LUCE SAYS WE’RE ALREADY IN THE WAR. Henry R. Luce, the publisher of Time and Life magazines and a Willkie Republican, contributed a long and thoughtful essay to last week’s edition of Life in which he exploded two pet arguments of the isolationist crowd -- that we can stay out of the war if we choose, and that if we get mixed up in it then we’re letting Britain dictate our foreign policy. To the contrary, Mr. Luce writes, acknowledging that America is already in the war would be a step toward taking an overdue leadership role in world affairs --
"All this talk about whether this or that might or might not get us into the war is wasted effort. We are, for a fact, in the war....Perhaps the best way to show ourselves that we are in the war is to consider how we can get out of it. Practically, there’s only one way to get out of it and that is by a German victory over England....We say we don’t want to be in the war. We also say we want England to win. We want Hitler stopped -- more than we want to stay out of the war. So, at the moment, we’re in....Americans have a feeling that in any collaboration with Great Britain we are somehow playing Britain’s game and not our own. Whatever sense there may have been in this notion in the past, today it is an ignorant and foolish conception of the situation. In any sort of partnership with the British Empire, Great Britain is perfectly willing that the United States of America should assume the role of senior partner. This has been true for a long time. Among serious Englishmen, the chief complaint against America (and incidentally their best alibi for themselves) has really amounted to this -- that America has refused to rise to the opportunities of leadership in the world."
All true and very well put, except for one quibble -- I have no doubt that when Mr. Luce says "we" want Britain to defeat Hitler, he’s speaking accurately about the feelings of a vast majority of Americans. But not all. The dirtiest sin of the isolationist crowd is their indifference to whether Britain or Germany wins. Just last Saturday the Chicago Tribune editorialized that Britain "has nothing to gain by continuing the war" -- an argument that could have, and often does, come from Berlin and Rome. But yes, most Americans wisely reject by now the foolhardy notion that we could live at peace with a Hitler-dominated Europe.
A CALL FOR AN "AMERICAN CENTURY." Contrast Henry Luce’s idealism in his Life magazine essay with the cynicism of isolationists. The latter portray the world as full of unscrupulous foreign leaders such as Prime Minister Churchill -- who is said to be hoodwinking the "bankers, college presidents, society women, and movie magnates" of America (in the Chicago Tribune’s phrase) into gullibly letting U.S. interests be subordinated to the economic appetites of nations which privately detest us. But Mr. Luce’s call for America to engage the world and lead the fight against tyranny -- to make this an "American Century" -- is built not upon cynical goals of exploitation, but on the ideals of our Founding Fathers --
"What internationalism have we Americans to offer? Ours cannot come out of the vision of any one man. It must be the product of the imaginations of many men. It must be a sharing with all peoples of our Bill of Rights, our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, our magnificent industrial products, our technical skills. It must be an internationalism of the people, by the people and for the people. In general, the issues which the American people champion revolve around their determination to make the society of men safe for the freedom, growth, and increasing satisfaction of all individual men....Most important of all, we have that indefinable, unmistakable sign of leadership: prestige. And unlike the prestige of Rome or Genghis Khan or 19th century England, American prestige throughout the world is faith in the good intentions as well as the ultimate intelligence and ultimate strength of the whole American people."
There’s much, much more to this inspiring and informative editorial, which is now available from the Life magazine offices as a reprint. If you missed it last week, by all means write for a copy from Time Incorporated, 9 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, New York.
THE ISOLATIONIST ARGUMENT FOR A TRUCE. For the sake of giving the other side a fair hearing, here’s a clip from the editorial from last Saturday’s Chicago Tribune, arguing why the British ought to seek a negotiated settlement with Germany. It’s offered here without comment, though I have to hold my nose to get through the arrogant condescension in the opening sentence --
"People in the midst of a war and under attack cannot think as clearly as people somewhat farther off. The question is whether a continuation of the war for an indefinite period, even with the unqualified assistance of America, will best serve the British interests. From a purely physical point of view the progressive damage to buildings, industrial and residential, and the increasing loss of shipping is obviously all loss and no gain. The realization, dawning on minds not prepared to accept it, that England cannot be a safe place is even more serious. Destroyed buildings can be rebuilt, but who will want to build in an England that has been pounded for another year or two?...The longer the war goes on the more it will be seen that the ocean lanes around England, even if they are kept open, as they can be, for the supply of foodstuffs, cannot be kept open for profitable commerce. Physically, therefore, Britain has nothing to gain by continuing the war....Even if peace today will not leave Britain the dominance of Europe she had held so long, it will leave her an empire intact, and the fleet that is not yet only one-half the strength of the American fleet. A negotiated peace would be the best thing for England."
Monday, February 27, 2017
Saturday, February 25, 2017
Tuesday, February 25, 1941
TURKEY MIGHT DECLARE WAR ON HITLER. If German troops use Bulgaria as a staging ground for aggression, that is. The latest turn-around in the Balkan crisis comes just a week after the Turks signed a non-aggression pact with the Bulgars -- a pact that many observers took to mean Turkey was backing away from her alliance with Britain and giving Hitler a green light to move. But according to the United Press, Turkish Foreign Minister Saracoglu has now issued a statement saying his country "cannot in any way remain indifferent to foreign activities which might occur in her zone of security." The Foreign Minister also said the Turks would fight any aggression "directed against her territorial integrity or her independence" -- note the distinction. It’s widely believed Turkish officials consider a German occupation of Bulgaria and invasion of Greece to be a threat to the continued "independence" of Turkey.
They’re right to think that way, of course. Nazi occupation of the remainder of the Balkans would reduce Turkey to cowed neutrality at best. And it’s heartening that British Foreign Secretary Eden is headed for Ankara (from a visit to Cairo) to discuss what the current crisis means for the Anglo-Turkish mutual-aid pact. But is Saracoglu’s sudden attack of courage too little, too late? The Associated Press says that Bulgarian police have halted all automobile traffic in the region around Sofia, the capital, and foreigners have been barred from the border areas. "The capital was ordered to be ready for a blackout at a moment’s notice, beginning Tuesday," says the A.P.
There’s still no confirmation of whether German troops are actually inside Bulgaria or not, but the Bulgars certainly seem to think they will be shortly. They don’t seem to mind much, either.
WHAT WILL JAPAN DO? Will Japan and America remain at peace with each other? Part of the answer, according to Hugh Byas in Sunday’s New York Times, depends on Russia, which figures heavily right now in the thinking of Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka --
"Japanese strategists see two potential enemies able to engage Japan in a life or death struggle. On their north looms Soviet Russia, gigantic, distrusted, unknown. Manchuria no longer is a buffer State, for Red soldiers and soldiers of the Rising Sun can see each other’s blockhouses across the Amur River. On their south is the Pacific, where the American fleet can force Japan to throw its whole navy into a battle which, if lost, would lay the Japanese islands open to invasion from air. It follows, like a demonstration in Euclid, that Japanese strategy requires that Japanese high policy shall prevent circumstances from arising wherein Japan might have to fight these two potential enemies at once. Mr. Matsuoka belongs to that school of Japanese statesmen who hold that understanding with Russia should be a fundamental of Japanese policy. If an enduring pact with Russia materializes, Japan’s southward drive will be invigorated. But ‘no war with America’ must remain a fixed point in Japanese policy unless and until Japan is assured of Russia’s friendly neutrality. If an when Lieut. Gen. Yoshitsugu Tatekawa, Ambassador to Russia, can wire from Moscow that the Soviets have been squared, conditions will change and the pace of the Japanese southward march will be speeded."
Seen in this light, Japan’s troop movements in Southeast Asia this past week look more like a bluff than anything else -- the Japanese wouldn’t move on Singapore and the Dutch East Indies, and risk American intervention, until their position vis-a-vis Russia is secured. And one can take comfort for now in Mr. Byas’ estimation that Japan, if guided by the Foreign Minister’s hands, might not decide on war after all -- "The riddle of the Pacific is whether [Mr. Matsuoka] is skillful enough to devise and strong enough to enforce policies which can obtain by peaceful means those economic opportunities Japan asks as rightfully hers. Or will other Japanese forces, now dazzled by the results Hitler’s power policies have obtained, use their power ruthlessly and recklessly to seize the opportunity to which they believe Japan’s imperial destiny and their European ally’s might are beckoning them."
They’re right to think that way, of course. Nazi occupation of the remainder of the Balkans would reduce Turkey to cowed neutrality at best. And it’s heartening that British Foreign Secretary Eden is headed for Ankara (from a visit to Cairo) to discuss what the current crisis means for the Anglo-Turkish mutual-aid pact. But is Saracoglu’s sudden attack of courage too little, too late? The Associated Press says that Bulgarian police have halted all automobile traffic in the region around Sofia, the capital, and foreigners have been barred from the border areas. "The capital was ordered to be ready for a blackout at a moment’s notice, beginning Tuesday," says the A.P.
There’s still no confirmation of whether German troops are actually inside Bulgaria or not, but the Bulgars certainly seem to think they will be shortly. They don’t seem to mind much, either.
WHAT WILL JAPAN DO? Will Japan and America remain at peace with each other? Part of the answer, according to Hugh Byas in Sunday’s New York Times, depends on Russia, which figures heavily right now in the thinking of Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka --
"Japanese strategists see two potential enemies able to engage Japan in a life or death struggle. On their north looms Soviet Russia, gigantic, distrusted, unknown. Manchuria no longer is a buffer State, for Red soldiers and soldiers of the Rising Sun can see each other’s blockhouses across the Amur River. On their south is the Pacific, where the American fleet can force Japan to throw its whole navy into a battle which, if lost, would lay the Japanese islands open to invasion from air. It follows, like a demonstration in Euclid, that Japanese strategy requires that Japanese high policy shall prevent circumstances from arising wherein Japan might have to fight these two potential enemies at once. Mr. Matsuoka belongs to that school of Japanese statesmen who hold that understanding with Russia should be a fundamental of Japanese policy. If an enduring pact with Russia materializes, Japan’s southward drive will be invigorated. But ‘no war with America’ must remain a fixed point in Japanese policy unless and until Japan is assured of Russia’s friendly neutrality. If an when Lieut. Gen. Yoshitsugu Tatekawa, Ambassador to Russia, can wire from Moscow that the Soviets have been squared, conditions will change and the pace of the Japanese southward march will be speeded."
Seen in this light, Japan’s troop movements in Southeast Asia this past week look more like a bluff than anything else -- the Japanese wouldn’t move on Singapore and the Dutch East Indies, and risk American intervention, until their position vis-a-vis Russia is secured. And one can take comfort for now in Mr. Byas’ estimation that Japan, if guided by the Foreign Minister’s hands, might not decide on war after all -- "The riddle of the Pacific is whether [Mr. Matsuoka] is skillful enough to devise and strong enough to enforce policies which can obtain by peaceful means those economic opportunities Japan asks as rightfully hers. Or will other Japanese forces, now dazzled by the results Hitler’s power policies have obtained, use their power ruthlessly and recklessly to seize the opportunity to which they believe Japan’s imperial destiny and their European ally’s might are beckoning them."
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Sunday, February 23, 1941
ARE THE GERMANS IN BULGARIA? The New York Times’ C.L. Sulzberger says no, the stories about Nazi troops crossing the Danube River boundary line are "unfounded" and "premature." But the Reuters news agency reports from Belgrade that "German troops have been crossing the Danube into Bulgaria at the Bulgarian town of Ruse since 4 p.m....Friday." Also, Leon Kay of United Press reports that German marching troops and "heavily-loaded lorries" are said to have entered Bulgaria at Ruschuk, Mikopoi, and Vidin. And Sam Brewer writes in the Chicago Tribune that German engineer units have "pushed 60 miles into Bulgaria." I haven’t heard anything on the radio this morning to confirm or deny these stories, but there is one report that German officers in civilian clothes have established themselves in the capital, Sofia (and have been treated to student anti-Nazi demonstrations). There’s also a story that brand-new road signs -- in German -- have shown up on Bulgarian highways leading from the Rumanian border. Yet, there’s still no consensus that the Germans have arrived.
Is there any doubt they will? Unless this is all an extremely elaborate feint, it’s conceivable that the Germans would, this time at least, do what they have baldly telegraphed the world they are going to do -- drive through Bulgaria and into northeastern Greece. There’s a chance they’ll get a hot reception, if a U.P. report is accurate that the British have fortified the Greek island of Lemnos in the upper Aegean. This is a highly strategic point in the region, equidistant from the port of Salonika and the Dardanelles straits. According to the Tribune, a Turkish radio report said British forces in North Africa are holding large forces in North Africa in readiness "for an instant call to Greece." A year ago, the British were too little, too late in Norway -- this time I have a feeling it’ll be a much more even fight. It could even result in a stable Balkan front, similar to that which we saw in the World War.
