Bonus Episode: Who was Dag Hammarskjöld?

As with JFK, discussions of Dag Hammarskjöld so often turn to the mysterious circumstances of his death following a plane crash on September 18, 1961. On my daytime podcast, I talked about Ravi Somaiya's book The Golden Thread and Mads Brügger's truly unique documentary Cold Case Hammarskjöld. In a future episode here, I plan to review Susan Williams' book Who Killed Hammarskjöld?  My question tonight, however, is: who was Dag Hammarskjöld? Leaving aside the bizarre details of his untimely death, who was he?

Links:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1125110/14034550

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1125110/14042731

https://books.google.com/books/about/Dag_Hammarskj%C3%B6ld.html?id=MTBEAAAAIAAJ

https://www.amazon.com/Dag-Hammarskjold-Strictly-Personal-Portrait/dp/B0006BYLAI

https://roape.net/2024/02/08/myth-busting-dag-hammarskjold-katanga-and-the-coup-against-the-lumumba-government/

https://www.amazon.com/Hammarskj%C3%B6ld-United-Nations-Decolonisation-Africa/dp/1787380041

Need more? You can visit the website at: https://consaracytheories.com/ or my own site at: https://saracausey.com/. Don't forget to check out the blog at: https://consaracytheories.com/blog. 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's bonus episode, I wanted to ask the question, who was Dag Hammarskjöld? From time to time on this podcast, we will visit and revisit the mysterious, weird, utterly bizarre death of Dag Hammarskjöld. And one thing I found in my research around the murder of JFK is that you may start out getting pulled into a murder mystery, all of the weird circumstances where you barely scratch the surface and you realize this situation stinks to high heaven. Nothing really makes any sense here in an official capacity, and so it is with the death of dag hammered. There's a wound on his forehead that appears to be a bullet wound, but then it's airbrushed out of the autopsy photos. There's an ace of spades playing card tucked in his shirt collar, not sounding like a random, accidental death due to pilot error. I'm just saying so you go down the rabbit hole of Well, who would have wanted him dead? What was the motivation? Who was he a danger to and from there? Doesn't take long to begin asking the question, well, who was he as a person? What did he believe in? What did he stand for? Since His birthday was July 29 I thought it would be a great bonus episode for the month of July to simply ask this question, who was Dag hammerscholt? Select your frosty beverage of choice. We will saddle up and take this ride. As with any historical figure, we're at a bit of a disadvantage because we're having to rely on biographies, and some of these biographies were written by people who never met Dag hammerschool were never even in the same room with him. And let's be honest, sometimes historians and biographers have their own agenda. We see this quite clearly with Kennedy scholarship. I had to begin with what the local library had on hand. And you may remember from my crossover episode about JFKs book why England slept. They still had that book at the library, but it was down in the basement because nobody had checked it out. Quote, for years. Then it was awfully strange, because as soon as I checked it out from the library, and my two weeks started with it. Somebody else, strangely, after years, put in a request for it so that I wasn't able to keep it beyond two weeks. And I thought, you know, that's awfully peculiar for a book to sit down in a basement for years. But then the minute I have it, somebody else wants it. Hmm, things that make you go, hmm. So there were two biographies that they had down in the basement. I was a little bit less, if I'm being honest, surprised to hear that the biographies of Dag Hammarskjöldl were down in the basement, as opposed to a work that was written by a future president. But anyway, the first one that I came upon was written by Charlie may Simon, published 1967 and still has that try to get close to the microphone, and still has that old book smell. You know, it's just some of us bookworms and book nerds love that kind of stuff. So this was my starting point. Her characterization is really of dag as someone who was at least to some degree, closed off and unknowable. And this is something that is observed from his youth all the way into, well, I can't say old age, because he didn't really die elderly, but his youth until his death, I'll give you a for instance, from her first chapter, which is Dag's life, from 1905 to 1913 the friendships he formed at this time were to be lasting. Ones. His classmates found him fun to be with. He was good at sports, and he had a quick mind and ready wit in games of competition. Each side wanted him for a leader. But from the beginning, there was something that kept him from feeling part of a group. He had loyal friends, but no close ones. He was a good comrade who remained loyal to his friends all his life. John Olaf wrote of him later, as a boy, he was completely natural and