and much of the rot was due to Bulger. In an October debate with his Democratic opponent, Boston University president John Silber, Weld snorted: “I think you’ve been hanging around your friend Senator Bulger too long, absorbing the 1,001 reasons why it’s impossible to change anything on Beacon Hill.”So how has the Weld revolution turned out? Did the first Republican to be elected governor of Massachusetts since 1970 make good on his vow to reduce state government radically?Not according to one high state official, who in August 1995—more than four and a half years after Weld took office—portrayed a state still mired in government, taxes, and regulation. Far from shrinking, the state's tax revenues and budget had climbed every year since 1992. The official characterized Massachusetts in Year 5 of the Weld administration much as the governor himself had five years earlier: “A bunch of boards . . . regulate barbers and cosmetologists and landscape architects and the like, . . . because somebody thought government ought to save both people and shrubs from the trauma of a bad haircut. . . . We’re choking on an excess of benevolence. . . .“[The state] props up segments of industry that ought to die a noble death in the marketplace. It creates social distortions like welfare that destroy the people they’re supposed to help. . . . In our cities we’ve got people living in places where government interference has completely driven out all the economic and social vitality of the community. These places are nothing short of public sector hells. . . . If a program fails, government historically . . . has slapped another program on top of it. . . . That's how Massachusetts wound up with 23 separate agencies serving the disabled; 41 separate job-training programs. . . . The Code of Massachusetts Regulations has grown so vast, bookshelves buckle under it.”It was a grim description; but most depressing was the speaker’s identity: William Weld. Nearly five years after the inaugural address that was to have ushered in an unprecedented downsizing of state government, Weld was still announcing the revolution's imminent arrival. His rhetoric was as pro-market and anti-statist as it had been in 1990. By 1995, however, it was hard for any but the most wishful to believe he actually meant it.Weld took office in the middle of the state’s worst crisis in five decades. Just three years after Michael Dukakis had run for president on the strength of the "Massachusetts miracle," the Bay State was on the verge of fiscal collapse. The $13.4 billion 1991 budget, which Dukakis had pronounced balanced when it was adopted in July 1990, was being pronounced $500 million out of balance by the time Weld was elected. In fact, as Weld would discover after taking office, the deficit was closer to $800 million.There never really had been a Massachusetts miracle. The state hadoutperformed most of the nation during the economic boom of the mid-1980s, but not because of any Dukakis wizardry. Its soaring growth had been powered by two engines: Proposition 21/2, the 1980 property tax cut adopted by ballot initiative that lit a fire under the Massachusetts real estate market; and the Reagan-era military buildup, which pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Route 128, the high-tech highway ringing Boston.As the economy surged, so did tax revenues—and state spending. With money no object, the Dukakis budget had room for all manner of new government programs and benefits, each of which instantly acquired a political constituency. By the time the downturn came in 1987 and revenues slowed to a trickle, spending was out of control. Unable to turn off the cash-guzzling machine they had revved up, Dukakis and the Legislature resorted to frantic borrowing and repeated increases in state taxes and fees.It wasn’t enough. By 1990, deficit spending reached unprecedented levels. Despite three years of jolting tax and fee hikes, Beacon Hill couldn't balance its books. The state began floating bonds to cover operating expenses. As more and more money was bled from the private sector, and as the national recession grew more severe, the state’s condition grew worse. By the time Dukakis departed, Massachusetts’s bond rating was the lowest of any state, just one step above “non-investment grade”—junk—level.Meanwhile, the recession, deepened by the tax increases, vaporized hundreds of thousands of jobs. Unemployment was 8 percent—well above the national figure—and climbing. Real estate prices were collapsing. The public’s mood lurched between anger and panic. As Weld came to power, Massachusetts had become a fiscal Beirut.The new governor’s first priority was to stop the trauma, and he did so. He