Transcriber’s Note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.
* * * * *
Is Tomorrow Hitler’s?
* * * * *
H. R. KNICKERBOCKER
IS TOMORROW HITLER’S?
200 Questions
On the Battle of Mankind
Reynal & Hitchcock : New York
* * * * *
COPYRIGHT, 1941, BY H. R. KNICKERBOCKER
_All rights reserved, including the right to
reproduce this book, or portions
thereof, in any form_
Second Printing
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY THE CORNWALL PRESS, CORNWALL, N. Y.
* * * * *
TO AGNES
CONTENTS
_NOTE: This descriptive table of contents gives only a sampling of the
many provocative questions discussed._
CHAPTER PAGE
FOREWORD xi
INTRODUCTION xv
1. GERMANY 1
Have you ever met Hitler?
What impression does he make when you meet him?
Does Hitler’s personality grow upon closer acquaintance?
Is Hitler personally brave?
Is it true that Hitler is a homosexual?
Are women attracted to Hitler?
What kind of public speaker is Hitler?
What is the secret of Hitler’s power?
Do you think Hitler is personally responsible for the war?
Is Hitler the real boss of Germany?
Are any of the men around Hitler of a calibre to succeed him?
Does Hitler actually direct his battles as did Napoleon?
Why didn’t Hitler attack England after Dunkirk?
What was Hitler’s second mistake?
Isn’t there anything constructive about Hitlerism?
How has Hitler run his show without money, without gold,
without foreign exchange?
Can the Nazi economy continue to run indefinitely?
How can you describe the German people as hysterical?
What would happen if Hitler were killed?
Why doesn’t somebody kill Hitler?
What was the explanation of the bombing attempt on Hitler in
the Munich Beer Hall?
Were the Nazi atrocity stories exaggerated?
Do you consider _Out of the Night_ authentic?
Hasn’t Hitler proved he is an enemy of Bolshevism by attacking
Russia?
What should we do with Hitler after he is defeated?
2. RUSSIA 88
What is the best way for the United States to help the Russians?
How can the Russian resistance to the German attack be explained?
What do the Russians fight for?
Is it true that the Soviet government has restored freedom of
worship?
Are we running a risk if we support the Russians?
Can Stalin be trusted?
Under what circumstances would Stalin make a separate peace?
What would be the effect of such a compromise peace on Great
Britain and the United States?
What is the NKVD?
Are the peasants better off on collective farms?
How about the Soviet elections of which we hear?
Why do you give so much importance to the Soviet Terror?
How do you explain Russian inefficiency and wastefulness?
How has the Red Army been able to stand up so well?
Could Stalin carry on with the resources of the Urals?
3. ENGLAND 139
What place will Churchill have in history?
Is Churchill really backed by the English people?
Can Churchill be trusted?
What does Churchill think of the United States?
What are Churchill’s characteristics as a person?
Would the British Navy survive the fall of the British Isles?
How can the flight of Hess be explained?
What is the secret of Churchill’s success?
What are Churchill’s principal interests?
4. WAR AIMS 184
What are Britain’s war aims?
What was the meaning of the Churchill-Roosevelt meeting?
How can the gains of victory be consolidated?
Will the United States come out of the war in a better economic
condition than others?
What will the peace conference be like?
In what sense will the conquered peoples be slaves?
How could we compete with Hitler after a German victory?
Can’t American labor produce better and cheaper than slave labor?
What are Hitler’s plans for Europe?
What kind of negotiated peace would be acceptable to the Axis?
What is the text of Hitler’s terms?
What chance has Communism in a defeated Germany?
Is there any way to render Germany impotent?
Is the problem of the Germans insoluble?
Will England come out of the war with a socialist system?
What is to be done with all the former nations of Europe?
5. FRANCE 234
Why did France fall?
Were there traitors on the French General Staff?
How did treason manifest itself in the operations of the army?
Who gave the orders?
What is the opinion of informed Frenchmen?
Is Pétain a patriot or traitor, or misguided?
Is Pétain moved by personal ambition?
What would Hitler do if he finally tired of fooling with Vichy?
What about Darlan? And Laval?
Has Laval a chance to seize power?
In what way are we Americans very much like the French?
Are there any encouraging differences between ourselves and the
unfortunate French?
Is there any hope that the French may come back?
Will Hitler’s treatment of France be different later?
How was the French indemnity fixed?
How does this compare with the reparations paid by Germany
after the World War?
What is Hitler doing with French industry?
Should we continue diplomatic relations with Vichy?
6. THE UNITED STATES 293
What is the greatest danger we face as a nation today?
Is our morale very bad?
What is the state of our armament?
If we have nothing to fight with, how can we go to war?
Could Hitler succeed in invading the British Isles?
Why doesn’t Ireland allow Britain to take over naval bases?
Is it true that Hitler wants to destroy the United States?
Haven’t we plenty to do at home without getting into a foreign
war?
Why do you think we ought to go to war with Germany today?
Why would a declaration of war be worth so much immediately?
What effect would a declaration of war have on the morale of
the Army?
But weren’t we suckers in the last war?
Would an American declaration of war have any effect on the
morale of the Germans?
Would another A.E.F. be required?
Might a new League of Nations be successful?