amusing playmate, but not one we could get intimate with. Dag made the highest grades in the class without the long hours of study and effort the others had to put in, and he was the son of the Lord lieutenant of the province, living in a castle away from the other houses of town. These things alone were enough to set a boy apart from his companions. But with young DAG, there was something. More, as with every sensitive child, there was an inner self, a self reserved for ideals and dreams and glimpses of beauty, which he could not bring himself to share, and with it, there was a loneliness that would never leave him. End Quote, she reports that at the age of 17, Dag took his entrance examinations to the university, and that his grades were the highest, but his father, who was stern and exacting, made the remark that one of Dag's older brothers had done better. Okay, Dag is able to receive his Bachelor of Arts degree at only the age of 19. In his undergrad, he was studying languages and literature, but then he goes on to study political economy while he works on his doctorate in economics, he was a lecturer at the Stockholm University, and then he receives an appointment to be secretary of the Royal Commission on unemployment. One character trait that I think most biographers agree on is this idea of somebody who works almost tirelessly. And there are stories of every other window in the office or in the finance department or in the UN would be dark, and everybody else would be at home, and there'd be one light on, and it would be Dag still working. We learned that whether he goes by himself, as he often did, or whether he brings a friend with him, he likes to go out to the country, go bicycling, hiking or mountain climbing. Apparently, mountain climbing would be something that stuck with him as a passion that he really enjoyed, along with photography. After hammer leaves the finance department, he becomes the envoy and financial expert to the Foreign Department, and also had been a chairman for the Bank of Sweden after World War Two, Hammarskjöld also becomes part of the organization for European economic cooperation.

After that effort, he's made cabinet secretary in the Foreign Department, and in 1951 he is appointed to be the vice minister of foreign affairs when he's not working, in addition to things like bicycling and mountain climbing, he loves to read. Tries to find time in every single day to read something. He also really likes to translate. When the position of Secretary General for the UN becomes available, initially, he thinks nobody is going to be crazy enough to nominate me, and even if they did, I wouldn't be crazy enough to accept. But of course, we know that yes he was nominated, and yes he did accept. Her summary of what hammershould is up against, I think is a pretty good one, so I will read it now. 11 American airmen shot down while flying over North Korea were being held in Peking against the terms of the truce. Trouble was brewing in Indochina, Palestine, Kashmir, there was a Mau, Mau uprising in Africa, an H bomb explosion in Russia, a new nationalism in Egypt, with the rise of Nasser to power, hundreds of 1000s of Arabs were made homeless by a change of boundary lines. There had been a time when a local crisis could occur without causing a stir in the rest of the world, but with television, radio, cable news reports for the daily papers, all these problems were brought quickly and fully into every home. Some called the Secretary General, the president of the World. End quote, he is able to negotiate the release of those airmen that were being held, and of this Charlie writes Dag Hammarskjöld would take no credit for this event. Many different things had happened to bring this about, he said, and many people were involved, but he added that no event or anything which he had been permitted to do ranked higher on that list of causes for gratitude than his trip to be king. He wrote that night to a friend, today, we accomplish something God and I, that is to say it was God who built it while I stood below with the paint pot, shouting and to himself. He wrote as a warning against pride, shame mixed with gratitude, shame over all my bouts of vanity, envy and self complacency, gratitude for all to which my bare intention, though certainly not my achievement, may possibly have entitled me. God sometimes allows me to take the credit for his work or withdraws from it in his solitude, he watches our capers on the stage with an ironic smile, so long as we do not tamper with the scales of justice. End quote, he has to go back and forth to the Middle East. Numerous times in one of his diaries, he's written to himself, it is an idea you are serving, an idea which must be victorious if a mankind worth the name is to survive. It is this idea which you must help towards victory with all your strength. Knowing this, it should be easy for you to smile at criticism of decisions, misunderstood ridicule of expressions, misinterpreted as idealism, declarations of war to the death upon that which for all