forced the 1991 budget he’d inherited from Dukakis into balance, in part by requiring state workers to take unpaid "furloughs," in part by cutting state aid to cities and towns—but mostly by landing an unexpected windfall: a $531 million federal reimbursement for Medicaid expenses (a “gooney bird,” Weld called it—a piece of great fortune that fell from the sky).However it was done, it was done: the 1991 fiscal year ended in the black. A scheduled expansion of the sales tax was scrapped. A decrease in the state income tax took place as planned. For fiscal 1992, Weld actually budgeted less money than the year before. That was a Massachusetts miracle, and it earned the governor glowing attention from conservatives nationwide. The Wall Street Journalhailed Weld as one of the nation’s most “courageous” chief executives. The libertarian Cato Institute rated him the best governor in America.In July 1992, Weld’s first full budget cycle came to an end. Total spending had indeed decreased from 1991. Not by much—only 1.7 percent (about $200 million)—but it was the clearest sign imaginable that the budget meltdown had been confronted and reversed. In a political culture where “cut” commonly means “raising spending by less than planned,” Weld’s accomplishment—actually reducing spending from one year to the next—seemed wondrous. Soon Wall Street was raising the commonwealth’s paper out of the bond-rating basement. Unemployment dropped. The state’s business groups expressed renewed confidence. The crisis was over.Ending the budgetary free fall bequeathed by Dukakis has been Weld’s signal achievement as governor. He has balanced each of his budgets without short-term borrowing and without raising taxes—in fact, the state has finished each year with a slight surplus, and some business taxes have been cut. In September 1995, Financial Worldranked Massachusetts the 11th-best-managed state in the nation; four years earlier it had ranked the Bay State dead last.It helped greatly, of course, that the recession that had battered New England so badly ended early on Weld’s watch. Before the recovery finally began in 1992, Massachusetts had lost 360,000 jobs—a staggering 11 percent of its employment base. Since then, jobs have grown by 1.9 percent annually, a little lower than the national average of 2.2 percent. “That isn’t a bad performance,” says economist Sara Johnson of DRI/McGraw Hill, a leading econometric forecasting firm. “But Massachusetts could certainly do much better.”Which, in a way, sums up the Weld administration’s record.Weld, to his great credit, put Massachusetts’s books right side up: Beacon Hill no longer spends more than it takes in. But that is about as far as his “reinventing government” has gone. The state’s fiscal house no longer totters on its foundation. But neither has it been rebuilt according to the entrepreneurial, privatized, free-market blueprint on which Weld had campaigned.For all Weld’s talk of downsizing, his administration has “upsized” in every year save its first. Final spending by Massachusetts in fiscal year 1992 was $13.4 billion; the appropriation for the current fiscal year (ending July 31, 1996) is $16.8 billion. State spending, in other words, will have climbed 25.4 percent in just four years. Inflation has totaled just 10.3 percent.By January 1992, Weld had abandoned his oft-repeated vow to carve $1 billion from the budget. In his State of the State address that month, he proposed adding $1 billion instead. He boasted of multi-million-dollar “increases in several key programs” in his forthcoming fiscal 1993 spending plan. “As these examples illustrate,” he said, “we’re not against government spending. We don’t wish to dismantle government.”A year later, Weld’s proposed 1994 budget included yet another $1 billion spending hike. “We’re seeing a completely different Bill Weld than we saw a couple of years ago,” exulted James Braude, director of the staunchly liberal Tax Equity Alliance for Massachusetts, which had led the fight against Question 3, the 1990 tax rollback ballot issue. The state’s foremost anti-tax advocate, by contrast, was dismayed. “Spending is out of control,” said Barbara Anderson of Citizens for Limited Taxation, “just like it used to be.”How could Weld, who had come to office waving a budget-slashing scimitar, have turned into a bigger spender than his predecessor? “Anyone who looks at this budget,” said State Representative Tom Finneran, the moderate Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, “will see Mike Dukakis, a foot taller, with a different shade of hair. The governor is doing everything he accused Dukakis of.”Weld’s own explanation was incoherent. “My hope is that revenues continue to go