Whitaker's take on new situation in this war (1941)

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The Pittsburgh Press (September 2, 1941)

jwhitaker

John T. Whitaker says –
HITLER GAMBLES IN RUSSIA FOR ONE CHANCE TO BEAT U.S.

This is the first of six articles by a correspondent who is back in America after a vigil of more than two years along the “inner circle” information posts of Nazi-dominated Rome. Expelled from Italy, he then spent five months in Lisbon, the “listening post” of Europe.

By John T. Whitaker

America is halfway across the world from the Soviet Union, but America – with a free people and gigantic industry – is the reason why Adolf Hitler invaded Russia.

American arms shipments, followed by America’s entry into the war of 1914-18, proved decisive when Germany made her first bid for world domination. Today, the Lend-Lease Act and the possibility of American participation are the only things that lie between Hitler and the conquest of the world.

Hitler is a realist and a man of action. While the invasion of Russia was a dangerous gamble, it was Hitler’s one chance of beating America and he took it.

Hitler needs time to beat America so long as the British fleet stills sweeps the seas. Hitler needs time for his fifth column to create further disunity among the American people, sabotage in their factories and defeatism in their training camps.

He needs time to clear the Mediterranean, cross that sea into Africa and establish bomber and U-boat bases along the South Atlantic in order to cripple American seapower in that vital area just as he has crippled the British in the North Atlantic.

He needs time to bring France, Spain and Portugal into his “new order,” time to break the democratic front of the Americas to the south and time to bring in Japan. The Russian invasion gives him time because even the British people have become complacent before the dog-eat-dog spectacle of Nazi butchering communist while the British military know that, without American manpower, they can undertake no immediate offensive of serious proportions.

This is the first reason why the man who can never mark time has moved his armored legions into the reaches of Russia. The second is equally clear to any observer who, like this writer, has visited the Axis, as well as the British camp and talked with leaders in both.

Having decided that America, rather than Britain, is the most formidable foe to Nazi conquest of the world, Hitler has faced with equal realism the fact that the war must be a long one. Consequently, he and his generals were in complete agreement when they counseled him that the armed forces of Russia must be destroyed. Germany cannot go into a long war with an armed foe on her flank.

Transocean bombers ready

Finally, the Germans need oil, wheat and minerals for a long war. With Russian transportation inefficient and Stalin bending the nation’s resources to his own rearmament rather than to serving as arsenal and larder for the Nazi revolutionaries, Hitler and his generals agreed that direct action was the only course. They must go and get Russia’s resources themselves. This is costly and means six to nine months of delay, but it guarantees vast quantities ultimately. And Hitler needs vast quantities of every raw material as he prepares to build transatlantic bombers to strike at American industry and a score of monster Bismarks – ships so formidable that it took three-quarters of the British Royal Navy to sink a single vessel.

According to the most important air manufacturers in Germany, the long-range bombers are already perfected and only need to be put into mass production. This individual said to me:

We have bombers that can fly to New York in seven hours with a full bomb load. Only, of course, you Americans will prefer peace.

Hitler’s plans for the invasion of Russia were laid the day he realized that the invasion of Britain was likely to prove impossible and they have been no secret to informed quarters. He began to mass troops along the Russian frontiers early this winter.

This writer, after talking with important, if indiscreet, Germans and Italians in Rome, wrote them that Hitler had decided (1) to blackmail the Russians into giving him raw materials and diplomatic aid against the Balkans and Middle Eastern countries and (2) to invade Russia if the attitude of Britain and America made that both desirable and impossible.

I was threatened with expulsion from Italy – by Berlin, not by Rome – unless I dropped these articles.

Churchill knew of plan

I learned in March that British Prime Minister Churchill, who all along had been informed of the German plan against Russia, actually knew the approximate date for the invasion three months later. The Prime Minister told a friend of mine in March that his plans were based upon a German invasion of Russia:

…about the end of June.

I learned from Nazi sources in April – Lisbon was sputtering with Germans – that Hitler’s invasion depended largely upon whether America entered the war. If America came in, Hitler would need all available troops and airplanes to prevent a joint Anglo-American operation – the crux would have been American aircraft carriers and planes – from driving the Germans out of Africa and the Middle East. Hitler knew from his fifth column spies that America was divided and that there was no question of her entering the war before he could carry out his campaign against the Russians.

