Chapter XII: Part 12

A. He promised that if Pétain would sign the armistice, very soon afterward he would give France a permanent and just peace, that German troops would evacuate France, and in the New Order of Europe Germany would help France become a free and independent partner. All this was, however, tacitly contingent on the defeat of Britain. The German excuse for not freeing France now is that the battle against Russia and Britain is still going on. France meanwhile is compelled to suffer in a slavery worse than she ever suffered in her entire national history.

Q. _What do you mean by the term “slavery”? The French people are not being driven about in slave gangs, are they, with an overseer carrying a black-snake whip and all that as in_ Uncle Tom’s Cabin_? I understood the Germans were behaving very “correctly.”_

A. It is true that only the prisoners of war, who still number about a million and a half, are in this literal, physical sense enslaved. The rest of the French people, though, are just as much the slaves of the Germans as if they were housed in slave pens and driven to work in chains. Why? Because they must give up to their German masters all the fruits of their labors except a bare subsistence. The French people have been paying the Germans an indemnity of roughly ten million dollars a day, or $3,650,000,000 a year, and with this money the Germans have been buying from the French, who are forced to sell, all the property of any value in the country, from objects of art to great industrial plants. Consider the size of this indemnity. The maximum yearly reparations payment Germany had to make after the last war was $600,000,000. That is one sixth of what the French have had to pay in the first twelve months of German rule in this war.

Q. _How was this indemnity fixed?_

A. In the armistice agreement which Pétain so trustfully signed, it was stipulated that the French would pay for the cost of maintaining the German Army in France. No sum was named. You can imagine the astonishment of the French when, after they had laid down their arms and there was no possibility of refusing, they learned they had to pay the Germans 400,000,000 francs, or roughly $10,000,000 a day. It will give you some notion of the difference between the old-fashioned German conqueror and the new-fashioned Nazi to recollect that after the Franco-German War of 1870 Bismarck exacted a _total_ indemnity of $1,250,000,000, or one-third of what the French of today are forced to pay _yearly_.

Q. _How does this French payment compare with the total amounts Germany paid for reparation after the last war?_

A. The maximum estimate of German reparations payments in cash and kind is about $5,000,000,000, which is almost precisely the amount of money Americans lent Germany and never got back. It is the literal truth that Germany paid no reparations. The United States paid them. I was a correspondent in Germany during all those crucial years from the French occupation of the Ruhr onward, and most of us who were on the spot agree that despite the dislocation of wealth in Germany the country as a whole had not lost wealth through payment of reparations, since for every dollar that went to France or England, an American dollar came in.

All critics of the Versailles treaty insist that its worst feature was the reparations, but if you keep in mind the fundamental fact that the Germans borrowed (and never repaid) every cent they used to meet the reparations claims, the Versailles treaty and the German complaints about it take on a very different aspect. This is so important that it cannot be overemphasized, because one of the principal reasons why the United States withdrew from the peace and why England and eventually France relaxed their vigilance and permitted Germany to arm and grow into the terrible power she is today, was the feeling that the Germans after all had been treated unjustly.

You could make a case for the argument that our own “guilt complex” about Versailles allowed Hitler to tear up the treaty and finally attack the world. Paul Birdsall has pointed out that this “guilt complex” received powerful encouragement from John Maynard Keynes, who correctly analyzed the economic impossibility of the reparations clauses, but went on from there to condemn the whole treaty as a Carthaginian peace. It has taken Hitler, who climbed to power on his denunciation of Versailles, to show us how lenient a peace it was.

Remembering that the Germans actually paid no reparations, it is instructive to examine what they formally paid in comparison with what they are now extorting from the French. The Allies at the London conference in April 1921 fixed their demands on Germany for “damage done to civilians” at $33,000,000,000--which at the time was considered insanely high, but incidentally is $11,000,000,000 less than the $44,000,000,000 the United States has now appropriated and recommended for national defense. Isn’t this a startling confirmation of the mistake the American Congress made in repudiating the League of Nations and refusing to ratify the security treaty with England and France?

It is fantastic to realize that we could have paid the entire bill for the last war and if by so doing we could have prevented this war, we would still have saved money. We will eventually learn that the isolationists’ or appeasers’ program for America is not only the most dangerous but infinitely the most costly. France has certainly learned how true this is.

_At the rate they are now paying, the French will have paid the Germans in about seventeen months an amount equivalent to all the reparations payments ($5,000,000,000) made by the Germans with American money in the twelve years during which the Germans pretended to pay._ They stopped even the pretense of payment you remember after the Lausanne Conference in 1932, even before Hitler came to power. This immense indemnity the French are paying now is merely an interim payment for the alleged cost of maintaining the German Army. Actually the cost of maintaining the army is estimated to be not 400,000,000 but 125,000,000 francs, so that the Germans have a surplus of 275,000,000 francs or around $7,000,000 for their daily “purchases.”