7. FIFTH COLUMNISTS 339
What makes Lindbergh the way he is?
Are we fair in calling Lindbergh a Copperhead?
What is the reason for the divorce between Lindbergh and the
American people?
Why did Lindbergh attack the Jews?
What is to be the fate of the Jews?
What are Lindbergh’s arguments against our entering the war?
What is the answer to America’s Fifth Columnists?
FOREWORD
I met H. R. Knickerbocker way back in 1927 or thereabouts. Those were
the good old days. They were the days of the Long Armistice. No one
had ever heard of the Rome-Berlin Axis, Stuka dive bombers, or the
Haushofer Plan. Mr. Roosevelt was out of politics, Mr. Churchill was
a chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Lindbergh had just flown the
Atlantic. We talked of such neolithic creatures as Pilsudski of Poland
and Alexander of Jugoslavia, and most of us thought that Hitler was a
bad Austrian joke, more or less. Those were the good old days. Even so,
thunderheads were gathering.
I first met Mr. Knickerbocker in Berlin. This was fitting, since
Berlin was his bailiwick. We all had bailiwicks in those days. Duranty
was in Moscow, Raymond Swing was in London, and Dorothy Thompson had
just left Berlin. I was bouncing all over the place. I didn’t have my
bailiwick yet. We were all very good friends. We formed a kind of fluid
international community. We were buzzards in every foreign office, and
kings on every wagon-lit.
We didn’t meet often, since we lived in different cities, and it took
something of a catastrophe to bring us all together. When we did meet,
the vault of heaven shook. I remember days--and nights--in Geneva,
Bucharest, Cairo, Helsingfors. I think of Sheean, the Mowrers, Webb
Miller, Shirer, Jay Allen, Fodor, Whitaker, and many more. Don’t let me
sound nostalgic. I am thinking merely that we have all grown up. We are
not cameras any longer.
This foreword is not about Mr. Knickerbocker’s book. Let that speak
for itself. Knick is the most pertinacious, plausible, and inquisitive
question-asker I ever met. In this book he answers questions instead
of asking them. I like to see the tables turned. I don’t know that I
agree with all his answers. But let him answer them.
This foreword is about Mr. Knickerbocker himself. His flaming red
hair, his flaming red personality (I mean “red” chromatically, not
politically) are famous on four continents. He needs no introduction.
But certain nuggets of memory stay fixed in mind. I remember the time
he fed me caviar inside a baked potato, at Horcher’s in Berlin, and
I remember the time I fed him a dinner in London that, deliberately,
we planned so that it would cost exactly five pounds. I remember the
time that he took me to hear Putzi Hanfstaengl hammer out a tornado
of Wagner in the Hotel Kaiserhof, and I remember the time I took him
across the freezing Danube, on the way to Sofia, in what was supposed
to be a rowboat. I remember week-ends on the Semmering, bad oysters
in Madrid, evenings in the Café Royal, drinks in Rome, Budapest, and
points beyond.
Knick’s career has been spectacular in more than one dimension. He
once set out to fly the Atlantic, as a passenger in a German plane,
long before the Lindbergh flight; he was the only correspondent during
the Ethiopian war to glimpse the front from the air; he has had more
interviews with European heads of state, I imagine, than any other
newspaper man alive.
Mr. Knickerbocker was born in Texas in 1898. He went to Europe in
1923, and, a student of psychiatry at the University of Munich, walked
straight into Hitler’s Beerhall Putsch. He studied briefly in Vienna,
and then got a job in Berlin on the _New York Evening Post-Philadelphia
Public Ledger_ foreign service. Since then his career has been a
calendar of most of the great events of our time. He spent two years in
Moscow as correspondent for the International News Service (this was in
1924-26, when Trotsky was declining and the N.E.P. expanding), and in
1928 took over Dorothy Thompson’s job as chief correspondent in Berlin
for the _Public Ledger_. He won a Pulitzer prize for distinguished
foreign correspondence--a series of articles on Russia’s Five Year
Plan, but for almost ten years Berlin was the blazing focus of his life.
Meantime there were trips to take. In 1933 he travelled all over Europe
for a series, “Will War Come in Europe?” for I.N.S. He saw the death
of Dollfuss in Vienna, and the burial of Hindenburg in Germany. He met
Mussolini, Masaryk, King Alexander, King Boris, Otto Habsburg, and
hosts of others. He did one series of articles on Russia and the Baltic
states, comparing living standards under communism and capitalism, and
another surveying economic aspects of the Europe that was crumbling.
Came the war in Ethiopia in 1935, which he covered on Haile Selassie’s
side. I will never forget the agitated days in London when Knick was
accumulating the vast equipment he took along. In 1936 came the Spanish
civil war, and the next year the war in China. He saw bombings all
the way from Toledo to Nanking. He returned to Europe to cover the
Anschluss crisis and the Munich disaster; then he dipped briefly into
South America, and reached Peru. Then Europe called again; he saw the
beginning of World War II in London and France, and in 1940 accompanied
the French armies till they collapsed, and then saw the battle of
Britain at its fiercest climax, in September.
