way the British feel? Well, then, I for my part...._
A. Yes, I know what you are going to say: that you for your part would
just as soon not help the British if that’s the way they feel about it.
How many Americans there are left who still think in terms of “helping
the British”! Cannot we finally understand that we are helping first
of all ourselves, and that it would make no difference to us if the
British were not human beings at all, but a race of perspicacious,
pugnacious penguins?
So long as these penguins are fighting off our common enemy who would
attack us if the penguins fell, is it not just good sense to throw our
whole combat aid to the penguins, no matter what the penguins may think
of us? If the British were to have a mental breakdown and declare they
disliked us so thoroughly that they would accept no more help from
us of any kind and would rather be beaten by the Nazis than win with
American help, we should be compelled from our own vital self-interest
to beg to be allowed to help them and then we should have to urge and
even threaten until reluctantly the British made room for us in the
battle line. It is good luck that the British are people who would be
worth saving even if thereby we were not going to save ourselves.
Q. _Will you recapitulate how you visualize the organization of peace?_
A. First, a Pax Anglo-Americana, based on our naval control of the
world. This may take one of several forms, including Union Now,
Clarence Streit’s thoughtful plan for amalgamating the democracies. Its
immediate purpose would be to unite the coercive power of the nations
of good will to restrain those of ill will until time and repentance
had made it possible to bring them into our second organization.
This World Federation of some kind might be a resuscitated League of
Nations, or it might have another name or form. All we know positively
is that unless we organize for peace, we shall have war again; and we
know now that the nations of good will on earth are not strong enough
without the United States to impose peace on the world. We know that if
we stay out of the peace we shall surely be drawn into the succeeding
war. Perhaps by the end of this present struggle we shall have learned
our lesson and will never again attempt to withdraw into an illusory
isolation which must always bring us into the very war it tried to
avoid. Perhaps for the first time in our history we will with open
eyes and clear plan enter the strength of the United States into the
organization of peace with the same zeal we use to make war. If we do,
who knows but that the peace established after this war could endure
for longer than we even dare to guess at this melancholy moment.
Q. _Is it a fact that because of the war England is becoming Socialist
and will come out of the war with a government and social system just
as repugnant to us as the Nazis’?_
A. It is true that the government and social system of England have
become Socialist but in the Christian and democratic sense of the
word. British society has become a Christian collective. If they could
maintain after the war as ideal a spirit of cooperation and love of
their neighbors as they have today under fire, we might call it the
first step toward the millennium. Far from being a government and
social system we disapproved, they would be worthy of our emulation. To
compare such a system of voluntary, democratic, unselfish devotion to
the common good as exists today in wartime England with the Nazi regime
is to compare good with evil. Beaten by the blows of war the British
people have attained in a period of months a degree of social progress
they would not have reached in decades otherwise.
Britain was forced to adopt a system of wartime socialism, if you want
to call it that, because that form of socialism under the inspiration
of life-and-death battle can produce so much more than uncontrolled
capitalism. Production is the materialist index of the value of any
economic system. Under British wartime socialism, capitalists and
workers genuinely pool their interests and restrict their demands to
the minimum, while men and women of all classes risk and give their
lives in battle for the community. Until we adopt such a system and
are inspired by the same dire necessity which animates the British,
our system of production, man for man, and unit for unit, will not
equal British production. As for the Nazis, their system of Socialism,
based on Terror and megalomania, aims to enslave the world; the
British system of Socialism, based on free choice and democracy, aims
to liberate the world. No, there is no possibility that any form of
government should emerge in England after the war which would be “as
repugnant to us as the Nazis’,” unless Britain is conquered and becomes
a satrapy of Hitler.
Q. _Is this British wartime Socialism not really equivalent to
Communism? How does it differ from capitalism?_
A. It is the sort of communism anyone would approve if it could work
in peacetime, though it seems that it really works only in war. In
wartime the motive that makes men work is defense of their lives, their
families, their nation, against an enemy from without. This leads to a
degree of self-sacrifice that is never even approximated in peacetime.
Witness the invariable collapse of national morale after every war.
One of the chief reasons, if not the chief reason, why communism
in peacetime does not work, either in Russia or anywhere else, is
because except under the duress of war, individuals primarily work for
themselves. The Russian Bolshevik party tried for twenty-three years
to make the Russians work for the community, but they never succeeded
until now, when they have gone to war. No matter how the Battle of
Russia turns out, when the war is over, if the Soviet Union is still
Communist, it will revert to its accustomed slackness and poverty.
If the British were to try to continue their wartime socialism into
peacetime, they would find it impossible. Strikes would break out;
employers would begin to reach out for profits and soon the old-time,
though modified capitalism would return, with many of its faults, but
still far more productive than peacetime communism anywhere in the
world. Capitalism in peace; collectivism in war appears to be the law
for democracies in our time.