Q. _Why did the Germans select the figure 400,000,000 francs daily?_

A. Because this was the amount the French were spending on the war. In their 1940 war budget they allocated 106 billion francs to the air force, 36 billion to the army, and 15 billion to the navy, making a total of 157 billion, which is roughly 400,000,000 francs a day. Hitler reckoned if the French could afford to spend this sum on fighting the Germans, they could spend the same amount to feed, clothe, transport, lodge, amuse, and otherwise support the Germans as they are doing now.

Q. _But if the French were spending this much money on the war anyway, how are they economically worse off by continuing the same expenditure?_

A. They are incomparably worse off because formerly the proceeds of this sum were consumed by Frenchmen; today they are consumed by Germans. The money formerly circulated throughout the French economic body as healthy blood; today it is sucked and swallowed by the vast German leech. Furthermore the French expenditure on the war did not cease with their defeat; they still have large expenses besides their tribute to Germany.

Q. _What means do the Germans use to buy up French businesses? Why don’t the French refuse to sell?_

A. Some of them do, but the Germans always have the power to force them to sell.

Q. _Why do the Germans bother to go through the form of buying, if they can confiscate whatever they want?_

A. Because they can get what they want with much less trouble and in better shape and be able to make better use of it if they go through the form of purchase. They had their whole system of plundering France worked out before the war. During the prewar period thousands of Germans crisscrossed France, as tourists or traveling salesmen. They located the most desirable industrial or other properties, nearly all, incidentally, in the rich Northern half now Occupied France. When the Germans came in they rushed a specially trained corps of experts to all the banks and business houses, embargoed banking transactions and ordered every security holder in France to give a list of his property. Soon they knew the precise financial position of every important corporation or individual in France. With this knowledge they were able to buy into the control of all the businesses they wanted. Sometimes if the French owner refused to sell, the Germans could make the owner’s bank foreclose on his loan and thus force the owner to raise money by selling a share of his business. The Germans were modest; usually they wanted only 51 per cent. Sometimes the Germans would withhold raw materials from a stubborn industrialist. Sometimes the German authorities forcibly confiscated the property; just often enough to remind Frenchmen that, if they liked, the Germans could take every machine, sack of flour, and stick of furniture in the country without recompense.

Another most effective weapon used by the Germans to force the French to sell their businesses is the German edict that all concerns, from shops to factories, must remain open and keep their full roll of employees. Since almost no business is being done, and most concerns would normally have closed, this rule drives most businessmen into bankruptcy, as it was intended to do. By these and other similar means, the Germans, using the francs paid them by the French, have gone far toward buying “legal” control of the most valuable property in France. With appalling swiftness the French people are being pauperized and reduced to slaves in what used to be their own homes.

They are like the Negroes on a pre-Civil War plantation in our own South. The Germans, like the white folks, live in the big house, eat caviar and chicken, drink the wonderful wines of France, clothe their women with the creations of the great couturiers, and promenade the Boulevards while the French people, half-starving, broken, humiliated, work desperately hard to support their masters. The French are now not even being treated as well as slaves under a master considerate enough to wish to keep his slaves in good health and fit working order. I should think it would be fair to say that out of an eight-hour day the Frenchman today has to devote four hours to working for the Germans.

Q. _If these are the interim armistice terms imposed on France, what will the final terms of peace be like?_

A. You can be sure that the German demands will be limited only by the total wealth of France. We know Hitler intends the total productive wealth of the country to pass into German hands. Without waiting for peace, the Germans are, as we noted, already systematically stripping France of her movable valuables and taking them to Germany, and buying control of the immovable property they want. But if the time ever comes, when Hitler makes a so-called peace with France, we may expect that he will take pleasure in basing his demands partly on the Versailles treaty.

He will first demand that the reparations Germany paid after the last war be paid back; then he will demand full compensation for the German merchant and fishing fleets, and the railroad equipment, cattle, etc., turned over to the Allies after the last war to make up for similar items seized by the Germans; he will demand replacement of all the shipping Germany was compelled to build for the Allies to take the place of the ships sunk by the Imperial Navy; he will bill the Allies for the coal Germany delivered the Allies to replace the coal taken from the mines of Northern France during the war. After the broad category of claims from the last war has been put down, Hitler will then ask for reparations for this war, and of course he can set any sum he likes.

Q. _But why should Hitler take so much trouble to claim formal reparations? Since he obviously intends permanently to cripple his victim, why should he bother to go through the legalistic form of itemizing his claims?_

A. Because that is the way Hitler and his Nazis always do things. The German, even the Nazi, is an orderly fellow. The first principle of all Germans is “_Ordnung muss sein._” Aside from that, or above it, is the fact that Hitler, deeply conscious of the illegality of all his actions, beginning with the seizure of power, has always insisted on clothing everything he does with the appearance of lawfulness. When he seized power he did it by banning the Communist and then the Socialist parties from the Reichstag, and thus obtaining a majority vote in the Reichstag. Whenever he attacks a nation he announces a long list of reasons, backed sometimes by an extraordinary array of documents, many of them forged, to prove he not only had a right to attack but was compelled to do so.

