the Reich with domestic autonomy for unit members whose economic and
political cooperation would be based on Berlin.”
There for all to read is the future map of Europe. The name of Europe
itself will scarcely be needed any more, save as a geographical term
once used to identify the continent now known as Great Germany. No more
France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland. All
will come under the Nazi yoke, even Spain and Portugal and the states
which yielded without a struggle, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria. You
ask, but isn’t this the unification of Europe we have all been hoping
for? The answer is no, because what the world needed was a Europe
voluntarily united in a United States of Europe, or whatever else you
wanted to call it, for the purpose of promoting the mutual prosperity,
health, and happiness of all its members. Hitler Europe’s avowed object
is to confiscate and exploit the resources of the conquered states
and to employ their man power as slaves for the exclusive, perpetual
benefit of the “master race.” This is not a new Commonwealth of
Nations; it is the first step in the Nazis’ program for the systematic
degradation of the human race. The only parallel for it is in Aldous
Huxley’s _Brave New World_. His robot human race was divided into Alpha
masters and various classes of slaves, down to the Epsilon automatons
who would correspond to Hitler’s Slavic serfs.
“f. The United Kingdom to remain the heart of the British Empire with a
gradual transfer of authority to Canada.”
This seems to be a covert bid for isolationist approval in the United
States, a hint that as the British Empire will not exist at all much
longer, the United States may profit by absorbing Canada and whatever
other vestigial remnants of the Empire may be granted Canada as the
residuary legatee. This profit-taking by the United States has already
been proposed by Lindbergh in his suggestion that we take over Canada.
“g. The German sphere of influence may go as far as the Sea of Marmora
unless that were handed over to the joint administration of Turkey and
Soviet Russia. But Germany may demand participation in the oil wells of
Iraq and Iran.”
This paragraph has been rendered obsolete by the German invasion of
Russia. Germany certainly hopes eventually to get all the oil of Iraq
and Iran.
“h. The United States’ sphere of influence would be Canada, Central and
South America, Newfoundland, and Greenland with islands and regional
waters, but the United States would undertake not to form any hegemony
over South America inimical to the Axis and would accord the fullest
freedom and equality of opportunity to Germany and her Allies in that
continental brotherhood. No American naval bases would be west of
Hawaii, and that stronghold would be reduced in importance.”
How does it feel to an American to hear this sort of dictation? It is
dignified treatment compared with what we would receive if we acceded.
Never was a proverb more true than the old Russian one, based on the
bitter experience of their vassalage to the Tartars. “A nation is never
too poor to pay the first installment of tribute and never rich enough
to pay the last.” We are asked to give up all our naval bases in the
Pacific west of Hawaii, but there is no hint of Japanese reciprocity.
The Japanese when the time came would move in and fortify the bases we
had dismantled.
“i. In the Pacific the Netherlands Indies might be detached from the
Netherlands and placed under an independent government with native
participation, and British possessions would obtain increasing
independence. Throughout all these Pacific islands, Japanese advisors
would be admitted and entrusted with the duty of rationalizing forms
of cooperation in the ‘co-prosperity sphere.’ French Indo-China would
receive independence on the same terms.”
We see now what this “independence” is. Just twelve weeks after the
publication of these “peace terms” the Japanese took over Indo-China.
These peace terms are not even hypocritically polite. They simply
assume the opposite “negotiators” are beaten, and that of course
includes the United States, as we may see from our prominent position
among its stipulations. Lindbergh declares we would be beaten from the
start if we entered the war, and that a negotiated peace would be more
acceptable than outright military defeat. But these terms, vouched for
by the Imperial Japanese Foreign Office organ, show us that we would be
treated as a conquered nation if we negotiated a peace.
“j. Australia would remain within the British Empire, but would
eliminate immigration bars and allow Japanese settlement on terms of
equality.”
The exclusively Japanese interests would be safeguarded by Germany in
a negotiated peace only if Japan had earned it by following German
orders. Japan, however, may disappoint her senior partner.
The next to last paragraph reads ironically:
“k. India would obtain self-government.”
We may be sure that if the Axis wins, India will not receive
self-government. Both Germany and Japan want India. Somewhere in the
path of this war appears the possibility of a clash between the Germans
and the Japanese. Already Japan shows signs of being afraid that if
Germany wins, Japan will suffer the same fate as Italy and Russia.
Japan likewise shows signs of wanting to wait for better evidence that
the Allies are going to win. Stranger things have happened in this war
than that Japan should finally quit the Axis and go to war on the side
of Britain and the United States.
But the most ironic paragraph of this peace offer is the last:
“l. Religious and political liberty would be enjoined throughout the
world.”
That’s all. That completes the offer of negotiated peace.
