Part 20

In any plan dealing with postwar Germany it is important to avoid vindictiveness. Nothing should be done as a punishment of Germany’s crimes in the past; everything should be done to restrain her from crime in the future. How much better it would have been if there had been no reparations imposed upon Germany after the last war, but the Allies had kept their Military Control Commission permanently in Germany while Allied troops permanently occupied the Rhineland. There is no use, however, in hoping for any such _permanent_ resolution on our part. We have only one hope of being able to restrain Germany for any considerable period, by the humane means which are the only ones open to us.

Q. _What hope have we of being able to restrain Germany?_

A. It is the hope that while we occupy Germany with our troops, say for the next thirty or forty years, a new generation of Germans would grow up which would forego its desire to conquer the world, forget that it was a Herrenvolk, and would gradually learn the habits of civilization. Meanwhile we would try to develop a World Federation or League of Nations under Anglo-American leadership to such a point of effectiveness that we could afford to allow Germany to become a member of it.

Q. _But do you suppose our people or the British would put up with the trouble and expense of occupying Germany militarily for thirty or forty years? Wouldn’t there be an outcry on behalf of the Germans?_

A. Many of our people would probably try to sabotage any realistic handling of the Germans. After the last war and at the beginning of this one you could hear many Americans remarking: “How could you expect the Germans or any upstanding, self-respecting people to tolerate being treated unequally, to put up with being disarmed while their neighbors were armed?” These remarks disclosed misapprehension of the German mind which will surely be duplicated at the end of this war by similar persons. That will not matter so much since the British will have a great deal to say about how the Germans are to be restrained, and this time the British will not be as shortsighted as they were after the last war.

You may remember that the French in 1919 wanted to occupy permanently various strategic points in Germany, including the Rhineland, but the British said no. They had two principal reasons for not consenting to proper restraint of the Germans and both reasons were, as we can see from our perspective of today, completely invalid. First, they did not want France to become too strong; they believed they had to maintain a balance of power with Germany, apparently leaving out of account the enormous, patent facts that there were 80,000,000 Germans to 40,000,000 Frenchmen, that the French birth rate was nearing the point of racial suicide, that Frenchmen were concerned not at all with expansion but only to keep what they had in their beloved “security.” Second, the British people had failed during the war to suffer any of the pain and tribulation the Germans had visited upon the French, who had seen their towns and villages destroyed, their families blown to bits by German artillery.

Today when the British sit down to a Peace Table they will be a different people. In Britain today are upward of 44,000,000 persons who have been under bombardment for two years and have suffered a strain upon their courage such as has no parallel. They have witnessed the mutilation of their dear ones, the destruction of their monuments. They have heard the menace from their enemy that he intended to destroy England as Carthage was destroyed. Is it likely that when the British sit down victorious in a Peace Conference they will shrink from the application of methods, no matter how severe, to prevent the recurrence of this horror? We shall not earn the right to speak at all at the Peace Conference until we have borne our share of the heat of the day. I hope we shall not try to exercise our influence to obstruct whatever solutions may seem appropriate at the end of years of war, to solve this essentially insoluble problem of the Germans.

Q. _Why do you call the German problem insoluble?_

A. Because no matter what we do, short of destroying the Germans, which we have agreed is impossible, the Germans are likely to break out again on the warpath some time. Let us assume that we take the view that the Versailles treaty was too harsh, and this time we will avoid all the mistakes of harshness. We grant Germany a peace treaty which not only takes nothing from her, but allows her to retain a considerable quantity of the territorial spoils she has accumulated by violence. We agree to let her retain all the territory inhabited for the most part by German-speaking people. Thus she is allowed to keep Western Poland whence she has so brutally expelled the native Polish population. She is allowed to keep the German Sudetenland, formerly Czechoslovakian, and until the men of Munich gave it to Hitler, never before a part of Germany. She is allowed to keep Belgian Eupen Malmedy; and even any part of Lorraine which may desire to opt for Germany. She is allowed to keep Austria. In short, Germany is allowed to keep all her 80,000,000 Germans together. More than that, in order to “right every wrong,” Germany is given back her old colonies, all of them. Thus there is no thought of dividing the country. There are of course no reparations. There are no punitive measures of any kind. Germany is invited to join the new World Federation as soon as it has been formed. Certainly this sort of treatment ought to mollify any people. This ought to be a perfect peace. But wait, there is a crucial point. Shall Germany be allowed now, at once, to bear arms again? Or ever again? And how many arms? What kind?