HE WHO HESITATES... British author and statesman Harold J. Laski wrote in his syndicated column yesterday that Hitler is having a highly atypical attack of indecision --
"One can see the shape of a German spring offensive taking its determined form....Is it to be the long expected invasion of Britain? Is it to be an attack on the Middle East? Spain, to show its gratitude for past favors, by cooperating in an attack on Gibraltar? Is Japan to launch an attack which tests all of America to defend its interests in the Far East? Has France been pulled over to the border line of decisive subjection to the Axis? Will Turkey fight? Is the Soviet Union so fearful of a German attack that it will continue to stand aloof whatever the threat of a German advance to the Black Sea may imply? My guess...is that none of these and no combination of them at the moment is more certain than another. For the first time since the defeat of Poland, Hitler is uncertain of his next move. Axis propaganda is working overtime to find out, if it can, the weak point in the British armor. So much in the last six or seven months has proved totally unexpected that Hitler waits on the ‘feel’ of events for one of those intuitions of his which looses his barbaric savagery in a new quarter....Neutral observers who have recently been in Germany told me of conversations with sober, middle class Germans to whom now any postponement of rapid victory is the equivalent of certain defeat. They ask themselves why the Fuehrer hesitates. They begin to wonder if he is so certain of his direction. Something spectacular and determined he will no doubt attempt. The chance of a negotiated peace has disappeared. He must ruin or be ruined. But he is torn between the possibilities."
Professor Laski hastily warns that no one should underestimate the danger of a Hitler triumph ("His gambler’s chance of victory...is real and will last at least until American aid to Britain has made the sea lanes safe and has given us something approaching parity in the air."). But there does seem to be something lackadaisical about the German war machine all of a sudden – for instance, making such a big build-up about a tactical move through Bulgaria that will almost surely bring German troops into Greece, invading through the back door. It would be an offensive, yes, but limited in scope and defensive in purpose. Maybe you could say it’s still likely the Nazis will launch a "spectacular" attack on Britain this spring. Still, I’m starting to wonder if -- for whatever reason -- Hitler has suddenly opted for a careful and essentially defensive strategy of consolidation.
Is there any doubt they will? Unless this is all an extremely elaborate feint, it’s conceivable that the Germans would, this time at least, do what they have baldly telegraphed the world they are going to do -- drive through Bulgaria and into northeastern Greece. There’s a chance they’ll get a hot reception, if a U.P. report is accurate that the British have fortified the Greek island of Lemnos in the upper Aegean. This is a highly strategic point in the region, equidistant from the port of Salonika and the Dardanelles straits. According to the Tribune, a Turkish radio report said British forces in North Africa are holding large forces in North Africa in readiness "for an instant call to Greece." A year ago, the British were too little, too late in Norway -- this time I have a feeling it’ll be a much more even fight. It could even result in a stable Balkan front, similar to that which we saw in the World War.
HE WHO HESITATES... British author and statesman Harold J. Laski wrote in his syndicated column yesterday that Hitler is having a highly atypical attack of indecision --
"One can see the shape of a German spring offensive taking its determined form....Is it to be the long expected invasion of Britain? Is it to be an attack on the Middle East? Spain, to show its gratitude for past favors, by cooperating in an attack on Gibraltar? Is Japan to launch an attack which tests all of America to defend its interests in the Far East? Has France been pulled over to the border line of decisive subjection to the Axis? Will Turkey fight? Is the Soviet Union so fearful of a German attack that it will continue to stand aloof whatever the threat of a German advance to the Black Sea may imply? My guess...is that none of these and no combination of them at the moment is more certain than another. For the first time since the defeat of Poland, Hitler is uncertain of his next move. Axis propaganda is working overtime to find out, if it can, the weak point in the British armor. So much in the last six or seven months has proved totally unexpected that Hitler waits on the ‘feel’ of events for one of those intuitions of his which looses his barbaric savagery in a new quarter....Neutral observers who have recently been in Germany told me of conversations with sober, middle class Germans to whom now any postponement of rapid victory is the equivalent of certain defeat. They ask themselves why the Fuehrer hesitates. They begin to wonder if he is so certain of his direction. Something spectacular and determined he will no doubt attempt. The chance of a negotiated peace has disappeared. He must ruin or be ruined. But he is torn between the possibilities."
Professor Laski hastily warns that no one should underestimate the danger of a Hitler triumph ("His gambler’s chance of victory...is real and will last at least until American aid to Britain has made the sea lanes safe and has given us something approaching parity in the air."). But there does seem to be something lackadaisical about the German war machine all of a sudden – for instance, making such a big build-up about a tactical move through Bulgaria that will almost surely bring German troops into Greece, invading through the back door. It would be an offensive, yes, but limited in scope and defensive in purpose. Maybe you could say it’s still likely the Nazis will launch a "spectacular" attack on Britain this spring. Still, I’m starting to wonder if -- for whatever reason -- Hitler has suddenly opted for a careful and essentially defensive strategy of consolidation.
Monday, February 20, 2017
Thursday, February 20, 1941
A "FRIENDSHIP" TREATY THAT HELPS HITLER. The so-called "Pact of Friendship" just signed between Turkey and Bulgaria appears to be another sign of Hitler’s diplomatic offensive in the Balkans is going well for him. Certainly Washington Post columnist Barnet Nover sees it that way --
"The pact has the potential force of a bombshell. Its very ingenuousness creates the suspicion that it hides more than it reveals. Ostensibly an agreement whereby Turkey and Bulgaria agree not to attack each other, it may turn out to be an agreement permitting Germany to attack their neighbor, Greece, or frighten the latter into concluding an armistice with Italy. That is why there is no disguising the fact that the Turkish-Bulgarian treaty is bad news for Great Britain and her ally....Turkey happens to be an ally of Great Britain; Bulgaria has slowly but steadily moved into the orbit of the Axis so that today her status begins to approach the status of Rumania, an undefeated nation whose rulers ‘invited’ Germany to send in an army of occupation. Until just the other day there was the possibility that a German occupation of Bulgaria, whether open or covert, would meet with the forcible opposition of the Turks. For while Bulgaria is the pathway between the Danube and the Aegean it is also the pathway between Rumania and the Dardanelles. Indeed, the Turkish press issued repeated warnings to Bulgaria not to become the catspaw of the Third Reich. Yet now that this has happened, the Turks proceed to make a treaty which looks suspiciously like an acceptance by the Ankara government of Bulgaria’s new status and a pledge not to do anything about it so long as Bulgaria is not used as a base of operations against Turkey herself."
Ironically, Britain’s success against Italy’s armies in North Africa may have contributed to Turkey’s acceptance of a Nazi-dominated Bulgaria. Without an Axis drive on the Suez canal, there’s less reason for the Turks to fear a German pincer offensive through the Dardanelles and Turkey toward the oil fields of Irak, then southward. Mr. Nover also thinks the Russians, who are emphatically interested in staying out of the war, may have pressured the Turks to signal Ankara’s disinterest in fighting the Germans in Bulgaria. Could be, but unfortunately a number of countries in the last few years have declared their lack of desire to fight Germany, without prodding from the Russians or anyone else. They often end up invaded and enslaved. Turkey may live to regret her implicit acquiescence.
AMERICA’S DOING NOTHING TO STOP JAPAN. Syndicated columnists Joseph Alsop and Robert Kintner sounded a warning about the developing crisis in the Far East, and America’s lack of response, in their "Capital Parade" column yesterday --
"Expert opinion [in Washington] inclines to the theory that unless strong measures are promptly taken, the Japanese will move against Singapore or the Netherlands Indies in about a month, or perhaps sooner. If they do move, and are successful, the war in the Far East will be lost. It may prove to be one of the major misfortunes of our time, therefore, that the approaching crisis finds the Navy Department both badly divided on policy, and in the hands of men without real Far Eastern experience. American officers with this experience, who have seen the Japanese navy in action, are virtually unanimous that strong measures can be taken at little risk to ourselves. A mere gesture, such as the sending of a flotilla of cruisers on a ‘courtesy visit’ to Singapore, is considered enough to frighten the Japanese into good behavior for a long time to come....Unfortunately, the chief of naval operations, Admiral Harold R. Stark, is a rather careful, elaborately methodical individual who, for all his other virtues, possesses little dash or boldness....Stark and the general board are haunted by the fear that any measures we may take will risk reprisals from Japan, and that we shall find ourselves still involved with the Japanese when a threat from the European Axis power calls for greater naval strength in the Atlantic. Unless the President turns for advice to the men who know the Far Eastern picture, we may remain immobilized. And it is difficult to exaggerate the seriousness of the possible consequences of a timid American policy in the Far East."
What I want to know is, just what kind of "reprisals" are the Navy brass frightened of? As a New Republic editorial pointed out last month, our aid to Britain will not increase America’s chances of getting embroiled in war with Germany if Hitler doesn’t feel it’s in his advantage to fight the U.S. The same thing goes for Japan. If it’s true, as our Far East naval experts say, that the Japanese navy is much less imposing in quality than it is in quantity, and that "it could be dealt with adequately in six months by the American Navy’s Pacific squadron" (according to Alsop & Kintner), Japan wouldn’t go to war with us because America put on a show of force. Oh, she’d squawk, all right, but if we’ve learned anything from the European war so far, it’s that dictators are more likely to move if they detect timidity in an opponent.
"The pact has the potential force of a bombshell. Its very ingenuousness creates the suspicion that it hides more than it reveals. Ostensibly an agreement whereby Turkey and Bulgaria agree not to attack each other, it may turn out to be an agreement permitting Germany to attack their neighbor, Greece, or frighten the latter into concluding an armistice with Italy. That is why there is no disguising the fact that the Turkish-Bulgarian treaty is bad news for Great Britain and her ally....Turkey happens to be an ally of Great Britain; Bulgaria has slowly but steadily moved into the orbit of the Axis so that today her status begins to approach the status of Rumania, an undefeated nation whose rulers ‘invited’ Germany to send in an army of occupation. Until just the other day there was the possibility that a German occupation of Bulgaria, whether open or covert, would meet with the forcible opposition of the Turks. For while Bulgaria is the pathway between the Danube and the Aegean it is also the pathway between Rumania and the Dardanelles. Indeed, the Turkish press issued repeated warnings to Bulgaria not to become the catspaw of the Third Reich. Yet now that this has happened, the Turks proceed to make a treaty which looks suspiciously like an acceptance by the Ankara government of Bulgaria’s new status and a pledge not to do anything about it so long as Bulgaria is not used as a base of operations against Turkey herself."
Ironically, Britain’s success against Italy’s armies in North Africa may have contributed to Turkey’s acceptance of a Nazi-dominated Bulgaria. Without an Axis drive on the Suez canal, there’s less reason for the Turks to fear a German pincer offensive through the Dardanelles and Turkey toward the oil fields of Irak, then southward. Mr. Nover also thinks the Russians, who are emphatically interested in staying out of the war, may have pressured the Turks to signal Ankara’s disinterest in fighting the Germans in Bulgaria. Could be, but unfortunately a number of countries in the last few years have declared their lack of desire to fight Germany, without prodding from the Russians or anyone else. They often end up invaded and enslaved. Turkey may live to regret her implicit acquiescence.
AMERICA’S DOING NOTHING TO STOP JAPAN. Syndicated columnists Joseph Alsop and Robert Kintner sounded a warning about the developing crisis in the Far East, and America’s lack of response, in their "Capital Parade" column yesterday --
"Expert opinion [in Washington] inclines to the theory that unless strong measures are promptly taken, the Japanese will move against Singapore or the Netherlands Indies in about a month, or perhaps sooner. If they do move, and are successful, the war in the Far East will be lost. It may prove to be one of the major misfortunes of our time, therefore, that the approaching crisis finds the Navy Department both badly divided on policy, and in the hands of men without real Far Eastern experience. American officers with this experience, who have seen the Japanese navy in action, are virtually unanimous that strong measures can be taken at little risk to ourselves. A mere gesture, such as the sending of a flotilla of cruisers on a ‘courtesy visit’ to Singapore, is considered enough to frighten the Japanese into good behavior for a long time to come....Unfortunately, the chief of naval operations, Admiral Harold R. Stark, is a rather careful, elaborately methodical individual who, for all his other virtues, possesses little dash or boldness....Stark and the general board are haunted by the fear that any measures we may take will risk reprisals from Japan, and that we shall find ourselves still involved with the Japanese when a threat from the European Axis power calls for greater naval strength in the Atlantic. Unless the President turns for advice to the men who know the Far Eastern picture, we may remain immobilized. And it is difficult to exaggerate the seriousness of the possible consequences of a timid American policy in the Far East."
