Part 9

In the land of the Nazis, the attempts of the Supermen to rule the world led the Germans to forget individual happiness as completely as the Bolsheviks. The Nazis believed that if they gave up butter for guns today, they could tomorrow win with their guns more butter; but the Nazi chief never had any intention of stopping for butter. In comfort-loving, once-bourgeois Germany, food, clothing, fuel, transportation deteriorated until it was impossible to find even a physically happy person outside the young armed forces for whom the nation sacrificed all. These favored youths found their chief pleasure in the exercise of a technical skill and lust in combat which enabled them to crush a continent with playful ease.

Now from the Atlantic to the Pacific, across the greatest continuous land surface on the globe, from the English Channel to the Sea of Japan there exists not one comfortable, secure, happy family. Not among the more than five hundred million persons now in Europe with its neighbor states could be discovered a trace of the happiness, imperfect though it was, which used to exist. The Nazi Bolsheviks had achieved triumph as far as Europe was concerned. The Wave of the Future had swept happiness from its path.

2. RUSSIA

Q. _What is the best way for the United States to help the Russians fight the German Army?_

A. The best way for the United States to help the Russians fight the German Army is for us to go to war against Germany. Our declaration of war against Germany would be of more value to Russian resistance than all the war supplies we shall ever be able to send to the Soviet Union. We ought to try to send the Red Army as much as we can spare of airplanes and arms and anything else it needs to help it hold the Germans, but all such aid would be trivial compared with the effect of our declaration of war.

Q. _Why? What practical effect on the Russian war effort would we have by going to war with Germany?_

A. It would have the moral effect of convincing the Russians that they would win in the long run; hence it should obviate any chance, however faint, of Stalin’s capitulating. As we have said before, it would convince the Germans they would lose the war and hence would halve their determination to go on. It would triple our war effort overnight, and result speedily in a vast increase of production here of the materials the Russians as well as the British need to carry on the war. It would enable us to base our Pacific Fleet on Singapore and other British bases in the Far East, and our Air Force, if it were found expedient, on Russian bases in Kamchatka and near Vladivostok within bombing distance of Tokyo. This would not only check the Japanese from advancing farther south but from indulging in any military adventure, such as attacking Siberia, while the danger existed of our immediate intervention against them. This would relieve pressure on the Far Eastern Red Army and permit it to send urgently needed reinforcements to the troops fighting the Germans in European Russia.

The use of our Atlantic antisubmarine vessels in complete cooperation with the British Navy in all the war zones would help break the German counter-blockade and permit a greater quantity of supplies to reach the British armed forces. It would enable us to seize those positions we need off the west coast of Africa and on the coast, and thus provide the first step toward establishing another take-off place for an expeditionary force against the Reich. The example of America’s entering the war could lead Weygand, or other authorities in Morocco, to consider collaboration with us instead of with the Germans; the north African coast has long been kept in mind as a possible springboard for invading Europe. America’s entry into the war would for the first time enable the British to attempt invasion of the continent. Until now the British have had to keep at home more reserves than they would need if they knew the American Army would soon be at their side.

Even with our Army in its present state of semi-preparedness, we have enough completely trained Regular Army and Marine units to be able to send abroad for active service an important contingent which would either take its place immediately in an invasion force or replace British units assigned to that task. The first effect upon the Germans of the intelligence that the British were seriously preparing to attempt an invasion would be to compel them to send back troops from Russia to threatened points in Europe.

Finally, from the broadest strategical standpoint, the entry of the United States would turn the tables on the Germans who until now have had the advantage of initiative and surprise. Throughout the world until now Hitler has kept the world wondering “where is he going to strike next?” With the United States in the war, it would be the turn of the Axis powers to wonder where the Anglo-American-Russian forces were going to strike next, and Hitler would be forced to keep large numbers of troops stationed at every point where our forces could possibly attack.

Q. _The Russian resistance to the German attack seems to have surprised nearly everybody. How do you explain it?_

A. There are many reasons for it. It is true that almost every expert expected the Russians to collapse within a few weeks after Hitler began his drive. Walter Duranty is the only one I know who said from the outset that the Red Army would hold much longer than the outside world seemed to expect.

The first reason for Russian resistance is that this was the first time Hitler ever tackled a country with _lives to waste_ and _miles to waste_. Its 200,000,000 population lived almost like animals, but most of them flourished like healthy animals on their black bread and cabbage and made sturdy fighting material. They claimed around 12,000,000 soldiers in their standing army and reserve. Thus they could lose as many men as the entire German Army and still have left an army as big as the former French Army. In fighting against the Germans they could afford to lose two to one and still have superiority in numbers. Their high command knew this and wasted lives with abandon but sometimes to advantage. The same advantage in size held with respect to terrain. They could afford to retreat over distances equivalent to the width of many European countries and still have room to live in, just as the Chinese did.

