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?_
A. Freedom of worship in the Soviet Union was never frankly and
publicly prohibited; it was merely quietly strangled. Today its public
restoration is a gesture toward the outside world and an effort to
canalize even the religious energies sleeping in the hearts of the
older people, into national defense. All the old shibboleths of
religion and patriotism and nationalism and local pride and mystic
faith in Holy Russia which for two decades had been banned have now
been revived. In the supreme trial of war the Russian people have
returned instinctively to the deep primitive traditions common to man
everywhere. Their Bolshevik masters have apparently recognized the
desirability of kindling fighting energy from any fuel, and have
permitted a veritable carnival of emotions which a short while ago
would have been condemned as “bourgeois” and “counterrevolutionary.”
Who knows what further changes the war may bring?
Q. _American friends of the Soviet Union claim that her present
resistance to the Germans entitles her now to our moral approval, and
that we are obligated to give it to our “Ally.” Is this true?_
A. I am sure Stalin does not care for our moral approval. He would
much rather have our material support. Those Americans who changed
their views of the Soviet Union either when Stalin signed his pact with
Hitler in August 1939, or when the Red Army attacked Finland, or when
it marched into Poland, the Baltic states, and Bessarabia, or again
when the Germans attacked Russia and the Red Army fought back--such
observers only proved that their judgment of Stalin’s system was
founded on mere day-to-day, surface events. When they approved of the
Soviet Union it was for wrong reasons; when they disapproved it was for
wrong reasons.
None of the events just named meant any change in the nature of the
Soviet regime. If one approved of it today for resisting Germany, one
ought to have approved of it in August 1939 for having signed up with
Germany. Both acts had the same motive: the self-interest of the Stalin
regime.
Whether we wish to extend our moral approval to the Stalin regime or
not, we all owe profound gratitude and respect to the Russian people.
It is said that every people gets the kind of government it deserves,
but I do not think this has ever been true of the Russian people; they
have never had as good a government as they deserved. Today they are
demonstrating a spirit on the battlefield which places us forever in
debt to them. Whatever his regime, the Russian soldier is giving his
life to defeat the Germans and every sacrifice of a Russian life means
the possible saving of an American life.
To the Russian people we owe our friendship as well as all our support.
Our support can reach the Russian people only through their regime. Let
us keep the distinction sharp and the supplies moving.
Q. _Aren’t we running a risk if we support the Russians?_
A. Yes, we are compelled to run a risk no matter what we do. The time
when we could have made ourselves secure without risk is long past; our
isolationists saw to that. Today we risk much if we support the Soviet
Union, but we risk more if we do not. If we do not support her, we risk
Hitler’s winning the resources of Russia. If we do support her, we risk
two things, first, that after we have poured supplies and munitions,
airplanes, gasoline, and guns into Russia, Stalin might capitulate and
these war materials would fall into the hands of the Germans.
The other risk is that with our help the Red Army should not only hold
the Germans but actually defeat them and invade and occupy Germany. I
purposely draw this picture crudely. This is a small immediate risk,
for the Red Army has not the offensive power to do it. But suppose the
Red Army were able to hold the Germans for another year, the while
Britain with the United States’ help grows strong enough in the air
to obtain supremacy over the Luftwaffe on the Western Front. Suppose
during this time, with the aid of shipments from the United States the
Red Air Force recovers and also grows strong enough to dominate the
Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front. It is then possible to imagine a time
when the Germans, disintegrating from within, would begin to withdraw
from the East and the Red Army begin to attack.
When once Germany begins to crumble, it is the conviction of all who
know that brittle country that she will fall apart at once. It will be
a miracle, indeed, if she finds a Hindenburg to lead her armies home
and demobilize them in orderly fashion. It will be more of a miracle if
a Prince Max of Baden can be found in Germany to apply for an armistice
or negotiated peace.
The German Army will have been defeated, disrupted, demoralized. For
a time there will be anarchy. Then all will depend upon which forces
reach German territory and the German capital first, the Red Army or
the armies of the West. If we have stayed out of the war, or have
participated only as a naval and air power; if the Western Allies have
conquered Germany on the sea and in the air, but have left the land
to be conquered by the Red Army; then if the Red Army pushes into
Germany before our forces can arrive, it will mean Communist revolution
throughout Europe.
Why has the world not gone Communist long ago? It is because Communism,
or its Soviet version, in the only country it was ever tried, had been
a peacetime failure. Let us not argue the definition of Communism and
whether we ought to call it State Capitalism. The world had made up its
mind that the collectivist system as practiced by the Russians could
not produce enough to make its population as well off as the people
were even under old-fashioned, broken-down, rickety capitalism. Now,
victory by the Red Army would be evidence that Russian Communism could
do what Western capitalism could not do--defeat Hitler. The populations
of Europe would count that power victorious whose land armies were on
the spot to occupy the territory of the defeated. If the Red Army were
to get there first, it would prove to millions of uncritical observers
that the Soviet system had won, that it was a success to be emulated,
and in the circumstances of disorder and unemployment which would
prevail at the conclusion of the war, such a judgment could lead to
continental upheaval.
Q. _How can we prevent this and at the same time see that Nazi Germany
is defeated?_
A. Only by going to war against Germany now. Never since the war began
have we had any stronger reasons for entering the war than now. We
cannot afford to stay out and allow Hitler the possibility of winning
the war by getting Russia. We cannot afford to stay out and allow the
Bolshevik regime the possibility of winning the continent of Europe to
Communism.
Q. _But can Stalin be trusted?_
A. Certainly not. His agreement with Churchill not to conclude a
separate peace is worth even less than the solemn promise the French
government made on March 28, 1940 to make no separate peace, just three
months before it made a separate peace over the protest of its Ally,
Britain.
Q. _Why do you say Stalin’s promise is worth even less than that?_