What I want to know is, just what kind of "reprisals" are the Navy brass frightened of? As a New Republic editorial pointed out last month, our aid to Britain will not increase America’s chances of getting embroiled in war with Germany if Hitler doesn’t feel it’s in his advantage to fight the U.S. The same thing goes for Japan. If it’s true, as our Far East naval experts say, that the Japanese navy is much less imposing in quality than it is in quantity, and that "it could be dealt with adequately in six months by the American Navy’s Pacific squadron" (according to Alsop & Kintner), Japan wouldn’t go to war with us because America put on a show of force. Oh, she’d squawk, all right, but if we’ve learned anything from the European war so far, it’s that dictators are more likely to move if they detect timidity in an opponent.
Saturday, February 18, 2017
Tuesday, February 18, 1941
WAR OR PEACE IN THE PACIFIC? Some contradictory indications in the papers the last couple of days over whether war is about to break out in East Asia -- either Japan vs. Britain or Japan vs. Britain and America. On the one hand, the British are mining the sea approaches to Singapore, according to an Associated Press story from yesterday. The A.P. says the action came as the British stand "on guard against the possibility of an actual Japanese campaign or a mere smokescreen to divert British attention from any European plans of the Axis." Britain had already placed troops, ships, and planes at Malaya’s border with Thailand to protect against a Japanese thrust in that direction.
There are other indications of trouble -- (1) the Japanese press is reporting rumors, datelined Bangkok, that a British-Japanese war is about to break out; (2) Japan is said to be setting up a military air base at Saigon, in southern Indo-China, which is only about 630 miles from Singapore and well within bombing range; (3) British officials have renewed their advisory of last fall that Britons evacuate Japanese-held areas of China; and (4) an official Chinese report claims the Japanese have stationed ten divisions in the vicinity of Southeast Asia.
So what does one make of Hugh Byas’s sunny article in Sunday’s New York Times reporting that a number of events the past few days have "appreciably lightened the strain" on Japan’s public, who’ve been worried about rumors of imminent war? Mr. Byas, the Times’ Tokyo correspondent, cites a statement by President Roosevelt that "minimizes" reports that war is nearer, and the words of an anonymous Australian spokesman that the situation in the Pacific is not deteriorating. Then, there are the official steps being taken by the Japanese public to reassure its citizens that an Anglo-American war isn’t on the horizon. And Mr. Byas adds that "putting these indications together and adding their own subconscious conviction that war with the United States would be a disaster that any Japanese government must try to avoid, the [Japanese] press tonight seemed considerably relieved."
Well, good for them. I hope they’re right to be relieved. But Japan’s military doesn’t much bother these days to listen to directives from their empire’s own government, much less the views of the press. And I get the nagging feeling from all this that Japan is planning to strike soon at British outposts in East Asia -- by "soon" I mean the second Hitler begins the long-awaited all-out Nazi assault on Great Britain later in the spring.
BULGARIANS WANT TO STAY OUT. Also in Sunday’s New York Times, C.L. Sulzberger writes from Sofia that rural Bulgarians don’t care a fig about this war, and are exasperated that they could end up in the middle of it --
"Eighty per cent of the population from the North Carpathians to the Marmora Sea comprises peasant farmers whose interests are crops, weather, and prices, the easiest way to live and die in conflict with the soil and not each other....The peasant does not much care whether he sells his goods to Germany or Britain, as long as he receives a price enabling him to live. He resents interference in his own affairs and he detests battles which not only kill but ruin crops, commandeer livestock and abolish fair prices. For this wish he has got nothing but war and the threat of war. The Balkan powder box is again smoking, and as usual it is some one far removed who is playing around with the fuse. The peasant says, ‘This is getting nowhere. During the war we will be occupied by Germany and possibly bombed by England. And after the war we will be occupied by Russia, and what will be left by then?’"
One can still sympathize with these sentiments while noting that neither this hypothetical peasant, or Mr. Sulzberger himself, seem to appreciate the cause-and-effect nature of the sentence, "The peasant does not much care...For this wish he has got nothing but war." Indeed, a lot of people in the neutral nations profess not to "care" about whether or not a bloodthirsty Nazi tyranny rules Europe, and a number of these neutrals have ended up occupied by the Germans. If the Bulgarians had pledged to fight, in conjunction with the Turks and the Yugoslavs, Hitler surely would be more reticent about his demands for troop passage through Bulgarian territory. But the rule seems to be is that if a nation’s people don’t care whether they sell to Germany or Britain, they’ll most assuredly end up selling to Germany. The German bayonets stabbing across their lightly-defended borders will see to that.
There are other indications of trouble -- (1) the Japanese press is reporting rumors, datelined Bangkok, that a British-Japanese war is about to break out; (2) Japan is said to be setting up a military air base at Saigon, in southern Indo-China, which is only about 630 miles from Singapore and well within bombing range; (3) British officials have renewed their advisory of last fall that Britons evacuate Japanese-held areas of China; and (4) an official Chinese report claims the Japanese have stationed ten divisions in the vicinity of Southeast Asia.
So what does one make of Hugh Byas’s sunny article in Sunday’s New York Times reporting that a number of events the past few days have "appreciably lightened the strain" on Japan’s public, who’ve been worried about rumors of imminent war? Mr. Byas, the Times’ Tokyo correspondent, cites a statement by President Roosevelt that "minimizes" reports that war is nearer, and the words of an anonymous Australian spokesman that the situation in the Pacific is not deteriorating. Then, there are the official steps being taken by the Japanese public to reassure its citizens that an Anglo-American war isn’t on the horizon. And Mr. Byas adds that "putting these indications together and adding their own subconscious conviction that war with the United States would be a disaster that any Japanese government must try to avoid, the [Japanese] press tonight seemed considerably relieved."
Well, good for them. I hope they’re right to be relieved. But Japan’s military doesn’t much bother these days to listen to directives from their empire’s own government, much less the views of the press. And I get the nagging feeling from all this that Japan is planning to strike soon at British outposts in East Asia -- by "soon" I mean the second Hitler begins the long-awaited all-out Nazi assault on Great Britain later in the spring.
BULGARIANS WANT TO STAY OUT. Also in Sunday’s New York Times, C.L. Sulzberger writes from Sofia that rural Bulgarians don’t care a fig about this war, and are exasperated that they could end up in the middle of it --
"Eighty per cent of the population from the North Carpathians to the Marmora Sea comprises peasant farmers whose interests are crops, weather, and prices, the easiest way to live and die in conflict with the soil and not each other....The peasant does not much care whether he sells his goods to Germany or Britain, as long as he receives a price enabling him to live. He resents interference in his own affairs and he detests battles which not only kill but ruin crops, commandeer livestock and abolish fair prices. For this wish he has got nothing but war and the threat of war. The Balkan powder box is again smoking, and as usual it is some one far removed who is playing around with the fuse. The peasant says, ‘This is getting nowhere. During the war we will be occupied by Germany and possibly bombed by England. And after the war we will be occupied by Russia, and what will be left by then?’"
One can still sympathize with these sentiments while noting that neither this hypothetical peasant, or Mr. Sulzberger himself, seem to appreciate the cause-and-effect nature of the sentence, "The peasant does not much care...For this wish he has got nothing but war." Indeed, a lot of people in the neutral nations profess not to "care" about whether or not a bloodthirsty Nazi tyranny rules Europe, and a number of these neutrals have ended up occupied by the Germans. If the Bulgarians had pledged to fight, in conjunction with the Turks and the Yugoslavs, Hitler surely would be more reticent about his demands for troop passage through Bulgarian territory. But the rule seems to be is that if a nation’s people don’t care whether they sell to Germany or Britain, they’ll most assuredly end up selling to Germany. The German bayonets stabbing across their lightly-defended borders will see to that.
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Sunday, February 16, 1941
HITLER PRESSURES YUGOSLAVIA. And the Yugoslavs may be about to cave in, according to an Associated Press dispatch yesterday --
"A Belgrade source close to Premier Dragisa Cvetkovic said last night that Yugoslavia would accede to Adolph Hitler's wishes after the return today of her statesmen from a conference with the Fuehrer. The country is expected to accept what were described as comparatively favorable terms in order to keep out of active warfare. These terms, while not yet known, are expected to call for active participation by Yugoslavia in Hitler's 'new order' for Europe. Informed sources interpreted the Yugoslavs' journey to Germany as meaning that the government of Yugoslavia had been driven into a corner as a result of Bulgaria's bowing to German wishes and Russia's nonintervention policy in the Balkans."
If the Yugoslavs sign on the dotted line, it'll be the biggest triumph yet of Hitler's building-block strategy in the Balkans -- turn Rumania into a vassal state, use her territory to pressure Bulgaria into submission, and then use the Bulgars' acquiescence to get the necessary concessions from Yugoslavia. And what are those concessions? The Germans aren't being bashful about this, according to a Friday A.P. dispatch -- "passage for German troops through both Yugoslavia and Bulgaria in order to get at Greece and the eastern Mediterranean." The New York Times story on this, by C. Brooks Peters, says the Yugoslavs' payoff for cooperation with the Nazis would be a slice of conquered Greece, namely Salonika, which Belgrade has been interested in as a more direct route to the Mediterranean.
Isn't it screwy that at a time when the Axis' military might is being tested more than ever -- routed in Italian East Africa, in North Africa, and in Greece, and blasted by an aggressive new R.A.F. bombing campaign over German-held territory -- Hitler might be on the verge of his greatest triumph yet at aggression-by-diplomacy?
THE TRIBUNE LASHES OUT AGAIN -- AT DEWEY. What's a Republican isolationist newspaper to do, now that Thomas E. Dewey has joined Wendell Willkie in endorsing the lend-lease bill? Publish yet another bitter, carping editorial, I guess. The Chicago Tribune did so yesterday, and placed itself in the strange position of denouncing last year's G.O.P. presidential candidate and the party's second most popular public figure as traitors to Republicanism. The crime is what these two gentlemen said in their Lincoln Day speeches --
"Republicans in the midwest who made [Willkie] their favorite candidate and who regretted to the last that the Willkie hoax was put over on the convention were not prepared to have him use the occasion of a Republican anniversary to give support to the dictatorship bill opposed by the faithful members of his party. Mr. Dewey endeavored to soften the effect of what he was doing. He referred to the bill as dangerous and unwise in the form it was submitted by the administration. He remarked that at the insistence of the minority it had been carefully considered. He said that as an American he was proud of the fair hearing given to both sides by the committees of the house and of the senate....'With some necessary further reservations of power to the people thru the congress,' said Mr. Dewey, 'I am satisfied that the House bill will be adopted. Speaking for myself alone, I hope it will be. I also hope that it will be in such form that it can be adopted with the support of both parties, serving notice on the world that the American democracy in full flower is a strong and united nation.'"
Sounds like an admirable show of bipartisanship to me, and a smarter approach than the Roosevelt Administration's short-sighted indifference to passing lend-lease by more than a party-line vote. But to the Tribune it means, somehow, that Mr. Dewey is a liar -- "[He] knows that if the bill was dangerous and unwise when introduced it was dangerous and unwise when it passed the house. He knows that evil was not taken out of it by amendment." Oh? And what evidence is there that he "knows" this? The Tribune doesn't say. And how does his qualified endorsement of lend-lease make Mr. Dewey "opposed to nothing the third term incumbent wants"?
The Tribune's latest barrage is one more outburst of hyperbolic pique, typical of the isolationists, capped with a closing thought that comes close to a smear -- "If the Republican party remains an American party, it will not make Mr. Dewey a candidate for president of the United States." I doubt that too many Americans will agree that Mr. Dewey is "un-American" for urging a bipartisan approach to our war policy, any more than most people can make any sense out of isolationist wheezes about the lend-lease bill serving as President Roosevelt's bid to "Hitlerize" America.
"A Belgrade source close to Premier Dragisa Cvetkovic said last night that Yugoslavia would accede to Adolph Hitler's wishes after the return today of her statesmen from a conference with the Fuehrer. The country is expected to accept what were described as comparatively favorable terms in order to keep out of active warfare. These terms, while not yet known, are expected to call for active participation by Yugoslavia in Hitler's 'new order' for Europe. Informed sources interpreted the Yugoslavs' journey to Germany as meaning that the government of Yugoslavia had been driven into a corner as a result of Bulgaria's bowing to German wishes and Russia's nonintervention policy in the Balkans."