outward appearances you are devoting your life. But is it so easy? No, for the pettiness you show in your reactions to other people about whose motives. You know nothing renders you very justly vulnerable to the pettiness you encounter in the interpretations of your own efforts. End quote, one of the things that has fueled speculation about whether dag hammer should was living in the closet or maybe he was a sexual maybe there was some kind of deep, profound part of himself that he just kept a secret from everyone is because he was never married. And this is something that Charlie Simon gets into in her book, Why have you never married? Dag Hammarskjöld was asked he answered that in his childhood he had seen the loneliness of his mother during his father's long absences on public business, and he would not want to subject a wife to the same thing on his 53rd birthday in July 1958 when he was in the midst of negotiation with the Arab states, he had written, didst thou give me this inescapable loneliness so that it would be easier for me To give thee all he wrote an article about photography called the camera has taught me to see. And Charlie Simon reports that photography was his favorite hobby, next to hiking and mountain climbing. Dag writes, When I look back at the results of my interest in photography, which has always been intense, the important thing is not the pictures I have been able to take, but far more the way doing this has taught me how to see. It is better to teach oneself to see than to have one's Vision fixed by others. End Quote, when he's invited to Nepal, he takes a variety of photos of the breathtaking mountains there in late September, early October, of 1960 Khrushchev really reaches a boiling point with his distrust and his distaste for Dag Hammarskjöld and calls for his resignation. In response to this hammered says in this context, the representative of the Soviet Union spoke of courage. It is very easy to resign. It is not so easy to stay on. It is very easy to bow to the wish of a big power. It is another matter to resist, as is well known to all members of this assembly, I have done so before on many occasions and in many directions. If it is the wish of those nations who see in the organization their best protection in the present world. I shall now do so again. Khrushchev disagreed with how hammerschold had handled various crises in the Middle East and the Suez Canal, and he wanted him out of that post. We're now in the sad chapter on 1961 where Simon writes he had a message sent immediately to his representatives in Katanga to negotiate a cease fire with Tshombe. But Tshombe, at that time, was in hiding. The first message that had come from Katanga, from the United Nations representative there was that the secession of Katanga was over, but the mercenaries began drifting back to take up the fighting again, and Tshombe came out of hiding. The reports now coming in were growing worse and worse. The soldiers under the United Nations flag were not equipped nor prepared for battle for four agonizing days. Dag Hammarskjöld waited in Leopoldville between the necessary state luncheons and dinners with the heads of the central government. He spent his time at the office assigned to him there with his staff, he went over each message that came in and drafted replies until three o'clock in the morning. Fears were expressed by his New York staff that this would mean a setback for the United Nations. In the eyes of the world, the member delegates were again divided. The Soviets wanted an even tougher policy against Katanga. The United States was on the side of the Soviets, this time with the afro Asian states, agreeing the other Western powers bitterly opposed the fighting end quote at the end of the book, Simon writes in the guest room where Dag Hammarskjöld had spent his last night. There lay on the bedside table the book Imitation of Christ, a bookmark showed the page he had last read, even the blows and the punishments which we receive from that paternal hand would be gentle, since he would never allow misfortune to befall us except for our good. On the bookmark were typed the words of the oath Dag Hammarskjöld had taken when he became Secretary General of the United Nations. I Dag Hammarskjöld solemnly swear to exercise in all loyalty, discretion and conscience the functions entrusted to me as Secretary General of the United Nations, to discharge these functions and regulate my conduct with the interests of the UN only in view and not to seek or accept instructions in regard to the performance of my duties from any government or any authority external to the organization. End Quote, so we come away from Charlie Simon's biography, thinking of a man who is apparently deeply religious, deeply spiritual, and also a bit closed off, there's something unknown or maybe even unknowable about him, mysterious, strange on the. Other side of the spectrum. It's kind of funny that the library would have these two books in particular, because on the other side of the spectrum, we have Dag Hammarskjöld