remember that whereas the agony of Europe and of the world, brought
about by the struggle to expel Hitler from power, will be severe but
brief, the degradation of all mankind which would result from the
failure to expel Hitler, would last perhaps for generations, certainly
far beyond the length of time it would take to restore order in a
Europe purged of the Nazis. What did it cost to achieve liberty in the
first place? Think of all the wars it has taken to enable each of us
to stand up and say, “I am the equal of any man on earth.” If we are
not able to face the prospect of fighting and suffering and starving
and dying for liberty and if we are not confident enough in the
righteousness of our cause to demand, not request but demand, that our
fellow citizens do likewise, then we do not deserve liberty, we deserve
our place with the rest of Hitler’s slaves. Better that half the
generation of men alive today go down to early death than that Hitler
should enslave all mankind.
Q. _Very well, I agree, but isn’t it understandable that we, away over
here in America, should shrink from such a future?_
A. Yes, but unless we learn not to shrink we shall surely die as
a nation. How many Americans today understand and fully realize,
emotionally as well as intellectually, that in order to retain our
liberty and our national independence and make secure the lives of our
children, we have to face now the prospect of years of war, hardship,
and the loss of many American lives, and the wounding and maiming of
many more? Certainly it is brutal, not my words, but the reality. It
is unworthy of a nation of 130,000,000 for its leaders to suggest that
all will be well if only we pass this piece of legislation or take that
stand or appropriate another trillion dollars. Nothing will save this
country except our own blood and our own tears. And please do not go
away and say that I “blithely” recommended blood and tears. I bitterly
declare there is no alternative.
Q. _After we have been able, as we hope, to install temporary law and
order and emergency rations throughout the continent, isn’t the problem
of Germany next on the agenda of the Peace Conference?_
A. It must be. There is a still larger, the largest problem, that of
trying to reorganize the world into a scheme for living without war,
for some kind of Federated Humanity, but for us in the Western World
nothing can be done until we discover what to do with Germany. Here is
a nation of 80,000,000 whose leaders, clamoring for “living space,”
shamelessly declare they intend to multiply into 250,000,000 within
a century and use their superior force to exterminate or enslave
everybody else. Here is a nation which thrice in the memory of living
man, in 1870, 1914, and 1939 has launched its war machine against its
neighbors, taken the lives of millions, and now has disrupted the
civilization of the entire world. Here is a nation, distinguished in
its past history by precious contributions to the arts and sciences,
which today, led by the lust for conquest, has discarded Christ, truth,
justice, and has debased a whole generation of its youth to the moral
and ethical level of savages.
Here is a nation which is one of the most talented on earth in
the theory and practice of the natural sciences, capable of world
leadership in bending nature to the peaceful services of mankind, to
the amelioration of suffering and the increase of prosperity, and what
does this nation do? It devotes all its talents to the cultivation of
the science of warfare, and becomes adept beyond all other nations
in the arts of destruction. Why? What is behind all this evil? Never
in modern history has any nation in the Western World displayed such
incorrigible tendencies to raid, rob, seize, invade, plunder, conquer,
and torture. Torture! For the deepest blot upon Nazi Germany is its
dark love of torture, its base delight in pain endured by others, its
cruel concentration camps. Never in any quarter of the globe at any
time in mankind’s history has any nation revealed so determined a will
and clever a method to exploit permanently as slaves the unfortunate
victims of its martial skill. The problem then is, how to restrain
Germany, or how to reform Germany, how, if possible, to bring her into
our world family.
Q. _Why not say the problem is how to destroy her or at least paralyze
her?_
A. For several reasons. First, because it is impracticable to destroy
80,000,000 persons even if we were Nazi enough to wish to do so. You
can be sure that if Hitler as head of a non-German Alliance were faced
with the German problem he would solve it precisely that way, by
extermination of the Germans. But we are not Nazis, and even suppose
some on our side were to advocate destruction of the Germans by mass
emasculation, you can be sure that millions of Americans and Britons
would arise and cry out in defense of the poor German people, misguided
victims, innocent souls. Politically and morally this solution is out
of the question.
