John Whitaker: "Hitler plans world empire!"

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 3, 1941)

Hitler plans world empire!

John T. Whitaker, noted Chicago News Foreign Service writer, in a new uncensored series, reveals Hitler’s plans for world domination, pointing out:

1. Hitler’s aims against the New York-Dakar triangle.
2. The cards with which Hitler prevented Pétain from playing the aces of fleet and empire.
3. How France’s Darlan is “co-operating” with Hitler.
4. The situation in North Africa.
5. Why marching into Spain will be easy for Hitler.

Read this new, startling series starting exclusively in the Press MONDAY!

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 5, 1941)

Hitler’s plans for world empire –
NAZIS PAVE WAY TO U.S. THROUGH PLANS IN AFRICA
…
Germans aim to break British-American defense system by occupying Dakar and most of ‘dark continent’ plus all France, Spain, Portugal
…

Editor’s note:
If Hitler succeeds in gaining undisputed control over unoccupied France, Spain, Portugal and North Africa, he will materially increase the prospects of Nazi victory and correspondingly jeopardize the security of the United States.

Nazi influence in those foreign countries is already so potent that it is extremely difficult to investigate and describe what Germany is up to in that strategic area.

John T. Whitaker, noted correspondent of the Chicago Daily News Service, had been visiting these countries since he was expelled from Rome by the Fascist government. He has succeeded in getting the facts about this critical condition. The first of a series of revealing stories follows; the series will continue throughout this week.

By John T. Whitaker

Somewhere in Europe –
German occupation of France, Spain, Portugal and much of North Africa now appears certain unless the United States enters the war and joins Britain in preventive action before Hitler’s plans can be developed and completed.

Except for the Iberian peninsula, Hitler already controls the whole of Europe, but he plans to make the “new order” all-embracive not from personal vainglory but for sound strategic reasons based on a war plan that never leaves the initiative to others.

Vichy, or unoccupied France, invited Hitler because he needs a contiguous stretch of German-ruled territory from the Reich itself to North Africa, because “occupied” Italy is insufficient to this purpose without the naval bases at Toulon in France and Bizerte in Tunisia and because he sees the possibility of seizing the French Navy.

Spain invites him because Gibraltar remains the rock of British sea power in the Western Mediterranean and must be isolated whether Hitler is able to take Suez or not. Indeed, it may not be possible to take Suez until the Straits of Gibraltar are closed.

Invited by Portugal

Portugal invites him – though his first step there probably will be the rupture of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance rather than immediate occupation – because he needs air and submarine bases on that flank of the British Isles if he is to win the “Battle of the Atlantic” which Churchill foresees as the decisive engagement of the war.

More important than any of these considerations, however, is Hitler’s theory that he must have control of Africa and the bases which extend from the Azores through Dakar – this simultaneously with the closing of the Mediterranean, which, together, would halve the efficiency of Anglo-Saxon naval power. For Hitler thinks strategically.

If the war is viewed strategically, Britain is already defeated and hangs on not only through the heroic stubborness of her people but also, and indeed primarily, through American help and the ultimate promise of American victory. Informed circles from Berlin and Rome describe Hitler as confident of victory over America.

Road to South America

American defense can be thought of graphically as lying along the New York-Dakar-London triangle. By confirming his hold on Dakar with control of the African bases down the coast and down the islands extending from Portugal through Dakar, Hitler will have broken that defensive system. The “Battle of the Atlantic” will be half-won and the way will be opened to South America. This is the way Germans and Italians have been talking for some weeks now.

Panic swept Berlin twice in the last two months and became more acute with the American occupation of Greenland. The German thought that the Americans would beat them to the punch. Twice there were rumors that Washington planned a swift occupation of the Azores and a join action with the British against Dakar.

Such action would have upset plans with Hitler laid early last winter, as I learned following one of Hitler’s conferences with Mussolini. Such moves would have been virtually the first instance of Hitler’s being beaten to an initiative by his foes.

Action is Hitler’s fear

Since then Germans to whom correspondents and diplomats have access indicate that Berlin has regained its confidence. Much is made there of the activities of Col. Lindbergh and others with the America First Committee. They are expected to paralyze American action and iot is action alone that Hitler fears.