If the Yugoslavs sign on the dotted line, it'll be the biggest triumph yet of Hitler's building-block strategy in the Balkans -- turn Rumania into a vassal state, use her territory to pressure Bulgaria into submission, and then use the Bulgars' acquiescence to get the necessary concessions from Yugoslavia. And what are those concessions? The Germans aren't being bashful about this, according to a Friday A.P. dispatch -- "passage for German troops through both Yugoslavia and Bulgaria in order to get at Greece and the eastern Mediterranean." The New York Times story on this, by C. Brooks Peters, says the Yugoslavs' payoff for cooperation with the Nazis would be a slice of conquered Greece, namely Salonika, which Belgrade has been interested in as a more direct route to the Mediterranean.
Isn't it screwy that at a time when the Axis' military might is being tested more than ever -- routed in Italian East Africa, in North Africa, and in Greece, and blasted by an aggressive new R.A.F. bombing campaign over German-held territory -- Hitler might be on the verge of his greatest triumph yet at aggression-by-diplomacy?
THE TRIBUNE LASHES OUT AGAIN -- AT DEWEY. What's a Republican isolationist newspaper to do, now that Thomas E. Dewey has joined Wendell Willkie in endorsing the lend-lease bill? Publish yet another bitter, carping editorial, I guess. The Chicago Tribune did so yesterday, and placed itself in the strange position of denouncing last year's G.O.P. presidential candidate and the party's second most popular public figure as traitors to Republicanism. The crime is what these two gentlemen said in their Lincoln Day speeches --
"Republicans in the midwest who made [Willkie] their favorite candidate and who regretted to the last that the Willkie hoax was put over on the convention were not prepared to have him use the occasion of a Republican anniversary to give support to the dictatorship bill opposed by the faithful members of his party. Mr. Dewey endeavored to soften the effect of what he was doing. He referred to the bill as dangerous and unwise in the form it was submitted by the administration. He remarked that at the insistence of the minority it had been carefully considered. He said that as an American he was proud of the fair hearing given to both sides by the committees of the house and of the senate....'With some necessary further reservations of power to the people thru the congress,' said Mr. Dewey, 'I am satisfied that the House bill will be adopted. Speaking for myself alone, I hope it will be. I also hope that it will be in such form that it can be adopted with the support of both parties, serving notice on the world that the American democracy in full flower is a strong and united nation.'"
Sounds like an admirable show of bipartisanship to me, and a smarter approach than the Roosevelt Administration's short-sighted indifference to passing lend-lease by more than a party-line vote. But to the Tribune it means, somehow, that Mr. Dewey is a liar -- "[He] knows that if the bill was dangerous and unwise when introduced it was dangerous and unwise when it passed the house. He knows that evil was not taken out of it by amendment." Oh? And what evidence is there that he "knows" this? The Tribune doesn't say. And how does his qualified endorsement of lend-lease make Mr. Dewey "opposed to nothing the third term incumbent wants"?
The Tribune's latest barrage is one more outburst of hyperbolic pique, typical of the isolationists, capped with a closing thought that comes close to a smear -- "If the Republican party remains an American party, it will not make Mr. Dewey a candidate for president of the United States." I doubt that too many Americans will agree that Mr. Dewey is "un-American" for urging a bipartisan approach to our war policy, any more than most people can make any sense out of isolationist wheezes about the lend-lease bill serving as President Roosevelt's bid to "Hitlerize" America.
Monday, February 13, 2017
Thursday, February 13, 1941
IS ITALY LOOKING FOR AN ARMISTICE? A volley of rumors in the last forty-eight hours offer a couple of tantalizing possibilities -- is Mussolini trying to find a way out of the war? Would Hitler actually let him quit? The front-page story in the Washington Post says that American correspondents in Rome have been trying to get a "big story" past the censors, and quotes a dispatch from the New York Times’ Herbert Matthews -- "It is not permitted to write a word from Rome tonight about the big story (section censored)...American newspapermen have already been sanctioned for writing about (section censored)....It is hoped a communique will be issued...(section censored)..." All we really know is that President Petain was set to meet with Generalissimo Franco, who in turn would confer with Mussolini. C.B.S.’s Vichy correspondent, Courtenay Terrett, said flatly in a broadcast Tuesday night that "the visit of Generalissimo Francisco Franco to France is likely to result tomorrow in an armistice between England and Italy." I can’t believe that Germany would allow that, but an N.B.C. report from London claims that, simultaneously, the Nazis are trying to negotiate, on Italy’s behalf, an immediate truce with Greece that would allow the Greeks to hold on to all the territory they’ve taken from the Italians in Albania.
If that’s true, it suggests that Hitler would go very, very far and swallow a lot of Axis pride to end at least for now the fighting on his southern flank, which has gone so badly for the Duce since November. British troops in eastern Libya haven’t let up a bit -- they’ve already covered a third of the distance from Bengazi, captured just last Friday, to what the United Press calls the "great Fascist base" at Tripoli, possibly the last place where the Italians could make a major stand. Advance British tank units have taken El Aghelia, the last town in eastern Libya and 170 miles south of Bengazi on the coast. The Fuehrer might be betting that taking Italy out of the conflict would free up more German forces to attack England that it would British units to defend the home islands.
David Darrah of the Chicago Tribune gets downright giddy about these reports, writing that they might portend "a general cessation of hostilities" -- though he doesn’t explain how meetings among senior French, Spanish, and Italian officials could bring about peace between Germany and Britain. But it’s certainly reasonable to suspect that Mussolini wants out, and would actively exploring the possibility. There was nothing Wednesday or this morning to follow up on these reports, save for a bland communique of the Franco-Mussolini meeting, saying the pair had "a complete identity of views" on European matters. But if something comes of all this, we should hear about by this week-end.
SOMETHING’S UP IN BULGARIA. On the other hand, the persistent and ominous reports coming from Bulgaria raise another possibility -- the peace rumors are Nazi bluff. Russell Hill of the New York Herald Tribune writes that Bulgarian statesmen consider themselves "powerless to alter the course of events" and would not oppose the expected Nazi "request" to move troops through their nation. Meanwhile, Reuters says that over 1,000 German warplanes have landed in Bulgaria and that Bulgarian airdromes have been taken over by the Nazis. An Associated Press dispatch from Belgrade says German troop transport planes are flying towards the Balkans. Another A.P. report says those transport planes are landing at Bulgarian airports. A radio report this morning says that Hitler has amassed 600,000 troops in nearby Rumania, and that the ice in the Danube River, which has prevented a German crossing into Bulgaria during the winter, is breaking up in a premature thaw.
In a way these moves point up how much things have changed since last fall, when there were numerous press stories about plans for a grandiose Nazi sweep through the Balkans that would move on through Turkey to seize the oil fields of Irak, then join in a pincer with then-advancing Italian troops in Egypt to take the Suez Canal. The latest alarms of German troop movements do not raise any extravagant fears. This time, Hitler’s purpose is considered to be far more modest -- to get German troops into Greece before the British can move up forces from their African campaign to aid the Greeks and pose a threat to German interests in Rumania.
HOW BRITAIN COULD BEAT GERMANY. Colonel Lindbergh went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a few days, repeating his message that "Britain can’t win the war." His argument is based mainly on comparative numbers of troops, tanks, planes, etc., which show what a daunting task it would be for a British invasion force to dislodge the Germans from their conquests. But Lindbergh makes no account for issues such as strategy and troop morale, and indeed, as we’ve just seen in North Africa, a numerically-inferior British force has routed a well-trained, well-equipped Italian army. Could the British do the same thing to the Nazis? Obviously it is a much greater task, but Ernest K. Lindley set forth in his Washington Post column yesterday some ways it could be done --
"Roughly, there are two theories as to how the British could destroy the Nazi regime. By the first theory, they must invade the European continent and defeat the German armies in the field. This would be an immense undertaking, even from a base as close to Europe as England is, if the morale of the Germany army had not been undermined. By the second theory, the Nazis will begin to wane when the British become able to punish severely from the air military targets in Germany. When the British become able to do this, the Nazis will know the British are on the upgrade, from a military viewpoint. The Germans have nothing to fall back on. The British will have our immense resources to reply upon, and justifiably it will be supposed that their strength will continue to increase. Somewhere on this rising scale of British strength, it is supposed, German morale will begin to crack. This is especially likely to happen if the British assert convincingly that their aim is the destruction of the Nazi regime, not of the German people. By this second theory, the British will not need to invade the continent at all, or at least until the morale of the Germany army has been sapped. There are variations of these theories. For example, one is that if Hitler attempts to invade England and fails, at heavy cost in life, there may be a revolution in Germany, engineered by leaders in the army who openly or covertly were against the attempt at invasion."
There’s already evidence that the Royal Air Force is capable of dealing punishing blows to Nazi targets, such as the six-hour attack Monday on the industrial district of Hanover, which left the area "a sea of blazing fires," according to the New York Times. It’s this and the possibilities Mr. Lindley mentions that help illuminate Prime Minister Churchill’s renunciation of aid from an American expeditionary force. And there are more practical issues that would keep the British from desiring U.S. troops -- "Even through 1942, [Churchill] says, large numbers of new ships will be needed to carry supplies to Great Britain. There will be no shipping space left to transport and supply American troops.....Anyone who attempts to forecast the course of the war is only guessing. But Churchill’s speech shows that he realizes the British must not rely on us for more than weapons and ships. In turn, he is making the British people and their Allies realize this."
If that’s true, it suggests that Hitler would go very, very far and swallow a lot of Axis pride to end at least for now the fighting on his southern flank, which has gone so badly for the Duce since November. British troops in eastern Libya haven’t let up a bit -- they’ve already covered a third of the distance from Bengazi, captured just last Friday, to what the United Press calls the "great Fascist base" at Tripoli, possibly the last place where the Italians could make a major stand. Advance British tank units have taken El Aghelia, the last town in eastern Libya and 170 miles south of Bengazi on the coast. The Fuehrer might be betting that taking Italy out of the conflict would free up more German forces to attack England that it would British units to defend the home islands.
David Darrah of the Chicago Tribune gets downright giddy about these reports, writing that they might portend "a general cessation of hostilities" -- though he doesn’t explain how meetings among senior French, Spanish, and Italian officials could bring about peace between Germany and Britain. But it’s certainly reasonable to suspect that Mussolini wants out, and would actively exploring the possibility. There was nothing Wednesday or this morning to follow up on these reports, save for a bland communique of the Franco-Mussolini meeting, saying the pair had "a complete identity of views" on European matters. But if something comes of all this, we should hear about by this week-end.
SOMETHING’S UP IN BULGARIA. On the other hand, the persistent and ominous reports coming from Bulgaria raise another possibility -- the peace rumors are Nazi bluff. Russell Hill of the New York Herald Tribune writes that Bulgarian statesmen consider themselves "powerless to alter the course of events" and would not oppose the expected Nazi "request" to move troops through their nation. Meanwhile, Reuters says that over 1,000 German warplanes have landed in Bulgaria and that Bulgarian airdromes have been taken over by the Nazis. An Associated Press dispatch from Belgrade says German troop transport planes are flying towards the Balkans. Another A.P. report says those transport planes are landing at Bulgarian airports. A radio report this morning says that Hitler has amassed 600,000 troops in nearby Rumania, and that the ice in the Danube River, which has prevented a German crossing into Bulgaria during the winter, is breaking up in a premature thaw.
In a way these moves point up how much things have changed since last fall, when there were numerous press stories about plans for a grandiose Nazi sweep through the Balkans that would move on through Turkey to seize the oil fields of Irak, then join in a pincer with then-advancing Italian troops in Egypt to take the Suez Canal. The latest alarms of German troop movements do not raise any extravagant fears. This time, Hitler’s purpose is considered to be far more modest -- to get German troops into Greece before the British can move up forces from their African campaign to aid the Greeks and pose a threat to German interests in Rumania.
HOW BRITAIN COULD BEAT GERMANY. Colonel Lindbergh went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a few days, repeating his message that "Britain can’t win the war." His argument is based mainly on comparative numbers of troops, tanks, planes, etc., which show what a daunting task it would be for a British invasion force to dislodge the Germans from their conquests. But Lindbergh makes no account for issues such as strategy and troop morale, and indeed, as we’ve just seen in North Africa, a numerically-inferior British force has routed a well-trained, well-equipped Italian army. Could the British do the same thing to the Nazis? Obviously it is a much greater task, but Ernest K. Lindley set forth in his Washington Post column yesterday some ways it could be done --
"Roughly, there are two theories as to how the British could destroy the Nazi regime. By the first theory, they must invade the European continent and defeat the German armies in the field. This would be an immense undertaking, even from a base as close to Europe as England is, if the morale of the Germany army had not been undermined. By the second theory, the Nazis will begin to wane when the British become able to punish severely from the air military targets in Germany. When the British become able to do this, the Nazis will know the British are on the upgrade, from a military viewpoint. The Germans have nothing to fall back on. The British will have our immense resources to reply upon, and justifiably it will be supposed that their strength will continue to increase. Somewhere on this rising scale of British strength, it is supposed, German morale will begin to crack. This is especially likely to happen if the British assert convincingly that their aim is the destruction of the Nazi regime, not of the German people. By this second theory, the British will not need to invade the continent at all, or at least until the morale of the Germany army has been sapped. There are variations of these theories. For example, one is that if Hitler attempts to invade England and fails, at heavy cost in life, there may be a revolution in Germany, engineered by leaders in the army who openly or covertly were against the attempt at invasion."