Q. _Is there no way we could render Germany impotent to do harm, no way
we could deprive her of the possibility of attacking the world again?_
A. There are two ways: military occupation or deindustrialization
of the Reich. It is plain that if Germany is allowed the least
opportunity, she would rearm and attack with the same swift ferocity
she has just displayed. There must be physical restraint to keep her
from doing so. Military occupation is the obvious, traditional method,
but it has serious drawbacks. It is expensive and tiring. Nevertheless
if the Nazis are defeated in this war, it will be imperative to
occupy Germany far more thoroughly than after the last war, if only
to preserve order. There are some advocates of deliberately allowing
Germany a period of disorder during which it could be hoped that the
Germans would themselves exterminate a great number of Nazis. This
would only render more formidable the task which already appears
staggeringly difficult, to re-establish a state of law in the Reich,
where since 1933, law as we know it, has been abolished. Whatever
permanent system of controlling Germany is eventually adopted, the
first step will have to be military occupation. Theoretically, military
occupation could be continued indefinitely. Actually it never is
continued long, because the occupying troops and their people at
home grow tired of it. Even the French, who directly after the war
were fanatically determined to secure their frontier by taking the
Rhineland, and who did get in the Treaty of Versailles permission to
occupy the Rhineland for fifteen years, even these prudent and wary
French grew so tired of it that they evacuated the Rhineland three
years ahead of time, in June 1930.
Six years later the Nazis moved in and constructed the Siegfried
line along the very positions which had been occupied by the French
troops. I know there were other reasons for the French to give up the
Rhineland. The British had pressed them to appease the Germans. The
Germans had agreed in the Young Plan to a new system of reparations and
as reward received the Rhineland ahead of schedule. But the moment the
last French troops left Germany the period of fulfillment of the war
treaties came to an end, and Germany began the period of repudiation
and revision which ended in this war and for France in her present
national humiliation. Looking backward one can see that nothing should
have moved the French to leave the Rhineland. That they did so is a
classic example of how people grow so careless, lazy, forgetful and
peace-minded that they become insensible to a threat to their very
lives. That is the state of mind of America today.
Q. _You mentioned a second possibility for physically retraining
Germany and you used the word deindustrialization. What does that mean?_
A. It is an ugly word but I know no other to describe the process of
taking away a country’s factories and leaving it without industry.
That of course would also leave it without the means of making war.
This is what Germany plans to do to the rest of Europe, as we have
seen. The civilized world would have every right to impose the same
treatment on the inventor of the scheme. Briefly the plan would be to
occupy Germany militarily; to disarm her rigorously; to dismantle all
her factories capable of making instruments of war; to prohibit the
import into Germany of raw materials which could be used for making
such instruments; to confiscate and turn over to Allied ownership and
operation all German mines producing iron or other metals; and to
appoint a permanent Inter-allied Control Commission to supervise these
restrictions. It would be necessary to forbid all manufacture or use of
airplanes by Germans in Germany.
Q. _How does this proposal fit in with the fourth paragraph of the
eight-point Atlantic Charter which reads, “They will endeavor, with due
respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by
all states, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal
terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are
needed for their economic prosperity.”_
A. There is the difficulty. Adherence to this paragraph would prevent
any such solution as deindustrialization, because there could be no
economic prosperity for a deindustrialized Germany. The first effect
of it would be a widespread return to the land, as Germans would have
no manufactured articles for export, and hence nothing with which to
buy abroad, and hence would be forced to grow all their own food. The
population would decline, young folks would emigrate if any country
would take them, and in general it would be a very unhappy period for
the Herrenvolk. Apparently Roosevelt and Churchill have rejected this
solution in favor of simple old-fashioned military occupation.