But let me go back to those days in Berlin. The main point I want to
make has to do with Knickerbocker in Berlin. During the turbulent
1930’s he was much more than a journalist covering Germany; he was a
definite public character in German political life. After Hindenburg
and Hitler, he was practically the best known man in the country. His
_réclame_ was fabulous, personally and politically. Everyone knew the
lithe, active, red-haired Herr Knickerbocker (pronounce the K, please).
Once a musical comedy was named for him--supreme tribute!
Partly this was because he published half a dozen books in German,
compiled from the long newspaper articles he wrote, which appeared
serially in the _Vossische Zeitung_ or the _Berliner Tageblatt_. The
books were extraordinarily successful in Germany; they introduced
German readers to a new type of American journalism. Among them were
_Der Rote Handel Droht!_, _Der Rote Handel Lockt!_, _Kommt Europe
Wieder Hoch?_, _Rote Wirtschaft und Weisse Wohlstand!_, _England’s
Wirtschaft und Schwarzhemden!_, _Deutschland So oder So!_, and _Kommt
Krieg in Europa?_
Knick knew practically every human being of consequence in Germany. He
explored the country from top to bottom. He talked to Hitler, Spengler,
Brüning, Goering, Goebbels. Then Hitler came to power. At the time
Knickerbocker was in the middle of a German lecture tour that had begun
in the Lessing Hochschule in Berlin. Knick watched the Nazi revolution
crushingly obliterate all opposition. He wrote a series exposing the
Brown Terror that caused violent comment in New York as well as Berlin.
Presently he was excluded from the country. There are hate affairs as
well as love affairs. The hate affair between Hitler and Knickerbocker
is one of the most torrid in political history.
But this should not detract from the main point, which is that Knick
knows the real Germany, loves it, and respects it. He is a Nazi-hater,
but not a German-hater. His authority on the subject is authentic and
complete.
_John Gunther_
INTRODUCTION
There is no such thing as winning a fight without passion. France went
to war apologetically; France fought the war without music, and so
France lost. Britain went to war apologetically, but Britain had the
inestimable advantage of being bombed, and today for the first time
in 100 years Britain is angry and is fighting as she has never fought
before. We, the United States, are today apologetic, so sorry that it
seems we after all are called upon to fight, and some of us still say
we should not fight, and others say we must fight only with aviators
and sailors, and never with infantrymen, and very few indeed are the
strains of martial music throughout the land. From all sides we are
called upon to restrain our emotions, and it is said that the cool head
is the shrewd head, and that is correct, of course, but a cool head
without a hot heart is useless on a battlefield. Without anger there
can be no victory and useful anger is based upon understanding. Unless
the American people can be brought to understand that our national
existence and our individual security are today in peril, and unless
the American people become angry at the enemy, we shall become a part
of Hitler’s Reich.
History may eventually record that Britain was saved by the bombs
Hitler has rained upon her since the fall of France. Unless they
annihilate the British, these bombs will have fulfilled a function
Hitler never imagined. He thought they would terrorize the British into
surrender; instead the bombs aroused a resistance such as no other
population has ever shown, for the prolonged punishment of Britain’s
cities has been worse than anything we know of elsewhere, including
Belgrade, Warsaw, Rotterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, or Chungking. The
British required this experience to awaken them. They had been at war
eight months when the Germans finally attacked in the West, but they
had not given up the grand old British custom of the Friday to Tuesday
week end. It took the German break-through on the Meuse, and then the
German bombs on London, to shock every inhabitant of the British Isles
into the realization that they faced death for their nation and death
or slavery for themselves unless they fought with a ferocity even
greater than that of their jungle enemies.
We are today as sound asleep as the British were before May 1940.
We are as sound asleep as the French were before they saw their
fortifications fall and their army of 4,500,000 soldiers with the
tradition of Napoleon dissolve between May 10 and June 17, in five
weeks of the greatest military debacle of all time. We have had no
bombs on America, and presumably shall not have them until it is time
to trek for the Rocky Mountains. A sober American patriot remarked,
“How fortunate Britain has been to have had the bombs to arouse her
martial spirit before it was too late. If Hitler were to have a lapse
in judgment and send just half a dozen bombers over New York, and drop
just half a dozen bombs, it might be the salvation of America.” But
Hitler will do no such thing. He is glad to accommodate those Americans
who refuse to believe they are threatened until they are physically
attacked. When and if the Germans break through upon America we shall
awake to find ourselves alone, cut off, surrounded, outnumbered,
outgunned, and outlawed amid a world of enemies.
A few of us, chiefly correspondents formerly in Germany, have been
trying to do duty for German bombs on America, and for the German
break-through. We have been called alarmists. For years the world of
international observers was divided into two groups: the one composed
of nearly everybody on earth outside of Germany, who understood nothing
of the true character of Hitler’s Third Reich; and the second tiny
group, small enough to be contained within a lecture hall, composed
of correspondents, diplomats, and a few businessmen who had firsthand
knowledge of what the Nazis mean. Today a good many persons without
this intimate knowledge of Nazi Germany have been able to decide for
themselves about the character of a regime which has overrun fifteen
countries in three years, but the danger to America still looks very
remote and impersonal to millions of patriotic citizens. I have been
talking to about 100,000 of these citizens, during a lecture series.