His final irrevocable order to his generals – drafted, of course, by the generals themselves – was issued June 1. On June 4, I reported the decision to invade Russia and later explained that no demands would be made to Stalin and no concessions accepted.

Stalin spurned warning

Incidentally, I learned in London that Stalin wouldn’t need Mr. Churchill’s warning. Stalin thought that there was no danger of his being invaded unless and until Hitler faced him with demands. The communist thought the democrat was selling him a capitalistic pup – or thought so until he was invaded without warning.

Hitler, as a courtesy, on June 12 informed his puppets – Mussolini, Franco and Darlan – of the invasion scheme. They were to whoop it up as a “holy war” to save the world from communism and they were to use their influence, if possible, to win the support of the Catholic Church. To the Vatican itself, Hitler offered the opportunity of sending missionaries along with his panzer divisions.

The invasion of Russia, undertaken in order to prepare the final showdown with America, can prove the most costly of Hitler’s blunders. That depends upon whether America and Britain exploit the situation that offers itself.

British spread too thin

Hitler was confident on the basis of fifth column reports in America that neither democracy could act. The American public is not prepared, Hitler believes, to send aircraft carriers and divisions into the Mediterranean zone to forestall Hitler’s open consequent conquest of Africa. Without American help, the British are spread too thin.

Russia has surprised the world, however. Nationalism proved as cohesive a force as communism when the foreigner invaded “Little Mother, Holy Russia.” It may well be that Soviet resistance will continue until November, when weather conditions would begin to work against the German,. That was the basis of the agreement between Roosevelt and Churchill when they promised aid to the Russians.

NEXT – The British morale.

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This quote is brilliant :+1:

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The Pittsburgh Press (September 3, 1941)

jwhitaker

John T. Whitaker says –
HITLER PINS HOPE ON COLLAPSE OF AMERICAN MORALE
…
Germans confident that ‘fifth column’ is paralyzing U.S. and that Washington will call for British surrender soon despite English spirit
…

This is the second of six articles by a correspondent who spent more than two years in close touch with inner circles in Nazi-dominated Rome and then, after being expelled from Italy, was in Lisbon for five months.

By John T. Whitaker

British morale, plus American aid, has made an invasion of Britain impossible in the past, and too costly for Hitler to undertake soion.

That is why Hitler has invaded Russia in preparation for a showdown with America, and why, with the Russian campaign once terminated, he will attempt to clear the Mediterranean, conquer Africa and establish U-boat and bomber bases against the United States.

Germans in Italy, Spain and Portugal are confident that America will not enter the war now. They predict that later, when Hitler is on a position to deal with America, the morale in the U.S. will collapse. They say with absolute confidence that their fifth column is paralyzing democracy in America already, and that it will ultimately force Washington to call for a British surrender.

Their confidence has already won over important Frenchmen and Spaniards as well as Italians with whom I have talked – that is the only reason why French Chief of State Marshal Pétain went over to the German camp – and I imagine that it is the basis of Japan’s present policy. In short, the Germans have decided that the American people, not the British, are the weak blockhouse in the beleaguered fortress of democracy.

The British aren’t weak

I think that the Germans have sized up America wrong. I know that they have got Britain right. After spending one month with the British, I marvel that any nation in the world can achieve such morale. I found no defeatism in any class or group in England.

The heart of city after city is razed to the ground but instead of being terrified by bombs, the people have discovered that they “can take it.” It wasn’t half as bad last winter as their imaginations led them to expect or, as they add:

…half as bad as it’s going to be this coming winter.

Standing in the ruins of their homes, they are lifting their fists and swearing to “dish it back.”

That is the spirit of the British aristocrat, once pro-German, whose lovely debutante daughter was killed by a German bomb as she drew the blinds of her London home.

‘Squadron will be here’

That is the spirit of a formerly communist dock worker in Plymouth who said:

Jerry, he killed my wife and child. That’s why we workers in the docks carry on whether he’s bombing now or not. We don’t go down to the shelters.