If Hitler can get the African bases, break the New York-Dakar-London triangle and close the Mediterranean before America enters the war, he can win the “Battle of the Atlantic,” reach Middle Eastern oil and bring Japan into the balance, according to every German with whom I have talked.

In this situation, the French, Spaniards and Portuguese are ready to welcome the Germans with open arms. Individual Frenchmen, Spaniards and Portuguese hate Hitler, are sick at the thought of being brought into the “New Europe” and dread the moment of occupation. But as nations, all three are ready to welcome the German. As nations they feel that they can resist the Nazis no better than the Poles, the Norwegians or the Yugoslavs. They are ready to relax and hope for the best.

Thousands ready to fight

In France, Spain and Portugal, I have heard the same question from scores – reiterated with the same insistence:

Will the Americans and the British come in before the Germans?

Thousands in each country are ready to die in guerilla resistance to the Nazis if that fits into an Anglo-Saxon plan to win the war. In France, Spain and Portugal, the masses are anti-German and they are thrilled by the heroism of the Finns, the Greeks and the Yugoslavs.

If there is a lead – some action which gives them confidence in ultimate victory over Germany – they are ready to prove themselves heroic, too. But they ask:

What will America do?

When I answered that at the moment America did not seem ready to enter the war, a French friend was bitter. He fought with great distinction last spring and had come out with a score of other Frenchmen to join De Gaulle’s “Free France” movement.

I am ashamed of my own country, but yours is worse. America isn’t a great country. Finland and Greece are great countries. America is only a big country.

The bitterness of this Frenchman must be measured by the fact that he knows occupied France, unoccupied France and French North Africa.

Hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen are ready to rise in these three places today, but you give them no hope of ultimate victory over Germany. They feel certain that Hitler will conquer America within two years. They are impressed with Hitler’s Balkan successes and in such a moment neither Britain nor America acts.

I know the world and I know that it is bigger than the Mediterranean and the Balkan lands. I know that Germany will be defeated. Most Frenchmen don’t. They say, “If America is paralyzed, that means Germany will win, so it is better that we should accept our fate and hope that the war will be over as quickly as possible.”

I quote this at length because it is so like what I have heard from Spaniards and Portuguese too at a moment when those peoples expect the invasion of their lands by Hitler. The Germans know how they feel and they expect little or no resistance.

A second story in Mr. Whitaker’s series will be published tomorrow.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 6, 1941)

Hitler’s plans for world empire –
HITLER UNDERMINES FRENCH WILL AND POWER TO RESIST
…
Division of country, reparations and retention of 2 million prisoners have robbed Pétain of his ace cards – fleet and empire
…

Editor’s note:
If Hitler succeeds in gaining undisputed control over unoccupied France, Spain, Portugal and North Africa, he will materially increase the prospects of Nazi victory and correspondingly jeopardize the security of the United States.

Nazi influence in those foreign countries is already potent. John T. Whitaker of the Chicago Daily News Foreign Service had been studying this crucial situation. The second of his revealing stories follows:

By John T. Whitaker

Somewhere in Europe –
A German attempt to complete the occupation, or subjugation, of France will find a government at Vichy that has neither the will nor the power to resist, a fleet whose officers are divided politically and an empire through which thousands of German troops as well as secret agents have infiltrated.

Last winter, the Germans were in a difficult position when they dealt with Pétain. The aged marshal was very infirm, but he had the rugged character of an honest man and he held two ace cards. If the Nazis went too far, he could release the fleet to the British and he could telegraph the French Empire to go over to the British cause.

This created the maximum of illusion in France and explains more than anything else why the Vichy French, unlike those in occupied Paris, are still unaware how crushing their defeat is and how terrible is the fate that lies ahead.

It created illusions even in America, which sent at least two agents to French Morocco to talk presumably with General Weygand and others about the possibility of colonial action against the Germans.