Q. _Haven’t Churchill and Roosevelt already declared the aggressors would be disarmed?_

A. Very well, the victors will insist that Germany is to have no arms at least for a period of years. Do you think that then the Germans, even with a treaty such as we have sketched, granting every conceivable amelioration, would be satisfied? No. If we restricted their armed forces in any degree, for example, by depriving them of offensive weapons, of tanks and bombing planes, you can be sure that the complaint of the Germans would be as great as though they had been stripped of half their population, the Reich divided into a score of puppet states, and their cities occupied by divisions of Senegalese.

Q. _Aren’t the Germans merely demanding absolute, uncompromising equality?_

A. They always demand absolute, uncompromising superiority. Look back on Hitler’s reign. He had several chances to stop this side of war, after having gained for his people not mere equality with his greatest rival, France, and not mere equality with the political and military forces of all his neighbors put together, but with real superiority in arms and in political power over all Europe. Look at the chances he had to stop short of war and build in peace, and perhaps go down as a greater man than he will appear after this bloody debacle is over. He could have stopped after he got the Sudetenland, and had finally united nearly all of his 80,000,000 Germans. He could have stopped after he took Austria; after he occupied the Rhineland; after he got the Saar back into Germany. The taking of the Sudetenland would have been a place to stop at the pinnacle. Suppose he had done that, and had used his power and talent to transfer his war machine into a peace machine, and had used his mighty prestige to bring Europe into a new economic order. Germany had attained practical “equality” with France by 1936 when Hitler’s troops entered the Rhineland, and they had “equality” with all the rest of Europe put together--as Hitler has now so disastrously proved--by 1938 when they got the Sudetenland. So the point is that the Germans never wanted equality, will never be satisfied with equality, but will always demand to be what they believe themselves to be, namely, the _master_ race.

Q. _Aren’t you confusing the Germans with Hitler and the Nazis?_

A. No, the Germans have done that themselves. By their so-called plebiscites which document their uniformly spineless behavior since Hitler came to power, they have identified themselves with him and permitted him uncontradicted to define himself as Deutschland.

There is just a chance that a combination of generosity and firmness may impress a minority of Germans which may grow and eventually bring the whole nation into our hoped-for World Federation. If, on the contrary, the Germans secretly arm, and prepare another ambush for civilization, our only hope is to find it out in time. We should have no hope at all if our sobbing societies succeeded in inducing the Peace Conference to give the Germans equality in arms. Let us remember that if we were all to disarm, including Germany, it would be just as disadvantageous for us as if we remained armed and allowed Germany to keep equal arms. For at any stage of armament or disarmament the Germans are superior to almost any combination of their opponents. Germany is not just another nation. It is a nation, not exceptionally numerous, but so highly talented in the mechanics, chemistry, and physics of warfare and so professionally skilled in the staff work of war, and so obediently brave in the practice of battle, that its military power is greater than that of any other single nation on earth, with no exceptions.

Q. _What are we going to do with all the former nations of Europe, especially the fifteen or so which were conquered? Are we going to reconstitute them all as they were?_

A. We shall try to reconstitute all those which are capable of maintaining a national life, but how can one foresee the fate of such unfortunate little states as Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania? The Soviet government, through its ambassador to London, Mr. Maisky, now declares that it approves the Atlantic Charter’s Eight Points, including the right of self-determination of all nations. This has been hailed as a great step forward; but I should prefer to wait to see the Red Army evacuate voluntarily any territory it may hold at the end of this war.

The attitude of the Soviet government toward the rights of small nations is brilliantly illustrated by Stalin’s treatment of the Baltic States. First, he asked Britain and France for them to be handed him on a platter, as roast chicken. Having been refused, he waited until the war began, then forcibly occupied the three little states, which were among the more attractive and in many ways more admirable little countries in Europe. We have almost completely overlooked the grisly fate of the middle-class population of the Baltic states--virtually exterminated by Stalin’s gunmen in one of those side shows of horror which only the great war could obscure. The Baltic population is suffering an epic of agony. After Stalin’s G.P.U. had killed or exiled all the professional and business people and all those suspected of being Nazi sympathizers, and then after war had swept the three countries, the Germans and the Gestapo moved in and killed all the Communist and other labor leaders and anti-Nazis. Now that Stalin has been driven out of the Baltic states, and they are occupied by the Nazis, the Soviet policy is ceremoniously announced to be in favor of restoration of full national independence to all states.