This necessity for self-justification explains also one of the queerest Nazi practices in their torture chambers. When they have finished torturing a victim, they invariably make him sign a statement testifying that he had been well treated. One would think since the Nazi power is absolute, they would not care, or bother to take this trouble, but they seem to be under a profound compulsion to make this gesture toward the justice they have in practice abolished.

Q. _What is the use of our maintaining diplomatic relations with Vichy? In view of all that you have said I should think we ought to withdraw our recognition of Vichy and transfer it to de Gaulle and the Free French._

A. I suppose the chief reason we do not break diplomatic relations with Vichy is the same reason why we have not broken formal relations with Germany: in both cases we wish to keep a diplomatic observer on the scene. That is understandable in the case of Germany, since we are only formally at peace with her, and are morally at war and all the world knows it. In other words, until we begin to shoot, it would not make much difference whether we broke relations with Germany or not. But in the case of Vichy, it would make a world of difference if we took our recognition away from Pétain and gave it to de Gaulle. It is true that de Gaulle is actually in control of only some central African French territory while Pétain nominally rules all France, but we have continued our recognition of all the governments in exile and refused any kind of recognition to the Quislings and Rexists, and in this spirit we ought to withdraw our recognition from Pétain. It would immensely hearten the Free French to have our recognition and if we extended Lease-Lend aid to de Gaulle’s forces it could have important military consequences. However, I suppose Washington is still hoping against hope that we may one day be able to gain some profit from having treated Pétain as well as we have. I personally do not believe we ever will.

6. THE UNITED STATES

Q. _What is the greatest danger we face as a nation?_

A. Our complacency. It is colossal, cosmic, suicidal.

Q. _Can you still call us complacent after we have conscripted an Army, begun to create an Air Force, gone far toward building a two-ocean Navy, flung a line of outposts from Iceland to South America, appropriated and recommended fifty billion dollars for defense, and told our Navy to sink German fighting ships?_

A. The very list you name reeks with complacency. All of that put together does not equal a week of what even the “despised” Russians are doing now. The bitterest thing yet said about us was: “Better a Bolshevik who kills Germans than a Democrat who kills time.” We still unwaveringly and unblushingly expect somebody else to do the job for us. Now it is Russia.

To begin with we said France and England would do the job; then Norway; then the Low Countries; then the Balkans; and now we sit back and actually rely on the Russians. We cheer the news that the Navy is going to fight but shrink at the idea of an American Expeditionary Force. Why? For the same reason that war with Japan has many more advocates than war with Germany, because we could leave a sea war to the professional fighting men of the Navy. We shirk calling things by their proper names. Never have we used so many weasel words. Conscripts are “selectees”; naval war is “hunting pirates”; hiring the British to do our fighting for us is “lease-lend”; isolationists become “noninterventionists”; interventionists argue tediously for “all-out aid,” but few of them ever come out plainly and say we ought to go to war. All of this evasion stems from the refusal to face the supreme reality, namely that we have to go to war, that it is our war and was our war from the beginning.

Q. _But haven’t we gone far toward recognizing that it is our war by our lease-lend appropriations of around thirteen billion dollars?_

A. Do you realize that we actually delivered only $190,000,000 worth of goods in the first six months of lease-lend to Britain and China? That is only a little over one per cent of the total lease-lend money involved. If it takes us six months to deliver one per cent, how long will it take to deliver 100 per cent? Certainly, the beginning is slowest; certainly speed of deliveries will increase almost geometrically after the new factories begin to produce. But the fact is that we will never produce enough to win this war without going formally to war. As Donald M. Nelson, chief defense buyer, suggested, the only way to get capacity production for armaments is to make the program so big that civilian needs will be irresistibly pushed into the background, and every factory capable of producing armaments will be forced to drop its civilian business and go immediately to work on war materials.

What does “pushing our civilian needs into the background” mean? It means sacrifice; it means a lowering of our standard of living. Do you know anyone, have you a single person in your acquaintance in civilian life, whose standard of living has deteriorated as a result of sacrifice for our so-called defense effort? Leaf through your smart magazines, read the news of the shops, and ask yourself what the fighting folk of Europe would think of the war effort of a country whose rugged males in the bloody autumn of 1941 are asked in full-page advertisements: “Have you seen the new brown diamonds for men? These interesting, subdued stones are rapidly becoming a major item in the well-dressed man’s wardrobe.” Would this make very good evidence against Hitler’s assertion that we are a “decadent, degenerate democracy not to be taken seriously in war”?