strictly personal a portrait by Bo Beskow, who was a close friend to Dag Hammarskjöld for, I think, about 10 years in his introduction, it immediately made me think of the introduction that Donald Gibson writes for battling Wall Street, where before he can even talk about the policies that JFK had, his views on the economy, etc, he first has to tackle this idea that there are too many John F Kennedys, because we have the himbo, the guy that had no deep ideology, somebody who is a corporate bootlicker, someone who is a mafia don, someone who is a spineless weenie, and it's like unless this guy was the most talented of all possible chameleons, somebody must be wrong. So it's amusing to read Charlie Simon's book that you have Dag Hammarskjöld being closed off, remote, peculiar. Maybe he's just that devoted of a public servant, and that's why he doesn't have many close relationships. And then we go over here to Bo Beskow, and it's completely different. In the introduction, Bo starts with a quote from Dag Hammarskjöld himself in my new official capacity, the private man should disappear and the international civil servant take his place. I'm just going to stop right there and say, I agree. I feel like so many of these lurid over the top stories about who some politician was sleeping with or two celebrities are getting a divorce. It's like, who cares? Mean, unless you're talking about something that's completely illegal, that would be an impeachable offense, or somebody needs to go to jail over it, child abuse, sex trafficking, something like that. Teffrey tepstein type stuff, if you're talking about consenting adults, is it really our business? I don't think so. So after this quote, Beau is written, the private man disappeared so successfully from public view that when biographers wanted the human touch, they were stuck for material to complete the puzzle. They made their own homemade pieces to fit their pictures, or they fished bits out of the mounting flotsam of rumors and lies so often repeated that they take on the false air of historical fact. The picture of hammerschool growing out of this objective writing seems so much out of focus to his friends that I had to write this book. It may answer some of the questions too often asked me, but it does not pretend to give the only true profile around the time of his death. A few well documented books were written on the Secretary General, and he mentions Joseph P lash and Richard I Miller in particular, and others will follow when more documents are released, the sketches of the man I remember. His letters speak for themselves, and so do the photos. The rest are scenes lit up in the twilight of memory. If they sometimes have a touch of autobiography, this is unavoidable to be able to write. I have to fought to follow the flow of reminiscences, including my own doings at the time, however insignificant they may seem, small touches sometimes can add a lot to a large and complicated picture. All comments on political situations and persons are my sole responsibility. End quote. Over the course of the book, he tells a number of stories about how Dag came to be friends with him, and then also friends with his wife. Dag becomes godfather to Bo and his wife's daughter, Maria. There's a funny story called The Hunting Lodge, because Bo has this like old homestead slash farmhouse type place out in the country in Sweden. And he and Dag take on as a kind of project, the idea of restoring this area, making sure that it stays as nature intended. It doesn't turn into a development, but it can be kind of like a retirement home for DAG. And so over the course of this book, you hear about different remodeling projects and things that they've said about to try to get this place in good enough condition that Dag could, you know, potentially live there at some point. So in this story, the hunting lodge, he and Bill. Bill was his bodyguard, so Dag and Bill have arrived rather late at night. It had turned pitch dark. I was busy in the kitchen when I heard the familiar rattling and explosions of the old Citron the headlights appeared over the hill, but not where I expected them, in the dark Villa taken the wrong road, or rather a bumpy track that ended in a potato field. The noise in first gear was terrific, and the lights danced around and hit everything but the ground, as the Citron bravely took all the hurdles it bumped over the potato field and came to a long deserved rest in. Sand pit on the highest point of my grounds. I rushed up the slope to rescue the victims from the crash, and was met by a roar of delighted laughter from both Dag and Bill. It was all part of the fun of being here again, fortified by the waiting supper and my healthy herb spice concoctions, we later somehow managed to put the Citron together again and turn her around so that she could roll downhill to the hunting lodge. We had started to call Dag's cottage, the hunting lodge after the books of Jonas love Almquist, the great Swedish 19th century author, a favorite of us both and also related to Dag's mother. End