The Pittsburgh Press (March 26, 1943)
Simms: Hitler’s dupes seek a sign of United Nations’ sincerity
Costly blunders seen in class appeals now beamed to Europe’s captives; Wilson’s success is cited
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
In United Nations circles here, there is a growing suspicion that we may be making some costly blunders in the propaganda we are aiming at both victims and dupes of Adolf Hitler in Europe.
Woodrow Wilson shortened World War I at least a year by winning over the populations of some of Kaiser Wilhelm’s allies. He won them, not by threatening to impose some new regime or other of our particular liking, but by promising them “self-determination.”
Leaders of foreign groups in the United States complain that some of the propaganda which we are now sending into their countries is directed at groups, rather than at populations as a whole. Some of it, they charge, is class-angled. This, they say, is extremely harmful. For while the inhabitants of Hitler’s puppet states are almost all hostile to Nazism, they are left guessing what their fate would be under the United Nations.
Take Italy. Italy is now a prisoner of Germany and knows it. In Italy in 1940, just before she took the plunge, I failed to find a single Italian who wanted to enter the war. As for entering it on the side of the Nazis, they were more than opposed.
Hate the Germans
They hated the Germans, who openly treated them as inferiors. They clearly foresaw, even then, that a German victory would leave Italy just a little fish in Hitler’s big European pond.
Today, the people of Italy have their eyes on Tunisia. Sooner or later this year, they expect invasion. At heart, well-informed Italians tell me, the vast majority of them would welcome United Nations forces – especially the Americans – if only they had some idea of what might be in store for them afterwards.
Through with fascism
Luigi Sturzo, founder of the Christian Democrat Popular Party in Italy back in 1919, author of Italy and Fascism, Church and State, and other writing on the subject, gives a pretty clear picture of the state of mind of his countrymen. He says, in the April number of Foreign Affairs:
The Italian people must feel certain that after the Allied occupation is over, they will not have to face some new variety of fascism which will continue to tyrannize then. They must be told, and believe, that in an earlier stage they will have opportunity to decide freely, as the third point of the Atlantic Charter provides, what form of government they wish to organize.
Will the future Italy, he asks, be a monarchy or a republic? What about King Victor Emmanuel? Or the Crown Prince? Or the Crown Prince’s 6-year-old son, with the Crown Princess Marie-José as Queen Regent?
None of these questions, says Mr. Sturzo, is vital at this time. Nor should the United Nations try to settle them at all. If the Allies will only live up to their pledge “to respect the rights of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live,” the Italian people can be trusted to settle these issues for themselves. One thing, however, may be taken for granted: They will not choose fascism.
The American way
This formula, leaders of foreign groups in America urge, should be adhered to in dealing with all of Hitler’s dupes. Not one of Germany’s neighbors, they say, entered the Nazi camp voluntarily – that is to say because of popular leanings – hence all of them could be won over to the Allied side if the job were gone about properly.
When I asked what they meant by going about the job “properly,” the reply invariably was reducible to: “The American way.”
Some who are working on it, it is charged, do not seem always to be thinking in terms of the Atlantic Charter, or even of democracy as the word is understood in this country. As a result, not all of Europe’s desperate peoples are persuaded that they either understand or particularly like what they hear.