The same spirit was shown by the leader of a crack bombing squadron. He said:

We want you to promise to come back and visit us when you return to England. We’ll all be gone, but the squadron will still be here.

That is the spirit of every man, woman and child with whom I talked in hundreds of daily conversations – the spirit of Dunkirk, which Germany’s most important airplane manufacturer described to me as:

…the greatest feat of military history, with the possible exception of the German conquest of France – which was psychological rather than military.

The popular press of Britain has been demanding that Britain bomb Germany so hard that Hitler must bring planes back from the Russian fronts and start the nightly terror over Britain again.

‘Just like old times’

One air raid warden – when Hitler’s planes did return after a six weeks’ layoff – cried to the people in the neighborhood:

Just like old times… Jerry’s back again.

A cab driver, who answered my telephone call in the midst of an air raid and took me across town to the East India docks with bombs falling in the streets, refused my double-fare tip.

Just a normal trip, sir. We’ve all got to carry on, you know, sir.

Then – there’s Margot Asquith. When I pleaded that she ought to move to the country and not spend another winter in London, this great old lady answered:

I shouldn’t like anyone to say that the widow of a wartime Prime Minister had moved away from danger.

‘Where in hell is bucket?’

That’s the spirit of Lady Astor, as described by one of her servants:

My lady made us all join her in prayer when one bomb blew in the front door, another the back of the house and a third threw an auto onto the roof. Then the Germans began to drop firebombs. My lady sprang to her feet. One second after praying, she cried as she led us all to the roof:

Where in the hell is the fire bucket?

Little boys of 10 and 12 climb the roofs to throw down incendiary bombs. That’s the spirit of Britain.

I thought after the collapse of France, that Britain would be beaten. I found no one in Britain to whom this idea was not wholly novel. No one apparently ever envisaged the possibility of defeat. In that black hour when France collapsed, Americans felt panic but not the British. One servant’s comment to a friend of mine was typical apparently of the reaction of all Britons. She said:

Improving, on the whole. At least there’s no one left to let us down.

None of America’s doubt

The people of Britain today know nothing of the soul-searching, indecision and doubt that affects Americans. To them, the problems have become simple, starkly simple. England expects that every man will do his duty. It’s that simple.

The people with whom I talked have made their peace with death and have forgotten any financial worries for the future. Everyone must behave well. Everyone does. My own personal friends, without exception, looked in better health and happier than when I had seen them before the war. People have found a new courage and a new dignity. Nothing can crush that kind of morale.

That morale has convinced the Germans that an invasion of Britain is too risky. Add to it two facts. American planes, tanks, arms and foodstuffs are reaching Britain in quantities at last. American warships are now escorting these supplies as far as Iceland, and the sinkings have fallen off abruptly. Those two things mean much to morale.

What American aid means

Unless the Germans can stop the supplies and force Washington to recall the warships, the people of Britain can stand anything the Germans bring against them this winter – bombings, gas, or invasion. The British cannot take the offensive in any immediate future without American manpower, in my opinion, but they cannot be beaten by Germany unless American aid is stopped.

Finally, there is the promise of the future to be seen in England today. Your train comes into the gaunt ruins of what was once a railway station. People have laid out fish or newspapers or other wares on burnt timbers placed across piles of bricks. They are trying to carry on.

Suddenly you hear the drone of motors, then the roar. Here they come – bombers – 10, 30, 50 bombers. And above and beyond them is the whine of fighting aircraft, too high to be seen. The people’s faces brighten. The Royal Air Force is on a daylight sweep across the Channel to Germany.

Cheer for the RAF

Twice when I watched this scene, the people standing in the railway station ruins lifted a cheer – the kind of cheer that roared from the throats of peace-loving but hard-fighting English folks at Blenheim, Trafalgar or Waterloo.

Those planes that streak out toward Germany – increasingly many of them American-made – fly in the V (victory) formation.

I think Hitler’s got America wrong.

I know he’s got Britain right if he thinks British morale is too high for an invasion effort now.

NEXT – Hitler-Mussolini strategy.