Hitler scarcely can have deluded himself. He held more ace cards than Pétain and, moreover, he was playing a game that was both clever and patient. Unless there is a miracle, Hitler will win that game. He has slowly increased his control over the French fleet and the moment seems to have passed when French North Africa might have thrown in its lot with De Gaulle’s “Free France.”

What were the cards with which Hitler prevented Pétain from playing the aces of the fleet and empire? The first was the division of the country into occupied France and free France, as the Germans humorously termed unoccupied France. Just as the division of France politically enabled Hitler to beat it to war, so the division of the country geographically enabled him to rule it in defeat with a minimum of difficulty.

The line of demarcation cut everything – the national economy, the transportation system, the factories that depended on one another, families, political party organization, everything.

On one side of the line lie French wheat; on the other the country’s meat. Even to make a sandwich, the French had to come on bended knee to ask the Germans for permission to cross an arbitrary line which was generally closed hermetically.

The Germans opened and closed that frontier ruthlessly but cleverly. Three weeks ago, they shunted across nine boxcars filled with 119 lunatics from an insane asylum. Vichy couldn’t send them back. Vichy had to take them, find asylum for them and learn again to laugh in the guttural way at the German sense of humor.

Halter around throat

It is no wonder that even Pétain, long-suffering and silent, cried out:

The line of demarcation is a halter around the throat of France.

The Germans designed it as such and the have had a genius for knowing when to tighten until it hurts. Not least of its harmful effects, of course, has been the division of Frenchmen, for the people in the occupied zone who feel the weight of the German heel cry out that Vichy lets them down in order to spare itself trouble, while Vichy says that the people in the occupied zone, thinking only of their own misery, forget that Pétain must play a patient and diplomatic game with the conquerors.

Hitler’s second card has been reparations levied on the excuse of the army of occupation. The French are compelled to pay 400 million francs a day. At this rate, the French have disgorged not less than $3,500,000,000 in the first year of occupation.

This is an interesting footnote to 20 years of German propaganda against the alleged iniquities of the Versailles Treaty. Under the Versailles Treaty, Germany had paid only some $9 billion by 1932 when reparations were scrapped. Thus the French in one year have paid nearly half of all the reparations paid by Germany.

Based on army of 8 million

The charge against the French is based on the cost of an army of occupation numbering 8 million men. Actually, the Germans have quartered only 3 million in France. Thus two-thirds of the sum charged is pocketed by the Germans. The stolen two-thirds has been used to buy control of French factories from the French shareholders. This provides a tremendous loot for the Nazi higher-ups and they control most of the French factories now working for Germany.

50% of French industry is at work again, it is estimated, and of this only 5% works for French consumption.

Groaning under such a burden, the French alternatively have hoped that it would be lessened and feared it would be increased. It has proved an effective weapon in German hands as well as the most colossal instance of looting in modern history.

The final and most important of Hitler’s weapons has been control over ome 2 million French prisoners of war held in German camps. There is scarcely a French family that does not wait for some loved one.

Whenever he has wanted to shake the French, Hitler has hinted that these prisoners might be released or reminded the French that they can still be held. In the main, they are under the supervision of German officers who were prisoners in the last war and know the prisoner’s psychology, but there is always the possibility of putting Nazi Stormtroopers over them.

Revolt is only hope

Many a French woman, with that shrewdness which characterizes them, knows that the only hope for France is revolt in an effort to facilitate an Anglo-Saxon victory over Germany. Many a French woman knows that Hitler’s promise of the early return of prisoners is a cynical and cruel lie.

But almost all French women forget those things if they have their own husbands or sons in a German prison camp. A mother always nurses the illusion that her boy is coming back – a wife knows that her man is still alive.

These three weapons have sufficed. Hitler has never had to fear that Pétain would send the fleet or the empire to Britain. With these three cards, Hitler has divided Frenchmen geographically, disunited them politically and paralyzed their wills. In the face of them, no national sentiment has crystallized.

Hitler must have chuckled, sitting in the Berchtesgaden, to see how well the technique employed in the Saar and the Sudetenland and now being undertaken in America has worked in France. It is the technique of exploiting the individual’s personal fears and personal aspirations until a national sentiment seems too costly, too risky.