5. FRANCE
Q. _Why did France fall?_
A. Because the French people were hypnotized by their low birth rate;
because their Maginot line had imprisoned their army; because, ignorant
of the character and intentions of their enemy, they did not know
why they had to fight the Germans and so preferred to fight among
themselves; because they had no Churchill; because they were betrayed
by a powerful group of their leaders including senior officers of the
Army; and because the French were stultified by their debased and venal
press.
Q. _But I thought they lost chiefly because they lacked the proper
weapons: airplanes and tanks._
A. They did not possess anything like the number of tanks and airplanes
used by the Germans; but I would rank this deficiency at the bottom
of any list of causes of the French defeat. If they had ignored their
birth rate, been willing to spend lives, had retained the old offensive
spirit traditional in the French Army, had known that they had to win
or perish, had possessed a Churchill to inspire and lead them, and had
had no traitors in their ranks, their comparative lack of weapons would
not have mattered; they would still be fighting the Germans in France.
The inferiority of their equipment consisted, as you indicate, in the
lack of a sufficient number of planes and tanks, but if they had had
the spirit to win they could have held the Germans until the deficiency
could be made up.
Tanks cannot cross properly defended rivers, and there were several
sets of rivers which the French could have held if they chose: the
Meuse, the Somme and the Oise, the Aisne, the Marne, the Seine, and
finally the Loire, but they held not at all at any of these natural
barriers. At most of these rivers I was present during the retreat, and
it astonished all of us, including United States officers, to visit a
French position along a river one day and observe how strong it was,
and how difficult it would be to take, and then the next day learn the
Germans had taken it within a few hours of our departure.
Q. _But surely the reason was the German dive bombers who could fly
across the rivers and drive the defenders away. I have heard that they
were the principal weapon used to break the French who didn’t have
enough pursuit planes to down them. It seems to me that if the dive
bomber is anything like as lethal as it is said to be, you must put
more of the blame for the French collapse on it than on the failure of
French morale._
A. No, the dive bombers are not effective against brave determined
troops. They are not as effective as artillery. I have an authority
for that, General Charles Huntziger, now Minister of War of the
Vichy government. I met him when he was Commander of the Second Army
occupying the left wing of the Maginot line. It was about May 31, 1940
in the second week after the German break-through.
General Huntziger received me in his headquarters, an old fortress
of Verdun. He explained that he had now taught his men how to meet
the terrible German tank-plus-dive-bomber attack. He said that he had
explained to his men that the dive bomber was not nearly so deadly as
artillery, and that its effect was chiefly psychological, and that if
the soldiers could master their first fright they could hold their
ground and win. The great thing was to hold long enough to learn that
your chance of being killed by dive bombers was much less than your
chance of being killed by artillery fire, since artillery shells may
fall uninterruptedly for an indefinite time, while a dive bomber has
only one or at the most a few bombs to discharge, and once it has
dropped them, has to return to its base for more, and the number of
dive bombers is limited.
He emphasized that French soldiers had never been afraid to stand
artillery fire, so why should they run from the less dangerous dive
bombers? He said he instructed all soldiers not serving antiaircraft
guns to go under cover for the few seconds while the dive bombers
dived, but to emerge immediately upon hearing the detonation of the
bombs, and meet the advancing tanks. If they were small thinly armored
tanks, and the French possessed adequate antitank guns, they should
attempt to destroy the tanks. If the tanks were too large and heavily
armored, the French should permit the tanks to go through and emerge in
time to stop the German infantry following the tanks.
General Huntziger admitted that it had been extremely difficult at
first to persuade his troops of the comparative harmlessness of the
dive bombers and mentioned the fact that in the first thirteen days
of the German attack his troops had been overwhelmed and he had lost
fifty per cent of his effectives, more than ninety per cent of whom
were captured, but he believed that now the troops were experienced
and could not be frightened as they were at first. As we were soon to
observe, the French troops never did get used to the dive bomber which
is truly the most terrifying weapon ever invented. General Huntziger
compared it to a locomotive with its whistle wide open falling upon you
from the sky.
“You are certain it is coming just for you,” the General said, “and you
believe it is not merely going to drop bombs upon you, but you are sure
the plane itself is going to crash upon you and leave you smashed like
a beetle.”
The noise of the dive bomber is its most terrifying quality. An
ordinary airplane diving makes a loud rushing noise familiar to
everyone nowadays, but many of the German dive bombers were equipped
with sirens attached to loud-speakers, so that when they dived each
plane screamed with the noise of a score of ordinary diving planes.
In addition to that they were often equipped with screaming bombs.
