of goods in the first six months of lease-lend to Britain and China?
That is only a little over one per cent of the total lease-lend money
involved. If it takes us six months to deliver one per cent, how
long will it take to deliver 100 per cent? Certainly, the beginning
is slowest; certainly speed of deliveries will increase almost
geometrically after the new factories begin to produce. But the fact
is that we will never produce enough to win this war without going
formally to war. As Donald M. Nelson, chief defense buyer, suggested,
the only way to get capacity production for armaments is to make the
program so big that civilian needs will be irresistibly pushed into the
background, and every factory capable of producing armaments will be
forced to drop its civilian business and go immediately to work on war
materials.
What does “pushing our civilian needs into the background” mean?
It means sacrifice; it means a lowering of our standard of living.
Do you know anyone, have you a single person in your acquaintance
in civilian life, whose standard of living has deteriorated as a
result of sacrifice for our so-called defense effort? Leaf through
your smart magazines, read the news of the shops, and ask yourself
what the fighting folk of Europe would think of the war effort of a
country whose rugged males in the bloody autumn of 1941 are asked in
full-page advertisements: “Have you seen the new brown diamonds for
men? These interesting, subdued stones are rapidly becoming a major
item in the well-dressed man’s wardrobe.” Would this make very good
evidence against Hitler’s assertion that we are a “decadent, degenerate
democracy not to be taken seriously in war”?
Q. _But how can we expect to improve morale by criticism? Isn’t it true
that if you tell a healthy man he looks ill, and tell him frequently
enough, he may actually fall ill?_
A. Yes, but if you tell an ill man he looks well, and he therefore
fails to take care of himself, he may die. It is not fear that we need;
it is awareness. What was the common cause of the death of the fifteen
nations which have fallen to Hitler? It was lack of awareness of his
threat to their national existence. From Poland to Greece they were
all overconfident and hence for six long years did nothing to bring
about that coalition which might have saved them. Overconfidence is our
danger, not defeatism. The moment our Navy was given orders to convoy
and shoot, one prominent voice was raised to suggest that now we might
diminish our Army, as though the war were virtually won.
Q. _Our morale is very bad, then?_
A. No, that is not true. Our morale is high. That sounds like a
contradiction but it is not. It is my conviction after talking to
audiences all over the country that the American people are eager
to find out the truth and when they hear it they are eager to act;
that they are far ahead of their leaders in Congress, and even of the
President; and that if the President wanted it, he could get directly
from the American people, not from Congress, but from the twenty-seven
million Americans who voted for him, plus many million more, approval
of any measure he advocated, including a formal declaration of war.
National morale depends so much on leadership that a great figure, as
Roosevelt in this country and Churchill in England, can influence it to
great decisions with one broadcast.
But without leadership we soon sink back into smug apathy, and the kind
of thoughtlessness which led Americans in the first six months of 1941
to buy 35 per cent more automobiles, 42 per cent more refrigerators,
and 51 per cent more electric ranges than in the same period of
1940--all of these luxury articles being built of materials vital for
our defense industry. The French too, right up to the collapse, went on
eating tremendous meals, loafing behind their Maginot line, and reading
illustrated magazines with pictures just like ours showing magnificent
fleets of planes and tanks. An unwitting reader of some of our great
periodicals would get the impression that we have one of the world’s
most powerful tank armies and that our warplanes could darken the
skies. We lay down the magazine with a sigh of content. Good old U.S.A.
We knew we could do it. What was all that talk about unpreparedness?
Q. _Haven’t we a tank army?_
A. We have four armored divisions now being organized. We see them
under such titles as “Uncle Sam’s Mighty Tanks Move Into Action,” and
only the closest examination of the picture reveals that most of the
tanks are armored cars. In 1940 we produced 20 light, no medium, and
no heavy tanks a month; in 1941, 260 light, 130 medium, and no heavy
tanks a month; and in 1942 we shall produce 390 light, 300 medium, and
still no heavy tanks a month. I quote from an authoritative release of
July 4, 1941: “None of the four existing armored divisions is regarded
as complete and ready for combat on the European scale because medium
and heavy tanks have not arrived yet, and because _coordinated practice
with the air arm regularly attached to the divisions has not yet been
possible_ and because much of the training time must be devoted to
the basic training of new men.” There is the mechanized force of the
United States of America in the third year of the mechanized world war.
Our armored strength consists of light tanks only, completely useless
against heavy or medium tanks. But most appalling is the revelation
that this late in a war in which every victory has been won by the
famous dive bomber plus tank team, we seem not to possess any such team
at all, for that must be the meaning of the statement that there has
been no practice of coordination between planes and tanks. These teams
cannot be improvised. An army without them today is like an army would
have been without artillery yesterday.