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Another classic quote :+1:

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The Pittsburgh Press (September 4, 1941)

jwhitaker

John T. Whitaker says –
HITLER’S STRATEGY BASED ON KEEPING U.S. ARMY HOME
…
Though Nazis knew Roosevelt would win, they backed Willkie only to inject ‘personal warmonger’ propaganda to hold off America longer
…

This is the third of six articles by a correspondent who spent more than two years in close touch with inner circles in Nazi-dominated Rome and then, after being expelled from Italy, was in Lisbon for five months.

By John T. Whitaker

The historical and only meeting between President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not take place until this August – almost two years after the commencement of hostilities. Hitler and Mussolini met to discuss exactly the same problem last winter and they met not once but many times.

The problem discussed by the democratic and by the Axis leaders alike was America’s role in the war. It has long been plain to statesmen of their stature, as it ought to be to the man in the street, that the decision lies between Germany and America – that one or the other must win the war.

Early last fall, before the American presidential election, German and Italian propaganda thumped for Wendell Willkie. Goebbels’ poisoned pens described Mr. Roosevelt as a “deformed Jewish hireling of the armaments companies and the banks” who wanted to bring America into the war so he could become dictator.

If Mr. Roosevelt were elected, they said, American boys would be transported to the battlefields of Europe. And it was a great shame, said Axis propaganda, because Hitler secretly loved America and invasion was a fantastic dream. This propaganda was a tissue of lies based upon the near certainty as fifth columnists reported of Roosevelt’s reelection and upon preparations already being made by Hitler and Mussolini for war against America.

Ciano’s views on election

In this period, I had one of many interviews with Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law and Foreign Minister. I thought what he said interesting.

He said:

I am absolutely certain of Roosevelt’s election. So are the Germans.

I demanded:

Why then does Axis propaganda attack Roosevelt and describe Willkie with enthusiasm?

Ciano replied:

For exactly that reason. Because we know that Roosevelt will win the election. But don’t think we don’t understand Willkie. Willkie is a Republican and the Republicans are your traditional war party, the real imperialists of America.

Willkie will take you to war as soon as Roosevelt. The man doesn’t matter. Your interests involve you in this war. Either the totalitarian powers or the democracies must prevail.

Germany v. America

That is the way Axis leaders were thinking last fall. They knew that the ultimate and decisive showdown had to come between Germany and America – the greatest of the democracies. Their propaganda was designed to persuade the American public that it was not necessary or to the interest of America to go to war, that war was something Roosevelt personally wanted for personal reasons.

This was doubly cynical since one of the most important of the German diplomats told me that Mrs. Roosevelt was a profound pacifist, that she had a great influence on the President and that Hitler felt convinced that Mr. Roosevelt would never lead the United States into war before America was attacked.

The greatest secrecy surrounded Hitler’s various talks with Mussolini through the winter. And yet within a few days or weeks of each of them important Germans and Italians knew most of what happened or the substance of the conversations always leaked out. One of the things the two dictators discussed – though certainly not in such disrespectful language – can be illustrated by an apocryphal anecdote first circulated by an Italian diplomat.

Where the Axis blundered

Hitler is supposed to have asked Mussolini:

Why can’t you take Malta?

Mussolini replied, according to this wit:

Malta is an island, too.

Facing the threat of an awakening America, which was talking at least about producing armaments in mass, Hitler and Mussolini found that England wouldn’t collapse. When France collapsed, both expected Britain to capitulate. When Britain would not capitulate, both undertook terroristic mass bombing.

If Mr. Churchill were a stubborn “warmonger” – the only man who stood between Hitler and peace – the British people would be bombed into submission. Hitler and Mussolini cared nothing for America reaction to the mass bombing of civilians because they knew they had to defeat America to win in any event. Their problem was to knock out Britain before America could enter the war.

But they bombed civilians

Had they bombed military objectives, they might have starved Britain out, but they bombed civilians and that only raised British morale to the most stubborn heights ever reached by a desperate people fighting with its back to the wall and alone.

Meeting in midwinter, Hitler told Mussolini frankly that they were in for a long war and that America was to be their principal foe. He outlined a joint plan. The Axis had to clear the Mediterranean, take the Balkans and the Middle East with Suez. Then Germany would conquer Africa and establish U-boat and bomber bases along the whole of the South Atlantic coastline.

