Part 26

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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