That must ring bitterly in the ears of the pitiful remnant of the population of Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Is there enough of them left to make it possible to resuscitate their nations? The experience of these countries shows how difficult it will be in our postwar settlement to give national independence to small states and at the same time allow them the possibility of national security. Many a small state will have to choose between the one or the other. If it stands alone, it may be devoured by a larger neighbor. If it enters a larger unit, it will have to sacrifice some of its sovereignty. All this points to the necessity of making the larger unit big enough to comprise all nations.

Whatever we do, the Soviet Union will present us with almost as many problems as Germany. How can Britain and the United States confidently outline specific war aims as long as we do not know what the position of the Soviet Union will be at the end of this war? And if the Soviet Union survives in her present form and temper, and has not defected from the war, how is she to fit into our world peace organization? There are in it only two durable points of reference: the United States and Great Britain, and one great hope of success for the organization of peace, the firm friendship of the two countries, braced by their control of the seas. Our only chance of realizing such a peace is by cherishing between ourselves a mutual trust which will override our selfish ambitions, for there are many points and places on the globe where our material interests conflict. We cannot maintain this relationship until we Americans begin to carry our full share of the burden of the war and the British in turn make us feel we are welcome to the comradeship as well as the responsibilities of the war and the peace.

Q. _Do the British want such a Pax Anglo-Americana which would divide their victory with us?_

A. Let us not be sentimental about the British in spite of our partnership and friendship with them. The British would like nothing on earth so much as to be able to win this war without the United States’ help. They would dearly love to win alone and enjoy the fruits of victory alone. But they know now they cannot win alone. They know they cannot beat the Germans without our full, shooting participation in the war. And so they are resigned to accepting our companionship in battle.

Q. _“Resigned to accepting our companionship in battle”? Is that the way the British feel? Well, then, I for my part...._

A. Yes, I know what you are going to say: that you for your part would just as soon not help the British if that’s the way they feel about it. How many Americans there are left who still think in terms of “helping the British”! Cannot we finally understand that we are helping first of all ourselves, and that it would make no difference to us if the British were not human beings at all, but a race of perspicacious, pugnacious penguins?

So long as these penguins are fighting off our common enemy who would attack us if the penguins fell, is it not just good sense to throw our whole combat aid to the penguins, no matter what the penguins may think of us? If the British were to have a mental breakdown and declare they disliked us so thoroughly that they would accept no more help from us of any kind and would rather be beaten by the Nazis than win with American help, we should be compelled from our own vital self-interest to beg to be allowed to help them and then we should have to urge and even threaten until reluctantly the British made room for us in the battle line. It is good luck that the British are people who would be worth saving even if thereby we were not going to save ourselves.

Q. _Will you recapitulate how you visualize the organization of peace?_

A. First, a Pax Anglo-Americana, based on our naval control of the world. This may take one of several forms, including Union Now, Clarence Streit’s thoughtful plan for amalgamating the democracies. Its immediate purpose would be to unite the coercive power of the nations of good will to restrain those of ill will until time and repentance had made it possible to bring them into our second organization. This World Federation of some kind might be a resuscitated League of Nations, or it might have another name or form. All we know positively is that unless we organize for peace, we shall have war again; and we know now that the nations of good will on earth are not strong enough without the United States to impose peace on the world. We know that if we stay out of the peace we shall surely be drawn into the succeeding war. Perhaps by the end of this present struggle we shall have learned our lesson and will never again attempt to withdraw into an illusory isolation which must always bring us into the very war it tried to avoid. Perhaps for the first time in our history we will with open eyes and clear plan enter the strength of the United States into the organization of peace with the same zeal we use to make war. If we do, who knows but that the peace established after this war could endure for longer than we even dare to guess at this melancholy moment.

Q. _Is it a fact that because of the war England is becoming Socialist and will come out of the war with a government and social system just as repugnant to us as the Nazis’?_

A. It is true that the government and social system of England have become Socialist but in the Christian and democratic sense of the word. British society has become a Christian collective. If they could maintain after the war as ideal a spirit of cooperation and love of their neighbors as they have today under fire, we might call it the first step toward the millennium. Far from being a government and social system we disapproved, they would be worthy of our emulation. To compare such a system of voluntary, democratic, unselfish devotion to the common good as exists today in wartime England with the Nazi regime is to compare good with evil. Beaten by the blows of war the British people have attained in a period of months a degree of social progress they would not have reached in decades otherwise.