My thesis was in brief: That the United States should be in a state of
formal, shooting war with Germany as speedily as possible because only
by this means can we make the world safe for America; and that we must
realize that after going to war we have only begun a task which may
last for many years and one which we can fulfill only by learning to
fight with even more fervor than the demoniac Nazi shock troops, and by
greater national self-sacrifice than we have ever been called upon to
make.
On this thesis I was asked around 3,000 questions during the question
period following the lectures. For this book I have chosen around
200 as representative of what the American people are thinking. I
have arranged the questions in categories and have added many recent
ones to bring the Forum up to date. Eager, painful, almost agonizing
concern for the future of America was the background of these queries
from audiences in 128 communities, including two-thirds of all cities
of more than 100,000 population and scores of towns and villages. The
people with whom I talked ranged from millionaire winter tourists
in Florida to coal miners in Pennsylvania, applegrowers in Yakima,
oilmen in Oklahoma, college boys in the Great Lakes states, farmers
in the Midwest, workers, bankers, club ladies, teachers, cowhands,
Catholics, Jews, Protestants, atheists, Yankees, Southerners, Texans,
Westerners--Americans.
I am convinced that these earnest Americans, representing through
their family and friendly connections at least ten times their number,
or more than 1,000,000 persons, are far in advance of the President’s
moves toward active defense, just as the President has always been far
ahead of the Congress. They wanted action even before the President
offered it. Among 3,000 questioners there were not more than six openly
hostile hecklers from the floor. Would it be too hopeful to say that
America is 2,994 to 6 in favor of liberty?
1. GERMANY
Q. _Have you ever met Hitler?_
A. Many times. From 1923 until today I have watched and studied him
and a good part of that time I was close enough to have opportunities
for firsthand observation. I first heard him speak in August 1923, not
long before his unsuccessful attempt to seize power, in the famous
Beer Hall Putsch, and then I witnessed the Putsch, and reported his
trial with Ludendorff for treason. He was released from Landsberg
Prison in December 1924 where he had been held in comfortable “fortress
confinement” just long enough for him to have time conveniently to
write _Mein Kampf_. I interviewed him for the first time in the Brown
House in Munich in 1932. Thereafter I had a series of interviews with
him, and was present at many of the great moments of his career.
Q. _What impression does he make when you meet him?_
A. The first impression he makes upon any non-German is that he looks
silly. Not to a German, mind you, and I suppose he did not look silly
to any of those heads of European states who crawled to Berchtesgaden
to get their orders. But to a foreigner not subject to his commands he
certainly looks silly. I know that is a strong word to use about a man
who has already conquered a continent but it fits.
I remember well the first time I ever laid eyes on him, in August
1923, when he was speaking at the Zirkus Krone in Munich--I broke out
laughing. Even if you had never heard of him you would be bound to
say, “He looks like a caricature of himself.” The moustache and the
lock of hair over the forehead help this look, but chiefly it is the
expression of his face, and especially the blank stare of his eyes,
and the foolish set of his mouth in repose. Sometimes he looks like a
man who ought to go around with his mouth open, chin hanging in the
style of a surprised farm hand. Other times he clamps his lips together
so tightly and juts out his jaw with such determination that again he
looks silly, as though he were putting on an act.
Indeed Hitler is, more than anything else, an actor. He will go on
being one the rest of his life, a great actor who in his role as tyrant
conqueror will have affected the destinies of more millions of people
than any other human being in history, but an actor to the last, a
tragedian whom no one would take seriously until he began shooting at
his audience. Even in the midst of his triumphs he manages to look
silly to any outsider capable for the moment of detaching himself from
horrified contemplation of the fate inflicted upon his victims.
I remember watching him roll down the Ringstrasse in Vienna standing
beside the chauffeur in a cream-colored Mercedes car, with his arm
outstretched in the stiff salute he affects on such occasions, the
hand rigidly held at a slight angle downward. It was the moment of
his conquest of Austria. The streets were crowded with half a million
people, a few cheering sincerely, many cheering out of fear, and
hundreds of thousands grim-faced, weeping inwardly.
At that moment when I, too, felt like weeping at the abasement of the
city where I had worked and danced and studied and played when I first
came to Europe fifteen years before, even at such a moment I found
myself smiling and saying to friends looking out the window of my room
in the Hotel Bristol, “Doesn’t he look silly?” That oversized cap of
his, the military cap with the too-large crown and the visor which
completely hides his low forehead!
There is something absurd even about his stance as he rides his
victorious chariot through freshly conquered cities. He is softly fat
about the hips and this gives his figure a curiously female appearance.
A scientist friend of mine watching him once remarked that Hitler
seemed afflicted by _steatopygia_, which he defined as “an excessive
development of fat on the buttocks, especially in _females_.” It is
possible that the strongly feminine element in Hitler’s character
is one of the reasons for his violence. He realizes his femininity,
is ashamed of it, wishes to be a man, and overcompensates by brutal
behavior. This little fatty-hipped, slope-shouldered, lonely figure,
standing so inflexibly, his arm outstretched so tautly, his eyes
staring over the heads of his subjects, is incredible. “No,” you say to
yourself, “this can’t be true.”