Q. _Why do they call it a negotiated peace?_
A. It is not “negotiated.” It is a dictated peace; it represents a
complete Hitler victory but that is the only kind of negotiated peace
he would consider until he is himself defeated.
Q. _But is it possible that these are authentic, genuine terms of the
Axis? It seems to me that the publication of such arrogant demands upon
America was an undiplomatic step, contrary to the interests of the
Axis, since it would be bound to arouse our indignation._
A. It was a “semi-official” publication of the Japanese Foreign Office
at the very time when the then Foreign Minister Matsuoka advised
Anthony Eden that Japan was ready to mediate a negotiated peace if
she were requested to do so. Its authentic character can hardly be
questioned. If it is arrogant it is because the Axis is arrogant, and
considers that Britain is already beaten and that the United States
was beaten before she began to fight. As the _Japan Times Advertiser_
put it: “These may be called victors’ terms but the Axis powers have
achieved a dominant position permitting liberty of dictation.” These
terms could not be worse if we had entered the war and lost it. They
would mean that from now on until perhaps centuries later when the
Nazis shall have become soft and self-indulgent and until some new,
rougher race arose to oust them, the Germans would rule the earth. For
of course if Britain or America were to be willing to accept such terms
it would prove they really were beaten.
During the period immediately after the signing of the negotiated
peace which would be used by the Germans to consolidate and strengthen
their military position, we should probably be allowed to retain our
nominal sovereignty, although we should not be able to do anything
in the realm of foreign politics or economics that was not permitted
by Germany. During this period our Lindberghs would declaim that they
had been right after all since we had not been invaded and we still
elected our own president and still sang “God Bless America,” and still
called ourselves the land of the free and home of the brave; and the
Lindberghs would insist that the sacrifices we had made were far better
than to have fought a war. But soon we should find that Hitler’s idea
of “equality” in South America meant complete Nazi monopoly. Soon we
should find we had lost all our world trade save that permitted us by
the Axis with the Axis on Axis terms.
Q. _Would the Nazi use of slave labor be an advantage? Can’t free
American labor always produce better and cheaper than slave labor?_
A. That is one of our popular fallacies. We proclaim this doctrine at
the same time that we use tariffs to protect American industry from
the products of foreign workers who receive lower wages than American
workers. Japanese manufactured articles, the cheapest in the world
because they are made by virtually slave labor, were able to flood our
market in spite of our high tariffs. For ordinary mass production, for
nearly every type of manufactured article save quality goods, slave
labor is more profitable than free labor. If it is not so efficient,
it makes up for that by being so much cheaper. If Hitler were to get
his slave Europe organized, he could turn out products which would
undersell anything we could make.
Q. _Wouldn’t he try to make us take his goods also?_
A. He would. We are talking now of the alternative to our going to war
and defeating Hitler. We are visualizing the situation as it would be
after Hitler had won, and had made all of those arrangements with the
rest of the world which we have described, and was now in process of
adjusting his Empire to the United States, or rather of adjusting the
United States to his Empire. We are discussing now how we would have to
behave if we wished to continue to be at peace with Hitler. We would of
course have to make some kind of trade agreement with him. What kind
of trade agreement do you think Hitler would propose? We can suppose
he would offer us the same kind of agreement he has concluded with
other states before they fell, or before they volunteered to become
his vassals--the sort of agreements he had with Jugoslavia, or Greece,
and with Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria. These agreements provide
that German goods may enter at lower tariffs than the goods of other
countries or that tariffs on German goods are abolished altogether, and
usually the country concerned must promise to take a minimum quantity
of whatever articles Germany wishes to export. If we hoped to have
any kind of trade agreement with the victorious Germans at all, it
would have to be one like this. We should probably have to consent to
receive German goods in such quantities and at such prices that our
own industry would step by step be ruined. This would be the German
aim. They intend to make German industry not only the only industry in
Europe, but the master of the manufacturing world. They intend to wreck
any industry they cannot control.
Q. _But you don’t think we would put up with such treatment as that, do
you? It would be better to go to war, wouldn’t it?_
A. By that time it might be too late to go to war. Now is the time
to go to war. Now is the time to avoid those calamities we have just
discussed. If we had done nothing to protect ourselves while we still
had the power to protect ourselves and still had strong allies
fighting in the field, what use would there be to try to resist Hitler
after he had become master of the world outside America? We should then
face the alternative of submission to Hitler or fighting an almost
hopeless war.
