The Pittsburgh Press (February 11, 1946)
Simms: Hitler echo
By William Philip Simms
WASHINGTON – Observers see an ominous similarity between Russia’s stand today and that of Nazi Germany at the height of her drive for rearmament and “lebensraum” leading up to World War II.
They see a deadly parallel between the goings-on surrounding yesterday’s Soviet elections and those staged by Hitler – from the one-party, carefully chosen ticket to the hair-raising drum-thumping about hostile “encirclement.”
Disquietingly like the special pleading of Der Fuehrer in his prime, Generalissimo Stalin took the stump to charge capitalism with starting two world wars and to announce a new five-year plan calling for huge production boosts “to guarantee the country against any eventuality.”
Other top-notchers – again in the Nazi tradition – closely followed the Stalin line. Lazar Kaganovitch warned the people against “smug complacency,” and called on them to “redouble their Bolshevik vigilance” to offset the menace of “capitalist encirclement.” G. M. Malenkov, another member of the Kremlin inner circle, said “it was no secret” that Russia was respected “because she is strong.”
The whole theme of the elections – which, of course, will go 100 percent for the Kremlin ticket just as Hitler’s one-party “elections” always went for him – was an ever more powerful, more militaristic Russia.
No word about UNO
Moscow’s mask, therefore, is now definitely off. Like brown Germany during the pre-war years, Red Russia is now drilling into her masses that their motherland is in danger; that it is “encircled” by a war-mongering enemy, and that that enemy is “capitalism” – the chief exponents of which are the United States and the British Commonwealth aided by a socialist France and a “fascist” China.
Not a word was heard about democracy’s new hope, the collective peace machine known as the UNO. Stressed was (1) that in 1913 Russia produced only 4,200,000 tons of pig iron; (2) that in 1940 she produced 15 million tons and (3) that “to insure her against any eventuality,” she must produce, under the new plan, no less than 50 million tons a year.
Like Hitler’s uneasy neighbors in the late ‘30s, Russia’s partners of today view her warlike plans with increasing misgivings. They smack far too much of Nazi Germany’s for comfort.
Fostering fifth column in every country
Because Germany was encircled, Hitler used to bellow, she was obliged to make herself self-sufficient. She had to take in Austria, the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, a slice of Lithuania, Danzig, the Polish Corridor. She had to arm herself feverishly and re-fortify the Rhineland. She had to increase industrial production, especially of coal and iron and oil. And while Goebbels stuffed the German masses with blood-curdling tales of foreign enemies on all sides and told them they’d have to produce cannon instead of butter, an impenetrable curtain of censorship prevented them from hearing any but the Nazi story.
Today the Russian masses are being subjected to the same dangerous indoctrination behind an even thicker barrier of censorship. Like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union is expanding her own “lebensraum” while fostering a Communist fifth column in every country in the world. Already she has taken over half of Poland, eastern Germany and Prussia, the three Baltic states, a portion of Czechoslovakia, Bessarabia, Moldavia, Outer Mongolia, Dairen, Port Arthur and the Kuriles and extended her control over Finland, most of the Balkans and parts of the Middle East, Manchuria, Korea and other areas.
And now she has drawn up a new blueprint to make herself as superior, militarily, to the rest of the world as 1939 Germany was to Poland, the Low Countries and France. All thus before the finishing touches have been put on the UNO or a single peace treaty has been signed.