The second reason for Russian resistance is that this was the first time Hitler had ever struck an army and a generation untouched by the humanizing influence of Christianity, immune to any form of pacifism, unsoftened by Western civilization. It was the first time Hitler had ever struck an army that had been taught that all life is struggle, that to fight for the Soviet Union was the noblest thing a man or woman could do, the first time the Nazis had met a fanaticism sharper than theirs. The Bolsheviks invented totalitarian fanaticism; the Nazis only copied it.

It was the first time the Germans had come up against a people more savage than themselves. The Bolsheviks were ahead of the Nazis in pronouncing that the end justifies the means, and the oriental Russians surpassed the occidental Germans in cruelty. The Germans have known Hitlerism only since 1933 and until that time they had normal contacts with the outside world. The Russians have known nothing but Bolshevism since 1918 and from that moment on have been hermetically sealed from the outside world.

For war-making this savage insularity has its uses. The Red Army is even more fanatically homogeneous in its political faiths and hatreds than is the Nazi Army. Everybody under the age of forty in Russia today has experienced either throughout life or in adult life nothing but the Soviet regime. The Russians have the advantage that they have been practicing totalitarians all their lives and are used to it. For the civilian population not immediately in the path of the battles there was less change in the move from peace to war in the Soviet Union than in any other belligerent state, because the Russians have been living on a war footing since 1918.

During this generation of hardships their Asiatic characteristics have been deepened, their fatalistic contempt for death increased. They are content to let the Party guide their emotions. There are no Hamlets among them. The Russians Dostoevsky wrote about, who dreamed and sorrowed and could not act--all these have long been eliminated. Also no living inhabitant of the Soviet Union has been corrupted by ease or luxury! Yet because they are completely cut off from the outside world the Russians think the Soviet Union superior to any other country. This is an advantage in war.

Isolated and youthful, the Russians after twenty-three years of suffering and historically unparalleled loss of life through revolution, famine, and terror, still were not disillusioned by a political, social, and economic system which had given them a standard of living and culture beneath that of any large white community in the world. There were no ideological divisions to rend the nation, since all who differed with the ruling clique were liquidated the moment the difference became apparent. Hence there was no Fifth Column in Russia. Since Soviet justice or Stalin policy goes on the principle that it is better to execute a hundred innocents than to let one guilty escape, the purge of 1934-1938 probably did eliminate important Fifth Columnists, together with many valuable military and industrial leaders.

A third reason for the strength of the Russian resistance is that the Red Army for the past twenty-three years has received a larger share of the national income in peacetime than any other defense force of any nation has ever enjoyed, including Germany. Though Russia starved, the Red Army ate well. On the four occasions--1925-1927, 1930, 1934, and 1937--when I visited the Soviet Union and worked there as a correspondent, I noticed that no matter how poorly the rest of the population was dressed, Red Army soldiers always wore good uniforms and strong leather boots. This was because ever since the Soviet Union was born, every leader from Lenin and Trotzky to Stalin was profoundly convinced that “the capitalist world will never permit the Socialist State to exist and some day will seek to destroy us.”

Of course this attack of Hitler’s is not the attack of the capitalist world upon the Socialist State, and the Socialist State now finds the capitalist world its only ally. Nevertheless the unshakable and correct Bolshevik belief in inevitable war led the regime to impose the greatest sacrifices upon the people for the sake of the armed forces, and even though the Soviet economy was most backward, the enormous amounts expended were bound to have effect.

Even in American terms the Soviet defense budget was large. In 1940 it was the equivalent of $11,000,000,000, and represented one-third of the national expenditure. Measure this against the fact that the infinitely richer United States will approximate the expenditure of that much yearly only in 1942 after two years of our greatest defense effort.

Most of the money spent on the Red Army and Air Force went for machines of war. Twenty-three years ago when the Bolshevik revolution took place there were few machines in Russia. Marx said Communism must come in a highly industrialized society. The Bolsheviks identified their dreams of socialist happiness with machines which would multiply production and reduce hours of labor until everyone would have everything he needed and would work only as much as he wished. Somehow this has not come about, but the Russians still worship machines, and this helped make the Red Army the most highly mechanized in the world, except perhaps the German Army now.