up,” he told the Boston Herald, “even if that means the budget goes up. If to some extent we’re victims of our own successes, . . . that’s not all bad.” Was this the same Republican who used to remind audiences that there was no such thing as government money, only taxpayers’ money?In reality, once the budget crisis was over, a majority of Beacon Hill Democrats found spending cuts intolerable. To cut spending a second (or third, or fourth) year in a row, Weld would have had to fight the legislative leadership—hard. It would have been unpleasant, and Weld avoids unpleasant fights. Not for lack of mettle: as a federal prosecutor he was tenacious. But when it comes to relationships with people he must deal with, Weld is conflict averse. Forced to choose between antagonizing the top Democrats in the statehouse and adjusting his ends, Weld adjusted.Besides, his passion for budget cutting as an end in itself—as a way to reduce the scope of government and shift power to the private sector—seemed to have largely dried up after the inaugural. Rather than pressing the genuinely revolutionary view that the state should spend less and do less because less government would be better for the economy and for society, Weld argued only that spending had to be curbed to avert economic collapse. When the fiscal storm ended, that argument lost its force.If Weld—a Republican governor facing a Democratic legislature—had really hoped to push a government-shrinking agenda, it was clear he would have had to draw political strength from some source other than public desperation. For that, he had two options: build a powerful cadre of loyalists in his own administration, or expand the Republican minority in the Legislature. He did neither.From the outset, most of Weld’s appointees did not share his campaign vision of a sharply slimmed-down government. His post-election transition committee tilted noticeably leftward. “Weld Picks a Lot of Liberals” was the headline on a Herald story two weeks after the 1990 election. To some extent, Weld was merely paying a political debt. He had been elected with a strong crossover vote from liberal Democrats put off by their own party’s abrasive nominee, John Silber.But Weld’s appointments also reflected his social and cultural orientation. A high-bred Yankee with Long Island roots, an education at Exeter, Harvard, and Oxford, and a wife (the former Susan Roosevelt of Oyster Bay) who backed Dukakis for president, Weld is at ease in the liberal milieu of Cambridge, where he lives. He is a Republican of the Elliot Richardson, not the Ronald Reagan, variety. The ambience of a Grateful Dead concert is far more congenial to him—he donned a black ribbon when Jerry Garcia died—than that of a Republican convention.As Weld shaped his team, the nod often went to appointees on the strength of personal friendship or politically correct “diversity.” He won kudos for the number of women and blacks he named to his Cabinet, but by common acknowledgment they were generally the least impressive members of the administration. He named former Dukakis aides and supporters to Cabinet posts and judgeships. In one agency after another—Public Utilities, Public Health, Youth Services, Environmental Affairs—the faces of the fledgling Republican administration were those of the outgoing, discredited Democratic administration. In a political roundup column one year into the nouveau regime, the Herald quoted the lyrics of a Who song to characterize the Weld bureaucracy: “Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.”There were, of course, exceptions—most notably James J. Kerasiotes, Weld’s first highway commissioner (later elevated to the Cabinet as transportation secretary). He unapologetically swept “Dukakoids” from his agency, sliced its budget and payroll, and mounted a hatchet in his office as a symbol of his willingness to battle defenders of the status quo. “That’s what elections are all about,” Kerasiotes said. “Those people who can’t work in sync with your agenda ought to leave.”Kerasiotes’s combative style earned the enmity of state-employee unions. Unlike other Weld officials, he was happy to return the bureaucrats' scorn. To audiences and interviewers, he relayed a stream of anecdotes about the goldbricking and waste he was uncovering. More significantly, he began changing the way his department did business. He halved the number of state cars taken home by employees of the state mass-transit authority and auctioned off the excess vehicles. For the first time in 30 years, the department used competitive bidding to retain bond counsel. Kerasiotes cut a public relations staff of eight to one. He was explicit about whose agenda he was following. “Until