Q. _They said nothing in their statement about militarily occupying
Germany._
A. No, but they said plainly they intended to disarm the aggressor
nations. You do not suppose you could disarm Germany without occupying
her, do you? It ought to be possible to devise something more effective
and novel than the thousand-year-old method of sending in troops. One
suggestion is that all German officers (there may be around 500,000
of them) should be exiled to an island under perpetual guard where
they could make their own living and end their lives in contemplation
of their sins. The German Army would be abolished entirely; not as in
1919 reduced to 100,000 men who were to become the cadre of the present
seven-million-man machine. For a decade or more the Allies would
have to accept the responsibility of policing Germany. All military
manuals and textbooks would be destroyed. Aviation of all kinds and the
building of airplanes would likewise be forbidden. These measures would
be for the purpose of demilitarizing the population, and it is possible
that, deprived of military instructors or any means of military
instruction, the plan might work, as least for a time.
In any plan dealing with postwar Germany it is important to avoid
vindictiveness. Nothing should be done as a punishment of Germany’s
crimes in the past; everything should be done to restrain her from
crime in the future. How much better it would have been if there had
been no reparations imposed upon Germany after the last war, but the
Allies had kept their Military Control Commission permanently in
Germany while Allied troops permanently occupied the Rhineland. There
is no use, however, in hoping for any such _permanent_ resolution on
our part. We have only one hope of being able to restrain Germany for
any considerable period, by the humane means which are the only ones
open to us.
Q. _What hope have we of being able to restrain Germany?_
A. It is the hope that while we occupy Germany with our troops, say
for the next thirty or forty years, a new generation of Germans would
grow up which would forego its desire to conquer the world, forget
that it was a Herrenvolk, and would gradually learn the habits of
civilization. Meanwhile we would try to develop a World Federation or
League of Nations under Anglo-American leadership to such a point of
effectiveness that we could afford to allow Germany to become a member
of it.
Q. _But do you suppose our people or the British would put up with the
trouble and expense of occupying Germany militarily for thirty or forty
years? Wouldn’t there be an outcry on behalf of the Germans?_
A. Many of our people would probably try to sabotage any realistic
handling of the Germans. After the last war and at the beginning of
this one you could hear many Americans remarking: “How could you expect
the Germans or any upstanding, self-respecting people to tolerate being
treated unequally, to put up with being disarmed while their neighbors
were armed?” These remarks disclosed misapprehension of the German
mind which will surely be duplicated at the end of this war by similar
persons. That will not matter so much since the British will have a
great deal to say about how the Germans are to be restrained, and this
time the British will not be as shortsighted as they were after the
last war.
You may remember that the French in 1919 wanted to occupy permanently
various strategic points in Germany, including the Rhineland, but the
British said no. They had two principal reasons for not consenting to
proper restraint of the Germans and both reasons were, as we can see
from our perspective of today, completely invalid. First, they did not
want France to become too strong; they believed they had to maintain a
balance of power with Germany, apparently leaving out of account the
enormous, patent facts that there were 80,000,000 Germans to 40,000,000
Frenchmen, that the French birth rate was nearing the point of racial
suicide, that Frenchmen were concerned not at all with expansion but
only to keep what they had in their beloved “security.” Second, the
British people had failed during the war to suffer any of the pain and
tribulation the Germans had visited upon the French, who had seen their
towns and villages destroyed, their families blown to bits by German
artillery.
Today when the British sit down to a Peace Table they will be a
different people. In Britain today are upward of 44,000,000 persons who
have been under bombardment for two years and have suffered a strain
upon their courage such as has no parallel. They have witnessed the
mutilation of their dear ones, the destruction of their monuments. They
have heard the menace from their enemy that he intended to destroy
England as Carthage was destroyed. Is it likely that when the British
sit down victorious in a Peace Conference they will shrink from the
application of methods, no matter how severe, to prevent the recurrence
of this horror? We shall not earn the right to speak at all at the
Peace Conference until we have borne our share of the heat of the day.
I hope we shall not try to exercise our influence to obstruct whatever
solutions may seem appropriate at the end of years of war, to solve
this essentially insoluble problem of the Germans.