Our isolationists like the Quislings and the Darlans and Lavals
abroad, are working themselves into the position of the French
collaborationists. That is, they are going so far out on the limb
of isolation-appeasement that eventually they will not be able to
withdraw. Even today they refuse to admit their error. If the worst
came to the worst and we remained out of the war, and Hitler won, and
all these things we are discussing came to pass, our isolationists
would be bound to continue to contend that they were right, and they
would have to advocate collaboration with Hitler, as indeed many of
them do now. We can see what collaboration means in France. Ninety-five
per cent of the French people are against it, and five per cent who
advocate and practice it are now considered traitors. This would be
the history of our isolationists also. When the alternative, war or
surrender, was offered, their answer would be that war was hopeless,
and the only sensible thing to do would be to collaborate with Hitler.
Q. _But isn’t there another way out for us? Couldn’t we simply give
up our foreign trade? In 1939 it amounted to only about six billion
dollars. What is that compared with the monstrous expense of war? It
is only one-seventh of the amount we have already agreed to spend for
defense. It is only one-tenth of our national income._
A. Even if our total foreign trade represented only one-tenth of our
total business activity, that would make it vitally important, for
as you know, in an economy such as ours, ten per cent means all the
difference between failure and success. Hitler said of Germany, “we
must export or die.” Our case is not that desperate, but it would be
fair to say we must export or suffer a lower standard of living and
increased unemployment. Witness the effect on this country of our
war export business which has revitalized the entire economic system
and practically wiped out unemployment. Before long the last of our
unemployed ought to be at work, as they have all found jobs in England.
Of course if we wished to crawl into a completely abject isolation,
we could give up our foreign trade, recall our ships from the seven
seas, seal our ports, and retire into a kind of hillbilly life, eating
our corn bread and sowbelly, drinking our home-brew, and supporting a
permanent mass of millions of unemployed.
Even if we attempted such a thing we would not be permitted to
continue to live peacefully behind our imagined walls. The world wants
what we can produce. Nazi Germany wants it. If we were to carry the
isolationist argument to its final absurdity and really try to set up
a complete autarchy and live within the continental borders of the
United States, the Nazis would never let us do so. From within and
from without the Nazis would attack us. Our own Nazis would labor to
bring us into Hitler’s New Order, while the German Nazis would assume
the role of our own Commodore Perry and as he broke open the Japanese
closed door in 1854 the Nazis would smash the locks of American
isolation.
We are discussing what would be a comparatively short period of time,
the period between the end of the war with a Hitler-negotiated peace
and the moment when he felt himself strong enough to resume the war,
this time to conquer all that was left unconquered at the first truce.
As soon as he had his machine in order and perceived that his strength
had risen relative to ours to such a point that he considered victory
certain, he, with Japan, would attack Britain, then America. If we
had agreed to any such negotiated peace such as the one we have been
discussing, we would be lost. Britain and America have held out so
far because despite the importance of air power, sea power is still
paramount and we have had sea power. We would not have it after a
negotiated peace.
Q. _But aren’t these terms of a negotiated peace somewhat dated now
since the German attack on Russia? Hasn’t the unexpectedly strong
Russian resistance diminished Hitler’s feeling that he can already
dictate as a victor?_
A. No doubt Hitler’s arrogance has been reduced at least a little
since the “scum of the earth” checked his warriors, but the Russian
setback to Hitler has been only that, and it has not yet changed his
long-range plans. He still aspires to conquer the world and he still
believes he can do it, and any negotiated peace he may offer, whether
it is the one whose terms we have just discussed, or some other terms
more fitted to the moment, will be calculated to give the Germans a
respite in preparation for resumption of the war. That, after all, is
the important point to remember. Specific terms are at this juncture
unimportant. It is only essential to remember that _any_ negotiated
peace with Hitler would not be a peace at all, but only a truce to
which Hitler would never agree unless he believed he would thereby be
strengthened for renewal of the war. We can never emphasize too much
that there is no such thing as a peace with Hitler; there is no such
thing as a peaceful Hitler; Hitler will either conquer or be conquered.
Q. _But if Britain and the United States had agreed to the sort of
negotiated peace offered through Tokyo, they would have surrendered
practically everything, so why should Hitler go to the trouble of
attacking us?_
A. Because Hitler does not want “practically” everything; he wants
absolutely everything. Also Hitler cannot stop making war; it will
take a greater Nazi than he to convert the German war machine to
garrison duties and the Nazi hordes to peaceful production.
No conqueror ever stops conquering until he is stopped by some outside
force. Alexander was just getting into his stride and longing for
more worlds to conquer when he died of a fever after drinking too
much. Hitler will never be stopped that way. Caesar was stopped by
the assassin’s dagger. That could stop Hitler but it would be foolish
to depend upon it. Napoleon was stopped at Waterloo by superior
force. That we hope will be Hitler’s end. But never did a conqueror
stop as our Lindberghs believe Hitler would stop, of his own accord,
satisfied with what he had won. Far more true is the analysis by my old
friend Douglas Miller, who during his fifteen years as United States
Commercial Attaché in Berlin was the constant source of knowledge about
the Nazis for all of us American newspapermen, and who now has written
the wisest book about the Nazis to appear from the pen of an American,
_You Can’t Do Business with Hitler_.