Tomorrow’s story by Mr. Whitaker will tell how Germany hopes to obtain the French fleet.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 7, 1941)

Hitler’s plans for world empire –
DARLAN ON VERGE OF GIVING UP NAVY
…
Vichy’s Vice Premier hates British – return of warships to guard vessels carrying food, as he proposes, would let Nazis grab fleet
…

Editor’s note:
Hitler is seeking undisputed control over unoccupied France, Spain, Portugal and North Africa, and if he gets it, he will materially increase the prospects of Nazi victory and weaken the security of the United States.

Nazi influence in those foreign countries is already so great that it is extremely difficult to investigate and describe what Germany is up to in that strategic area. John T. Whitaker, noted correspondent, has succeeded in getting the facts about this crucial situation. The third of his stories dealing with it follows:

By John T. Whitaker

Somewhere in Europe –
Hitler has always known how to pick his moment and the time is near at hand when he can attempt swift action against France to integrate that defeated but geographically important country into his general war plans for Africa and the Spanish peninsula.

The difficulties that stayed his hand in France through the winter no longer obtain and Hitler is in a position to regain the initiative whenever he is ready to face America.

Admiral Darlan’s political preferment as the Vice Premier of the Vichy government under Marshal Pétain has removed much of the risk that the French fleet might go over to the British. Darlan has exploited the anti-British sentiments inspired by the clashes at Oran and Dakar. More important, he has taught the fleet to cooperate even if clandestinely with the Germans against their British allies.

Darlan’s hatred of the British is real. He said to a friend of mine:

The British have ruined seven generations of my family.

My friend asked if he would be precise and explain just how the British had ruined seven generations of Darlans. The admiral turned on his heel and walked off in a huff.

This vague but profound sentiment is matched with great personal ambition. Darlan once commanded a gunboat on the Rhine, but most of his success as a French naval officer has been political. The Ministry of Marine has stood for years in the Place de la Concorde and it is notorious that more politics than salt water reach that beautiful old palace.

When Laval’s intrigues and Flandin’s incompetence left the way open to Darlan, the admiral was delighted. He knew that Laval’s policy of collaboration had sickened most Frenchmen. As one French general remarked:

Laval wallows in defeatism like a dog in its own vomit.

But Darlan believes in “collaboration” with Germany. He shares Laval’s views, but believes that, as a member of the armed services, he can carry through that policy with national support. It is an honest position, conditioned by personal ambition and it is based on two things – a great ignorance of the world beyond France and absolute confidence in German victory while America remains out of the war.

As often happens with an honest but not very much experienced man, Darlan’s very honesty of purpose sometimes takes him too far. At a recent press conference in Vichy, Darlan was enthusiastic about the results of “collaboration.”

As a proof that it could be worked to the benefit of France, he wanted to make an important announcement. Darlan said Germany was sending down wheat from occupied to Vichy France. The admiral put it on too thick. Marshal Pétain intervened.

‘Statement’ ruffles Pétain

The old Marshal said:

I think it ought to be clear that this wheat which is being sent down by the Germans is French wheat, grown in French soil by French peasants. It is part of wheat seized by the Germans. I think we ought to make that clear.

Needless to say, the journalists did not make this clear. The Vichy press is entirely controlled by the Germans who even write the headlines for the principal articles.

What Darlan says about the “generosity” of the Germans – he used that word – is less important than what he does about the French fleet. Charging that the British were preventing the arrival of ships with food for France – despite the fact that many come through regularly, though their cargoes are carried directly to Germany – Darlan made a proposal at which even Laval would have balked.

The admiral threatened to use French warships to convoy French merchant vessels. Such a move has long been sought by the Germans. It would make a clash between British and French ships inevitable. The clash would enable the Germans to get complete control of the French Navy.

Nazis covet French fleet

The French fleet is now spread in African ports all the way from Tunisia and Algeria through Morocco and down the Atlantic to Dakar. The Germans want them back in French ports. There the Nazis could seize them. If Darlan is able to call these ships into convoy service, many of them will fight with British ships, many of them will come back into French ports and thus into German hands.