I’m told otherwise,” he said, “I’m taking the governor’s campaign promises as my marching orders.”But more typical were the department and commission heads who shared none of Weld’s early fervor for downsizing, and who had no intention of dismantling anything. Some of the most crucial positions in state government went to appointees completely at odds with Weld’s philosophy. “He just never grasped the importance of doing an ideology check on people,” said a member of the governor’s senior staff. Another aide lamented in a confidential 1992 memo: “How can we possibly revolutionize state government when virtually the entire bureaucracy is in enemy hands?”But by then it was clear that Weld no longer intended to revolutionize state government. The ideological clarity of his campaign and his inaugural message was dissipated. “Philosophically, I’m a work in progress,” Weld said of himself, and his performance echoed his lack of focus.Latitudinarian by nature, Weld was uncomfortable with the idea of testing potential nominees for ideological purity. But a governor who doesn’t concern himself with the political views of his appointees is not a governor who can lead a revolution. In May 1992, Martin Kaplan, chairman of the state Board of Education, told the Boston Globe: “The governor has never, when I came on the board or became chairman, told me how I should move on certain issues.” Across much of the Weld administration, that was the prevailing attitude.Weld proved no better at building a strong Republican presence in the State Legislature. The 1990 election that had swept Weld into office had also swelled Republican ranks in the 40-member State Senate to 16—enough to sustain a gubernatorial veto. Weld’s power to strike down bills was a weapon the Democrats who controlled the Legislature had to respect. If Weld were serious about transforming state government, preserving his veto and expanding the GOP base should have been his top political priorities.Instead, he allowed the Republican Party to fall apart. He paid little attention to the GOP’s few officeholders and kept the Republican State Committee powerless. He recruited few candidates to run for office and delivered minimal assistance to those who did. Result: in the 1992 legislative elections, Republican Senate seats shrank from 16 to 9. Weld's power shrank, too. Democrats could now override his vetoes at will, and often did. In December 1993, Weld suffered a key defeat: over his objection, the Legislature enacted a law intended to prevent privatization.Yet even this loss seemed to teach him nothing. When he ran for reelection in 1994, he again left fellow Republicans to fend for themselves, even as he spent more than $4.5 million on his own campaign against a weak Democratic nominee. As he romped to a second term with 71 percent of the vote, his party gained exactly zero seats on Beacon Hill. In a year of massive GOP pickups around the country, Massachusetts was one of only four states where Republicans gained no ground.“Why didn’t he recruit a slate of 40 Republicans to run for the Senate?” asked one unhappy Republican activist. “I love Bill Weld, but he’s going to be hurt by his failure to do anything to help his party.” Former State Senator Arthur Chase, a Worcester Republican, concluded that Weld “was more concerned about getting the largest possible reelection margin for himself than with electing the largest number of Republicans. I think his objective was to catapult himself onto the national scene.”By the end of 1994, Weld appeared to have lost interest in his job. Increasingly absorbed with national Republican politics, he began taking soundings for a presidential run. He seized every opportunity to fly to Washington for appearances with the new Republican leaders in Congress. He bragged about the book he and Speaker Newt Gingrich allegedly were going to write together.Weld eventually decided not to run for the White House and signed on instead as a top fund-raiser for California Governor Pete Wilson. He plunged into Wilson's presidential campaign (and out of Massachusetts) so energetically that his absence became a running joke. The Globe began clocking the hours Weld actually spent in his office in a feature called “Weld Watch.” The Herald editorialized: “Time to come home, Bill.” One Boston radio station even sent two talk-show hosts on a “Where’s Weld-o?” search for the missing governor.But Weld’s efforts to project influence nationally didn’t alter his standing on Beacon Hill, where—lacking an aggressive command staff and bereft of Republican troops in the Legislature—he has found himself without much political muscle. Disinclined by temperament to “pull a Reagan”—that is, to