Just as the combination of U-boats and planes was destroying commerce in the North Atlantic, so it would close the South Atlantic. Britain and America together could never replace the shipping lost. The French fleet, in cooperation with the Italian fleet and new German units such as the Bismarck, would drive commerce from the seas.

Sees Ciano again

America would be terrified and to ensure her isolation, Hitler had arranged that some time later Japan would join a tripartite alliance under which she would come to war if America intervened for Britain.

A long deadlock was plain to see and in subsequent weeks, the British won Cyrenaica and pounded the Italian fleet at Taranto while the Greeks, picked as a pushover, proved a monkey-wrench in the timetable. Italian morale was collapsing and I went again to see Count Ciano, hinting that the moment had come for the Italians to make separate peace unless they were willing to see the Germans march in and turn them into a conquered province.

I said:

Your Excellency knows, as well as I, that time is on the side of the democracies.

Ciano, very serious, replied quietly:

Yes, time is on the side of the democracies, provided – provided there is time enough.

U.S. isolationists help Axis

Nothing has so succinctly summoned up the grand strategy of Hitler and Mussolini in face of America. They must thank the American isolationists, no less than their own fifth column, that America failed to act in the spring and is failing to act now.

The Axis leaders have retrieved their position in the Mediterranean and they are now conquering Russian raw materials and wiping out the armed forces on their most vulnerable flank. This is being done with no interference from America. American production and American morale will never be a threat to the Axis, in the opinion of every Axis spokesman with whom I have talked, until America has declared war.

Until America is on a war footing with a war psychosis, the Axis leaders feel they can keep the initiative. Then they will hit America before the country realizes that, for a full year, it has been dominated by Hitler as Enemy No. 1.

‘We’ll land in key cities’

South America will go against you, your own public will be paralyzed and we will have every country in the world standing with us. Our long-range bombers will wipe out your industrial cities and we will land 25,000 men at a time in your key cities – land them by transport aircraft.

France will look heroic by comparison with America – your fleet spread in two seas, your air force crippled by fifth columnists, your money-clad citizens scrambling to climb onto what you call the “bandwagon.”

These were the farewell remarks of an important fascist leader to me as I was expelled from Italy. He said:

We know America. Our fifth column is busy. You won’t go to war this spring and you won’t go to war this fall. Your people aren’t the kind to make sacrifices. They won’t ration food and clothing and gasoline. They won’t live in training camps. They won’t go abroad to die for the liberty you talk about so glibly.

This important fascist added a personal warning:

Whitaker, you are a fool. You could have chosen for us if you hadn’t believed so profoundly in what you call democracy. You’ll spend your latter days in a concentration camp in Axis-ruled America. I’ll come to see you then.

I told him:

Don’t bother. I’ll come to see you in Rome – I’ll come in the uniform of the American Army.

It was five years ago that Mussolini said:

We or they.

He meant it, and Hitler means it too.

NEXT – Lend-Lease changed Hitler’s timetable.

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The Pittsburgh Press (September 5, 1941)

jwhitaker

John T. Whitaker says –
HITLER HAMPERED BY 2 U.S. BLOWS
…
‘We have lost the war,’ German cabinet minister says and sobs at news of Lend-Lease bill passage; Yugoslavs upset timetable
…

This is the fourth of six articles by a correspondent who spent more than two years in close touch with inner circles in Nazi-dominated Rome and then, after being expelled from Italy, was in Lisbon for five months.

By John T. Whitaker

The United States has dealt two crippling blows to Hitler which have upset the grand strategy of the German General Staff and gained time for Uncle Sam.

Germans appreciate the true significance of these moves better than Americans. Both were bold, both were based on a comprehension of strategy and both knocked the German timetable haywire.

The most important of the two is undoubtedly the Lend-Lease Bill. This measure baffled the imagination of Hitler’s generals, for the first time in their carefully prepared war, with the likelihood of German defeat. Indeed that likelihood seemed a certainty when my German military sources feared that it would be followed by prompt American entry into the war.