There can be small doubt that Darlan intends to do this for the Germans after what he already has done. The German panzer divisions, which were landed with supplies in Libya and drove the British from Cyrenaica, would never have reached Africa without the secret cooperation of the French.

Thanks to Darlan’s policy of “collaboration,” the Germans moved their convoys across the narrow Strait of Sicily under cover of darkness to French North Africa. There they were reorganized and, with strong air escort, made their way down the coast on French territorial waters.

Aided move to Africa

In this way, the Germans, despite the great strength of British sea power, moved to Africa a whole mechanized army which, more than anything else in the war, has threatened to take Suez and close the Eastern Mediterranean.

French connivance alone explains the safe transit of the first two mechanized German divisions which included 40-ton tanks. The passage of almost two more divisions was facilitated by the Battle of Matapan, which the Germans forced the Italians to undertake as a diversion for the troop convoy. A fifth German panzer division was sunk by British fleet and air-arm action.

Darlan’s attitude, consequently, gives Hitler every hope of being able to take over the French fleet even before he completes the occupation of France. Should Darlan become alarmed in face of protests by Pétain or by what remains of French public opinion, the Germans can always threaten to replace him with Laval or some other pro-German politician with fewer scruples.

Another story in Mr. Whitaker’s series will be published tomorrow.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 8, 1941)

Hitler’s plans for world empire –
NAZI POLICE TURN HEAT ON IN VICHY AND NORTH AFRICA
…
Germans sap morale of Weygand’s huge army in Morocco, prepare death lists in unoccupied zone, grab French ports as starvation draws nearer
…

This is the fourth of John T. Whitaker’s series telling how Hitler seeks to gain control over unoccupied France, Spain, Portugal and North Africa. Nazi influence in those foreign countries is already so potent that it is extremely difficult to investigate and describe what Germany is doing, but Mr. Whitaker has succeeded in getting the facts about this crucial situation.

By John T. Whitaker

Somewhere in Europe –
The situation in French North Africa, the sudden tightening of police measures through the Vichy zone and the shortage of food, no less than Admiral Darlan’s tendency to force fleet cooperation with Germany, offer Hitler the hope of swift action for the final conquest of France and the completion of the “New Europe.”

French North Africa has been an enigma to most observers. The German and Italian armistice commissions there have not carried through the disarmament of the French forces and indeed General Weygand’s army has been expanded somewhat so that some even estimate that it totals 360,000 men.

There were many rumors through the winter from Casablanca and Oran as well as from Vichy. It was known that Marshal Pétain had sent General Weygand back to Africa despite the protests of Pierre Laval and the Germans.

Marshal Pétain was quoted as having said to General Weygand:

If German demands become impossible, you will know what your duty is as an officer of France.

The Germans seemed undismayed by these reports that led London and Washington to count on the possibility that General Weygand would swing his army over to De Gaulle’s “Free France.” M. Pétain and General Weygand evolved the formula that they would defend the empire in its integrity against any power that threatened its violation. The Germans had no intention during the winter of threatening Morocco, they so informed M. Pétain and General Weygand.

The Germans must have been very frightened when General Wavell destroyed Graziani’s Libyan army, marched steadily across Libya and threatened to continue undisturbed to the Libyan-Tunisian frontier where they could have made contact once again with their former French allies. But Greece declared its intention of fighting even in the event of the inevitable German intervention and the British went on the defensive in Libya, transferring troops from there.

Opportunity lost by Weygand

If General Weygand has ever intended to fight against the Germans, that was his moment. Four German panzer divisions had not then been transferred to African soil. Africa could have been swept clear of all Italian forces. Spain was neither ready nor willing then to intervene against French Morocco.

He had only some 300-odd planes, mostly Curtiss-Wrights based far south near Marrakech, and he lacked every kind of supply including even ammunition for small arms. But supplies and ammunition were not badly needed for such a move at that moment and they could have been transported then from America. Is that possible now or in the period when Hitler starts cleaning North Africa and the Western Mediterranean?