Q. _But how can we expect to improve morale by criticism? Isn’t it true that if you tell a healthy man he looks ill, and tell him frequently enough, he may actually fall ill?_

A. Yes, but if you tell an ill man he looks well, and he therefore fails to take care of himself, he may die. It is not fear that we need; it is awareness. What was the common cause of the death of the fifteen nations which have fallen to Hitler? It was lack of awareness of his threat to their national existence. From Poland to Greece they were all overconfident and hence for six long years did nothing to bring about that coalition which might have saved them. Overconfidence is our danger, not defeatism. The moment our Navy was given orders to convoy and shoot, one prominent voice was raised to suggest that now we might diminish our Army, as though the war were virtually won.

Q. _Our morale is very bad, then?_

A. No, that is not true. Our morale is high. That sounds like a contradiction but it is not. It is my conviction after talking to audiences all over the country that the American people are eager to find out the truth and when they hear it they are eager to act; that they are far ahead of their leaders in Congress, and even of the President; and that if the President wanted it, he could get directly from the American people, not from Congress, but from the twenty-seven million Americans who voted for him, plus many million more, approval of any measure he advocated, including a formal declaration of war. National morale depends so much on leadership that a great figure, as Roosevelt in this country and Churchill in England, can influence it to great decisions with one broadcast.

But without leadership we soon sink back into smug apathy, and the kind of thoughtlessness which led Americans in the first six months of 1941 to buy 35 per cent more automobiles, 42 per cent more refrigerators, and 51 per cent more electric ranges than in the same period of 1940--all of these luxury articles being built of materials vital for our defense industry. The French too, right up to the collapse, went on eating tremendous meals, loafing behind their Maginot line, and reading illustrated magazines with pictures just like ours showing magnificent fleets of planes and tanks. An unwitting reader of some of our great periodicals would get the impression that we have one of the world’s most powerful tank armies and that our warplanes could darken the skies. We lay down the magazine with a sigh of content. Good old U.S.A. We knew we could do it. What was all that talk about unpreparedness?

Q. _Haven’t we a tank army?_

A. We have four armored divisions now being organized. We see them under such titles as “Uncle Sam’s Mighty Tanks Move Into Action,” and only the closest examination of the picture reveals that most of the tanks are armored cars. In 1940 we produced 20 light, no medium, and no heavy tanks a month; in 1941, 260 light, 130 medium, and no heavy tanks a month; and in 1942 we shall produce 390 light, 300 medium, and still no heavy tanks a month. I quote from an authoritative release of July 4, 1941: “None of the four existing armored divisions is regarded as complete and ready for combat on the European scale because medium and heavy tanks have not arrived yet, and because _coordinated practice with the air arm regularly attached to the divisions has not yet been possible_ and because much of the training time must be devoted to the basic training of new men.” There is the mechanized force of the United States of America in the third year of the mechanized world war. Our armored strength consists of light tanks only, completely useless against heavy or medium tanks. But most appalling is the revelation that this late in a war in which every victory has been won by the famous dive bomber plus tank team, we seem not to possess any such team at all, for that must be the meaning of the statement that there has been no practice of coordination between planes and tanks. These teams cannot be improvised. An army without them today is like an army would have been without artillery yesterday.

In effect we still do not possess an effective armored force and the production figures indicate we shall not have one in 1942 either, for until we have heavy tanks we cannot face heavy tanks. What have the Germans in the way of mechanized armament? We cannot tell what changes have taken place since the Battle of Russia began, but we know that their losses are constantly replenished from the industrial plants of all Europe now working feverishly for the Germans. At the Battle of France the Germans had ten Panzer divisions and it was these steel hack saws which cut the body of France into bleeding ribbons and ended the French nation in five weeks. The Germans captured from the French 4,000 or 5,000 tanks and since that time have produced incessantly until it is estimated that they entered the Battle of Russia with a total of 20 to 30 Panzer divisions and with at least 25,000 tanks. The German Army is obviously the army we are preparing to fight. Its armored strength is conservatively estimated about twenty-five times ours, and it has more than two years of battle experience. We not only have not got an army that could take part in modern warfare at all, but we are not even preparing to create such an army. We may get one. We will get one if we have time. We will get an army if we go to war in time to keep the British between us and our enemy for the period it will take to build an army. We will never get an army so long as we are satisfied with what we have.

We American people have been like a neurotic who refuses to listen to bad news; who will not go to a physician for fear of what he may find out. We could afford to view the matter less darkly if it appeared that our production would give us an effective fighting machine sometime in the future, but this does not seem to be the case. Our gun production indicates that we expect to be ready to fight a modern army sometime around the 1950’s. It shows that in the middle of 1941 we had a production of 4 big, 29 medium, and 20 small antiaircraft guns per month. At that rate it would take a year to make enough antiaircraft guns to guard New York City alone. In mid-1942 we shall, if we are lucky, have a production of 22 big, 23 medium, and 300 small antiaircraft guns monthly. At this rate we should be able properly to guard the large cities of the Eastern seaboard in about ten years.