Q. _Why do you call the German problem insoluble?_
A. Because no matter what we do, short of destroying the Germans, which
we have agreed is impossible, the Germans are likely to break out again
on the warpath some time. Let us assume that we take the view that
the Versailles treaty was too harsh, and this time we will avoid all
the mistakes of harshness. We grant Germany a peace treaty which not
only takes nothing from her, but allows her to retain a considerable
quantity of the territorial spoils she has accumulated by violence. We
agree to let her retain all the territory inhabited for the most part
by German-speaking people. Thus she is allowed to keep Western Poland
whence she has so brutally expelled the native Polish population. She
is allowed to keep the German Sudetenland, formerly Czechoslovakian,
and until the men of Munich gave it to Hitler, never before a part of
Germany. She is allowed to keep Belgian Eupen Malmedy; and even any
part of Lorraine which may desire to opt for Germany. She is allowed to
keep Austria. In short, Germany is allowed to keep all her 80,000,000
Germans together. More than that, in order to “right every wrong,”
Germany is given back her old colonies, all of them. Thus there is no
thought of dividing the country. There are of course no reparations.
There are no punitive measures of any kind. Germany is invited to join
the new World Federation as soon as it has been formed. Certainly
this sort of treatment ought to mollify any people. This ought to be
a perfect peace. But wait, there is a crucial point. Shall Germany be
allowed now, at once, to bear arms again? Or ever again? And how many
arms? What kind?
Q. _Haven’t Churchill and Roosevelt already declared the aggressors
would be disarmed?_
A. Very well, the victors will insist that Germany is to have no
arms at least for a period of years. Do you think that then the
Germans, even with a treaty such as we have sketched, granting every
conceivable amelioration, would be satisfied? No. If we restricted
their armed forces in any degree, for example, by depriving them of
offensive weapons, of tanks and bombing planes, you can be sure that
the complaint of the Germans would be as great as though they had been
stripped of half their population, the Reich divided into a score of
puppet states, and their cities occupied by divisions of Senegalese.
Q. _Aren’t the Germans merely demanding absolute, uncompromising
equality?_
A. They always demand absolute, uncompromising superiority. Look back
on Hitler’s reign. He had several chances to stop this side of war,
after having gained for his people not mere equality with his greatest
rival, France, and not mere equality with the political and military
forces of all his neighbors put together, but with real superiority in
arms and in political power over all Europe. Look at the chances he
had to stop short of war and build in peace, and perhaps go down as
a greater man than he will appear after this bloody debacle is over.
He could have stopped after he got the Sudetenland, and had finally
united nearly all of his 80,000,000 Germans. He could have stopped
after he took Austria; after he occupied the Rhineland; after he got
the Saar back into Germany. The taking of the Sudetenland would have
been a place to stop at the pinnacle. Suppose he had done that, and
had used his power and talent to transfer his war machine into a
peace machine, and had used his mighty prestige to bring Europe into
a new economic order. Germany had attained practical “equality” with
France by 1936 when Hitler’s troops entered the Rhineland, and they
had “equality” with all the rest of Europe put together--as Hitler has
now so disastrously proved--by 1938 when they got the Sudetenland. So
the point is that the Germans never wanted equality, will never be
satisfied with equality, but will always demand to be what they believe
themselves to be, namely, the _master_ race.
Q. _Aren’t you confusing the Germans with Hitler and the Nazis?_
A. No, the Germans have done that themselves. By their so-called
plebiscites which document their uniformly spineless behavior since
Hitler came to power, they have identified themselves with him and
permitted him uncontradicted to define himself as Deutschland.