quote and on the photograph on the page opposite, it's funny to me, I guess because we see dag hammer holding his camera, and he's gone on a sweater that looks like a sweater that belonged to my grandmother at about the same time, a pair of khaki pants that are rolled up so they don't get in the water, and a pair of man sandals. It's just It's funny, and it's humanizing to see somebody that's typically in a very official capacity, wearing three piece suits, dressed in a more casual way, on a vacation. On Dag's 50th birthday, he's visiting Greta and beau, and they're going to try to give him like this mellow day. He's got plenty of stress. He does plenty of traveling. This should be a birthday where they can just chill. So they go out on this fishing boat, and the proprietor of the fishing boat doesn't even know who Dag Hammarskjöld is, but they wind up getting ambushed by the press, and he's like, let's just get out of here. As soon as the press shows up and starts bothering them, it's like, okay, no private time, mellow time, chill time has been disrupted. Let's get out of here. Dag asked Bo to work on the meditation room for the UN and in the process of getting the artwork ready for that room, Beau and his wife Greta, move in to Dag's flat on 73rd Street in New York on the nights when Dag's housekeeper would have the night off Bo and Greta would do the cooking, so that whenever he got home, that would be one less thing that he would have to worry about. And in this biography, Bo writes, after these Wednesday dinners, Dag rushed out into the kitchen department to wash dishes and clean up. In spite of my protests when I cook, there is certainly some cleaning to do afterwards, and I had no intention of doing it. I longed for a comfortable chair and a good cigar after the day's hard labor, and I really thought that Nellie and Iver, that's Dag Hammarskjöld's House staff could take care of the debris in the morning. No, we had to go to work. And here I would like to comment on the way writers make the most absurd statements about hammerschool in one of the later efforts, I read, to my surprise, that he was not good at washing dishes, really facing the risk of being taken seriously. I must protest, for the sake of history, I feel it my duty to correct a gross misstatement on this evidently important point. He was extremely good at washing dishes. He was, in fact, the most perfect dishwasher I ever saw in my long life. He was a super dishwasher, even singing while he performed this dreary task, which always spoils the fun of cooking, Nellie could not find a speck the next morning. End quote. He also writes when dag did not have to return to the UN or was not otherwise engaged. We usually sat in his study after dinner, often listening to music or hearing dag read something he liked, classic or contemporary authors and poets, sometimes letters from his many friends in the international literary world, or a translation he was struggling with, or a draft for a university or Academy address. End quote, he also writes. Sometimes there were guests, and dag was a charming host. He had the rare ability of reading between the lines, of listening to what was not said in a conversation, and he hated false pretensions, even when brilliantly displayed, then the signs were unmistakable. His shoulders rigid, one foot tapping impatiently, and the baby Webster burning and smoking at a furious pace when such guests had gracefully been escorted to the door, Dag said, Well, that was that, and went into his study. He also writes. His interest in good writing is well known. After dinner, we often walked down to the nearest double day bookstore and browsed among the latest publications. Dag always carried something home to read something new and interesting to add to his library if it was good. He was a constant reader. He knew his classics, but was also always on the lookout for what was happening in contemporary writing. When I painted him in 1953 we discussed the answer to an old question, which 10 books would you take with you if you had to live on a desert island for the rest of your life? I don't remember the exact list that we, more or less agreed upon. It included obvious things like, oh, there's a couple photos of the pages The Divine Comedy, the Bible, the collected works of Shakespeare. But I also remember Spoon River anthology and Le Rivage des Syrtes. Yes, the list would surely have looked different toward the end of his life, maybe fewer well known classics and more of the less read philosophers. My guess is that Martin Buber would have been included. Dag was a constant and hungry reader after his death, as we were listing and packing things I found on his bedside table, the following four books an introduction to haiku poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, poems by George Sepphoris, the way and its power by Arthur Whaley. End quote. Here's something else that I found really interesting. I think he regarded Moon rockets and spaceships as a waste of time and money. To my knowledge, he never read a