If this odd creature finally conquers the world, his last victims,
we once proud Americans, would still be saying as we filed into
concentration camp, “It’s impossible. He looks too silly.” But he is
not silly. My friend, Captain Philippe Barres of the French Army, one
of those who did not surrender, remarked to another Frenchman: “You
say Hitler is merely a madman, an idiot. I suppose you must be one of
those Frenchmen who prefer to have been conquered by an idiot than by a
clever man.”
Oh no, he certainly is not an idiot; but is it not incredible that
this mighty conqueror, now master over two hundred and fifty million
Europeans--more civilized white human beings than ever before came
under the tyranny of a single despot--and now reaching out to drive
another thousand million under his yoke, that this man usually looks
completely insignificant? I am sure that was the first impression
Mussolini had of him. I saw the two dictators when they first met and
Hitler never looked sillier in his life than at that time.
Q. _How did the two behave toward each other? Did they seem to like
each other?_
A. Not much. It was June 14, 1934 when Hitler first visited Italy to
meet the Duce and discuss with him the fate of Austria. Hitler had
not yet created his army and Mussolini could still talk on terms of
equality, or even a little better. Mussolini wanted to impress his
guest as much as possible with the power and glory of Fascist Italy.
Hitler had to try to impress Mussolini with the coming strength of Nazi
Germany. Mussolini, being at home, had all the advantage. For Hitler
the trip itself must have been a great experience because it was the
first time he had ever been out of Germany or Austria in his whole
life, if you except the time he spent as a soldier in the trenches of
Northern France.
Mussolini proved a great stage manager. He arranged the meeting to take
place in Venice, and had his guest land on the airfield of the Lido.
The fact that it was an island made it easy for the authorities to
exclude the public, and when Hitler arrived he stepped directly into a
perfectly appointed theater.
There were representatives of all the Italian armed forces, companies
of Bersaglieri, Alpini, Sailors, Airmen, and the Black Shirt Fascist
Militia, and a group of the highest civilian officials in black uniform
with the black-tasseled fez caps of the party, surrounding the Duce
himself who was in the powder-blue uniform of a Corporal of the Fascist
Militia.
Mussolini used to think of himself as the successor to the Corsican
Corporal. I remember once noticing that the only ornament on his desk
was a framed portrait of Napoleon. I remarked on it, and Mussolini
exclaimed, “A great Italian!” One of the Duce’s most ambitious literary
ventures was a play called _The Hundred Days_. Whether he is still able
after Greece, Libya, and Ethiopia to fancy himself in the role of a
conqueror when he meets Hitler now, he still appears in the uniform of
a corporal as when he met Hitler the first time.
The only persons on the field not in uniform were the foreign
correspondents and we looked very dim compared with the brilliant
Italians. Mussolini appeared a few minutes early and when he strode
down the line and looked over his warriors he made a most vigorous
impression. He had an electric step; his feet seemed to bounce off the
ground, and the air vibrated with his personality. After he finished
reviewing his troops he came over and stood within a few feet of us and
we waited.
Presently Hitler’s Junkers plane roared down out of the sky, landed,
taxied up to us, and came to a full stop. The door opened. The Italian
troops, dazzling in full dress, presented arms. The Fascist officials
stood at attention. The sunshine sparkled on Mussolini’s gold braid
and the Duce, stepping close to the open door of the airplane, flung
out his arm in a Roman salute with so much energy that it seemed as
though he might lose his hand. He trembled with passion. Then, out of
the shadow of the door, emerged Hitler. There, before the splendid
Italians, he stood, a faint little man arrayed in his old worn
raincoat, his blue serge suit, and a brand-new Fedora hat. His right
hand faltered up in the Nazi salute.
He gives the salute two ways. For reviewing his own troops or crowds
he gives it stiff-arm. This is his Prussian style. For greeting
individuals he gives the salute, Viennese style, with a limp hand, the
arm not outstretched but bent at the elbow and the hand flopping back
until it almost touches his shoulder, then flopping forward feebly. He
used the Viennese version on Mussolini. Hitler was embarrassed. Later
we learned he had threatened to dismiss Baron von Neurath, then chief
of protocol, for having advised him to come in civilian clothes.
The Fuehrer stood for a moment, blinking in the sunlight, then
awkwardly came down the steps, and the two dictators shook hands.
They were not over three yards from me, and I was fascinated to watch
the expressions on their faces. Beneath the obligatory cordiality I
fancied I could see an expression of amusement in Mussolini’s eyes and
of resentment in Hitler’s. At any rate Hitler’s embarrassment did not
diminish, for when Mussolini led him down the line of troops he did not
know how to carry it off. This was the first time he had ever had to
inspect foreign troops, but that was not the chief trouble. The chief
trouble was his hat.
He had taken it off as a salute to the Italian flag, and he started to
put it back on his head, thought better of it, and held it in his right
hand. Then, as he walked beside the Duce, who was chattering all the
time in his fluent German, Hitler shifted the hat to his left hand,
then back to the right, and so back and forth until one could feel he
would have given anything to be able to throw the hat away. Finally,
when they reached the end of the line, he clapped the hat back on his
head, but he had not yet recovered his poise because when they came to
the launch which was to carry them to Venice, Hitler, flustered, tried
to insist that Mussolini, the host, precede him on board. The Duce
finally got behind the Fuehrer and shooed him down the gangplank first.