General Touchon, commander of the Sixth Army, showed me one at his
headquarters. It had four whistles, each about the size of a cannon
cracker, in the vanes of its tail. They made each falling bomb sound
as loud as four American locomotives with the whistles open. “But,”
General Huntziger said, “all you have to do is to realize that noise
doesn’t hurt anyone, and I have explained that to my soldiers and from
now on they will stand firm.”
Huntziger gave me a copy of his orders of the day. I cannot read it
even now without feeling the terrible weight of despair that settled
upon all of us as we realized that the end of France was near. It is
dated May 18, 1940 and begins: “The war has commenced,”--it was to
be all over in exactly thirty days--“and, in order to win, the enemy
always attacks your morale. In this first shock, his tactic, his ruses
of warfare and his weapons have but one object, _to demoralize you_.
The enemy is reckoning only upon fighting you with fright. It is
necessary therefore that you know this.
“Know also that the massive bombardments of the enemy aviation, no
matter how impressive they are, make few victims, as you may have
already noted. You know the total lost; they are a minimum. Take refuge
when the enemy aircraft passes and immediately afterward take up again
your combat post. Never forget our aviation protects you. _Even when
you cannot see it._ Know that our airplanes have knocked down more than
a thousand enemy machines in less than eight days and that among the
enemy our bombers are giving blow for blow.
“Know that against infantry the tank is not able to accomplish big
things if you hide yourself and the tanks cannot see you. Let them pass
without showing yourself, then fire on the guides who accompany them.
Without them the tank is almost blind; sooner or later it will have
to abandon the field to refuel if our antitank guns have not already
knocked it out.
“These guns are very efficient; they have given many proofs of it in
the last few days.
“Do not allow yourself to be influenced by tales of parachutists but
if you actually find some, remember that an armed man can always beat
them. Guard yourself against imaginary dangers. As though you were in
active combat, you have to defend yourself against false rumors which
may be spread by a traitor or an imbecile seized with panic.
“If you listen to such tales they may be able to provoke serious
defection. Listen to no one but your superior officers and those you
know.
“A man can overcome his fear. It is his duty to surmount it and to
combat the fears of others. If a man spreads fear he not only commits
an act of cowardice. He commits treason.
“Know finally that the enemy is not so strong as some people think.
Oppose to him your will. It is your will which will sweep the enemy
away. Never forget what you are defending. If you let the enemy pass
you will lose more than your life. You will be pitilessly separated
from your families to suffer far from them a slavery worse than death.”
The intelligence and courage of Huntziger as displayed in these orders
were of no avail, because he could not, as Churchill can, transmit his
spirit to others. His soldiers listened to his talk and read his orders
of the day but still they yielded to their fear. It must be seldom in
military history that a commanding general has to devote his principal
orders to adjuring his troops not to be afraid. The French Army was
already panic-stricken.
Q. _You say there was treachery among senior officers of the French
Army and among the government. Why do you say that and what proof of it
have you?_
A. There were both treachery and treason. High French officers and
officials conspired to overthrow the Republic. Pétain himself was their
leader. They were so fanatical in their desire to destroy the Republic
that they fell into the German trap and acquiesced in what the Germans
told them would be a fake defeat, after which they would set up the
Fascist government which they did set up at Vichy. After that Hitler
would withdraw his troops and restore France to all her old power
and glory, an equal partner and friend of Nazi Germany. They were of
course deceived and now most of them must realize they were deceived,
and that Hitler has no intention of ever allowing France to be a great
power again. But this awakening is too late and the guilty men, many
of them now in Pétain’s government, have a life-and-death interest in
preserving their secret, since in the present temper of the French
people if the truth were known many another assassination would follow
the attempts on Laval and Deat.
This is a rough outline of what I believe to have happened in France.
I will be glad to give you all the evidence I have, admitting that
it probably is not sufficient to win a verdict of guilty in a court
of law, but maintaining that it is convincing to one who witnessed
the debacle and was bewildered by the lack of adequate explanation.
You see, after we had added up all the other reasons for the fall
of France, there was still something lacking; something to explain
the fact that the French Army of nearly five million men, with its
centuries of glorious tradition, and its reputation among experts as
the best in the world, never once held firm after the Germans broke
through the Low Countries, never once stopped the enemy for as much as
a day, but steadily, day by day retreated, crumbled, broke up, and at
the end of five weeks ceased to exist.
Review our list of causes now and see if all of them put together
explain this phenomenon. Complacency and trust in the Maginot line
and the softening effect of eight months of inactivity, comparative
lack of leadership, man power and planes and tanks; lack of faith,
anger, and the spirit to fight to kill; conflict between communists
and conservatives. No, all these reasons together do not explain the
conduct of the French Army between May 11 and June 17, 1940.
Q. _But the thesis you present is too astounding. That French Army
officers should have conspired with the enemy is almost beyond belief.