Since that critical moment – assuming that General Weygand was ever capable of fighting again against the Germans – Hitler has acted quietly but quickly in preparation for the moment when he will take the initiative in that theater. On Feb. 6, five Dornier transport planes flew into Casablanca with German officers and soldiers. Until that date, civilian control and port authority had been in charge of German and Italian officials. The two, moreover, had their spies and agents throughout the whole of the French Empire in Africa. But they had not sent down military units.

Nazis in key towns

Since Feb. 6, the Germans have arrived daily and steadily, according to trustworthy quarters. There is no key town with less than 200 German officers and men. They are not allowed to walk in the streets in uniform. They have been given whole apartment houses or hotels for their lodging. I have checked the names of their dwelling places in cities as far apart as Casablanca, Oran, Marrakech and Dakar.

This German infiltration comes at a moment when two things are likely to have a very important effect on French officers in Africa. The Germans have got into the Deuxième Bureau, the famous secret service of the French Army. As a result, the Germans know exactly what the French do and do not know and every French officer is aware that what he does and reports is known to the Germans so that he can be called up for arrest at any hour merely for doing his duty in an intelligent or capable way.

Nothing is so likely to undermine the morale of French officers who, while carrying out the orders of Vichy, have been waiting, nevertheless, for the time when General Weygand would fight once more on the British side. This is what they have hoped for when they have gone to Morocco as reserve officers or when they have enlisted in answer to advertisements in Vichy or when they have flown planes to General Weygand instead of flying on to British lines.

Impressed by Nazi victories

Similarly, morale will be flattened by the success of the Germans in Libya and in the Balkans. Nothing can save French Africa or bring it in on the British side short of serious German reserves or an immediate entry of America into the war. The French are impressed with German victories.

Knowing this, the Germans suddenly have tightened control of their secret police in the occupied zone. In Marseille, in the last 10 days, the Germans have started herding Frenchmen together on the sidewalks, putting them in trucks and taking them to concentration camps by the hundreds. Their papers are inspected carefully. A man whose political and military record shows that the Germans have nothing to fear from him is quickly released. Others are held three or four days. Others are taken to concentration camps. Others are shot.

Simultaneously, in Vichy, the Germans have started a campaign to round up Frenchmen and foreigners they have been unable to locate heretofore, according to a reliable informant recently escaped from Vichy through the underground.

Officials given death list

French police officials are called in, given a list of 10 names, told to have them or their bodies within a given time or be responsible with their own lives. A French police inspector found that an important anti-Nazi German in his list had committed suicide. He dug up the body and took it to the Germans before they would be satisfied.

These signs that Hitler’s hour approaches for swift action to complete the conquest come when the French food storage is becoming acute so that the Germans can scarcely expect to bleed the French of much more in the next four-month period.

Trustworthy figures will suffice on wheat, meat, sugar and fats. The 1940 wheat crop was under 40 million quintals (133 million bushels) as against 71 million quintals for 1939 and against normal French needs of 80 million quintals. Less has been sowed for this year’s crop than for 1940; fertilizers are lacking; there is no gasoline for tractors, binders and the like; livestock has been requisitioned and there is a complete absence of such things as binder cord so that wheat cannot be shocked as usual.

Half of cattle lost

In 1940, France had 3.5 million head of cattle. The Germans have taken more than half and the rest have had virtually no fodder. The 1940 sugar crop stands at 400,000 tons as against 950,000 for 1939 with current prospects worse.

Fats come from Africa, but the Germans take virtually all of them. The Germans are in every southern French port and they confiscate virtually all foodstuffs and fats coming from Africa.

The next two-month period finds France between harvests and faced with starvation for the first time unless wheat and the like continue to come in from America. Unable to loot France in this period, the Germans will have small reason not to complete their invasion in the drab period before foodstuffs begin to come in again.

Another story in Mr. Whitaker’s series will be published tomorrow.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (May 9, 1941)

Hitler’s plans for world empire –
STARVATION FEAR EXPLAINS DELAY IN OCCUPYING SPAIN
…
Huge German army needed to take Gibraltar faces death for plague may sweep land and hungry Spaniards would menace well-fed Nazis
…

This is the fifth of John T. Whitaker’s “Somewhere in Europe” series telling how Hitler seeks to gain control over unoccupied France, Spain, Portugal and North Africa. If he succeeds, it will materially increase the prospects of Nazi victory and correspondingly jeopardize the security of the United States.

