The Life of John Birch

The biography of a young American who was brutally murdered by the Chinese Communists in 1945, ten days after then end of World War II. John Birch has been called the first casualty of World War III. "With his death and in his death the battle lines were drawn, in a struggle from which either communism or Christian-style civilization must emerge with one completely triumphant, the other completely destroyed."

John Birch was a Baptist missionary in a remote province of China, when, through a series of extraordinary coincidences, he helped Colonel James Doolittle and several of his downed fliers to safety. He was subsequently inducted into the U.S. Army as an intelligence officer under Gen. Chennault, and served for slightly over three years of our war with Japan. His remarkable feats of personal courage and leadership helped immeasurably to bring about victory in China. Ten days following the end of the war, while on a peaceful mission for the Army, he was brutally killed by Chinese Communists.

Why, asks Robert Welch, was so heroic, brilliant and dedicated a patriot so completely unknown in America? And what was the significance of his life - and death? The story of John Birch was carefully kept from the American people by the Communist sympathizers in our government at that time. Around the character and deeds of John Birch the author has woven some of the history, and more of the basic principles, involved in our continuing fight against the Communist conspiracy. In the life story of one American boy, he has presented the ordeal of our era.