Do you mean the French General Staff?_
A. Yes, the French General Staff. Not all of it; only a few members
were necessary. If you find it difficult to believe, remember that
the French officers and officials concerned did not believe they were
betraying France; they believed that Hitler would keep his word and
restore France as soon as the Republic was overthrown. To make this
aspect of the matter clear: suppose you were a young Frenchman today,
would you think of it as treason if you worked to overthrow the Vichy
government? Would you think of yourself as a traitor if you conspired
with the British to throw out Pétain and reorganize a democratic
government? No.
Well, in so far as one can credit such Fascists with sincerity, we
have to admit that these men also thought they were serving the best
interests of France when they conspired to overthrow the Republic.
Remember that French officers as a class have generally been
anti-Republican. Napoleon’s officers soon forgot Republican principles
in their devotion to the Emperor. The hierarchy of the Army did not
favor the equalitarianism of the French Republic. Aristocratic officers
generally set the tone for the majority of the higher ranks. Time and
again I was astonished to note that upper-class Frenchmen seemed to
remember as though it had been yesterday the bloody events of the
French Revolution, and were more afraid of their own working class than
of any foreign enemy.
I visited once the famous deep cellar vaults of the Bank of France
where they kept the gold, and while walking through the doorway,
piercing its twenty-foot thick steel and concrete walls, I asked why
they needed such formidable and expensive protection. Was it against
the Germans? It could not be, because if ever the Germans occupied
Paris, as they do today, no underground fortification such as these
vaults could prevent them from getting the gold, especially since the
Germans would be holding as hostages the men with the keys. No, it was
not against a foreign enemy; the vaults were built against the Paris
mob, against revolutionaries, against another 1789.
This spirit was shared by many French senior officers, and it is
ironic that their conspiracy to bring about a feigned defeat in order
to overthrow the Republic was greatly helped by the defection of the
Parisian Communist troops in Corap’s Ninth Army at the Meuse. The
very workingmen who had most to lose by the fall of the Republic and
the establishment of a Fascist France, helped bring about their own
downfall under the mistaken guidance of Moscow. The treachery to France
came from the two opposite poles of French society.
Q. _How did this treason manifest itself in the operations of the army?_
A. I will give you one example, from personal experience and the
testimony of French friends. You remember the Germans, when they broke
through the Low Countries and across the Meuse, dashed with their
Panzer divisions for the coast, pell-mell, at top speed, not bothering
or wasting time at first to widen their column of penetration, which
was still only a few miles wide for much of its length when the first
German detachments reached the sea at Abbeville. North of this thin
German column was the strong French Army under General Prioux, while
south of it were the main French forces. It was the constant fervid
hope of the French that their armies would cut across the German
column, roll it up in two directions, and win not merely the battle of
France but perhaps the war.
Military experts, foremost our own, thought it possible; some held it
probable. This hope reached its climax after Weygand made an inspection
flight to the Low Countries and returned to Paris. That day at the
Ministry of Information as I was waiting in the office for Colonel
Schieffer, in charge of American correspondents, the gaunt, one-eyed,
black-monocled, fiercely patriotic Colonel came in with a bang, dropped
his customary stillness and exclaimed: “Weygand says he won’t leave a
German alive, not one. He’s going to cut the column and bottle them up
and he says there won’t be left one living.” Like wildfire the word of
Weygand spread through the building, through Paris, through France. It
was the only bright moment in the whole Battle of France.
But it did not happen. Why didn’t it? A captain from General Prioux’s
staff may have the answer. This is the story he told. “After the
Germans reached Abbeville and cut us off from the South, General Prioux
called us all together one day and said, ‘I have orders from General
Headquarters that you must blow up your tanks and guns and retreat as
speedily as possible to the seashore. I must tell you that personally
I do not approve these orders. I am convinced we are strong enough to
make an offensive southward and cut the Germans and reunite with our
troops in France. However, orders are orders and one does not discuss
orders. You will do as I have told you and I shall stay here where I
am.’
“We did as we were told and Prioux became a prisoner of war. That was
our last chance. The failure to cut the German column was the end of
the Battle of France. We could have done it; we were ordered not to.”
Counterattack, always we waited for the famous French counterattack,
the fulfillment of the French Army tradition of aggression, _à la
baionette!_ but it never came. Orders stopped it.
Q. _Who gave the orders? Pétain was not an active officer then._
A. No, but General George was. I want to give you my evidence in the
form of a firsthand quotation from a French friend, but before I do so
it is important to point out that between General Gamelin, commander in
chief of all the Allied land forces, and General George, commander of
the French armies fighting against Germany, there existed a jealousy so
strong that it amounted to hatred, and their headquarters staffs became
so permeated with it that they actually withheld information from each
other.