In effect we still do not possess an effective armored force and the
production figures indicate we shall not have one in 1942 either, for
until we have heavy tanks we cannot face heavy tanks. What have the
Germans in the way of mechanized armament? We cannot tell what changes
have taken place since the Battle of Russia began, but we know that
their losses are constantly replenished from the industrial plants of
all Europe now working feverishly for the Germans. At the Battle of
France the Germans had ten Panzer divisions and it was these steel hack
saws which cut the body of France into bleeding ribbons and ended the
French nation in five weeks. The Germans captured from the French 4,000
or 5,000 tanks and since that time have produced incessantly until it
is estimated that they entered the Battle of Russia with a total of 20
to 30 Panzer divisions and with at least 25,000 tanks. The German Army
is obviously the army we are preparing to fight. Its armored strength
is conservatively estimated about twenty-five times ours, and it has
more than two years of battle experience. We not only have not got an
army that could take part in modern warfare at all, but we are not even
preparing to create such an army. We may get one. We will get one if
we have time. We will get an army if we go to war in time to keep the
British between us and our enemy for the period it will take to build
an army. We will never get an army so long as we are satisfied with
what we have.
We American people have been like a neurotic who refuses to listen to
bad news; who will not go to a physician for fear of what he may find
out. We could afford to view the matter less darkly if it appeared
that our production would give us an effective fighting machine
sometime in the future, but this does not seem to be the case. Our
gun production indicates that we expect to be ready to fight a modern
army sometime around the 1950’s. It shows that in the middle of 1941
we had a production of 4 big, 29 medium, and 20 small antiaircraft
guns per month. At that rate it would take a year to make enough
antiaircraft guns to guard New York City alone. In mid-1942 we shall,
if we are lucky, have a production of 22 big, 23 medium, and 300 small
antiaircraft guns monthly. At this rate we should be able properly to
guard the large cities of the Eastern seaboard in about ten years.
In 1941 we did not produce any 155 mm. cannon, but we will make
fourteen of them monthly in 1942; just as we produced no 105 mm. cannon
in 1940, but put out 22 per month in 1941 and in 1942 hope to make 155
a month. At this rate we ought to be able to finish enough artillery
to match the German artillery in about 1951. We are still turning out
37 mm. antitank guns, although tests have shown that this gun will not
penetrate the armor of the tanks it would have to meet. Even our famous
Garand rifle apparently cannot be manufactured anything like fast
enough to supply the growing army. In mid-1941 it was being turned out
at the rate of 22,500 a month; and in 1942 it is due to be produced at
the rate of 52,000 a month. That is only 624,000 a year. At this rate
it would take well over three years to equip the two-million-man army
which is our initial goal in the face of the fact that the forces it is
being built to meet number upward of ten million.
In airplanes we have the one advantage that we came so late into the
field that we have few obsolescent types. The British and Germans
have the immense advantage of daily contact with battle experience.
In mid-1941 we produced 206 fighters and 60 bombers per month for
ourselves and sent an average of 390 planes monthly to Britain. Our aid
to Britain, “all out, short of war,” amounted to this, that after two
years of war we were sending Britain about one-eighth as many warplanes
as Germany’s production, believed to be around 3,000 a month. Even in
1942 when we shall have reached capacity production, we expect to send
Britain only 650 planes a month, and to make only 600 bombers and 600
fighters monthly for ourselves. That is, even in the third year of war
we propose to have a production of only about three-quarters the German
production. We have pitched our sights far too low. We might as well
quit if we cannot set the sights up.
Raymond Swing always tells me as he rakes in the pot, “Knick, it is
not good hands that win in poker; it is better hands.” So it is in
this war. We shall never win with a good army, navy, and air force;
they have to be better than the enemy’s and bigger too. Before the
Battle of Russia some military critics held that we did not need even
the 1,500,000 men we now have under arms; that we needed only a highly
mechanized force. Now we see that to win in this war an army needs mass
as well as machines. As yet we have neither.
Q. _Why haven’t we at any rate planned an adequate army of four or five
million men with at least as many armored divisions as the Germans?_
A. Because to plan an adequate army would indicate we intended to go
to war. To make it big enough and well enough equipped to fight the
Germans would indicate that we intended to fight the Germans. The
consequence of our ostrich hypocrisy, our faint-hearted catering to the
pacifist, isolationist-obscurantist bloc is that we not only do not
but we cannot build an army to perform the function for which it was
called into existence: fight the Nazis. If we equip it to go abroad, up
go cries of alarm from the Wheeler-Lindbergh crowd: “Foreign war! See,
the President is going to put us into a foreign war!”
Q. _But if we have nothing to fight with, how can we go to war?_
A. Only by going to war can we guarantee the continued existence of the
British fighting machine and the control of the Atlantic by the British
Navy and our own. As long as the Atlantic is thus controlled we can arm
ourselves in safety.