Like Americans, the Russians admire size, bigness, large numbers. They took pride in building a vast army of tanks, some of them the largest in the world, armored cars, airplanes, motorized guns, and every variety of mechanical weapon. Their quality was seldom the best. Few things produced in the Soviet Union have attained high quality, but the attempt is made to compensate by quantity.

Bolshevik love of novelty, eagerness to experiment and try new things (they invented parachute troops), their willingness to discard traditional methods, and their liking for youthful leadership all were advantages. The Red Army apparently was the only one to learn from the lessons of the German campaign in Poland--which were open for the instruction of the French, British, Dutch, Belgians, and every other country in Europe, but were ignored by all of them. Stalin’s purge of the Red Army wherein he executed or otherwise eliminated one-fourth of the senior officers was believed at the time to have done unmitigated harm, but besides the probability that it disposed of some real Fifth Columnists, it destroyed nearly all the older generals, and left the field for men under fifty. Voroshiloff and Budenny were vestigial exceptions. In this day of brand-new warfare youth has an advantage.

We have to include here also the fact that the Russian is an excellent pilot. He has reckless courage, keen eyesight, abounding health, contempt for the enemy, and fanatical belief in his cause. The Russians have a word they like to apply to themselves, _Shirokaya Natura_, meaning broad-natured, lavish-tempered. That is a characteristic of all the good pilots I have ever known. It means they are ready to spend themselves, their lives, as readily as they spend their money. The R.A.F. has it, Udet has it, Goering has it, the American and Canadian pilots have it, and the Russians have it. I dare say Lindbergh must have had it once. There are millions of boys in Russia of pilot age.

The fourth set of reasons for Russian resistance is based upon the immense benefit the Red Army won through the occupation of the Finnish Mannerheim line, the Baltic states, Eastern Poland, and Bessarabia during the time Hitler was busy conquering the rest of Europe. This action of Stalin’s was typical of the principle that the end justifies the means. If you believed in this principle and in the righteousness of the Soviet cause, you would now have to admit that the end did justify the means in this case, since the creation of this screen of territory enabled the Red Army to defeat the Blitz.

The term Blitzkrieg, frequently misused, technically means the destruction of your enemy by action so swift that he is not able to mobilize, or bring up his forces to meet yours at the decisive point. The screen of occupied territory slowed up the Germans long enough for the Red Army to mobilize fully. Thereafter the great distances, the bad roads, the unfavorable weather, and the scorched-earth policy impeded the German advance, while Russian guerilla warfare proved more effective than anything of the kind the Germans had ever met.

Russian guerilla fighting is not the old-fashioned kind, where a farmer hides with a shotgun to catch an enemy sentry with his back turned. During the Russian Civil War, the most ferocious conflict of modern times until its Spanish equivalent, the Reds especially developed Partisan warfare. This consisted in deliberately hiding companies of several score or hundred heavily armed men until the enemy passed forward. These guerillas would then attack from the rear, usually by night, and often annihilate whole detachments of the enemy. Their ambushes, ruses, and surprises were endlessly ingenious. The guerillas seldom wore uniforms. They were invariably shot if captured. They also never took prisoners except to obtain information by torture. They were extremely successful. Heretofore the Germans have been able to terrorize their conquered populations by the exercise of utterly ruthless Terror. They will have less success with the Russians than with any people they have yet tried to break, except perhaps the Serbs.

Q. _But that is a very long list of reasons for Russian resistance. Can’t you sum them up for us in a word?_

A. Yes, the answer is morale, or better, faith. That word with its deep Christian connotations may sound blasphemous when applied to the atheist Bolsheviks, but it is a true faith, in reverse, founded upon hatred. It may be objected that faith is a positive force and it may be asked in what do the Russians have faith? In their dogma, their doctrine, their nation, or faith in themselves, or the faith that lies in their deep attachment to their soil? Or is it not their faith in the unspeakably evil character of their enemies? I think it is the last. The Bolsheviks have taught all Russians to hate the Fascists, as they generically call the Nazis, with a ferocity which surpasses anything in our experience. This sort of faithful hatred is a terrific force. It inspires to limitless valor. It is a priceless asset in war. The Russians see the Nazi legions as the incarnation of wickedness, led by the devil himself. They are right. Furthermore they are inspired to fight by the belief, also correct, that if they lose they will suffer intolerable punishment. Unlike the French they have no illusions about the fate that awaits them at the hands of the man who has called them the “scum of the earth.”