detective story to lull him to sleep, nor, of course, science fiction. We saw the first Sputnik pass over New York, and Dag remarked, this will mean a complete change of strategy for the Cold War, but it will take some time before people realize this, and many years before T does. T was at that time, chief editor of Sweden's leading daily newspaper. For some reason, he thought himself a great authority on politics, war, strategy, the wrongdoings of the UN and especially of Dag. Few more pictures. Hang on about this time Dag had been reelected, and T's editorial comment was a masterpiece of perfidious spite. End Quote, that's really interesting, and I think it's appreciate comment, this will mean a complete change of the strategy of the Cold War, but it will take some time before people realize this. I think that that bore out true, don't you? He includes a picture in this book of Dag playing with Maria, who was Bo and greta's daughter, but who was also DAGs goddaughter, and he's playing with crayons with her and drawing a picture of what summers look like when he was a kid. And he includes the actual drawing a picture of the actual drawing that Dag did, which, by his description, sounds really lovely, but then when you look at it, it's not very much better than anything that I could have done. Honestly, the cow and the fish are the same size, and nothing is to scale, but it's a really cute effort. Bo writes about the last significant time that he ever spent with Dag he had rented like this little country house type place a couple of hours away from New York City, and they were going to have this quiet time out in the country. It was going to be like Dag and Greta and some other people, and the guys are all trying to figure out how to water ski, but Dag is on a raft floating, and he just wants to read. And I just thought, I thought that was funny. So he's Beau is talking about how they're all trying to learn how to water ski, and there's all this yelling and splashing and hooping about. And so Bo writes, Dag's whole body expressed intense concentration and disgust at last, Bill sensed that something was wrong, and he kindly asked, Dag, would you like to try this? Sir, no, thank you. I am reading. Was Dag's answer, and he added, at least I am trying to. We all took the hint silently, boarded the boat and with muffled motor, sneaked back to the landing stage. Bill's comment was coming here to swim and have fun and then reading books. I just thought that was really I just thought that was funny. So they talk a little bit more, and, you know, Bo reflects on the fact that there was no way he could have known that that would have been the last real time they would have spent together.

At the end of the book, Bo writes, whatever happened is irreparable. A good man died with his comrades, and I would like to quote his own words on the death of a Swedish poet and friend in a letter of August 6, 1961 he was indeed one of the few and perhaps last representatives of a spiritual standard, a natural nobility, a warmth of heart and an ironclad integrity, which is more necessary than ever in the present period of growing darkness and decay, how many of his poems do not take on a new significance in the light of his last difficult years and his end end quote, it was interesting to go from Charlie Simon's portrayal of this cold, closed off person, unknowable. He had friends, and they stayed pretty much loyal. They never stabbed him in the back, but they also felt like they didn't know him very well either. Maybe he was extremely religious, monastic in some ways, that might be a good way of characterizing cold, unknowable and somewhat monastic in his lifestyle. Then we read Bo Beskow's book, and you see somebody that's warm and funny and likes to laugh and sits with paper and crayons and plays with his goddaughter, and you're like, Well, wait a minute, that person doesn't seem cold and closed off and unknowable. In an article for the review of African. Political Economy. Ludo DeWitt writes myth busting. Dag hammered Katanga and the coup against the Lumumba government, a terrible myth has developed around the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld who died in a plane crash in 1961 Ludo DeWitt explains that the UN chief was one of the architects of the Congo crisis that led to the removal and murder of the country's first leader, Patrice Lumumba DeWitt, reveals the true role of the UN and Hammarskjöld in the imperialist catastrophe that savaged the Congo in 1960 the UN in no way hindered the action of the regime in Katanga and the Belgians who were maneuvering to carry out the murder of Lumumba, the UN chief in Katanga. New Zealander Ian Berenson later said that he had been informed of the arrival of Lumumba, mpolo and okito one or two hours after the DC four had landed by NCO Lindgren. But the local UN chief did not bother to put pressure on Tshombe or the Katangese Army leadership. It was only on January 18, and then only in passing that Berenson mentioned it to Tshombe In a letter to Tshombe dated January 