bypass the Legislature and take his case to the people—Weld came to adopt a policy of accommodation.He began bending over backward to get along with the legislative leadership. No longer did he condemn the Legislature as “rotten to the core.” On the contrary: in November 1994, in the face of enormous public hostility (but to enthusiastic acclaim inside the statehouse), he introduced a bill to raise legislators' pay by 55 percent. The move came just a few weeks after Weld told reporters that a pay hike was “not something we’re considering.” Adding insult to injury, the bill made the raise unrepealable by referendum.Weld’s aides insisted he wasn’t sleeping with the enemy but simply being cagey and practical. The governor’s willingness to take the heat for a pay raise, they pointed out, was promptly rewarded by the Legislature with the capital gains tax cut Weld had long sought.But such victories were few and very far between, not enough to explain Weld’s ostentatious chumminess with the legislative leaders he used to execrate. Just how far he was willing to go to win favor with the Democrats was evident on Election Day 1994. At a polling place in South Boston, Weld actually campaigned with Bill Bulger, the State Senate president he had denounced so hotly four years earlier. He introduced himself to bemused voters as “Senator Bulger’s campaign manager” and urged them to reelect the senator—the state’s most powerful Democrat, a vehement opponent of term limits, tax cuts, and most privatization, the antithesis of nearly everything Weld had stood for in 1990. “He’s a good man,” Weld grinned. One year later, Weld helped this “good man” step up to the presidency of the University of Massachusetts.What happened? It may be that Weld doesn’t take governing—or political differences—too seriously. He enjoys the gamesmanship of politics more than the substance of policy. Embracing the Democrats who hold power on Beacon Hill was a way of staying in the game, of demonstrating his good sportsmanship. It certainly added to his reputation for puckish unpredictability.Weld’s change of opinion about Bulger symbolized his transformation from an anti-government crusader to an amiable status-quo politician, from an outsider bent on “reinventing government” to an insider content with managing the government that exists.Just how committed Weld ever really was to “taming the beast” is open to question. Like sunspots, his anti-government zeal flares up at intervals. When Weld is running for office, that zeal is pronounced; thereafter it largely subsides. On the campaign trail in 1990 and 1994, he fervently attacked government's wasteful, oppressive ineptitude. Once the votes were counted, he seemed to find government much less offensive. In November 1995, as he prepared to run against U.S. Senator John Kerry, Weld again cranked up the downsizing rhetoric.“We’ve insulated, we’ve sealed, we’ve caulked the old place”—state government— “as much as possible,” he proclaimed, “but it’s still leaking taxpayer dollars like crazy. It’s time to knock the old fleabag down.” He proposed a slew of reforms, from abolishing Cabinet departments to privatizing mass transit to making driver’s licenses permanent. He said his plan would reduce state spending by $659 million, and that most of the savings would be returned in the form of tax cuts. Whether the governor who had driven state spending up at two and a half times the rate of inflation actually meant any of this was—not to put too fine a point on it—uncertain.In fairness, Weld has presided over some downsizing of state functions. A number of market-oriented reforms have taken effect, some despite harsh opposition. For example, in its first year, the Weld administration hired a private firm to provide medical services for the state’s prison inmates, replacing some 200 state workers, reducing costs to the treasury, and improving the quality of care. Similarly, the Department of Mental Retardation privatized food and housekeeping services at facilities housing 1,600 retarded citizens. In-house operations that had required 725 state workers and cost $23 million were contracted to private vendors. Costs dropped $10 million, most of the laid-off state workers found jobs with the new vendors, and the department reported “substantial improvements in cleanliness, sanitation, and quality of food.”A Weld drive to shut down nine underused public hospitals was largely successful. The administration closed eight of them by late 1993, moving thousands of patients to residential settings or into nursing homes and saving some $36 million per year. The administration drew praise for keeping its promise that every transferred patient would end up receiving “equal or better care.”Beginning in 1992, Weld's administration contracted out highway maintenance in eastern Massachusetts, long the domain of public-sector unions. The results are impressive by any measure: the Highway Department has cut its workforce from 3,100 to 2,300 and its operating budget from $96 million to $73 million—while increasing the frequency of grass mowing, bridge washing, and road sweeping. In Dukakis's last term, 302 state bridges were repaired or rebuilt; in Weld’s first term, that number nearly doubled, to 595. Researchers at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government audited the privatization program in Essex County and found it 21 percent more cost-effective than the old system.Weld has reined in Medicaid spending, the biggest line-item in the budget, to an annual growth rate of less than 3 percent—a phenomenal change from Dukakis's last term, when it was skyrocketing 20 percent a year. In essence, the Weld administration transformed Medicaid into a giant HMO, using the state’s financial clout to win lower prices from hospitals and nursing homes. A private firm took over mental health care and drug treatment. For the first time, the system concentrated on treating Medicaid patients in the right setting—steering them away from gold-plated teaching hospitals, for example, when a community hospital would be more appropriate. Weld also won passage of a law deregulating hospital finances: no longer would the state tell insurers how much to pay hospitals for various services; now insurers (including Medicaid) were free to negotiate deals for themselves. Result: a remarkable slowing of the rise in health care costs and the taming of what had been the worst budget buster in Massachusetts.These were not trivial accomplishments. But they hardly added up to a sweeping overhaul of Massachusetts government. And they didn't spring from any administration-wide passion to shrink state government. Almost all the downsizing and privatizing successes were the work of two officials who shared a genuine commitment to curbing the scope of government. One was Kerasiotes, the highway commissioner later elevated to transportation secretary. The other was Charles D. Baker, who joined the administration as undersecretary for health, moved up to secretary of health and human services, and in 1994 was made secretary of administration and finance, the highest post in the Cabinet.Weld once called Baker “the soul of the Weld administration.” He said of Kerasiotes: “I wish I had a dozen like him.” That he had only one of each was no one’s fault but Weld’s. Had he paid greater attention to personnel, seeking out and appointing more Bakers and Kerasioteses to state office, a Weld revolution might indeed have taken place.What took place instead was a retreat. On the evidence of his first five years, Weld’s enthusiasm for reining in government is gone. He may still, on occasion, talk the talk—his call last November to “knock the old fleabag down” was, if anything, even more radical than his first inaugural address; and in his race for the Senate, he has revived the conservative themes of his gubernatorial campaigns. But in most areas, he has yet to walk the walk.Some illustrations:Reducing Massachusetts’s network of state colleges once stood high on Weld’s to-do list. While public higher education predominates elsewhere, in Massachusetts—where the tradition of private higher learning is older than statehood—state institutions award only 20 percent of academic degrees. Yet an empire of 29 mediocre public colleges has bloated up, built mostly to satisfy the “edifice complex” of a succession of governors and legislators. Weld had said he would consolidate the system, closing campuses and trimming the budget by $40 million. But when an uproar ensued, he reversed course. In May 1991 he announced: “There will be no campus closings; . . . that $40 million is going back into the higher ed budget.” Today Weld dreams of building “a public university on a par with Michigan and California.” Spending on the state college empire is now 24 percent more than when he was inaugurated.Privatizing chunks of the state’s transportation infrastructure was supposed to be part of the Great Downsizing. In April 1991 Weld’s first transportation secretary touted the virtues of privately operated toll roads. At various times, Weld or his aides have suggested privatizing the new Central Artery, a below-ground highway now under construction; the Massachusetts Turnpike, a 135-mile road running from Boston to New York State; the traffic tunnels that connect downtown Boston to the East Boston peninsula; the buses and subways of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority; and