In 1941 we did not produce any 155 mm. cannon, but we will make fourteen of them monthly in 1942; just as we produced no 105 mm. cannon in 1940, but put out 22 per month in 1941 and in 1942 hope to make 155 a month. At this rate we ought to be able to finish enough artillery to match the German artillery in about 1951. We are still turning out 37 mm. antitank guns, although tests have shown that this gun will not penetrate the armor of the tanks it would have to meet. Even our famous Garand rifle apparently cannot be manufactured anything like fast enough to supply the growing army. In mid-1941 it was being turned out at the rate of 22,500 a month; and in 1942 it is due to be produced at the rate of 52,000 a month. That is only 624,000 a year. At this rate it would take well over three years to equip the two-million-man army which is our initial goal in the face of the fact that the forces it is being built to meet number upward of ten million.

In airplanes we have the one advantage that we came so late into the field that we have few obsolescent types. The British and Germans have the immense advantage of daily contact with battle experience. In mid-1941 we produced 206 fighters and 60 bombers per month for ourselves and sent an average of 390 planes monthly to Britain. Our aid to Britain, “all out, short of war,” amounted to this, that after two years of war we were sending Britain about one-eighth as many warplanes as Germany’s production, believed to be around 3,000 a month. Even in 1942 when we shall have reached capacity production, we expect to send Britain only 650 planes a month, and to make only 600 bombers and 600 fighters monthly for ourselves. That is, even in the third year of war we propose to have a production of only about three-quarters the German production. We have pitched our sights far too low. We might as well quit if we cannot set the sights up.

Raymond Swing always tells me as he rakes in the pot, “Knick, it is not good hands that win in poker; it is better hands.” So it is in this war. We shall never win with a good army, navy, and air force; they have to be better than the enemy’s and bigger too. Before the Battle of Russia some military critics held that we did not need even the 1,500,000 men we now have under arms; that we needed only a highly mechanized force. Now we see that to win in this war an army needs mass as well as machines. As yet we have neither.

Q. _Why haven’t we at any rate planned an adequate army of four or five million men with at least as many armored divisions as the Germans?_

A. Because to plan an adequate army would indicate we intended to go to war. To make it big enough and well enough equipped to fight the Germans would indicate that we intended to fight the Germans. The consequence of our ostrich hypocrisy, our faint-hearted catering to the pacifist, isolationist-obscurantist bloc is that we not only do not but we cannot build an army to perform the function for which it was called into existence: fight the Nazis. If we equip it to go abroad, up go cries of alarm from the Wheeler-Lindbergh crowd: “Foreign war! See, the President is going to put us into a foreign war!”

Q. _But if we have nothing to fight with, how can we go to war?_

A. Only by going to war can we guarantee the continued existence of the British fighting machine and the control of the Atlantic by the British Navy and our own. As long as the Atlantic is thus controlled we can arm ourselves in safety.

Q. _But why can’t we arm ourselves, as we are now doing, without going to war, and after we are thoroughly prepared, then, if it is still necessary, go in and win? Wouldn’t that be more sensible?_

A. No, because until we go to war we shall never arm ourselves adequately or send to Britain and Russia anything like the supplies we would send if we went to war. Second, if we do not go to war at once there exists always the possibility of German victory. Although the German Army is busy for the time being in Russia, Hitler knows he has to conquer Britain to win. He intends to return to the Battle of Britain. The Battle of the Atlantic is constantly going on. Events move with such lightning speed in this war that a sudden overwhelming Hitler victory is still quite conceivable. Beaverbrook only the other day said he was convinced Hitler still intended to try to invade the British Isles.

Q. _Do you think Hitler could succeed in invading Britain?_

A. If Hitler is willing to lose half a million or a million men in a super-Blitz--and we know that he is quite willing to invest that many more German lives in his dream of 1,000 years of Nazi Empire--even British authorities admit he might get a foothold in England. The German tactics would probably be similar to the attack on Crete, except that against the British Isles they would try many more landings by sea. Everything would be on a gigantic scale. The air bombardment to precede the attempt would surpass anything experienced in the Blitz of the autumn of 1940 which I witnessed. In this super-Blitz the Germans would attempt to paralyze the R.A.F. They were not able to do it before. The R.A.F., as Churchill said, won the climacteric victory of the First Battle of Britain by knocking down three German planes to every one they lost, and in that fight the Germans outnumbered the British three to one. But if Hitler gets the airplane factories of Russia, to add to the production of the French, Czech, Belgian, and Greater German production, is there anyone who would undertake to prove that he could not concentrate in one furious attack more force than even the dauntless R.A.F. could repel?