19, ostensibly only written for the record, Hammarskjöld did not demand the release of the three, nor their transfer to the Congolese capital. He only asked for their humane treatment. But by then, it was already too late to influence events. End quote in the introduction for his book Dag Hammarskjöld The United Nations and the decolonization of Africa. Henning Melber writes, it seems a fair assessment that Dag Hammarskjöld has been the subject of extensive legend building in the half century or so since his death. But legends are not only constructed through a kind of selective heroic narrative by those contemporaries close to him, or others in the admiration club. The Selective narrative also applies to those with opposite motives, both within the inner circle of his time and those since, who describe Hammarskjöld either as a dishonest, opportunistic broker or as the unscrupulous personification of a global governance institution they dismiss as biased and an infrastructure of imperialism. What has been rightly observed about the fan club of Dag Hammarskjöld applies as much to those who launch scathing attacks on his role. Both ignore the complexity of the environment in which he operated, which set limits to individual responsibility. Precious little of this evidence appears to disturb the mostly uncritical and laudatory, sometimes bordering on hagiographical accounts of Hammarskjöld's ethical approach to diplomacy in theoretical terms. These oversights prevent a full application of the dilemmas faced by international civil servants in managing the conflicting demands of diverse missions and broad constituencies, most of the attempts on both sides, the uncritical praise songs as well as the damning disclosures debunking the Hammarskjöld cult, conveniently ignore the complexity of the man, as well as the structures in which he operated, to associate Dag Hammarskjöld with the hegemonic policy, because The United Nations as an institution of global governance has been constructed in a way that reproduces hegemonic rule. Is an undue simplification of the dynamics of international organizations. Asymmetrical power relations, influencing institutions do not make everyone in such organizations, including the highest international civil servant, by definition, an agent of imperialism or other dominant interests. Someone operating in such an environment is still the owner of his or her mind, but at the same time, he or she is not protected from being a prisoner of circumstances and at times practical constraint. I maintain that personal values and integrity do matter, even if they face limitations in the execution of office or other daily practice. It is noteworthy in this regard that few of those who draw conclusions about Hammarskjöld's Impact and legacy have bothered to look closely at the numerous statements and speeches of the Secretary General during his time in office. After all these fill four edited volumes totaling some 2000 pages, while there are always discrepancies between what is said and what is done, as so often in politics and diplomacy and in private life too, these documents offer insights into concepts and convictions and are indicative of Hammer's values and principles by repeatedly emphasizing them, As he consistently did over eight years in office, they formed part of a policy, as I argue and try to document, Dag Hammarskjöld was indeed a person of integrity whose moral and political views reflected the humanist spirit of the United Nations Charter, which he always considered the ultimate compass. But given the complexity of matters and the few reliable sources at hand a final judgment in the absence of verifiable factual evidence, risks being speculative. End quote, basically anything that we just read, apart from the specific references to the United Nations, could also be said about JFK. There seems to be this battle for any. Any political leader who dies young or dies before their time, in some tragic circumstance, this battle, this tension between what he's calling a fan club versus the rabid detractors. And I think it's interesting how he chooses to put both of those types of people in the same camp. Because if you think about it, whether you're talking about somebody that is a rabid enthusiast, as he says, part of the fan club, or someone who's a rabid detractor, they're both pushing their own agendas. It's always puzzling to me, the rabid detractors, because I'm like, why would you spend that much time trying to hate on somebody? Why wouldn't you just simply move on to a subject that you find more desirable, who would want to devote their life's work to tearing another human being apart. I don't understand the logic there. I don't understand how that would edify anybody's spirit. If you were to do some digging and some research on a particular person, thinking, Hey, maybe I like this person, or maybe I want to write a biography about them. And you concluded over the course of time that you hated their guts. Why wouldn't you just leave? Why wouldn't you just stop and say, upon further