There’s already evidence that the Royal Air Force is capable of dealing punishing blows to Nazi targets, such as the six-hour attack Monday on the industrial district of Hanover, which left the area "a sea of blazing fires," according to the New York Times. It’s this and the possibilities Mr. Lindley mentions that help illuminate Prime Minister Churchill’s renunciation of aid from an American expeditionary force. And there are more practical issues that would keep the British from desiring U.S. troops -- "Even through 1942, [Churchill] says, large numbers of new ships will be needed to carry supplies to Great Britain. There will be no shipping space left to transport and supply American troops.....Anyone who attempts to forecast the course of the war is only guessing. But Churchill’s speech shows that he realizes the British must not rely on us for more than weapons and ships. In turn, he is making the British people and their Allies realize this."
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Tuesday, February 11, 1941
JAPAN’S THREAT TO THE PHILIPPINES. A long article in this week’s Time magazine goes into the chilling possibility of a Japanese attack on the Philippines, the U.S.’s ability to counter it, and just why such an attack, launched sooner rather than later, might well fit into Japan’s overall strategy for dominating East Asia --
"The Philippines’ danger is that the islands are a threat to Japan’s flank if she moves on The Netherlands Indies. To prepare for such a move, the Japanese may well make a sudden assault on the islands. The archipelago’s first line of defense would be Admiral Thomas John Hart’s thin Asiatic fleet (two cruisers, 13 destroyers, 12 submarines, as of June 1940). In a prolonged attack the Japanese would also have to meet the full might of the Pacific Fleet, now based on Honolulu. But what worries Filipinos is the problem of immediate defense against an invasion. Although there are only 10,000 U.S. regulars stationed in the islands (mostly in Luzon), U.S. Army men say: The Philippines can be defended....The core of this defense sector is Luzon. For on Luzon is not only the Philippines’ capital, but their only Navy Yard (at Cavite), their only naval repair station (Olongapo), most of their fortifications and military airdromes. So long as Manila is in U.S. hands, no Japanese drive to the south could safely by-pass the islands. Hence the U.S. Army has centered its defenses around Manila. Here the defenders of the Philippines would make their last stand against an invasion. Most officers think they could hold on until help came from Honolulu."
The Philippines aren’t scheduled to become independent of the U.S. until 1946, but Filipino officials aren’t waiting until then to create a national military, which could represent the joker in the deck -- "Back of the primary defenses stands a newer and more questionable one: the Filipino army. Preparing for independence, the Commonwealth hired (reputedly at $50,000 a year)a crack professional soldier to raise and train an army. The job went to General Douglas MacArthur, one-time Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army and son of an Army general officer who once bossed the Philippines as military governor. The result of Philippine Field Marshall MacArthur’s four years of hard work is still a tactical question mark. The Filipino army consists of 20,000 regular troops and 130,000 reservists....The army is still short of modern equipment, a shortage that is dependent, like the rest of the U.S. war effort, on production in the U.S. Question mark though it is, the Philippine native army may well be the deciding factor, if invasion should come to the islands."
CHURCHILL WARNS THAT BULGARIA’S NEXT. The Prime Minister’s first radio speech in more than five months covered a lot of territory, most prominently the Balkans. The British now believe that some of Hitler’s vast army is headed southeast, and are sounding off about it -- according to Churchill, "a considerable German army" in Rumania has begun moving into Bulgaria, "with what we must suppose is the acquiescence of the Bulgarian government." Surely more than one listener got a deja vu feeling listing to the Prime Minister urge the Bulgarians to resist Nazi encroachments, since it was so similar to the message he gave the Netherlands and Belgium, about this time a year ago, warning that Hitler would not leave them alone. The Dutch and Belgians ignored Churchill’s words and, alas, the Bulgarians seem intent on doing so too. According to an Associated Press story yesterday, the Bulgarian government’s official reply to Churchill amounts to saying, "What Germans?" Only "a few officers and men" from the Reich are in their country, say Bulgarian officials, and that’s normal -- Germany has supplied Bulgaria with all of its military training and weapons.
But the A.P. also cites "usually reliable" sources in Sofia as saying that "a special soviet envoy had arrived...to discuss the question of passage of German troops thru Bulgaria." And the British are sure enough of their information that they’ve publicly warned the Bulgarians that "military objectives in that nation will be subject to bombardment" if the Germans come in, says another A.P. report printed Sunday. Passage through Bulgaria would allow German troops to drive toward the Greek port of Salonika, outflanking the Greek troops who’ve been battering Mussolini’s forces farther west. Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune has a page-one dispatch reporting that Britain’s dramatic capture of Bengazi has caught the Nazis off-guard, "giving rise to the fear British troops may be available to counter Nazi Balkan invasion plans sooner than they expected." A German ultimatum demanding right of passage through Bulgaria for a Nazi attack on Greece might come "within a few days," the Tribune reports.
Lest anyone feel relieved that a Nazi move into the Balkans makes an invasion of Britain less imminent, there’s a school of thought right now that argues it might actually herald a coming attack on the British Isles. An article in this week’s Time magazine describes a possible Hitler strategy of "diversion before invasion." British experts, Time says, "suspect that a southern campaign would be a sure indication of an imminent attempt at invasion."
"GIVE US THE TOOLS." Another great moment of Churhillian rhetoric, and an inspiring pledge to Americans, from the Washington Post’s transcription --
"The other day President Roosevelt gave his opponent in the late Presidential election a letter of introduction to me, and in it he wrote out a verse in his own handwriting from Longfellow which he said, ‘Applies to you people as it does us.’ Here is the verse: ‘Sail on, O ship of state; sail on, O Union strong and great. Humanity with all its fears, with all its hopes of future years, is hanging breathless on thy fate.’ What is the answer that I shall give in your name to this great man, this thrice-chosen head of a Nation of 130,000,000? Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt: Put your confidence in us. Give us your faith and your blessing, and under Providence all will be well. We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us out. Give us the tools and we will finish the job."
"The Philippines’ danger is that the islands are a threat to Japan’s flank if she moves on The Netherlands Indies. To prepare for such a move, the Japanese may well make a sudden assault on the islands. The archipelago’s first line of defense would be Admiral Thomas John Hart’s thin Asiatic fleet (two cruisers, 13 destroyers, 12 submarines, as of June 1940). In a prolonged attack the Japanese would also have to meet the full might of the Pacific Fleet, now based on Honolulu. But what worries Filipinos is the problem of immediate defense against an invasion. Although there are only 10,000 U.S. regulars stationed in the islands (mostly in Luzon), U.S. Army men say: The Philippines can be defended....The core of this defense sector is Luzon. For on Luzon is not only the Philippines’ capital, but their only Navy Yard (at Cavite), their only naval repair station (Olongapo), most of their fortifications and military airdromes. So long as Manila is in U.S. hands, no Japanese drive to the south could safely by-pass the islands. Hence the U.S. Army has centered its defenses around Manila. Here the defenders of the Philippines would make their last stand against an invasion. Most officers think they could hold on until help came from Honolulu."
The Philippines aren’t scheduled to become independent of the U.S. until 1946, but Filipino officials aren’t waiting until then to create a national military, which could represent the joker in the deck -- "Back of the primary defenses stands a newer and more questionable one: the Filipino army. Preparing for independence, the Commonwealth hired (reputedly at $50,000 a year)a crack professional soldier to raise and train an army. The job went to General Douglas MacArthur, one-time Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army and son of an Army general officer who once bossed the Philippines as military governor. The result of Philippine Field Marshall MacArthur’s four years of hard work is still a tactical question mark. The Filipino army consists of 20,000 regular troops and 130,000 reservists....The army is still short of modern equipment, a shortage that is dependent, like the rest of the U.S. war effort, on production in the U.S. Question mark though it is, the Philippine native army may well be the deciding factor, if invasion should come to the islands."
CHURCHILL WARNS THAT BULGARIA’S NEXT. The Prime Minister’s first radio speech in more than five months covered a lot of territory, most prominently the Balkans. The British now believe that some of Hitler’s vast army is headed southeast, and are sounding off about it -- according to Churchill, "a considerable German army" in Rumania has begun moving into Bulgaria, "with what we must suppose is the acquiescence of the Bulgarian government." Surely more than one listener got a deja vu feeling listing to the Prime Minister urge the Bulgarians to resist Nazi encroachments, since it was so similar to the message he gave the Netherlands and Belgium, about this time a year ago, warning that Hitler would not leave them alone. The Dutch and Belgians ignored Churchill’s words and, alas, the Bulgarians seem intent on doing so too. According to an Associated Press story yesterday, the Bulgarian government’s official reply to Churchill amounts to saying, "What Germans?" Only "a few officers and men" from the Reich are in their country, say Bulgarian officials, and that’s normal -- Germany has supplied Bulgaria with all of its military training and weapons.
But the A.P. also cites "usually reliable" sources in Sofia as saying that "a special soviet envoy had arrived...to discuss the question of passage of German troops thru Bulgaria." And the British are sure enough of their information that they’ve publicly warned the Bulgarians that "military objectives in that nation will be subject to bombardment" if the Germans come in, says another A.P. report printed Sunday. Passage through Bulgaria would allow German troops to drive toward the Greek port of Salonika, outflanking the Greek troops who’ve been battering Mussolini’s forces farther west. Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune has a page-one dispatch reporting that Britain’s dramatic capture of Bengazi has caught the Nazis off-guard, "giving rise to the fear British troops may be available to counter Nazi Balkan invasion plans sooner than they expected." A German ultimatum demanding right of passage through Bulgaria for a Nazi attack on Greece might come "within a few days," the Tribune reports.
Lest anyone feel relieved that a Nazi move into the Balkans makes an invasion of Britain less imminent, there’s a school of thought right now that argues it might actually herald a coming attack on the British Isles. An article in this week’s Time magazine describes a possible Hitler strategy of "diversion before invasion." British experts, Time says, "suspect that a southern campaign would be a sure indication of an imminent attempt at invasion."
"GIVE US THE TOOLS." Another great moment of Churhillian rhetoric, and an inspiring pledge to Americans, from the Washington Post’s transcription --
"The other day President Roosevelt gave his opponent in the late Presidential election a letter of introduction to me, and in it he wrote out a verse in his own handwriting from Longfellow which he said, ‘Applies to you people as it does us.’ Here is the verse: ‘Sail on, O ship of state; sail on, O Union strong and great. Humanity with all its fears, with all its hopes of future years, is hanging breathless on thy fate.’ What is the answer that I shall give in your name to this great man, this thrice-chosen head of a Nation of 130,000,000? Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt: Put your confidence in us. Give us your faith and your blessing, and under Providence all will be well. We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us out. Give us the tools and we will finish the job."
Thursday, February 9, 2017
Sunday, February 9, 1941
THE HOUSE APPROVES LEND-LEASE. By nearly a hundred votes, too. Last night’s large margin of victory, 260 to 165, will of course be seen as a big victory for President Roosevelt, but ironically it serves as another example -- as if we needed one more -- of how ham-handed the Administration and the Democratic House leadership have been in pushing this legislation. That’s because, according to Robert C. Albright’s article in Friday’s Washington Post, a decent number of those "yea" votes came at the last minute, as the result of a common-sense amendment that the President’s men hadn’t counted on and initially tried to swat down --
"The House...unexpectedly overrode its leadership, 148 to 141, to reserve for Congress the right to terminate at will President Roosevelt’s proposed powers to lend or lease arms. The supposed Administration defeat was immediately capitalized by the Democratic forces as an answer to charges of ‘dictatorship.’ Caught napping by the amendment, leaders first studied means to remove it from the bill. But that effort was abandoned last night when it became apparent that the change was winning G.O.P. votes for the aid-England bill. ‘I wish I had thought of it myself,’ said one Administration spokesman."
Really fills one with confidence that the White House sees national unity as a high priority, doesn’t it? The President could have cut the legs out from under the isolationists weeks ago if he’d offered as amendment like this in response to the widespread skepticism provoked by his original, sweeping lend-lease proposal. But he did little except heckle the opposition, with the apparent assurance that the Democratic leaders could successfully put across a partisan bill -- not minding that we are in a national crisis, and this is one of the most important measures ever considered by Congress. The Administration did have a stroke of sanity yesterday, when they agreed to a compromise amendment that limited to about $1,300,000,000 the amount of existing U.S. military equipment that could be transferred to Britain under lend-lease. Here’s hoping they show further signs of wising up as the Senate debate goes forward.