The Germans can never beat the British but they might suffocate them. Hitler so far has never used more than 500 or 600 warplanes in a single attack on England. Suppose he uses 5,000. Why has he not done this before? Every aviation and military authority I talked with during the Blitz in England was baffled at this. There were scores of guesses. The most popular answer now is that the Germans did not have the airfields from which to launch so many planes at once. This is a limiting factor in air warfare which is now given great weight. It is pointed out that it takes a huge airfield to send off 100 planes. It is even argued that the British are bound to lose the war eventually because their island can accommodate only a restricted number of airfields, which fix an upper limit for their R.A.F., while the Germans can build an indefinitely large force. Since the First Battle of Britain the Germans have had plenty of time to build airfields from Norway to France sufficient to take care of the air fleets of all the world. We know they have built many secretly along the coast of Northern France and the Low Countries. Hitler’s tactic of surprise would lead him to keep them in reserve for the great invasion. Few observers would exclude the possibility that the Germans may be able to use thousands of planes in the Second Battle of Britain where they used hundreds in the first.

Q. _Why doesn’t Hitler use poison gas?_

A. I am convinced he will use it whenever he becomes desperate. Why has he not used it before? The British know he has vast quantities of it. He may be afraid of reprisals. When he uses gas at all I should think it would be in a once-for-all storm. Imagine what the effect of a giant attack with a heavy gas might be on London where as many as 4,000,000 persons sleep in underground shelters. The English have virtually ceased to carry gas masks. At the beginning of the war not one person in a hundred appeared on the streets of London without one. Today not one person in fifty carries one.

Hitler would probably not use gas at all except as a part of a knockout blow so violent that the British would not have a chance to strike back. Whatever the outcome, it is possible that such a mass gas assault might kill hundreds of thousands in one night. While the gas attack was being poured upon the large cities, in the hope also of wiping out the government and other leaders in urban headquarters, swarms of flat-bottomed scows and other vessels would put out from the coasts of the Channel and the North Sea, to make for landings at perhaps a dozen different places, anywhere along the coast of both England and Scotland. Some of these objectives would be feigned to divert English defense forces from the real ones, which might number five or six. Meanwhile great numbers of parachute troops would be landed to capture British airfields and hold them long enough for troop planes and gliders to land reinforcements, and these landings would also be attempted at the immediate rear of the coastal points where the German troops were coming in by sea.

British authorities admit that it would be a serious matter if the Germans could establish one or more such bridgeheads on the coast and land heavy tanks, for the British even yet are not satisfactorily equipped with this indispensable weapon. The British believe they could concentrate and recapture any points seized by the Germans, but who knows? Crete showed what could be done with air-borne troops, and although the British Isles would be in most respects more difficult to capture than Crete, they would not be in all respects. The Germans are much nearer the British Isles, and could concentrate many times the force they used on Crete.

If the invasion of Britain ever takes place, Hitler will doubtless make it a win-the-war or lose-the-war battle, on a scale of the highest concentrated violence. Neither side will hold back reserves, as the R.A.F. did even in the worst days of the 1940 Blitz, because they were waiting to use their last fighters and bombers against the expected invaders. The British Navy will drive regardless of mines or submarines through the narrow waters of the Channel to throw itself between the invaders and the island. The odds would still be on the British to win, in my judgment. They are in an incomparably stronger position than in 1940 when after Dunkirk they were practically weaponless. Today they have two to three million first-class, well-equipped, and well-trained troops and over a million Home Guards on the island; their coast defenses, as I have seen on visits around the island, are formidable and deep; the R.A.F. is present in full strength on its home bases, and the British claim it is growing steadily stronger relative to the Luftwaffe; and the Royal Navy, sallying from its home ports, here has the protection of air forces which were not available at Crete. Finally, the British would be defending their homes, and this lends an astonishing extra strength to fighting men. I would not like to be a member of the German Army trying to occupy and pacify England. At the school of Cad’s Warfare, run by Tom Wintringham outside of London, they have taught the old fellows and the youngsters in the Home Guard many odd and useful tricks, from the best way to strangle a German sentry from behind, to the best way to stab a German sentry from in front.

Even if the chances are in favor of the British, there are so many surprises in war, and especially in this war, that it would be folly for us to behave as though we knew Britain would win without us. If she falls, we must be prepared to meet the whole German war machine alone.

Q. _Is it true that the Germans once tried to invade Britain and failed as we heard rumored here?_

A. I am convinced those rumors were without foundation; I do not think the Germans have ever tried to invade the British Isles. I remember the September story. I was in England then and about mid-September I learned that the highest British authorities believed the invasion might come at any moment. With the invincible Virginia Cowles we went “Looking for Trouble” and motored to Dover and spent a week along the coast, in constant contact with the British military authorities. We heard not a whisper of the yarn about invasion until later in London when rumors came from the continent that the R.A.F. had broken up a fleet of German invasion vessels and drowned or burned with flaming oil on the surface of the sea thousands of German soldiers. Now it is perfectly possible that the R.A.F. may have surprised and thus treated German invasion vessels engaged in maneuver or in moving from one port to another, but it is out of the question that it should have been a serious attempt at invasion. When that happens there will be 500,000 Germans concerned, not 50,000, and there will be no attempt at concealment.