reflection, upon deeper understanding and better knowledge, this is not a subject matter that I want to explore any further. I'm turned off. I'm done. I don't understand people that want to make a research career on a topic that they appear to hate, which then also makes me wonder, how many of these people are just simply paid shills, if you're doing it for a paycheck, that changes the picture considerably. So we have these disparate portraits, even just for me sitting here recording a casual bonus episode for this podcast, we have one biography telling us that Dag Hammarskjöld is this very religious, closed off, mysterious figure. Yes, he has friends, but none of them feel like they know him very well. There's not the typical platonic intimacy with this person. Then you also have Bo talking about the relationship that he and his wife and daughter had with Dag and as well as some of Dag's other friends that actually he was not closed off and weird. He was funny, he was warm. He had his own way about him, but he wasn't unknowable or some weird stuck up snob that was impossible for anybody to relate to. We have, on one hand, an article telling us that dag was responsible for the Congo crisis and didn't do enough to undo the mess that he set about doing. Then we also have that he was a man of integrity. He was not an agent of imperialism. He was doing what he actually thought was best for everybody.

There's a Japanese proverb I really like about three faces. The first face is a public face that you would show to anyone in the world, the general public, strangers. Anybody can see the first face, the second face you only show to people you're close with your spouse, your immediate family, a best friend. A third face is one that you don't show to anyone. It's a private face that only you will ever see. This can also be interpreted as the notion that people are not precisely the same all the time, and that people are not precisely the same to each person that meets them. Think about people that you've worked with or a friendship that went sour. I can think of a particular coworker that other people were like. I don't particularly care for him, but he's not the bane of my existence. Whereas I could not get away from the guy fast enough he irritated the fire out of me. There's a saying that we're all bad in someone's story. So it's possible that some of these contradictory opinions are just a matter of these faces. Nobody is completely the same person all the time in every moment. And I think that there may have been this third face, just as we all, I believe, have a third face that we don't show to anybody. It's strictly reserved for ourselves privately. There may have been this third face for Dag Hammarskjöld that was private and closed off. I suspect at times it was probably. In private and closed off from him himself. There may have just been some part of him that was protected by a shell and it wasn't meant for anybody else to see. That doesn't mean that he was cold and unknowable all of the time. I mean, Bo's book shows us that someone that's completely cold and unknowable is not going to sit there with crayons and paper and entertain a little kid. So maybe, in the same way that we have this problem of too many JFKs, maybe we have too many Dag Hammarskjölds, maybe the issue is just simply that, as I said, nobody is precisely the same person at every moment. But with that being said, there are general character traits that are observable time and time again through the years, so that you can rough out a general composite, not the same thing as being in the room with somebody and knowing them closely while they were alive, but having at least a general sense of their character, so that when you hear something that's way off base, you recognize it as being BS, since there will be forthcoming episodes about the strange death of Dag Hammarskjöld, I wish I could sit here and give you some neat, tidy summary Dag Hammarskjöld was X, Y and Z, problem solved. I can't do that. Do I think that he was completely closed off and unknowable? No, I don't do I think that he was some secret agent of imperialism that wanted to take over the world and make a lot of his own problems. No, I don't think that either a perfect person, no, absolutely, not completely explicable, an open book, easy to read, easy to peg, no, not really that either.

What human is, it seems to me that a person would have to be awfully flat and one dimensional, probably not very interesting and not very fun to be around. If we could just say, boom, boom, boom, everything about this person is easily classified next. I wish I could give you an easy summary here, but I can't. In terms of recommended reading if you're interested in the topic, I do think that Bo Beskow's book, Dag Hammarskjöld: Strictly Personal, is 100% worth your time. The writing is very good. It's interesting, and the photographs are also very interesting as well. Stay a little crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

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