A STUNNING BRITISH VICTORY AT BENGAZI. If you happened to be strolling through the North African deserts this week-end, you might have seen a flash of light speed by -- the British army. According to the Associated Press, the armored formation of British troops who conquered Bengazi yesterday drove 150 miles westward in only thirty hours. They destroyed sixty Italian tanks in fighting south of the city and captured a large number of prisoners, including an army commander and several other senior officers. The A.P. says a numerically-superior formations of Italians tried to cut through a British cordon in the Bengazi area, but the attempt ended in "disaster." So now, Britain has effectively taken control of all of eastern Libya, though there are still pockets of Italian resistance to be mopped up, in Cyranaica and at Jarajub on the Egyptian border, as well as probably at oases here and there.
Anyone who listens to war news on the radio is probably immune to words such as "stunning" and "spectacular" by now. But the superlatives seem justified this time, especially if the British continue their march westward. Bengazi itself is a big, big fish -- the biggest base taken by the British in their North African offensive, a city with a peacetime population of over 50,000 and described by the A.P. as "one of the gems of the Italian Empire." And while this in itself is great news, I’m even more excited by what might be yet to come. The A.P. dispatch makes it sound like a complete British victory in Libya might not be far off -- "Between Bengazi and Tripoli -- 500 miles by road to the west -- there are only a few inconsequential coastal towns. The British expect the Italians to fall back to that ancient city with whatever men can survive to make their next, and, perhaps, last stand." Sounds promising.
BENGAZI -- "A STARTLING CONQUEST." Hanson W. Baldwin’s analysis in yesterday’s New York Times makes it clear just how much the Tommies have accomplished so far in their eight-week North African campaign, why the victory at Bengazi is so significant, and what opportunities it offers for the fighting ahead --
"Marshal Rodolpho Graziani’s Libyan armies have lost about 114,000 men (killed, captured, or wounded), or almost half their strength, and the British have fought and marched 490 miles beyond their railhead at Matruh in Egypt. Here is a ‘blitz’ campaign that rivals the speedy German victories in Poland and the West. The tactics of the North African triumph were leaves taken from the German book of war. The British have waged a campaign of mobility. Since the attack on Sidi Barrani, seventy miles inside Egypt and high-water mark of the Italian invasion, they have seized the initiative and held it, giving the harried enemy little time to reorganize....The capture of Bangazi is of military importance not only as the climax of a swift military campaign but also because it plants the Union Jack on the easily defensible line of the Gulf of Sidra, gives the British control of all roads and desert tracks that lead toward the Egyptian frontier and puts under British hands ports and air fields that will strengthen their control of the Mediterranean area."
Mr. Baldwin cautions that "distance and terrain and the tremendous problem of supply rather than the Italian opposition are now the chief obstacles to a further British advance." But if they can overcome these problems (and they should, since Royal Navy ships can now bring supplies to their desert army through Bengazi’s port), they can exploit their triumph by continuing westward, or in one of two other ways -- "They may take the long, hard road toward Tripoli and complete domination of Italian North Africa with perhaps a greater reward in a rapproachment with the French North African Armies. They may detach some of their forces to press the campaign in Italian East Africa or they may send more troops to Greece, perhaps risking bringing Germany down."
Personally, I hope Britain continues to press the Libyan attack, at full strength. The remaining Italian forces in Ethiopia and Eritrea are outnumbered, lack air support, and are too remote to have a meaningful impact on the war -- they could be left to subdue at a later date. But a new British drive that chased the reeling Italians completely out of North Africa would have an electric effect on the morale of every Briton, not to mention every anti-Axis citizen, diplomat, and soldier in Europe now looking for a reason to hope that the Nazis, too, can one day be chased out of the lands they’ve crushed.
"The House...unexpectedly overrode its leadership, 148 to 141, to reserve for Congress the right to terminate at will President Roosevelt’s proposed powers to lend or lease arms. The supposed Administration defeat was immediately capitalized by the Democratic forces as an answer to charges of ‘dictatorship.’ Caught napping by the amendment, leaders first studied means to remove it from the bill. But that effort was abandoned last night when it became apparent that the change was winning G.O.P. votes for the aid-England bill. ‘I wish I had thought of it myself,’ said one Administration spokesman."
Really fills one with confidence that the White House sees national unity as a high priority, doesn’t it? The President could have cut the legs out from under the isolationists weeks ago if he’d offered as amendment like this in response to the widespread skepticism provoked by his original, sweeping lend-lease proposal. But he did little except heckle the opposition, with the apparent assurance that the Democratic leaders could successfully put across a partisan bill -- not minding that we are in a national crisis, and this is one of the most important measures ever considered by Congress. The Administration did have a stroke of sanity yesterday, when they agreed to a compromise amendment that limited to about $1,300,000,000 the amount of existing U.S. military equipment that could be transferred to Britain under lend-lease. Here’s hoping they show further signs of wising up as the Senate debate goes forward.
A STUNNING BRITISH VICTORY AT BENGAZI. If you happened to be strolling through the North African deserts this week-end, you might have seen a flash of light speed by -- the British army. According to the Associated Press, the armored formation of British troops who conquered Bengazi yesterday drove 150 miles westward in only thirty hours. They destroyed sixty Italian tanks in fighting south of the city and captured a large number of prisoners, including an army commander and several other senior officers. The A.P. says a numerically-superior formations of Italians tried to cut through a British cordon in the Bengazi area, but the attempt ended in "disaster." So now, Britain has effectively taken control of all of eastern Libya, though there are still pockets of Italian resistance to be mopped up, in Cyranaica and at Jarajub on the Egyptian border, as well as probably at oases here and there.
Anyone who listens to war news on the radio is probably immune to words such as "stunning" and "spectacular" by now. But the superlatives seem justified this time, especially if the British continue their march westward. Bengazi itself is a big, big fish -- the biggest base taken by the British in their North African offensive, a city with a peacetime population of over 50,000 and described by the A.P. as "one of the gems of the Italian Empire." And while this in itself is great news, I’m even more excited by what might be yet to come. The A.P. dispatch makes it sound like a complete British victory in Libya might not be far off -- "Between Bengazi and Tripoli -- 500 miles by road to the west -- there are only a few inconsequential coastal towns. The British expect the Italians to fall back to that ancient city with whatever men can survive to make their next, and, perhaps, last stand." Sounds promising.
BENGAZI -- "A STARTLING CONQUEST." Hanson W. Baldwin’s analysis in yesterday’s New York Times makes it clear just how much the Tommies have accomplished so far in their eight-week North African campaign, why the victory at Bengazi is so significant, and what opportunities it offers for the fighting ahead --
"Marshal Rodolpho Graziani’s Libyan armies have lost about 114,000 men (killed, captured, or wounded), or almost half their strength, and the British have fought and marched 490 miles beyond their railhead at Matruh in Egypt. Here is a ‘blitz’ campaign that rivals the speedy German victories in Poland and the West. The tactics of the North African triumph were leaves taken from the German book of war. The British have waged a campaign of mobility. Since the attack on Sidi Barrani, seventy miles inside Egypt and high-water mark of the Italian invasion, they have seized the initiative and held it, giving the harried enemy little time to reorganize....The capture of Bangazi is of military importance not only as the climax of a swift military campaign but also because it plants the Union Jack on the easily defensible line of the Gulf of Sidra, gives the British control of all roads and desert tracks that lead toward the Egyptian frontier and puts under British hands ports and air fields that will strengthen their control of the Mediterranean area."
Mr. Baldwin cautions that "distance and terrain and the tremendous problem of supply rather than the Italian opposition are now the chief obstacles to a further British advance." But if they can overcome these problems (and they should, since Royal Navy ships can now bring supplies to their desert army through Bengazi’s port), they can exploit their triumph by continuing westward, or in one of two other ways -- "They may take the long, hard road toward Tripoli and complete domination of Italian North Africa with perhaps a greater reward in a rapproachment with the French North African Armies. They may detach some of their forces to press the campaign in Italian East Africa or they may send more troops to Greece, perhaps risking bringing Germany down."
Personally, I hope Britain continues to press the Libyan attack, at full strength. The remaining Italian forces in Ethiopia and Eritrea are outnumbered, lack air support, and are too remote to have a meaningful impact on the war -- they could be left to subdue at a later date. But a new British drive that chased the reeling Italians completely out of North Africa would have an electric effect on the morale of every Briton, not to mention every anti-Axis citizen, diplomat, and soldier in Europe now looking for a reason to hope that the Nazis, too, can one day be chased out of the lands they’ve crushed.
Monday, February 6, 2017
Thursday, February 6, 1941
WADSWORTH’S GALLANT STANCE. However much more mud-throwing there is to come in the lend-lease debate -- and given the regularity with which Senator Wheeler and President Roosevelt now seem to accuse each other of treason, there will assuredly be more -- at least Representative Wadsworth’s speech gave us something more uplifting. The Republican from New York electrified his fellow congressmen yesterday with a ringing appeal for national unity and a proposal to add two new amendments to the lend-lease bill which would slightly further limit the President’s new war powers. They strike a neat balance between Representative Fish’s crippling amendment package and the Administration’s glib, trust-the-President line. The limitations include a cap on the total amount of money appropriated, at maybe $2,000,000,000 or $3,000,000,000 (Samuel W. Bell’s article in the New York Herald Tribune points out that such a limitation is "usually done by Congress in bills legalizing long-range expenditures."). The other amendment would limit commitments made by the President for beyond the two-year limit of his emergency powers. Representative Wadsworth is a supporter of lend-lease, and doesn’t feel the need so much to reassure himself with these amendments. But he does see the good sense in passing a lend-lease bill by the widest possible margin, with plenty of support in both parties.
If only the White House felt this way! Henry N. Dorris’s story in yesterday’s New York Times says that Administration officials were "somewhat staggered by the apparently warm reception given to Mr. Wadsworth’s proposal on both sides of the aisle." And they’re not interested in calls for unity, from the looks of it -- according to the radio this morning, Democratic leaders in Congress are planning to fight any cap on appropriations, even if it means in the end that the President only gets a strongly partisan, narrowly-passed bill (one prominent Democrat predicted earlier this week the current bill would pass by 50 votes, which is probably optimistic). The reasoning of Administration supporters in this regard is screwy. According to the Herald Tribune’s article, Representative Luther Johnson of Texas argues that "If [a cap] is too small, it would be disastrous" -- i.e., the British wouldn’t get enough aid to survive -- and "if it is too large, it would have a bad psychological effect" -- i.e., it would exacerbate fears the President is seizing dictatorial powers. Well, by that reasoning, wouldn’t "unlimited" -- i.e., no cap be all -- be just a tad too large? Do President Roosevelt and his supporters not see partisan broadsides and cries of "Trust me!" are not going to bring America together on this critical issue?
WHAT WADSWORTH SAID. Representative Wadsworth’s own words, as transcribed in Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune --
"As I look back over the history of this country, and the processes of Government under the Constitution, I do not believe that a bill of this sort spells the end of liberty in America. If we could do two or three things to this bill, such as I have suggested, it might bring about some greater degree of unity on the part of Congress and the people of the United States. As we face this hour, this menace -- and I believe it most seriously to be a menace to us primarily -- how much stronger our government will be if the world knows that that is the way America feels."
Amen.
THE REAL REASONS TO PASS LEND-LEASE. The isolationists might be right about one thing regarding lend-lease -- if Hitler really does invade Britain in the next couple of months, the bill won’t be of any practical help in her fight for survival. Yet oddly, Administration supporters have argued in favor of the bill by harping that an "all out" Nazi attack on Britain is right around the corner. Ernest Lindley notes the "queer twist" in the debate in Wednesday’s Washington Post, and gives some good, less emotional reasons why lend-lease is necessary to keep the British in the war, and put Hitler off-balance --
"Supporters of the bill have been emphasizing the critical importance of the next 60 or so days. They have sketched a dreadful picture of the all-out attack on England which they expect Hitler to launch. It is apparent, however, that the lend-lease bill, even if it were signed today, could not materially increase our flow of munitions to England during the next 60 days....The reasons why the prompt passage of the bill is important have to do with morale, diplomacy and the military strategy of the British. Without the assurance that supplies will come from this country in increased quantities, the British will have to stop fighting. Their own factories, plus those of their empire and the rest of the non-Axis world, are not a match for Germany’s. To meet the Nazi onslaught, if it comes, the British need a morale of steel. The best stiffener we can provide -- apart from the declaration of war, which the British have been told again and again not to expect -- is the lend-lease bill. The bill will also bolster the opposition to Hitler throughout Europe, including the conquered countries. Every riot, every uncertainty, in Europe is a drain on Hitler’s military strength. On the military side, the bill will also enable the British to reapportion their strength....When it is passed, they can throw into action more of their first-line strength, particularly in the air, with the confidence that equipment will be replaced."