Miller puts the matter with hair-fine accuracy thus: “The essential
sterility of the Fascist system is one explanation of its
aggressiveness. The totalitarians are a group of bandits who have
learned no useful trade or occupation but are well armed and have no
scruples about attacking their neighbors. Germany has, under Hitler,
thrown away her possibilities of peaceful trade and understanding with
all the world and has no option but to go forward in the campaign of
aggression. She must not, in Hitler’s words, ‘export or die’; she must
fight or die. Under these circumstances it is completely useless to
await any peaceful settlement of Europe’s troubles. The Nazis are not
organized for peace. They are not prepared for it. They would not know
what to do with it.”
But beyond these reasons for attacking Britain and America even after
they had accepted such humiliating, emasculating terms as those
we have sketched, Hitler would have the same reason to attack the
Anglo-American combination that he had to attack Russia. He attacked
Russia partly to remove the remote possibility of a Russian attack
while he was attempting to invade England, but he attacked Russia also
to get complete control over the Russian resources which Stalin was
doling out to him too slowly and meagerly. So it would be with the
resources of the rump British Empire and of the United States. Hitler
would not be satisfied with the necessity for negotiating or trading
with Anglo-America. He would demand the power to dictate. So in the
long run Hitler by achieving such a negotiated peace as is advocated by
Wheeler, Nye, Lindbergh, and others, would have conquered America.
Q. _What kind of a peace would we make if we win the war?_
A. That is more difficult to forecast than to sketch the outlines of
a Hitler world. His peace is engraved in his past and blueprinted in
his program. We know what it is like, a simple pattern of masters and
slaves. All we can say positively about our postwar world is that
the British and Americans and the populations of Hitler’s conquered
territory, wish it to be a world in which there shall be no masters or
slaves; we want justice for everybody, and all the liberty possible,
and we want to get rid of fear and want. We know we will not be able to
get all this but the difference between us and Hitler is that Hitler
does not even want such a world. If he could have such a world by
merely asking for it, he would prefer to battle for his sort of world,
because violent struggle and the infliction of pain upon others is an
essential part of the satisfactions of the Nazis.
Q. _What chance has Communism in a defeated Germany?_
A. If Hitler is defeated it is possible that the Communists will be
the strongest party or political group of any kind in Germany. When he
came to power Hitler dissolved all parties, and only the Communists
continued a militant, underground organization. The bourgeois,
democratic parties completely disappeared, and it is hard to imagine
their revival. It is easy to imagine the revival of the Communist
Party. It won six million votes at the last honest election before
Hitler seized the government. A great many Germans who voted Communist
entered the Nazi Party or Nazi organizations such as the SA Brownshirts
and the SS Elite Guards. This confirmed the observation that between
Nazism and Communism as systems there existed more similarity than
difference. It would be easy for those who had been Communists before
Hitler came to power to return to the Communist cause after Hitler
fell. A Communist program promising immediate peace for the German
people and vengeance on the Nazi leaders would appeal more and more to
the masses of German workingmen as the war lengthens and shows no signs
of ending. We should not forget that the Soviet government, or rather
Joseph Stalin, unless he capitulates, will have something to say when
the time comes to think about the kind of government Germany is to have.
_Q. Well then, it seems to me that the first problem of our Peace
Conference will be what to do with the Germans._
A. It is likely that an even more urgent problem, demanding the first
attention of the Peace Conference, will be how to keep millions of
people in Europe from starving to death; how to restore the railroad
lines and other means of transportation; and how to prevent sheer
anarchy, or gutter-communism from seizing the continent. In the period
immediately after the Nazis collapse--and be sure of one thing, and
that is that when Hitler cracks he and his regime will crack all at
once in one frightful cataclysmic smash beside which the German
surrender in the last war will look like a fight to the finish--the
likelihood is that throughout Europe law and order will disappear for
a time at least until Allied troops arrive. For years the only law and
order will have been the German troops and Gestapo. The former leading
citizens of the occupied territories, Norwegian, Dutch, Czech, French,
etc., will all have been either killed, exiled, or demoralized. There
will be no firm group of strong men left to restore order anywhere in
Europe. In Germany itself the disorder will reach its height as the
Nazi masters flee and the German people take vengeance upon them. There
will be throughout the continent a universal struggle, as of beasts,
for the scanty food left. It is possible that more lives will be lost
in the immediate postwar period than in the war itself. Therefore I say
the most urgent problem before the Peace Conference will be how to give
Europe the physical means and the police force to keep it alive.
Q. _That is such a horrible picture that in spite of myself I must ask
if it would not be better to let Hitler have his way?_