Mussolini arranged that his visitor should constantly be reminded that
although Germany might have her great man, Italy had a greater. With
true totalitarian courtesy Mussolini ordered thousands of young Black
Shirts to cheer him and keep up a continuous howl of “Duce, Duce,
Duce!” whenever Hitler appeared. They jammed St. Mark’s square and that
night when Mussolini gave his guests a banquet in the wonderful old
Palace of the Doges, the Black Shirts yelled so much and so powerfully
that nobody could hear the speeches. Finally Mussolini had to send word
for the boys to quiet down.
The show had its desired effect as far as the Italian populace was
concerned. The climax of the evening was a procession on the Grand
Canal. They had taken from museums the most treasured old gondolas,
and decorated them with lanterns. You may imagine what a spectacle they
made under a June moon. My wife had a gondolier who spoke a few words
of broken English. She asked him, “What do you think of Hitler?” “Oh,”
said the gondolier, “Eetlaire, Eetlaire is only a _piccolo_ Mussolini.”
I wonder if the gondolier still thinks Hitler is a “little Mussolini”?
Q. _What did the two dictators accomplish by their meeting? Did they
lay the basis for the Axis there?_
A. No, just the contrary. They laid the basis for nearly going to
war with each other. The Axis was not formed until much later, after
Mussolini had been compelled to recognize Hitler’s supremacy and take
orders from him. At the time they first met, Mussolini still fancied
himself Hitler’s superior. At Venice they were supposed to negotiate an
agreement about Austria.
At that time Mussolini wanted very much to take Austria himself, or to
keep it independent as a buffer state between Italy and the Germany
which he felt was going some day to become strong enough to menace him
as well as the rest of Europe. Hitler, on the other hand, was bent upon
the Anschluss, upon annexing Austria as the first item on his program
of expansion.
Mussolini had an army of unknown quality but big enough compared with
Hitler’s to make the Duce feel superior and Hitler feel cautious. So
they talked on this basis and Count Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law and
already Propaganda Minister, took me aside the afternoon of the second
day and triumphantly whispered that a “gentleman’s agreement” had been
reached that both parties would respect the integrity and independence
of Austria. It was all I could do to restrain myself from putting in my
cable some obvious crack about the agreement between those two notable
“gentlemen,” but one does not do that under censorship.
What happened then? I must say that everything that has happened in
Europe since the gangsters took over has the quality of a caricature.
Sure enough, Hitler and Mussolini made their “gentlemen’s agreement” to
keep hands off Austria on June 15, and just forty days later, on July
25, Hitler sent a band of Nazi revolutionaries to seize the Austrian
government. They murdered Chancellor Dollfuss, but were overpowered by
loyal troops, and before Hitler could move, Mussolini had mobilized on
the Brenner mechanized forces strong enough to make Hitler back down
and disavow the whole action. I reached Vienna and the Ballhaus Platz
while the loyal troops were still besieging the Reichskanzlei. Dollfuss
had not died yet. In the midst of it all I had to laugh at the thought
of that “gentlemen’s agreement.”
Q. _That must have made Mussolini cocky, to make Hitler back down?_
A. Decidedly! I went from Vienna where I had covered the Dollfuss
Putsch, back to Berlin for the death of Hindenburg--and incidentally
for a sidelight on Hitler, let me remark this. You still hear repeated
the wishful thought that the German Army will some day “do something”
about Hitler. Nobody who knows anything about Germany believes that
for a moment now, but I admit I thought it possible until the day
Hindenburg died that the army might stop Hitler.
That was August 7, 1934, and at the moment Goebbels announced on the
radio the death of the President he also announced that Hitler had
assumed the presidency, which meant he was commander in chief of the
armed forces as well as Reichs Chancellor, and thus had sole executive
power. That morning I came early to the office in Berlin and as I
entered the door Goebbels’ voice began to come over the radio. I worked
on the cables until mid-afternoon and then Dosch-Fleurot and I went out
to witness the swearing in of the Berlin garrison. That was where I
learned that the army would from then on do nothing to stop Hitler.
The regiment was drawn up in hollow square and in the middle stood
the commanding general on a platform. Every one of the 2,000 men and
officers held his right hand above his head with the two fingers
extended as in taking an oath in court. The general repeated the words
two at a time and the troops repeated in sonorous chorus, “I swear--by
God--eternal allegiance--to my Fuehrer--Adolf Hitler--to obey him,”
and so on, with no word about the flag, the Constitution, or even
the Fatherland. The oath was a personal oath to Hitler himself, as
commander in chief. I believe it is unique; at any rate I have never
heard of such an oath in any other army.
The officers corps knew what it meant, so much so that thousands
of officers absented themselves that day from duty “on account
of illness,” but when they came back each had to take the oath
individually. The significance of that is that no German army has ever
mutined, and this oath bound every soldier of Germany to the person of
Adolf Hitler. It was a most impressive ceremony and I carried away from
it the conviction that this army would never break its oath and turn on
Hitler until it met defeat. I am still convinced this is true.
Q. _Yes, but what about Mussolini? You said he was decidedly cocky
about defeating Hitler over Austria._
A. I started to say that after having covered the death of Hindenburg
and the accession to the Presidency of Hitler, I went down and reported
the Nuremberg Party Congress, and directly thereafter went to Rome
and met Mussolini. It was October 1934. I had met him several times
previously and he always used to insist on asking more questions than
he answered; so he began our conversation by saying, “I hear you have
been to Nuremberg--what did you learn there? What did they think of me?”