Q. _But why can’t we arm ourselves, as we are now doing, without going
to war, and after we are thoroughly prepared, then, if it is still
necessary, go in and win? Wouldn’t that be more sensible?_
A. No, because until we go to war we shall never arm ourselves
adequately or send to Britain and Russia anything like the supplies
we would send if we went to war. Second, if we do not go to war at
once there exists always the possibility of German victory. Although
the German Army is busy for the time being in Russia, Hitler knows he
has to conquer Britain to win. He intends to return to the Battle of
Britain. The Battle of the Atlantic is constantly going on. Events move
with such lightning speed in this war that a sudden overwhelming Hitler
victory is still quite conceivable. Beaverbrook only the other day said
he was convinced Hitler still intended to try to invade the British
Isles.
Q. _Do you think Hitler could succeed in invading Britain?_
A. If Hitler is willing to lose half a million or a million men in a
super-Blitz--and we know that he is quite willing to invest that many
more German lives in his dream of 1,000 years of Nazi Empire--even
British authorities admit he might get a foothold in England. The
German tactics would probably be similar to the attack on Crete, except
that against the British Isles they would try many more landings by
sea. Everything would be on a gigantic scale. The air bombardment to
precede the attempt would surpass anything experienced in the Blitz
of the autumn of 1940 which I witnessed. In this super-Blitz the
Germans would attempt to paralyze the R.A.F. They were not able to do
it before. The R.A.F., as Churchill said, won the climacteric victory
of the First Battle of Britain by knocking down three German planes
to every one they lost, and in that fight the Germans outnumbered the
British three to one. But if Hitler gets the airplane factories of
Russia, to add to the production of the French, Czech, Belgian, and
Greater German production, is there anyone who would undertake to prove
that he could not concentrate in one furious attack more force than
even the dauntless R.A.F. could repel?
The Germans can never beat the British but they might suffocate them.
Hitler so far has never used more than 500 or 600 warplanes in a single
attack on England. Suppose he uses 5,000. Why has he not done this
before? Every aviation and military authority I talked with during the
Blitz in England was baffled at this. There were scores of guesses. The
most popular answer now is that the Germans did not have the airfields
from which to launch so many planes at once. This is a limiting factor
in air warfare which is now given great weight. It is pointed out that
it takes a huge airfield to send off 100 planes. It is even argued
that the British are bound to lose the war eventually because their
island can accommodate only a restricted number of airfields, which
fix an upper limit for their R.A.F., while the Germans can build an
indefinitely large force. Since the First Battle of Britain the Germans
have had plenty of time to build airfields from Norway to France
sufficient to take care of the air fleets of all the world. We know
they have built many secretly along the coast of Northern France and
the Low Countries. Hitler’s tactic of surprise would lead him to keep
them in reserve for the great invasion. Few observers would exclude the
possibility that the Germans may be able to use thousands of planes in
the Second Battle of Britain where they used hundreds in the first.
Q. _Why doesn’t Hitler use poison gas?_
A. I am convinced he will use it whenever he becomes desperate. Why has
he not used it before? The British know he has vast quantities of it.
He may be afraid of reprisals. When he uses gas at all I should think
it would be in a once-for-all storm. Imagine what the effect of a giant
attack with a heavy gas might be on London where as many as 4,000,000
persons sleep in underground shelters. The English have virtually
ceased to carry gas masks. At the beginning of the war not one person
in a hundred appeared on the streets of London without one. Today not
one person in fifty carries one.
Hitler would probably not use gas at all except as a part of a knockout
blow so violent that the British would not have a chance to strike
back. Whatever the outcome, it is possible that such a mass gas assault
might kill hundreds of thousands in one night. While the gas attack
was being poured upon the large cities, in the hope also of wiping
out the government and other leaders in urban headquarters, swarms of
flat-bottomed scows and other vessels would put out from the coasts
of the Channel and the North Sea, to make for landings at perhaps
a dozen different places, anywhere along the coast of both England
and Scotland. Some of these objectives would be feigned to divert
English defense forces from the real ones, which might number five or
six. Meanwhile great numbers of parachute troops would be landed to
capture British airfields and hold them long enough for troop planes
and gliders to land reinforcements, and these landings would also be
attempted at the immediate rear of the coastal points where the German
troops were coming in by sea.
British authorities admit that it would be a serious matter if the
Germans could establish one or more such bridgeheads on the coast and
land heavy tanks, for the British even yet are not satisfactorily
equipped with this indispensable weapon. The British believe they
could concentrate and recapture any points seized by the Germans, but
who knows? Crete showed what could be done with air-borne troops, and
although the British Isles would be in most respects more difficult to
capture than Crete, they would not be in all respects. The Germans are
much nearer the British Isles, and could concentrate many times the
force they used on Crete.
