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By 1965, Indonesia’s Communist Party (PKI) had 3.5 million members and 20 million supporters in trade unions, youth and women’s movements and artist, scholar and veteran organizations. It was the third largest communist party in the world. Indonesia had around twelve political parties but the PKI was the largest of the political parties and the most disciplined, and its leaders expected their party to be on top in the next general election. Tactically the party presented itself as sympathetic to religion, ignoring the atheism of Marx and Lenin. Some members were moderate Muslims. Some were Christians. The party appealed to the patriotism of Indonesia's recent struggle for independence, the PKI presenting itself, of course, as anti-imperialist. The party spoke against the tactics of violence in seeking political objectives. The communists spoke up for democracy, which was serving them well and giving them influence in the freedom that President Sukarno's Indonesia had been offering them.

Indonesia was suffering economically. The sales of oil, rubber and tin were bringing Indonesia too little wealth, its sales abroad covering only half of what was being bought from abroad. Inflation for the year 1965 was running around 650 percent. Ships were unable to put to sea because they lacked needed equipment repairs. Thousands of miles of road had reverted to dirt tracks. Sukarno was moving away from the capitalist West toward the socialist world, especially China. In 1964 he had told the U.S. to “go to hell with your aid.” He had kicked the Peace Corps out of Indonesia. In January 1965 he took Indonesia out of the United Nations.  In August, 1965, Sukarno severed links with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Sukarno was 65 and ill. In 1964 he had gone to Vienna for a medical check up concerning his kidneys. He is said to have declined surgery because a seer had predicted that he would die by the knife, and he had turned instead to Chinese medicine. He remained in ill-health, and talk about his death was circulating along with concern about who would replace him.

Indonesia had anti-communists in its military, and there had been talk among them that China was smuggling arms to the communists. Sukarno worried about his military. He had announced in January 1965 that he was embracing Indonesia’s armed peasants and workers as a political force - a communist force - to defend democracy. Sukarno’s relationship with his Minister of Defense, General Abdul Haris Nasution, had turned cold. Nasution had become a symbol of the army’s hostility toward communists, Nasution wanting no place for communists in Indonesia’s political power distribution. Sukarno had warmer relations with his Army Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Ahmad Yani, who was also an anti-communist, but more tolerant. 

In the United States many were unhappy with Sukarno. The Johnson administration was pursuing a war against communism in Vietnam and concerned about China’s support for North Vietnam. Indonesia was the sixth most populous nation in the world and would have been a loss too great to accept for those concerned about the spread of Communism. Indonesia appeared to be a domino tottering and about to fall if something were not done to stop it, and the Johnson administration dismissed Sukarno as somebody they could rely on to prevent communism from winning in Indonesia. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) still had contacts in Indonesia, and it was not likely that the CIA and others from the United States who had funds to do something in Indonesia were going to let Indonesia fall to communism. Some of Indonesia’s military men had been trained in the United States and still had contacts with Americans and the CIA. U.S. newspapers wrote of U.S. funds for Indonesia having ended, but Congress was treating funding to Indonesian military men as a covert matter, which restricted congressional review of the matter.

One of Indonesia's anti-communist army officers in contact with Americans was Haji Mohammad Suharto. He had quietly established contacts also with the British and Japanese. He was one of the military officers who had participated in smuggling, or at least accused of it, and in 1959 had been transferred to the army Staff College in Bandung, West Java. He was involved with a shipping company operated by an army division in central Java. He was shrewd and ambitious but not recognized as having any special influence among the anti-communist generals. It was he who was destined to be Sukarno's successor.

A “Pre-emptive” Coup

On August 21 a report circulated among Indonesia’s Communist Party leaders of an impending coup by Indonesia’s anti-communist generals against President Sukarno. On September 30 a group of military officers led by Lieutenant Colonel Untung, a member of Sukarno’s palace guard, moved troops against what they claimed was a plan by right-wing generals to overthrow Sukarno with support from the CIA.

Untung’s group was friendly toward the left and in contact with the members of Communist Party. On September 30, the PKI leader, D.N. Aidit, with some other communists, were at Untung’s headquarters at the Harim air base in southeast Jakarta. But Untung was to suggest that they were friendly observers. Untung was to claim that his operation consisted only of his military men.

The next day, in the early morning hours, October 1, squads of soldiers belonging to Untung’s group burst into the homes of seven generals. It would be claimed that they intended to arrest the generals and drag them before President Sukarno. Instead, three of the generals were killed. A fourth, General Nasution, escaped with a broken ankle from leaping over a fence, but his five-year-old daughter was shot and would later die. The troops did take a few as prisoners to their headquarters at the Halim air force. And their troops occupied the national radio station and posted themselves outside the president’s palace.