The decisive consideration is that if the Germans had tried an invasion and the British had beaten it back, the British would have been certain to advertise their victory as widely as possible. But British authorities never said anything about a repulsed invasion attempt. We may be sure that when and if the invasion attempt comes, there will be no question about what is happening; not even the most enterprising American newspaperman will be able to get a scoop on the story.

Q. _Would the Germans first invade Ireland in order to be able to attack the British Isles from all sides?_

A. Possibly, though not necessarily. The Germans might consider the disadvantages of taking Ireland greater than the advantages. The Irish Channel is as wide as the English; the Germans would be no nearer England than they are now. The possession of submarine bases in Ireland would be the most important gain for the Germans. Against this the Germans have to balance the cost of the operation, since there are strong British units in Northern Ireland; the time lost; the alarm given; and the effect on the Irish in America.

Q. _Why doesn’t Ireland allow the British to take over for the duration of the war or at any rate let them use the Irish naval bases they need so badly?_

A. Because the Irish still consider Oliver Cromwell a far more unpleasant fellow than Adolf Hitler. They still distrust and to a degree hate the British. Also they know they would be enslaved if Hitler won; but they do not expect Hitler to win. They expect Britain to win, but they will do nothing or practically nothing to help win. To be fair to the Irish, their attitude is based less on historical prejudice than on today’s life or death. If De Valera were to give the British permission to occupy the Irish ports, the moment the news became known, the Germans would bombard Dublin and other Irish cities, and deliberately attempt to kill as many Irish men, women, and children as possible to punish them for siding with the English. This is the threat that so far has kept the Irish from allowing the British in.

Q. _If the Russians hold the German Army long enough, won’t the time come when the German people will revolt? Why not wait for that?_

A. Because it is extremely unlikely ever to happen unless we go to war. The German people will revolt only when, as Walter Lippmann expressed it, they feel that it has become more dangerous to go on with Hitler than to get rid of him. Such a time will come only when the German people become convinced that they are going to be defeated and invaded. It will not come merely because the German Army falls into a prolonged deadlock with the Russians.

There has to be the conviction that foreign troops are going to enter Germany itself, and that if the German people overthrow Hitler they will receive milder treatment at the hands of their liberated victims. The danger of going on with Hitler has to be very imminent and great to move the German people to revolt, because the crimes of the Nazis have been so atrocious that the Nazis know they will be killed if they are overthrown. There must be ten thousand Nazis who anticipate death if they lose their power either by revolt or by loss of the war. They will meet any attempt at revolt with the utmost mercilessness. In the last war there were no Germans who expected to be killed if Germany lost. The Nazi gang whose life and death hang on the outcome of the war is larger than the clique of the German ruling class which had an urgent, though not life-and-death interest, in seeing the last war to a successful conclusion. Any hopes that a German revolt would end the war if the deadlock lasts long enough are based on wishful thinking.

Q. _What makes you think Hitler would want to destroy us?_

A. First, because he could not afford to allow any democracy, any free state, to exist in his totalitarian world. In his world there would be only one kind of freedom, the freedom of the German to do as he likes with all other varieties of men. If Hitler is not interfered with and has time to accustom his slaves to slavery, his dynasty of tyrants might last far beyond our lifetime, but not if a single democracy persists to tempt and challenge his slaves to revolt. Witness today how for a long time the subjugated peoples of Europe seemed sunk in abject apathy, but awakened to demonstrate against their despot the moment Russia’s resistance awakened the hope of eventual victory. If Hitler wins over the rest of the world, he must destroy us in order to be safe in his own Empire.

As long as a democracy exists on earth it will hold out before the eyes of hundreds of millions of Hitler’s subjects the vision of a place on earth where the body and soul of a man belong to himself and there are no masters and slaves. Especially dangerous to his rule would be a democracy which not only offered this vision but was potentially powerful enough to be a positive threat, as the United States. For this reason alone Hitler could not allow us to continue to exist, a free oasis in his vast helot Reich.

Second, Hitler could not afford to give us time to translate our potential into real strength. He professes two opinions of America. One is that we are negligible; the other is that as the last war was decided by America, this one may be. He once told a diplomatic official of his who still occupies a high post in this country: “The United States is a degenerate democracy in the backwash of civilization and too demoralized by pacifism to play any important role in the war to come.” He is truly contemptuous of our democracy, as of all democracies, which he judges on the basis of those he has overthrown or conquered, from the German to the French. He concludes that we must be weak, since our democratic system dispenses justice, as far as humanly possible, to the weak as well as to the strong, and because since the conquest of the continental United States we have shown little or no interest in building an empire. To the Nazi heart justice to the weak is a proof of weakness; and to the Nazi mind only one thing prevents a human being from seizing the property of a neighbor, weakness. So Hitler on the one hand thinks us weak, but on the other hand he recognizes that we could become strong.