If the invasion of Britain ever takes place, Hitler will doubtless make
it a win-the-war or lose-the-war battle, on a scale of the highest
concentrated violence. Neither side will hold back reserves, as the
R.A.F. did even in the worst days of the 1940 Blitz, because they were
waiting to use their last fighters and bombers against the expected
invaders. The British Navy will drive regardless of mines or submarines
through the narrow waters of the Channel to throw itself between the
invaders and the island. The odds would still be on the British to win,
in my judgment. They are in an incomparably stronger position than in
1940 when after Dunkirk they were practically weaponless. Today they
have two to three million first-class, well-equipped, and well-trained
troops and over a million Home Guards on the island; their coast
defenses, as I have seen on visits around the island, are formidable
and deep; the R.A.F. is present in full strength on its home bases,
and the British claim it is growing steadily stronger relative to the
Luftwaffe; and the Royal Navy, sallying from its home ports, here
has the protection of air forces which were not available at Crete.
Finally, the British would be defending their homes, and this lends an
astonishing extra strength to fighting men. I would not like to be a
member of the German Army trying to occupy and pacify England. At the
school of Cad’s Warfare, run by Tom Wintringham outside of London, they
have taught the old fellows and the youngsters in the Home Guard many
odd and useful tricks, from the best way to strangle a German sentry
from behind, to the best way to stab a German sentry from in front.
Even if the chances are in favor of the British, there are so many
surprises in war, and especially in this war, that it would be folly
for us to behave as though we knew Britain would win without us. If she
falls, we must be prepared to meet the whole German war machine alone.
Q. _Is it true that the Germans once tried to invade Britain and failed
as we heard rumored here?_
A. I am convinced those rumors were without foundation; I do not think
the Germans have ever tried to invade the British Isles. I remember
the September story. I was in England then and about mid-September I
learned that the highest British authorities believed the invasion
might come at any moment. With the invincible Virginia Cowles we went
“Looking for Trouble” and motored to Dover and spent a week along the
coast, in constant contact with the British military authorities. We
heard not a whisper of the yarn about invasion until later in London
when rumors came from the continent that the R.A.F. had broken up a
fleet of German invasion vessels and drowned or burned with flaming
oil on the surface of the sea thousands of German soldiers. Now it is
perfectly possible that the R.A.F. may have surprised and thus treated
German invasion vessels engaged in maneuver or in moving from one
port to another, but it is out of the question that it should have
been a serious attempt at invasion. When that happens there will be
500,000 Germans concerned, not 50,000, and there will be no attempt at
concealment.
The decisive consideration is that if the Germans had tried an invasion
and the British had beaten it back, the British would have been
certain to advertise their victory as widely as possible. But British
authorities never said anything about a repulsed invasion attempt. We
may be sure that when and if the invasion attempt comes, there will be
no question about what is happening; not even the most enterprising
American newspaperman will be able to get a scoop on the story.
Q. _Would the Germans first invade Ireland in order to be able to
attack the British Isles from all sides?_
A. Possibly, though not necessarily. The Germans might consider the
disadvantages of taking Ireland greater than the advantages. The Irish
Channel is as wide as the English; the Germans would be no nearer
England than they are now. The possession of submarine bases in Ireland
would be the most important gain for the Germans. Against this the
Germans have to balance the cost of the operation, since there are
strong British units in Northern Ireland; the time lost; the alarm
given; and the effect on the Irish in America.
Q. _Why doesn’t Ireland allow the British to take over for the duration
of the war or at any rate let them use the Irish naval bases they need
so badly?_
A. Because the Irish still consider Oliver Cromwell a far more
unpleasant fellow than Adolf Hitler. They still distrust and to a
degree hate the British. Also they know they would be enslaved if
Hitler won; but they do not expect Hitler to win. They expect Britain
to win, but they will do nothing or practically nothing to help win.
To be fair to the Irish, their attitude is based less on historical
prejudice than on today’s life or death. If De Valera were to give
the British permission to occupy the Irish ports, the moment the news
became known, the Germans would bombard Dublin and other Irish cities,
and deliberately attempt to kill as many Irish men, women, and children
as possible to punish them for siding with the English. This is the
threat that so far has kept the Irish from allowing the British in.
Q. _If the Russians hold the German Army long enough, won’t the time
come when the German people will revolt? Why not wait for that?_
A. Because it is extremely unlikely ever to happen unless we go to war.
The German people will revolt only when, as Walter Lippmann expressed
it, they feel that it has become more dangerous to go on with Hitler
than to get rid of him. Such a time will come only when the German
people become convinced that they are going to be defeated and invaded.
It will not come merely because the German Army falls into a prolonged
deadlock with the Russians.