By John T. Whitaker

Somewhere in Europe –

A small army isn’t powerful enough and a big army would starve to death.

One of the ablest diplomats in Madrid thus explained why Hitler has delayed in the past to occupy Spain. Gibraltar is vital to Hitler if he is to close the Mediterranean, take over French Africa and extend his submarine and air bases against America.

Faced with military necessity, Hitler will probably feel that he has no choice and Spain’s refusal heretofore to come into the war will be brushed aside. But Napoleon spoke of the “Spanish ulcer” as the cause of his downfall and Hitler may well find that, in Spain, history repeats itself.

Starvation in Spain is a reality. Even with money, it is hard now to procure food. One of the best hotels in Madrid gets meat only about every three weeks and, according to the head waiter, “that is generally horse meat or dog.”

A workman would rather receive bread than pesetas. An American motoring through Spain gave some stale bread to the garage mechanics who had repaired his car. One actually burst into tears and the other said:

We haven’t seen bread like this since Los Rojos – since the Reds.

An expert who studied conditions in France and Spain said that, while the French are in dire want, the Spaniards are starving. He said that the average person in unoccupied France gets 2,800 calories of food daily, whereas in Spain, according to his studies, the average consumption is only 800 calories. Many of course have less than that. They are the ones found dead in the streets.

When a whole people suffers malnutrition, plague becomes inevitable. Nearly 2,000 cases of typhus have been reported in Spain. The government is making heroic efforts to stop it. Beggars are being rounded up because typhus is carried by the louse, which is a very class-conscious vermin almost never found on clean bodies.

If the government’s efforts are inadequate, typhus may sweep northward, where the French are vulnerable, and thence into the prison and concentration camps of Hitler’s “New Europe.” It would then become a problem even for Hitler’s sleek and well-fed troopers.

Such conditions cannot be explained by the Spanish Civil War alone. For three years, Spaniards slaughtered each other, laid towns low, destroyed the fields and neglected the crops. But to this, the Spaniards have added three years of reconstruction under the Falangista (Fascist) Party.

To these Spanish Nazis, the peasants who till the soil and tend the vineyards and olive groves are “Reds,” and so are the men who fish the seas and work in the factories. Jobs go to the Falangistas and party regularity, not competence, is the qualification for administrative positions in a corporate state which glorifies bureaucracy.

Machine ‘alarms’ officer

The situation was summarized to me by a Spanish general who, while a Falangista, feels alarmed in the face of the power of the party machine.

He said:

It must have been the same after the American Revolution and again after your Civil War. The country and the people haven’t a chance until every damned hero in the war is dead. An officer who fought bravely at the front or a Falangista organizer who murdered behind the lines with vast zeal is not necessarily a good administrator. Well, these heroes are in all the key posts.

The bitter hatreds of civil war are not healed, moreover. Franco lost an opportunity to show himself magnanimous. Even a year ago, he could have ended the weekly executions and turned out the imprisoned “Reds.” Some 200,000 “Reds” could still be freed but the Falangistas know now that after the horrors they have suffered, nothing will win their peaceable support of the Fascist regime. There seems to be no program but to keep them jailed until they slowly die.

Hitler’s problem

Marching into Spain consequently is going to be easy for Hitler’s magnificently equipped army. Staying in Spain is going to be hard. Starving Spaniards are not going to enjoy watching Hitler’s soldiers eat. The men at the top may be thrilled with the thought of regaining Gibraltar and Morocco and they may look forward hopefully to the day when they can win back the former Spanish colonies in America. But the simple Spaniards are tired of war and horrors.

The strength of Franco heretofore has been his comprehension of the national revulsion to further fighting. That more than anything else has given him national prestige. Spaniards have decided that Franco is an honest man in a moment when there is much corruption in Falangista circles and they have decided that he will not be a catspaw for foreigners in a moment when many Falangista leaders are on the German payrolls.

Can Franco maintain this position?