I answered that frankly the Italians were not popular in Nuremberg,
and that one of my English colleagues, Chris Holmes of Reuters, who is
tall, dark, and handsome, had once been mistaken for an Italian and had
some trouble with Nazi Storm Troopers until he identified himself. “So
we are unpopular there,” Mussolini ruminated. “And go on, what else did
you observe in that line?”
“Well,” I continued, “one night I met a group of officers of the SS
[_Schutzstaffel_] and we were talking about affairs, and one of them
asked me what you, Your Excellency, would have done with those troops
you mobilized on the Brenner during the Dollfuss Putsch if you had
marched into Austria.” “Yes,” said the Duce leaning forward. “Yes, yes,
go on, what did they want to know?” “Well,” I hesitated, “they wanted
to know if you had marched into Austria, would you have stopped there,
or would you have gone on and marched into Germany?” Mussolini put his
hands on the desk and leaned halfway over it, and a great smile came on
his face as he ejaculated, “Ahhhh! Were they afraid?” I laughed and he
laughed and it was agreed that the Germans had been afraid, and if ever
there was a delighted man it was Mussolini, reveling in the thought
that he had frightened his gentlemen friends.
Q. _You have told us that the first impression one gets of Hitler
is that he looks silly, but you remarked that this was a false
impression.... Do you imply that on closer acquaintance his personality
grows upon you?_
A. In a way, perhaps. At any rate you realize after several meetings
that the silly appearance is due to superficialities. His moustache,
the lock of hair over his forehead, and his staring eyes make his face
easy work for a cartoonist, and a world of them have taken advantage
of it. It is almost like a mask. He frequently looks as though he were
gazing into space when he is looking straight at you. He has terrific
power of concentration and sometimes when he talks he appears to forget
his surroundings, and to be conversing with himself, although he may be
shouting loud enough to be heard by a great multitude.
His manner is various, and he can be quietly affable just as another
time he may rave and bellow until his voice breaks. Once, during his
trial for treason, I heard him bellow and then surrender to a louder
voice. This was an incident worth recording, because as far as I know
it is the only time Hitler has been literally shouted down. All during
his trial the courtroom was dominated by the figure of Ludendorff,
the great Ludendorff who for the last two years of the war had been
master of Germany. Ludendorff of course was as guilty of treason as
Hitler, and if the court had done its duty both Ludendorff and Hitler
would have been sentenced to death and executed. Ludendorff, however,
had such prestige that even this republican court was afraid to find
him guilty, and as you know, they acquitted him. And having acquitted
Ludendorff it was not possible to sentence Hitler to death. They gave
him the lightest possible sentence, fortress confinement for five
years, and later commuted by a general amnesty to less than a year.
Ludendorff used to bark at the court in _Kommandostimme_, the tone of
the parade ground, every syllable clipped harsh, and when his imperious
voice rose, the little Chief Justice in the middle of the Bench would
quiver until his white goatee flickered so badly he had to seize it
to keep it quiet. Hitler at that time had nothing like the authority
of Ludendorff but he made up for that by his volubility and his rough
treatment of the witnesses against him. As defendant he had the right
to question witnesses and he bullied them unmercifully until the turn
came of General von Lossow, the chief witness for the state. Von Lossow
was in command of the Bavarian Reichswehr.
A few days before the Putsch, Hitler had given his personal word of
honor to von Lossow that he would not try a revolution. On the night
of the Putsch, Hitler, brandishing a revolver, forced von Lossow to
join the revolution and yield the Bavarian Reichswehr to the new Hitler
government. But the moment von Lossow was free, he mobilized his troops
and crushed the Putsch. So the two men hated each other, and each
considered the other a double-crosser.
When von Lossow took the stand, Hitler stood up and yelled a question.
Thereupon the General, a tall bony man, with a corrugated shaven
head and a jaw of steel, pulled himself up to his full height and
began yelling at Hitler and throwing his long forefinger as if it
were a weapon at Hitler’s face. Hitler started to shout back, but the
General shouted so much louder, and looked so menacing, that presently
Hitler fell back in his seat as if he had collapsed under a physical
blow. Hitler had his revenge on June 30, 1934 when he had von Lossow
assassinated along with the hundreds of others who perished in the
Blood Purge. In retrospect it is fascinating to reflect that Hitler,
the most successful bully our world has seen, can himself be bullied.
Q. _Do you think that Hitler is personally responsible, or largely
responsible, for this war? Is it possible to ascribe that much
importance to one individual?_
A. I do ascribe that much importance to the individual Hitler. We would
no more have had this war, in the form it has taken, and at the time it
has taken place, without Hitler, than we would have had the Napoleonic
wars without Napoleon. Without Hitler, Germany would either have forged
slowly ahead as she was doing under the Weimar Republic, or she would
have come under some other leader of Pan-German Imperialism who would
have attempted on a lesser and not so successful scale something like
the thing Hitler has attempted. It is extremely unlikely that anyone
else could have been found with Hitler’s genius. It is more likely that
the Weimar Republic would have persisted. Remember, when Hitler was
sentenced to fortress confinement for his 1923 Putsch, his National
Socialist German Workers Party practically disappeared, but immediately
upon his emergence from prison it began to grow until by 1928 he had 12
seats, and in 1930, 130 seats in the Reichstag.