By the way, Mr. Lindley himself isn’t convinced by the arguments of some of our own military experts that a Nazi invasion is imminent. "One of the highest men in the Government does not believe Hitler can muster the strength, either in the air or on the water, to invade Britain or to bring it down by aerial bombardment or counterblockade. For every fact that is known there are many uncertainties. But among the known facts are that the British have many more combat planes and pilots than they had last September, and that they have constructed strong and elaborate defenses against invasion. Even the most profound pessimists in the Government are much less pessimistic than they were last June, July, and August, after the fall of the Low Countries and France and the loss of near all the British army’s modern equipment."
If only the White House felt this way! Henry N. Dorris’s story in yesterday’s New York Times says that Administration officials were "somewhat staggered by the apparently warm reception given to Mr. Wadsworth’s proposal on both sides of the aisle." And they’re not interested in calls for unity, from the looks of it -- according to the radio this morning, Democratic leaders in Congress are planning to fight any cap on appropriations, even if it means in the end that the President only gets a strongly partisan, narrowly-passed bill (one prominent Democrat predicted earlier this week the current bill would pass by 50 votes, which is probably optimistic). The reasoning of Administration supporters in this regard is screwy. According to the Herald Tribune’s article, Representative Luther Johnson of Texas argues that "If [a cap] is too small, it would be disastrous" -- i.e., the British wouldn’t get enough aid to survive -- and "if it is too large, it would have a bad psychological effect" -- i.e., it would exacerbate fears the President is seizing dictatorial powers. Well, by that reasoning, wouldn’t "unlimited" -- i.e., no cap be all -- be just a tad too large? Do President Roosevelt and his supporters not see partisan broadsides and cries of "Trust me!" are not going to bring America together on this critical issue?
WHAT WADSWORTH SAID. Representative Wadsworth’s own words, as transcribed in Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune --
"As I look back over the history of this country, and the processes of Government under the Constitution, I do not believe that a bill of this sort spells the end of liberty in America. If we could do two or three things to this bill, such as I have suggested, it might bring about some greater degree of unity on the part of Congress and the people of the United States. As we face this hour, this menace -- and I believe it most seriously to be a menace to us primarily -- how much stronger our government will be if the world knows that that is the way America feels."
Amen.
THE REAL REASONS TO PASS LEND-LEASE. The isolationists might be right about one thing regarding lend-lease -- if Hitler really does invade Britain in the next couple of months, the bill won’t be of any practical help in her fight for survival. Yet oddly, Administration supporters have argued in favor of the bill by harping that an "all out" Nazi attack on Britain is right around the corner. Ernest Lindley notes the "queer twist" in the debate in Wednesday’s Washington Post, and gives some good, less emotional reasons why lend-lease is necessary to keep the British in the war, and put Hitler off-balance --
"Supporters of the bill have been emphasizing the critical importance of the next 60 or so days. They have sketched a dreadful picture of the all-out attack on England which they expect Hitler to launch. It is apparent, however, that the lend-lease bill, even if it were signed today, could not materially increase our flow of munitions to England during the next 60 days....The reasons why the prompt passage of the bill is important have to do with morale, diplomacy and the military strategy of the British. Without the assurance that supplies will come from this country in increased quantities, the British will have to stop fighting. Their own factories, plus those of their empire and the rest of the non-Axis world, are not a match for Germany’s. To meet the Nazi onslaught, if it comes, the British need a morale of steel. The best stiffener we can provide -- apart from the declaration of war, which the British have been told again and again not to expect -- is the lend-lease bill. The bill will also bolster the opposition to Hitler throughout Europe, including the conquered countries. Every riot, every uncertainty, in Europe is a drain on Hitler’s military strength. On the military side, the bill will also enable the British to reapportion their strength....When it is passed, they can throw into action more of their first-line strength, particularly in the air, with the confidence that equipment will be replaced."
By the way, Mr. Lindley himself isn’t convinced by the arguments of some of our own military experts that a Nazi invasion is imminent. "One of the highest men in the Government does not believe Hitler can muster the strength, either in the air or on the water, to invade Britain or to bring it down by aerial bombardment or counterblockade. For every fact that is known there are many uncertainties. But among the known facts are that the British have many more combat planes and pilots than they had last September, and that they have constructed strong and elaborate defenses against invasion. Even the most profound pessimists in the Government are much less pessimistic than they were last June, July, and August, after the fall of the Low Countries and France and the loss of near all the British army’s modern equipment."
Saturday, February 4, 2017
Tuesday, February 4, 1941
JAPAN’S "CREEPING INVASION" OF INDO-CHINA. While all the attention has been focused on the European war, there’s been a significant development elsewhere -- Japan has mediated an end to the border war between Thailand and French Indo-China. (The Vichy government accepted Japan’s offer of mediation after being "advised" to by Germany). What’s significant is that the peace terms are extremely favorable to -- Japan! According to Douglas Robertson in Sunday’s New York Times, Japanese diplomats have used this opportunity to force upon the French a parallel agreement containing the following terms --
"1. Japan gets a virtual monopoly on Indo-China’s production of rice, rubber, and coal. 2. Japanese interests will have a free hand in the exploitation of French Indo-China’s natural resources, especially minerals. 3. Japanese military garrisons will be established on the border between Indo-China and China proper. 4. Japanese inspectors will be stationed in all of Indo-China’s custom houses. 5. A Japanese naval base will be established at Cam Rahn Bay, while the Japanese will acquire also a defense concession at Saigon. 6. Indo-China will allow Japan the free use of all the present air bases established in French Indo-China, while new bases will be established wherever deemed necessary."
While this amounts to de facto Japanese control over the political and economic life of Indo-China, Prince Konoye’s government still sees fit -- for the time being -- to leave the hapless French authorities nominally in control. Not that that matters much in the long run. An article in the current Newsweek says Tokyo will soon push Thailand’s government to allow construction of Japanese air bases on Thai territory. The Thai capital, Bangkok, is just over 800 miles from the great British base at Singapore. The Dutch East Indies, rich in raw materials, might well soon receive the Indo-China treatment too.
Japan’s military men are putting their forces in a favorable position to attack British interests in East Asia, especially if Britain begins to falter in the wake of the expected German invasion. And not so incidentally, a Japan that controlled Indo-China, the East Indies, Singapore, and Hong Kong would put American troops and interests in the Phillippines in great peril. It looks likely that in the Pacific, as well as in Europe, we will need to get military aid to the British in a hurry, in order to protect ourselves.
HOW THE NAZIS COULD CONQUER SOUTH AMERICA. The isolationists make it sound like a Hitler assault on the Western Hemisphere is as fantastic as a Nazi invasion of the Moon. But the New York Herald Tribune’s Dorothy Thompson spells out just how chillingly easy it might be for Germany to peacefully seize control of lands south of the border through a "creeping invasion" of her own, if she wins the war in Europe --
"Every year Europe purchases South American products to the tune of $2,500,000,000. Every year the United States purchases South American products to the tune of $200,000,000 to $300,000,000. Every year Europe sells manufactured goods to South American for over a billion dollars and the United States sells for $600,000,000. But we can only sell if South America has the money with which to buy. And that money she must get as the result of the turnover of all of her trade. Now, if the Nazis win in Europe, they will, at one stroke, have become South America’s sole, greatest, and absolutely indispensable European customer, as South America is an absolutely indispensable source of certain foods and raw materials for Europe. And if the United States attempts to interfere with or cut down that trade we shall become the worst enemy of South America. South American ports will be crowded with German ships; Nazi commercial, technical and eventually military advisors will be in every South American republic. To keep in with these Nazi representatives will be a necessity for every South American government, and the end will be a series of Nazi states south of the Rio Grande. With extreme rapidity, the Latin-American states will be as peacefully penetrated, reorganized and reoriented by the Master of Europe, plus his Italian and Spanish satellites, as Spain itself has been."
Miss Thompson points out that no amount of American military preparedness could throw the Germans out, once this happens -- "What are we going to do about all this, even if we have seapower and airpower to burn? Are we going to go down and blast out the Nazis by force? Then we shall become an ‘aggressor nation’ and Germany will become ‘the defender of Latin-American independence.’ The Nazis won’t have to invade Latin-America; they will be invited in to defend Latin-American freedom, trade, and prosperity against ‘the Colossus of the North!’ And against that ‘menace’ airdromes built by the Nazis for ‘purely commercial purposes’ will shortly be supplied by the Nazis with bombers and fighters."
SECRETARY KNOX, THEN AND NOW. The lend-lease bill has cleared the House Foreign Affairs Committee and may get a full House vote by this week-end, but the last days of the hearings provided one more bit of theater. Senator Nye and the isolationist press had a merry old time when Secretary Knox testified in defense of the Administration’s proposed war powers -- they dredged up statements the War Secretary made a year ago, and longer, when he was a somewhat more partisan Republican than he is now. And some of them were doozies. Such as --
"Mr. Roosevelt is without doubt the greatest autocrat of all time."
"[The President]...gets his way by either beating the drums of emergency or slipping things across quietly."
"[There is] the itch for totalitarian powers in the White House."
Senator Nye seized upon such statements, made well before Mr. Knox’s appointment as War Secretary, as somehow proving that the Roosevelt Administration is fanning "an alleged emergency, a so-called crisis." But while the Senator had great fun with Knox’s old remarks (as well as the Chicago Tribune, which lavishly front-paged the Nye-Knox exchange), the isolationist crowd seemed to completely miss the Secretary’s main point. Which was -- "I’m not ashamed that I was a Republican all my life, but I’m not functioning as one now....We are presented with a grave national crisis in which we should adjourn politics and abandon partisanship -- approach things from a non-partisan viewpoint as an American."
He’s right. The world changed completely in May and June, 1940, and we don’t have the luxury of partisan hyperbole any more. Secretary Knox gets it. Senator Nye, alas, still does not. It’s appropriate to be concerned about President Roosevelt’s careless use of power and to put safeguards in lend-lease that will protect the prerogatives of Congress. But it’s way out of bounds, and lacking in any kind of class, to accuse the Administration, as Nye does, of ginning up a phony crisis, or, as a Chicago Tribune front-page cartoon puts it, of attempting to "Hitlerize America."
"1. Japan gets a virtual monopoly on Indo-China’s production of rice, rubber, and coal. 2. Japanese interests will have a free hand in the exploitation of French Indo-China’s natural resources, especially minerals. 3. Japanese military garrisons will be established on the border between Indo-China and China proper. 4. Japanese inspectors will be stationed in all of Indo-China’s custom houses. 5. A Japanese naval base will be established at Cam Rahn Bay, while the Japanese will acquire also a defense concession at Saigon. 6. Indo-China will allow Japan the free use of all the present air bases established in French Indo-China, while new bases will be established wherever deemed necessary."
While this amounts to de facto Japanese control over the political and economic life of Indo-China, Prince Konoye’s government still sees fit -- for the time being -- to leave the hapless French authorities nominally in control. Not that that matters much in the long run. An article in the current Newsweek says Tokyo will soon push Thailand’s government to allow construction of Japanese air bases on Thai territory. The Thai capital, Bangkok, is just over 800 miles from the great British base at Singapore. The Dutch East Indies, rich in raw materials, might well soon receive the Indo-China treatment too.
Japan’s military men are putting their forces in a favorable position to attack British interests in East Asia, especially if Britain begins to falter in the wake of the expected German invasion. And not so incidentally, a Japan that controlled Indo-China, the East Indies, Singapore, and Hong Kong would put American troops and interests in the Phillippines in great peril. It looks likely that in the Pacific, as well as in Europe, we will need to get military aid to the British in a hurry, in order to protect ourselves.
HOW THE NAZIS COULD CONQUER SOUTH AMERICA. The isolationists make it sound like a Hitler assault on the Western Hemisphere is as fantastic as a Nazi invasion of the Moon. But the New York Herald Tribune’s Dorothy Thompson spells out just how chillingly easy it might be for Germany to peacefully seize control of lands south of the border through a "creeping invasion" of her own, if she wins the war in Europe --
"Every year Europe purchases South American products to the tune of $2,500,000,000. Every year the United States purchases South American products to the tune of $200,000,000 to $300,000,000. Every year Europe sells manufactured goods to South American for over a billion dollars and the United States sells for $600,000,000. But we can only sell if South America has the money with which to buy. And that money she must get as the result of the turnover of all of her trade. Now, if the Nazis win in Europe, they will, at one stroke, have become South America’s sole, greatest, and absolutely indispensable European customer, as South America is an absolutely indispensable source of certain foods and raw materials for Europe. And if the United States attempts to interfere with or cut down that trade we shall become the worst enemy of South America. South American ports will be crowded with German ships; Nazi commercial, technical and eventually military advisors will be in every South American republic. To keep in with these Nazi representatives will be a necessity for every South American government, and the end will be a series of Nazi states south of the Rio Grande. With extreme rapidity, the Latin-American states will be as peacefully penetrated, reorganized and reoriented by the Master of Europe, plus his Italian and Spanish satellites, as Spain itself has been."
