Synopsis:

    The United States has been defeated and devastated in a terrible war with the "PanAsians."  The government is gone, the major cities wiped out, the military forces crushed.  The United States as a nation is history.  Its culture is targeted as well: the schools are closed and written English is forbidden.  America is occupied by a tyrannical foreign power, its people enslaved.  Carefully hidden in the Rocky Mountains and thus surviving the onslaught is a secret military-scientific enclave called the Citadel.  As the story opens, an experiment at the lab has just gone tragically awry.  Desperate to develop a super-weapon to defend the nation, the scientists have inadvertently released an unknown, deadly energy source named the Ledbetter effect after its discoverer.  Nearly everyone in the compound has been killed instantly, including Dr. Ledbetter.

    The six survivors are paralyzed by the dual catastrophes.  Surrounded by two hundred corpses inside the Citadel and by an occupying force of 400 million PanAsians beyond its walls, what can they possibly do that would make a difference?  Major Ardmore arrives and takes command of the Citadel as the last remaining remnant of the US army.  In proceeding with their research the men have several serious questions to consider: why were six humans and all the lab animals spared when everyone else was killed instantly?  Could the Ledbetter effect be controlled and fashioned into a weapon?  Even if a weapon were developed, how could it be used?

    Other than PanAsian propaganda on television, the men have no sources of information about conditions beyond their walls.  Jeff Thomas is appointed to go out and gather intelligence for a week.  A former itinerant worker himself, he finds that hoboes are a good source of news from all around the nation.  He is encouraged in  learning that the overlords have not been able to wipe out the American love for freedom and spirit of patriotism.

Everywhere he finds boiling resentment, a fierce willingness to fight against the tyranny, but it was undirected, uncoordinated, and in any modern sense, unarmed.  Sporadic rebellion was as futile as the scurrying of ants whose hill has been violated.  PanAsians could be killed, yes, and there were men willing to shoot on sight, even in the face of the certainty of their own deaths.  But their hands were bound by the greater certainty of brutal multiple retaliation against their own kind.  As with the Jews in Germany before the final blackout in Europe, bravery was not enough, for one act of violence against the tyrants would be paid for by other men, women, and children at unspeakable compound interest.

    Meanwhile, the scientists have worked through Dr. Ledbetter's notes and have made great strides in furthering his research.  They discover that people have different wavelengths within the Ledbetter spectrum.  This leads to the production of a weapon that can stun or kill Asiatics while leaving other people completely unaffected.  But even with such an extraordinary weapon now at their disposal, a frontal attack against the enemy is impossible without an army to deploy the weapon.  "Those tactics were not for the commander who could not afford to lose any men.  For him it must be deception, misdirection — feint and slash and run away — ‘and live to fight another day.'"

    "It would have to be something like the ‘fifth columns' that destroyed the European democracies from within in the tragic days that led up to the final blackout of European civilization.  But this would not be a fifth column of traitors, bent on paralyzing a free country, but the antithesis of that, a sixth column of patriots whose privilege it would be to destroy the morale of invaders, make them afraid, unsure of themselves."

    Since religious meetings are not forbidden by the overlords, the conspirators settle on a plan to build their underground organization under the guise of a new religion.  They construct above the Citadel a grand temple to "Lord Mota" and themselves play the roles of priests and acolytes.  They invite pilgrims to visit, and make sure, using the Ledbetter effect, that PanAsians will experience discomfort even entering the building.  Most Americans see through the clever ruse, and many join "the faith" as their way to fight back against the masters.  The PanAsians, on the other hand, are unfamiliar with American culture and religions, and dismiss the Temple of Mota as just another sect of harmless crackpots.

    Branch temples are established in cities throughout the country, each with Ledbetter projectors, which have now been perfected to the point that they can accomplish a variety of apparent "miracles."  Americans flock to the new "religion."  Those who can be trusted are told the nature of the sham and sworn in as members of the conspiracy and the U.S. Army.  As the movement grows, the PanAsian overlords gradually lose control of the population,  failing to recognize their enemy until it is too late.
 

Comments:

    At times people have accused Heinlein of racism, unfairly, I believe.  In Sixth Column the Americans are clearly not very fond of their PanAsian masters, and sometimes engage in the use of racial slurs.  Readers with 90's PC sensibilities may be uncomfortable with these passages, but it must be remembered that this book was written in the early 1940's, when the world was being consumed in a terrible war.  At the heart of World War II were German and Japanese claims of "racial superiority."  How should we respond when a group declares that it is the "master race," and attempts to enslave the rest of humanity?  As a nation, we did not think very highly of Germans or Japanese during the early 1940's.  We had a number of unkind names for them, the least offensive being "krauts" and "japs."  Just imagine if Germany and Japan had defeated the United States, slaughtered millions of people, and enslaved the rest, what types of racial slurs the victims might have pronounced under their breaths.  It would have been easy for Heinlein to make the German or Japanese people his villains.  Instead, he invented a non-existant race, the PanAsians.  And with his sympathetic characterization of Frank Mitsui, Heinlein assures the reader that the PanAsians are hated for their actions, not their race.

    One matter in this book is puzzling: there seem to be no black people in America.  The battle lines are clearly drawn between Caucasians and PanAsians, and people of African descent receive no mention at all.

    One explanation is that Heinlein liked to play "what if?"  His stories tend to take place in universes parallel to our own, and often there are significant differences.  Perhaps in this universe the large-scale forced emigration of blacks to America through the institution of slavery never took place.  Perhaps the PanAsians in the story murdered them systematically during the protracted war, as they did Asian-Americans (who they considered impure, compromised by American blood and culture).  Perhaps since in the past black Americans have experienced the bitterness of slavery and the battle for freedom, Heinlein wanted whites in this story to have the same sort of experience.

    In addition to being an adventure story, Sixth Column is a powerful allegory regarding the horrors of World War II and slavery in general.  I applaud Heinlein's courage:  in the early 1940's he could not know for sure that the US would win the war.  This book, as a matter of fact,  presents a terrifying scenario in which the Allies lost that war.  It refers on numerous occasions to the "final blackout of European civilization," the loss of World War II or its parallel universe equivalent.  If we had actually lost the war to Germany and Japan, Heinlein would no doubt have been among the first to be executed for provocative writings such as this.