There is just a chance that a combination of generosity and firmness
may impress a minority of Germans which may grow and eventually bring
the whole nation into our hoped-for World Federation. If, on the
contrary, the Germans secretly arm, and prepare another ambush for
civilization, our only hope is to find it out in time. We should have
no hope at all if our sobbing societies succeeded in inducing the
Peace Conference to give the Germans equality in arms. Let us remember
that if we were all to disarm, including Germany, it would be just as
disadvantageous for us as if we remained armed and allowed Germany
to keep equal arms. For at any stage of armament or disarmament the
Germans are superior to almost any combination of their opponents.
Germany is not just another nation. It is a nation, not exceptionally
numerous, but so highly talented in the mechanics, chemistry, and
physics of warfare and so professionally skilled in the staff work
of war, and so obediently brave in the practice of battle, that its
military power is greater than that of any other single nation on
earth, with no exceptions.
Q. _What are we going to do with all the former nations of Europe,
especially the fifteen or so which were conquered? Are we going to
reconstitute them all as they were?_
A. We shall try to reconstitute all those which are capable of
maintaining a national life, but how can one foresee the fate of
such unfortunate little states as Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania?
The Soviet government, through its ambassador to London, Mr. Maisky,
now declares that it approves the Atlantic Charter’s Eight Points,
including the right of self-determination of all nations. This has been
hailed as a great step forward; but I should prefer to wait to see the
Red Army evacuate voluntarily any territory it may hold at the end of
this war.
The attitude of the Soviet government toward the rights of small
nations is brilliantly illustrated by Stalin’s treatment of the Baltic
States. First, he asked Britain and France for them to be handed him
on a platter, as roast chicken. Having been refused, he waited until
the war began, then forcibly occupied the three little states, which
were among the more attractive and in many ways more admirable little
countries in Europe. We have almost completely overlooked the grisly
fate of the middle-class population of the Baltic states--virtually
exterminated by Stalin’s gunmen in one of those side shows of horror
which only the great war could obscure. The Baltic population is
suffering an epic of agony. After Stalin’s G.P.U. had killed or exiled
all the professional and business people and all those suspected
of being Nazi sympathizers, and then after war had swept the three
countries, the Germans and the Gestapo moved in and killed all the
Communist and other labor leaders and anti-Nazis. Now that Stalin has
been driven out of the Baltic states, and they are occupied by the
Nazis, the Soviet policy is ceremoniously announced to be in favor of
restoration of full national independence to all states.
That must ring bitterly in the ears of the pitiful remnant of the
population of Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Is there enough of them
left to make it possible to resuscitate their nations? The experience
of these countries shows how difficult it will be in our postwar
settlement to give national independence to small states and at the
same time allow them the possibility of national security. Many a
small state will have to choose between the one or the other. If it
stands alone, it may be devoured by a larger neighbor. If it enters a
larger unit, it will have to sacrifice some of its sovereignty. All
this points to the necessity of making the larger unit big enough to
comprise all nations.
Whatever we do, the Soviet Union will present us with almost as many
problems as Germany. How can Britain and the United States confidently
outline specific war aims as long as we do not know what the position
of the Soviet Union will be at the end of this war? And if the Soviet
Union survives in her present form and temper, and has not defected
from the war, how is she to fit into our world peace organization?
There are in it only two durable points of reference: the United States
and Great Britain, and one great hope of success for the organization
of peace, the firm friendship of the two countries, braced by their
control of the seas. Our only chance of realizing such a peace is
by cherishing between ourselves a mutual trust which will override
our selfish ambitions, for there are many points and places on the
globe where our material interests conflict. We cannot maintain this
relationship until we Americans begin to carry our full share of the
burden of the war and the British in turn make us feel we are welcome
to the comradeship as well as the responsibilities of the war and the
peace.
Q. _Do the British want such a Pax Anglo-Americana which would divide
their victory with us?_
A. Let us not be sentimental about the British in spite of our
partnership and friendship with them. The British would like nothing on
earth so much as to be able to win this war without the United States’
help. They would dearly love to win alone and enjoy the fruits of
victory alone. But they know now they cannot win alone. They know they
cannot beat the Germans without our full, shooting participation in the
war. And so they are resigned to accepting our companionship in battle.