This hatred of their enemies and fear of the consequences of defeat are probably the strongest feelings animating the Russians in battle, but they have also an incredible faith in themselves. It makes no difference that this faith is founded for the most part on lack of knowledge of the outside world, and the absence of any chance to compare themselves with other nations and other systems: they are unshakably convinced that they are what would have been called in another time and another place, “God’s anointed.” An American general defined morale as “when a soldier thinks his army is the best in the world, his regiment the best in the army, his company the best in the regiment, his squad the best in the company, and that he himself is the best blankety-blank soldier man in the outfit.” This is what the Red Army soldier thinks. The Red Army was not impressed by the German victory in France. After all, the defeated were “just Frenchmen, just _bourgeoisie_.”

The average Russian has a strong conviction, unspecified and unsupported by evidence, but forming a subconscious background for all his thinking about the war, that the citizens of the outside world, in “capitalist-imperialist” and “capitalist-fascist” states alike, are composed of two classes, depraved slave drivers and spiritless slaves. He even looks down on the proletariat abroad which has gone these twenty years without making the revolution the Russians made. It was a bitter revelation to many an American and other foreign Communist leader on visiting Moscow the first time, to be assigned a cubbyhole in the old Lux Hotel, and to be forced to wait hours for an audience with a Russian official who scarcely troubled to conceal his contempt for the inferior foreign communist.

We are surprised that the Russians, after all these years of starving and pain and suffering, should still possess the morale to fight, but we overlooked the fact that faith thrives on tribulation. The British had no faith and no morale until they were threatened with death and punished with fire. Today they have a faith in their cause such as they have not had since they became a nation, and now they announce they will scorch the earth, and if necessary burn London before the advance of an invader. Today the British are poor in food and clothes and lodgings, but rich in spirit. The Russians are likewise, and though it is painful to say it, so are the Germans. We alone among the nations are still rich in material goods and poor in spirit, for we lack faith. Where are those among us furious to fight for liberty and democracy?

Q. _Do you mean to say the Russians have more faith in their cause than we do in ours?_

A. I do.

Q. _How can you say such a thing, how do you mean it?_

A. I think you are surprised because you confuse faith and morality. They have nothing to do with each other.

The morality of the Nazis and the Bolsheviks is abhorrent. That has nothing to do with the fact that their faith was strong enough to make them great warriors. The best fighters in the Spanish Civil War, Ernest Hemingway testifies, were the Moors. Those skinny brown men, who looked so insignificant and whose behavior was so abominable, were always chosen, if available, to be the shock troops, as when they relieved the Alcazar. They fought with the bravery traditional of the Mohammedan warrior from the Ottoman Turks to the Afghans. Their morals were criminal. They butchered, looted, raped with neither compunction nor discrimination.

I have seen them walking down a village street laden with sewing machines, women’s clothing, surgical instruments, and chicken feed to set up shop in a Cathedral underneath the image of the Saviour whose head they had hacked off. Decent folk on Franco’s side were appalled, but Franco could not do without them. They had a faith that only the Catholic Requetés on the one hand and the Communists on the other could equal, and when they went into battle the Moors sang. I have heard them and reflected that good and evil have nothing to do with faith which moves mountains and wins wars. Are we today in the United States going into battle singing? We are not even going into battle, although we admit it is ours.

Q. _Do you mean to say the Moors fought for the Mohammedan faith in Spain?_

A. I do not. I mean to say that they fought because they believe the profession of a man is to fight, and in fighting they are upheld in spirit by their belief in Allah, and their faith in his promises.

Q. _What do the Russians fight for? They have no Allah and believe in no hereafter._

A. I am not sure that either of those statements is correct. The images of Lenin, Stalin, and Marx blend in the primitive Soviet Russian mind together with dim memories of Orthodox ritual to make up a kind of ikon of Communism. In some minds it may be only the figure of Father Lenin, now mummified, deified, or at least sanctified, in his glass coffin on the Red Square, but in all save the minds of the intellectualized leaders there is some personification of the faith. As for belief in a hereafter, I have sometimes wondered if even the highest leaders of the Party are always as sure as their Bezbozhnik Society, the Society of the Godless, professes to be.

The Bezbozhniks’ battle against God would be meaningless unless they thought, however subconsciously, that there must be something there to fight. Twice I have seen Stalin stand at the graveside of a lifetime comrade, once at the burial of Frunze and once at Kirov’s, and each time as the final words were spoken and the earth fell and the bells of the Kremlin tolled, I scrutinized his face for a sign of his thoughts and under the spell of the moment I always thought I could see the flicker of a question across his gloomy face. As a matter of fact I suppose he was absorbed in thinking how to finish the ceremony as quickly as possible in order to get back to his office and ensure that a good Stalin man succeeded the dead.

Q. _Is it true that in order to curry favor with the outside world the Soviet government has restored freedom of worship?_