As he once told me that he admitted the entry of the United States into the last war had decided the struggle, so now when America is preparing to throw its whole weight against him, he shows signs of wishing to keep us out. By now Britain has taught him that even a democracy can become tough if it has time. Would Hitler, after he had crushed the British, willingly give us time to become morally strong enough to fight him as the British fought him? Could he afford to let us have the two years or more still necessary for the physical job of creating the cannon, tanks, airplanes, and naval vessels and for the training of the officers and men for an armed force strong enough to face his?

The third simple reason for his wishing to subjugate the United States is that he wants the loot of America, richest on earth, and wants us to pay tribute to the Greater German Reich as France and the other conquered countries are doing now.

Fourth, and not the least, important reason to believe that Hitler wishes to destroy the United States, is because he has said so. You remember his speech in the second year of the war when he said, “We shall destroy Britain and every country which has fed Britain.” To whom do you suppose he referred if not to the United States? And do you not think now that it is high time to pay attention to this no longer funny little man when he announces what he intends to do? He is unique among conquerors, because he always, by one means or another, warned his victims of what he intended to do to them, and in most cases, the Lindberghs of the world have looked up appeasingly and archly inquired, “Oh no, Mr. Hitler, you surely don’t mean that, do you?”

As someone expressed it, Hitler has never kept a promise but never failed to carry out, or at least try to carry out, a threat. His threat to destroy us has been documented scores of times. Hermann Rauschning quotes Hitler as declaring privately to friends that he would conquer the United States first from within, with his Fifth Column, and Walther Darre, his Minister of Agriculture, has developed the topic thus: “I have been asked about my opinion of America, especially the United States, and the danger of this pseudo-democratic Republic’s possible attempts to hinder us in our historical development. There is no fear that this demoralized country will mix in this German war. In the first place, as in France and other countries, also in the United States, we have many of our compatriots and even more friends among the citizens of the United States. Many of the latter hold the most important positions in political and economic life and will not permit public opinion to allow something so senseless and insane as war against Germany.... The United States is at present so demoralized and so corrupted that, like England and France, it need not be taken into consideration as a military adversary.... The United States will also be forced by Germany to complete and final capitulation.”

Finally, as we discussed before, Hitler as every conqueror, cannot stop trying to conquer, and after he had finished with the Old World, his momentum would force him to attack the New.

Q. _Haven’t we plenty to do at home, without getting into a foreign war? Why don’t we try to make a real democracy in America before we go out to try to improve the rest of the world?_

A. This argument that we should pay no attention to the fire in the house next door because we are busy cleaning the windows of our house, polishing the floor, and cleaning up the kitchen has the same amount of logic and common sense as the doctrine that we ought not to fight on our enemy’s territory but only on our own. President Hutchins of the University of Chicago has put this argument of perfectionism in scholarly form. He maintains that we are going to war to establish throughout the world the Four Freedoms--of speech, of worship, from want, and from fear--but he says we have no right to crusade for them until we have established them at home. But we are not going to war to crusade for the Four Freedoms; as we have pointed out before, we are going to war to make the world safe for the United States, and at the same time or thereafter do what we can to establish the Four Freedoms elsewhere as well as in America. If we do not go to war, we risk losing even what we have of the Four Freedoms, even the small quantities of them measured by Dr. Hutchins.

Something of what he says about the failure of the Four Freedoms in this country to reach perfection is true; not all of it. He says we have freedom of speech to say only what everybody else is saying, but Dr. Hutchins will admit we have more of this kind of freedom than any other country at this moment. He will also admit that everyone else is not saying the things Dr. Hutchins is saying and yet he may say them without let or hindrance. He says we have “freedom of worship if we don’t take our religion too seriously,” but one must ask oneself what examples of religious intolerance have given rise to such a statement? Where are the persecuted religionists and to what country would they flee to escape from the alleged deficiency of freedom of worship in America?

Dr. Hutchins says that as for freedom from want and freedom from fear, so long as one-third of the nation is ill-fed, ill-clothed, and ill-housed, as Roosevelt says it is, we have no right to try to establish these freedoms in other countries. Again, we can admit that the matter is precisely as President Roosevelt has stated it, and yet assert that the people of the United States have as a whole better food, clothing, and living conditions than those of any other country with comparable climatic conditions. He says that as for democracy, “we know that millions of men and women are disfranchised in this country because of their race, color, or condition of economic servitude.” But if by reason of the passive attitude toward the war advocated by Dr. Hutchins, this country should fall under Hitler’s power, whether directly, with der Fuehrer in Washington, or indirectly with der Fuehrer’s Gauleiter, chosen from the America First Committee as our President, all of America’s 133,000,000 men and women would be wholly disfranchised.