You may say this growth of a radical party would have been inevitable
under the circumstances of economic crisis, unemployment, and so on. I
agree that the growth of radical votes would have been inevitable, but
it was far from inevitable that so many of these radical votes should
be canalized into one great, super-efficient, terroristic, militaristic
party. This was the accomplishment of one man, Adolf Hitler.
I was a correspondent in Germany from 1923 on, and during that
particular decade, 1923 to 1933, when Hitler took power, two-thirds
of the German electorate voted consistently in favor of some form
of collectivism, either Social Democracy, or National Socialism, or
Communism. I contend that it was solely the genius of Adolf Hitler
which eventually brought the whole country under his particular brand
of collectivism. Without him the votes given the Nazis would have
been split in half a dozen ways, and the probability is that the
conservative parties representing one-third of the votes, with the
Social Democrats who wanted a democratic republican collectivism, would
have won out in the long run, and we should have had a republican
Germany today and no war. This is sheer retrospective speculation, but
it is useful to point out the importance of the personality of Hitler.
The Marxists have always insisted that individuals do not count; that
history is made by economic and social forces which in the long run
accomplish their destiny no matter who lives or dies. The longer I
live the less I believe in this explanation of history, at any rate as
it applies to our span of life.
Over centuries it may be that the great forces carry mankind
irresistibly along no matter what leaders it has, but within a single
generation we are bound to feel that the history of our nation
would have been quite different if this or that individual had not
existed. Objectively it may be true that over long periods of time
the individual leader counts for little. But subjectively, for short
periods of time, the individual leader counts for nearly everything.
What a difference it would have made for the Jews of the whole world,
if a Hitler had not obtained control of the collectivist movement in
Germany.
There was nothing inherently anti-Semitic in the German yearning for a
_Gemeinschaft_, a collective. Anti-Semitism need not have played any
part in National Socialism any more than it did in Communism or Social
Democracy. Yet, because Hitler from his early youth had been infected
with this curious kind of psychic sickness, anti-Semitism became a part
of the German state religion, and from this accident of history has
grown the tragedy of twelve million people.
Q. _Is Hitler really the boss of Germany, or is there not someone
behind the throne?_
A. There is nobody behind the throne. Hitler is the whole regime, its
author, its parent, its spirit, its brains, and its boss.
Q. _What about the men around Hitler; are any of them of the caliber to
succeed him?_
A. None of them is of the caliber to succeed Hitler, but Hitler has
publicly announced Goering as his successor, and he would automatically
take the position if der Fuehrer should die now. In the Party there
is nobody to compete with him. The bloodthirsty Himmler, head of
the SS Elite Guards and the Gestapo, is merely a policeman, one of
great ability, ranking perhaps with the notorious Fouché of the
French Revolution, but out of the question as Fuehrer. Goebbels, the
advertising director, is the cleverest man in the Party, but he would
be lucky to remain alive twenty-four hours after Hitler’s protective
hand was removed. He and Himmler are rivals in unpopularity. Who are
the rest? Minor figures, as Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, the upstart
“Bismarck” of the champagne trade, who if anything is more widely
disliked and despised than Goebbels. Hess, of course, has fled. Dr.
Ley, the head of the Labor Front, is the type of drunken, racketeering
labor gangster who in this country would have gone to the penitentiary
under the lash of Westbrook Pegler. Alfred Rosenberg, the Party’s
“brain,” could no more succeed Hitler than he could take Joe Louis’s
place.
The more one scrutinizes the German scene the more one realizes that
the war has moved all the big party figures far into the background,
leaving only Goering a modest place miles beneath the Fuehrer. The
outside world has believed Goering would be an improvement on Hitler,
in that he would be more amenable to reason, less aggressive. He would
be an improvement only in that he would be weaker. His instincts and
intentions are not more Christian than Hitler’s. He would have neither
Hitler’s magic hold on the German people nor Hitler’s genius in action,
but he is as cruel a man as ever exercised power in a modern state.
At the same time he has all the sentimentality which is an almost
invariable accompaniment of brutality in this type of German. During
the period of the worst Terror, the active Nazi revolution in 1933,
Goering was over Himmler in charge of the concentration camps, and at
the moment when the Nazi sadists and criminals in charge of the camps
were beating to death and torturing and hanging scores of men daily,
Goering decreed the severest law against cruelty to animals ever to be
passed anywhere.
Goering’s most marked characteristics, aside from his high animal
spirits, his callous cruelty, and his sentimentality, are his energy,
courage, and will power. He looks too fat to be self-disciplined, but
he twice cured himself of the morphine habit, which he had contracted
after his wounding in the World War, and again after his wounding on
the Odeon’s Platz during the Munich Putsch. A glandular derangement
resulting from his wounds made him monstrously obese, but appears to
have endowed him with an excess of energy which he demonstrates by
doing the work of half a dozen men. He works incomparably harder than
Hitler who by any ordinary standards is a fitful worker, given to long
spells of dreamy idleness.