Miss Thompson points out that no amount of American military preparedness could throw the Germans out, once this happens -- "What are we going to do about all this, even if we have seapower and airpower to burn? Are we going to go down and blast out the Nazis by force? Then we shall become an ‘aggressor nation’ and Germany will become ‘the defender of Latin-American independence.’ The Nazis won’t have to invade Latin-America; they will be invited in to defend Latin-American freedom, trade, and prosperity against ‘the Colossus of the North!’ And against that ‘menace’ airdromes built by the Nazis for ‘purely commercial purposes’ will shortly be supplied by the Nazis with bombers and fighters."
SECRETARY KNOX, THEN AND NOW. The lend-lease bill has cleared the House Foreign Affairs Committee and may get a full House vote by this week-end, but the last days of the hearings provided one more bit of theater. Senator Nye and the isolationist press had a merry old time when Secretary Knox testified in defense of the Administration’s proposed war powers -- they dredged up statements the War Secretary made a year ago, and longer, when he was a somewhat more partisan Republican than he is now. And some of them were doozies. Such as --
"Mr. Roosevelt is without doubt the greatest autocrat of all time."
"[The President]...gets his way by either beating the drums of emergency or slipping things across quietly."
"[There is] the itch for totalitarian powers in the White House."
Senator Nye seized upon such statements, made well before Mr. Knox’s appointment as War Secretary, as somehow proving that the Roosevelt Administration is fanning "an alleged emergency, a so-called crisis." But while the Senator had great fun with Knox’s old remarks (as well as the Chicago Tribune, which lavishly front-paged the Nye-Knox exchange), the isolationist crowd seemed to completely miss the Secretary’s main point. Which was -- "I’m not ashamed that I was a Republican all my life, but I’m not functioning as one now....We are presented with a grave national crisis in which we should adjourn politics and abandon partisanship -- approach things from a non-partisan viewpoint as an American."
He’s right. The world changed completely in May and June, 1940, and we don’t have the luxury of partisan hyperbole any more. Secretary Knox gets it. Senator Nye, alas, still does not. It’s appropriate to be concerned about President Roosevelt’s careless use of power and to put safeguards in lend-lease that will protect the prerogatives of Congress. But it’s way out of bounds, and lacking in any kind of class, to accuse the Administration, as Nye does, of ginning up a phony crisis, or, as a Chicago Tribune front-page cartoon puts it, of attempting to "Hitlerize America."
Thursday, February 2, 2017
Sunday, February 2, 1941
BRITISH TROOPS MARCH INTO DERNA. First Bardia, then Tobruk -- and now Derna. British armies in North Africa under General Wavell’s command have now advanced westward over 175 miles from the Egyptian border, seized three major Fascist bastions, and now threaten Italian control over all of eastern Libya. According to an Associated Press dispatch, the Italians tried to defend Derna with fewer than 10,000 troops, and now are trying to "organize a new line behind it in a final attempt to halt the British drive and save Bengasi, 150 miles to the west." Mussolini is also facing a new round of bad news in Italian East Africa, where a new British thrust into Eritrea by tank and armored car units has trapped about 30,000 Italian troops. And a radio report this morning says Greek forces have completely encircled over 15,000 Italians in the Albanian town of Tempelini, and also anticipate taking the port of Valona momentarily.
What’s most interesting about these latest Italian disasters is that the Fascist armies involved aren’t disorganized, ill-trained, or retreating pell-mell. They appear to be well-disciplined and are putting up a tough fight. The A.P. reports the defenders of Derna held out for four days, after giving "the most bitter resistance offered by the Fascists in the whole of the African campaign." The latest Greek victories come after the Duce’s troops have largely stalemated any further Greek advances in recent weeks, via numerous, and fierce, counter-attacks. If indeed the Italians are now putting up the best fight they possibly can, and they’re still getting whipped on three different fronts -- then, minus a massive German intervention, how much longer can we expect any Italian troops to be fighting outside of Italy? I’d say not past late Spring.
HITLER REFUTES THE ISOLATIONISTS. Administration spokesmen have debated the nation’s leading isolationists now for month after windy month about the European war. But nobody has refuted one central tenet of the isolationists more effectively than Hitler himself, according to a New York Herald Tribune editorial published yesterday --
"Somehow, Herr Hitler managed to convey, after all the absurd rodomontade and windy mindlessness of his Sports Palace speech, at least one concrete idea. He is going to destroy Britain. 'Wherever we can defeat England, we will defeat her.' The Fuehrer is too illiterate to get it into any more precisely quotable words; but he makes it evident enough that he has failed to absorb the more ingenious reasoning of people like Col. Lindbergh or Senators Wheeler or La Follette, who are so convinced that the war must end in a stalemate and a negotiated peace in which 'nobody wins.' The Fuehrer, with his more primitive intelligence, is certain only that he has got to win, or be destroyed; and the whole tenor of his speech was directed toward convincing the unhappy German people he is going to smash Britain, completely and finally, ‘within the year,’if he wrecks Germany in the attempt."
The editors find that Hitler’s words leave us but two possible worlds in the future, and Americans better be aware of that choice now -- "This ought, at least, to clear the atmosphere. It ought to close the mouths of those among the Fuehrer’s American aids and admirers who are bemusing themselves with pretty pictures of a future in which the war ends in a tie, in which Germany and Britain negotiate a peace leaving each more or less as we now know them, and the United States can go on untroubled in a world not essentially different from that to which we have become accustomed. The Fuehrer makes it perfectly plain that the actual prospect before us a far grimmer one than that. Either Nazi Germany is beaten -- beaten down decisively and finally -- or the British Commonwealth is destroyed. And destroyed, in the Hitler imagination, means 'destroyed' -- demolished, partitioned, its fleet sunk or captured, its economic resources put as completely at the Nazis’ disposal as are those of occupied France today. If the United States is not willing to work for the first alternative, the second is the one which actually faces it."
WHY HITLER GAVE THE SPEECH. Barnet Nover of the Washington Post thinks the Hitler speech came in response to a festering morale problem within the Reich --
"The German people must have asking themselves a lot of questions these days. They must be wondering why the spectacular victories of last year did not produce that final triumph which Nazi spokesmen and the Nazi press had repeatedly declared was just around the corner. They are certainly not unaware of what has been happening to Germany’s ally, Italy. The German press had played up the British evacuation of Berbera as the beginning of the end of the British Empire in Africa, the Italian capture of Sidi Barrani as proof that the fall of Suez was not fall off. No amount of praise of Italian heroism can delude Germans into believing that the [British] capture of Sidi Barrani, Sollum, Bardia, Trobruk, and Derna are Axis triumphs. The German people have furthermore been told, and told repeatedly, that London is in ruins, that Goering’s Luftwaffe commands the air over Britain, that British industry is in a desperate state. Yet the nightly visitations of R.A.F. bombers give the lie to this oft-told tale of British weakness. And the censorship has not been able to keep from Germans the news that the United States is on its way to becoming in a very real sense the ‘arsenal of the democracies.’ Those Germans who lived through the first World War are under no illusions as to what this may mean to the Reich."
The fact that Hitler sought to address those worries in the manner that did, writes Mr. Nover, is another indication of something big coming soon -- "Hitler’s speech was primarily an attempt to answer those questions, resolve those doubts, replace the growing German skepticism regarding the promised victory by renewed belief in the certainty of a German triumph....The very circumstance that Hitler has found it necessary to bolster Germany’s morale, hold out the promise of a victory this year suggests that he is likely very soon to throw everything Germany has into the scales in order to win such a decision in that time. For Germany to wait would be fatal to Hitler’s chances of victory by increasing the strength of his enemies abroad, by multiplying the number of doubters at home. Hitler’s Sportspalast speech is additional proof that the hour of decision draws near."
What’s most interesting about these latest Italian disasters is that the Fascist armies involved aren’t disorganized, ill-trained, or retreating pell-mell. They appear to be well-disciplined and are putting up a tough fight. The A.P. reports the defenders of Derna held out for four days, after giving "the most bitter resistance offered by the Fascists in the whole of the African campaign." The latest Greek victories come after the Duce’s troops have largely stalemated any further Greek advances in recent weeks, via numerous, and fierce, counter-attacks. If indeed the Italians are now putting up the best fight they possibly can, and they’re still getting whipped on three different fronts -- then, minus a massive German intervention, how much longer can we expect any Italian troops to be fighting outside of Italy? I’d say not past late Spring.
HITLER REFUTES THE ISOLATIONISTS. Administration spokesmen have debated the nation’s leading isolationists now for month after windy month about the European war. But nobody has refuted one central tenet of the isolationists more effectively than Hitler himself, according to a New York Herald Tribune editorial published yesterday --
"Somehow, Herr Hitler managed to convey, after all the absurd rodomontade and windy mindlessness of his Sports Palace speech, at least one concrete idea. He is going to destroy Britain. 'Wherever we can defeat England, we will defeat her.' The Fuehrer is too illiterate to get it into any more precisely quotable words; but he makes it evident enough that he has failed to absorb the more ingenious reasoning of people like Col. Lindbergh or Senators Wheeler or La Follette, who are so convinced that the war must end in a stalemate and a negotiated peace in which 'nobody wins.' The Fuehrer, with his more primitive intelligence, is certain only that he has got to win, or be destroyed; and the whole tenor of his speech was directed toward convincing the unhappy German people he is going to smash Britain, completely and finally, ‘within the year,’if he wrecks Germany in the attempt."
The editors find that Hitler’s words leave us but two possible worlds in the future, and Americans better be aware of that choice now -- "This ought, at least, to clear the atmosphere. It ought to close the mouths of those among the Fuehrer’s American aids and admirers who are bemusing themselves with pretty pictures of a future in which the war ends in a tie, in which Germany and Britain negotiate a peace leaving each more or less as we now know them, and the United States can go on untroubled in a world not essentially different from that to which we have become accustomed. The Fuehrer makes it perfectly plain that the actual prospect before us a far grimmer one than that. Either Nazi Germany is beaten -- beaten down decisively and finally -- or the British Commonwealth is destroyed. And destroyed, in the Hitler imagination, means 'destroyed' -- demolished, partitioned, its fleet sunk or captured, its economic resources put as completely at the Nazis’ disposal as are those of occupied France today. If the United States is not willing to work for the first alternative, the second is the one which actually faces it."
WHY HITLER GAVE THE SPEECH. Barnet Nover of the Washington Post thinks the Hitler speech came in response to a festering morale problem within the Reich --
"The German people must have asking themselves a lot of questions these days. They must be wondering why the spectacular victories of last year did not produce that final triumph which Nazi spokesmen and the Nazi press had repeatedly declared was just around the corner. They are certainly not unaware of what has been happening to Germany’s ally, Italy. The German press had played up the British evacuation of Berbera as the beginning of the end of the British Empire in Africa, the Italian capture of Sidi Barrani as proof that the fall of Suez was not fall off. No amount of praise of Italian heroism can delude Germans into believing that the [British] capture of Sidi Barrani, Sollum, Bardia, Trobruk, and Derna are Axis triumphs. The German people have furthermore been told, and told repeatedly, that London is in ruins, that Goering’s Luftwaffe commands the air over Britain, that British industry is in a desperate state. Yet the nightly visitations of R.A.F. bombers give the lie to this oft-told tale of British weakness. And the censorship has not been able to keep from Germans the news that the United States is on its way to becoming in a very real sense the ‘arsenal of the democracies.’ Those Germans who lived through the first World War are under no illusions as to what this may mean to the Reich."
The fact that Hitler sought to address those worries in the manner that did, writes Mr. Nover, is another indication of something big coming soon -- "Hitler’s speech was primarily an attempt to answer those questions, resolve those doubts, replace the growing German skepticism regarding the promised victory by renewed belief in the certainty of a German triumph....The very circumstance that Hitler has found it necessary to bolster Germany’s morale, hold out the promise of a victory this year suggests that he is likely very soon to throw everything Germany has into the scales in order to win such a decision in that time. For Germany to wait would be fatal to Hitler’s chances of victory by increasing the strength of his enemies abroad, by multiplying the number of doubters at home. Hitler’s Sportspalast speech is additional proof that the hour of decision draws near."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)