Logan International Airport. Except for the MBTA (still unprivatized, but Kerasiotes is talking about it), all these suggestions have died.Weld took office vowing to privatize Boston’s state-owned Hynes Convention Center, a paradigm of mismanagement that loses millions annually. But when Bulger—whose former chief aide is executive director of the Hynes—objected, Weld backed down. He even signed a law providing the Hynes with a guaranteed subsidy. “Weld’s first cave-in was on the Hynes,” recalls GOP Congressman Peter Blute, who as a state legislator had led the effort to privatize the convention center. “There was a big meeting with Weld and all of us who had been fighting the Democrats on the Hynes, and we urged him not to do it. We told him, ‘Hey, we have a lot invested here.’ But he basically said he had to deal with Bulger.” By 1994 Weld was backing efforts to build a second government-owned convention center in Boston.In 1992, Weld favored ending Massachusetts’s ludicrous requirement that all road repair or construction sites be supervised by police officers on paid details—a government monopoly that costs utilities and municipalities at least $100 million annually. But the Legislature, heavily lobbied by police unions unwilling to give up this lucrative perk, refused to consider the issue. So Weld declined to push it. “Come back when you’ve got 81 votes [a majority] in the House, and let’s talk about it,” he told the Globe. Any attempt on his part to change legislators’ minds, he said, “would be performing a vain act.”Just before his inauguration, Weld noted that he looked forward to “blowing up” the Metropolitan District Commission, a hodgepodge state agency that manages—with notorious incompetence—an assortment of Greater Boston parks, pools, beaches, and roadways. Five years later the MDC remains unscathed, with a favorite Weld aide at its head.Since Weld has been governor, in fact, no state agency or bureau has been abolished. Several, however, have been created. Weld has further cluttered the state’s bureaucracy with an executive office of education (complete with a Cabinet secretary), several new licensing boards, a Gay and Lesbian Youth Commission, and a Governor’s Advisory Committee on Women’s Issues.In 1992 he lobbied for the creation of government-managed investment funds to back start-up companies that private lenders deemed too risky. “Some people,” Weld acknowledged, “will ask, ‘Why are you being so proactive?’ I say, these are market failures we are responding to.” This was a far cry from the fiscal libertarian who in 1990 had condemned the state’s “unwieldy structure of ‘industrial policy,’” scorning anyone who thought government ought to be picking the economy’s winners and losers.In the 1988 presidential campaign, one of Michael Dukakis’s mantras was “competence, not ideology.” Ironically, that slogan in many ways describes not the performance of Dukakis but of his successor in the Massachusetts statehouse. The Bay State today is managed much as Dukakis must have wished he could manage it—by a government that is large, intrusive, and expensive, but mostly free of scandal and able to balance its budget.Frankly, there is little about the commonwealth's government in Year 5 of the Weld era that Dukakis would object to. Expenditures and tax revenues go up each year—both by several points more than the inflation rate—but spending never outstrips income. Massachusetts citizens pay very high taxes (the Tax Foundation estimates their tax burden as the nation’s eighth-heaviest), and the state is ruled by a government that involves itself in everything: foster care and smoking prevention, job training and arts subsidies, liquor wholesaling and harness racing, school discipline and the price of milk, manicurists, and auto insurance. In the name of environmental protection, the state promulgates reams of regulations, many of them stringent and costly to business. The state supervises and regulates dozens of professions, and only a few of its functions have been privatized. State employees are very well paid; state legislators—thanks to the Weld pay raise—even more so. As a rule, the government's priorities are Democratic priorities. Racial preferences are required by law and defended by the governor. Abortion is widely available and in many cases state funded. Onerous new mandates have been signed into law—mandatory electric car quotas, mandatory helmets for kids riding bikes, a mandatory school curriculum on “gay sensitivity.”I was living in the state at the time. I voted for him . He was down the African American agenda. The previous years I had voted for Dukasis. I think for Black Republicans he is a good choice.