This was just what those who wanted to destroy the communists needed  - just as Chancellor Hitler had used the burning of the Reichstag and claim of a communist plot to acquire more power. If the anti-communist generals had staged a coup against Sukarno, the onus of subversion would have been upon them, and Sukarno, with help from the communists, might have been able to rally the nation and crush them. Now, with the left having moved first, the surviving anti-Communist generals could pose as saviors rather than rebels.

Untung’s group had not warned Sukarno of their action, and Sukarno at first thought he was in danger. According to plan a member of Untung’s group drove to Sukarno’s palace during the morning of October 1 to inform him of what they had accomplished, but he found Sukarno gone. They found him at the air base, where Sukarno's personal jet airplane had always been on standby. With Sukarno was Suharto, who had not been on Untung’s hit list and had placed himself at Sukarno’s disposal, awaiting his orders and guaranteeing his safety.

Sukarno and those with him listened to a radio broadcast by Untung's group that described the anti-communist generals who had been planning a coup as “power-crazy” and as having neglected their subordinates while “living luxurious and happy-go-lucky lives” and as having  squandered government funds. The broadcast announced a replacement of the government’s cabinet and listed the members of the new council that would for the time-being have authority throughout Indonesia. The council was to consist of forty-five people, including a few minor-ranking communists and twenty-four military men, many of whom had not known they would be on the list and did not want to be there.

Sukarno was displeased. Untung’s group was in effect challenging Sukarno’s constitutional powers. To Sukarno they were at least a disturbance. He ordered an immediate end to all bloodshed. For the time being, Suharto became Army Chief-of Staff, replacing General Yani, one of those killed by Untung’s group. Sukarno allowed Suharto’s forces to established control over the national radio station and elsewhere. On October 5 a public funeral took place in Jakarta for dead generals. On October 6, Sukarno met with his cabinet and issued a statement denouncing Untung’s putsch. At the end of the meetings army officers under Suharto arrested one of Sukarno’s communist cabinet members who had been in attendance. 

The leader of the PKI, D.N. Aidit, meanwhile, had flown in an army plane to various places in Indonesia, where he met with local party leaders. He instructed them to leave the military to settle things among themselves. He told them there were to be no demonstrations and no creating suspicion by going underground.

Sukarno Loses Power 

On October 10, according to the New York Times, the Johnson administration expressed belief “that a dramatic new opportunity has developed both for anti-Communist Indonesians and for United States policies following the 10 days of turmoil in Indonesia.” By October 12, according to the Times, “Anti-Communist military leaders supported by Moslem groups were increasing their efforts today to convince President Sukarno that he must ban the Communist party.” And a Times report dated October 13 wrote of Sukarno intending “to create a new Communist party in Indonesia, one that would be exclusively Indonesian and not influenced by Communist China.” On October 14 an anti-communist Jakarta newspaper accused Chinese intelligence agents of having plotted and financed Untung's putsch. Ethnic Chinese came under attack in Indonesia. And on the 15th more than 5,000 members of Moslem organizations demonstrated, shouting "Crush the PKI." and "Hang Aidit.”

A murderous campaign against Communists had begun. A report coming out of Singapore on October 23 described Sukarno as threatening to order the army to "shoot to kill" to stop further demonstrations or violence against the communists. And a report on October 24 described Sukarno as having “accused non-Communist political factions of making some left-wing organizations the "victims of false slander." A force had been unleashed, led by the anti-communist generals, against which Sukarno had little power.

Through November a slaughter took place across much of Indonesia, including the capture and execution of Aidit. Army officers in league with Untung were executed. Bands of Muslim young men roamed about killing people, sometimes by beheading. Landlords moved to get lands back that had been taken from them in communist led land-reforms. Old feuds were revived and murderously resolved on the pretext of rooting out communists. In some instances, anti-communists arrived in communities, assembled local men and ordered women and children to stay home. Names were read from lists, and they were described as communists, atheists and  people not certified as members of any religion. The named were roped together. Those not roped-off were told that those within the ropes were their enemies. They were given machetes or other crude weapons and told to fight for their religion. Hindus and Buddhists among them were exempted because of prohibitions by their religions against taking life. In other places, soldiers killed with their automatic weapons, often as a distance from their village, the people transported to their deaths in military vehicles. In places victims were ordered to dig their own mass graves.

Often Chinese-Indonesians were targeted, attended by the rumor that the Chinese were the core of communist leadership. Some of Indonesia’s Chinese began leaving their country.  Some others began converting to Christianity to ward off accusations of atheism.

In early 1966, the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, Andrew Gilchrist, put the slaughter total at 400,000. A Swedish colleague described this as a “very serious under-estimate.” Those killed have been estimated at more than one million, with some others imprisoned. 

On April 21, 1966, President Sukarno admonished his ministers not to view him “as a puppet."

On March 12, 1967, Indonesia’s provincial parliament took away Sukarno’s presidential title. Sukarno was put under house arrest, where he remained until his death in 1970. And Suharto was named Acting President.

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