Britain was forced to adopt a system of wartime socialism, if you want to call it that, because that form of socialism under the inspiration of life-and-death battle can produce so much more than uncontrolled capitalism. Production is the materialist index of the value of any economic system. Under British wartime socialism, capitalists and workers genuinely pool their interests and restrict their demands to the minimum, while men and women of all classes risk and give their lives in battle for the community. Until we adopt such a system and are inspired by the same dire necessity which animates the British, our system of production, man for man, and unit for unit, will not equal British production. As for the Nazis, their system of Socialism, based on Terror and megalomania, aims to enslave the world; the British system of Socialism, based on free choice and democracy, aims to liberate the world. No, there is no possibility that any form of government should emerge in England after the war which would be “as repugnant to us as the Nazis’,” unless Britain is conquered and becomes a satrapy of Hitler.

Q. _Is this British wartime Socialism not really equivalent to Communism? How does it differ from capitalism?_

A. It is the sort of communism anyone would approve if it could work in peacetime, though it seems that it really works only in war. In wartime the motive that makes men work is defense of their lives, their families, their nation, against an enemy from without. This leads to a degree of self-sacrifice that is never even approximated in peacetime. Witness the invariable collapse of national morale after every war. One of the chief reasons, if not the chief reason, why communism in peacetime does not work, either in Russia or anywhere else, is because except under the duress of war, individuals primarily work for themselves. The Russian Bolshevik party tried for twenty-three years to make the Russians work for the community, but they never succeeded until now, when they have gone to war. No matter how the Battle of Russia turns out, when the war is over, if the Soviet Union is still Communist, it will revert to its accustomed slackness and poverty. If the British were to try to continue their wartime socialism into peacetime, they would find it impossible. Strikes would break out; employers would begin to reach out for profits and soon the old-time, though modified capitalism would return, with many of its faults, but still far more productive than peacetime communism anywhere in the world. Capitalism in peace; collectivism in war appears to be the law for democracies in our time.

5. FRANCE

Q. _Why did France fall?_

A. Because the French people were hypnotized by their low birth rate; because their Maginot line had imprisoned their army; because, ignorant of the character and intentions of their enemy, they did not know why they had to fight the Germans and so preferred to fight among themselves; because they had no Churchill; because they were betrayed by a powerful group of their leaders including senior officers of the Army; and because the French were stultified by their debased and venal press.

Q. _But I thought they lost chiefly because they lacked the proper weapons: airplanes and tanks._

A. They did not possess anything like the number of tanks and airplanes used by the Germans; but I would rank this deficiency at the bottom of any list of causes of the French defeat. If they had ignored their birth rate, been willing to spend lives, had retained the old offensive spirit traditional in the French Army, had known that they had to win or perish, had possessed a Churchill to inspire and lead them, and had had no traitors in their ranks, their comparative lack of weapons would not have mattered; they would still be fighting the Germans in France. The inferiority of their equipment consisted, as you indicate, in the lack of a sufficient number of planes and tanks, but if they had had the spirit to win they could have held the Germans until the deficiency could be made up.

Tanks cannot cross properly defended rivers, and there were several sets of rivers which the French could have held if they chose: the Meuse, the Somme and the Oise, the Aisne, the Marne, the Seine, and finally the Loire, but they held not at all at any of these natural barriers. At most of these rivers I was present during the retreat, and it astonished all of us, including United States officers, to visit a French position along a river one day and observe how strong it was, and how difficult it would be to take, and then the next day learn the Germans had taken it within a few hours of our departure.

Q. _But surely the reason was the German dive bombers who could fly across the rivers and drive the defenders away. I have heard that they were the principal weapon used to break the French who didn’t have enough pursuit planes to down them. It seems to me that if the dive bomber is anything like as lethal as it is said to be, you must put more of the blame for the French collapse on it than on the failure of French morale._

A. No, the dive bombers are not effective against brave determined troops. They are not as effective as artillery. I have an authority for that, General Charles Huntziger, now Minister of War of the Vichy government. I met him when he was Commander of the Second Army occupying the left wing of the Maginot line. It was about May 31, 1940 in the second week after the German break-through.

General Huntziger received me in his headquarters, an old fortress of Verdun. He explained that he had now taught his men how to meet the terrible German tank-plus-dive-bomber attack. He said that he had explained to his men that the dive bomber was not nearly so deadly as artillery, and that its effect was chiefly psychological, and that if the soldiers could master their first fright they could hold their ground and win. The great thing was to hold long enough to learn that your chance of being killed by dive bombers was much less than your chance of being killed by artillery fire, since artillery shells may fall uninterruptedly for an indefinite time, while a dive bomber has only one or at the most a few bombs to discharge, and once it has dropped them, has to return to its base for more, and the number of dive bombers is limited.