German reaction to this measure can be illustrated best by quoting Hitler’s most important cabinet minister. This individual spoke frankly to a leading statesman of one of the Axis satellite countries, a man I have known for years, a man I vouch for as entirely trustworthy.

‘We have lost war!’

The German cabinet minister, who suddenly burst into tears in the midst of a serious business conversation, said:

My friend, we have lost the war. I can think of nothing else. You must forgive me. You can write in your diary that we lost the war the day the American Congress voted the Lend-Lease Bill. I cannot sleep because of that measure.

I bear a grave responsibility before my Führer. I told him that Britain’s empire could not mobilize enough gold. We had a seven years’ advantage in rearmament. I said there wasn’t enough gold in the British Empire to buy enough arms to overcome that advantage. I made a careful study of British resources, not only her gold assets but her export capacity.

The German cabinet minister then continued, according to my informant:

We knew that America would sell Britain arms, of course. But we never dreamed that America would give arms. The Lend-Lease Bill gives Britain the arms she didn’t have the resources to buy. That bill saves Britain and it saves America. It means the defeat of Germany. These filthy Americans… We know that they would sell for gold and gain. We never believed that so materialistic a people would give arms.

Blubbers as going gets tough

The Germans are notoriously unstable emotionally, especially since the mystical religious experience of National Socialism which offered them the vision of a master race standing as the conquerors of the world. This cabinet minister’s bad moment must be somewhat discounted consequently. Like all bullies, the Nazis blubber when the going gets too hard.

I quote him at length, however, because his pessimism is not unique. I have heard the same sentiments brought from Germany by a score of reliable informants who have talked with the important men in control at Berlin.

In the spring, there was deep pessimism in the German capital for fear that America would enter the war, and it was in this mood that Hitler’s generals made the final decision to invade Russia in preparation for a long struggle against America.

America’s second crippling blow against the Nazis came in the Balkans in Yugoslavia. To understand what America did there and how it upset the Nazi timetable and drove Hitler against Stalin is necessary to re-examine the Greek campaign.

Grand plan of conquest

Before Mussolini invaded Greece, Hitler had carefully outlined to his Axis partner – Italy had not then been occupied as a subject province – the grand strategy for winning the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Africa. Hitler planned to line up the French and drive Gen. Wavell back on Cairo and the Nile, counting on Graziani’s Italian Army to serve as one prong of the pincers.

Hitler himself was to provide the other prong by taking over not only Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria, but the whole of the Balkans, including Yugoslavia and Turkey. Suez would be plucked like a plum.

Simultaneously, revolt in Iraq and a flopover in Iran were expected to complete Britain’s collapse in that theater and leave the door open to India. Russia, under threat of German invasion, could be induced to join Germany and Japan in the dismemberment of India. It was all very grandiose and, for as good a military and diplomatic machine as Hitler’s, relatively easy.

Axis rode high on dreams

Italians and Germans in Rome talked very freely about these schemes in that period. Adopting a manner of “helpful and friendly” intimidation, they explained to me that the Axis would have bases against the United States and South America along the whole of the African coast, Russia and Japan as allies and Russia and Africa as the raw materials reservoirs for war against America if the fifth column did not achieve the destruction of American morale.

Having been promised Greece as part of his loot, Mussolini did the dirty on Hitler. He jumped the gun. Thinking that he had bribed the Greek generals to offer only tokens of resistance, Mussolini attempted the invasion of Greece with seven Italian divisions fighting in rain and snow-covered mountains against 15 Greek divisions. Hitler met Mussolini at Florence for one of their many conferences, but at dawn of the morning Hitler was to arrive, Mussolini started the Greek offensive.

The story of that heroic resistance is now history – as moving and inspiring as Thermopylae. And on top of the Greek disaster, Gen. Wavell, with a mere handful of hard-fighting men, destroyed Graziani’s fascist horde and Hitler’s pincer prong. Italian morale collapsed.

Hitler plans anew

Hitler then decided that Mussolini was no fit or trustworthy partner in the dangerous business of looting the world. Hitler moved into Italy, effectively occupying and subjugating the country, though as a man of political genius, the Führer kept Mussolini on as a kind of Gauleiter.

Since neither Britain nor America could attack him, Hitler’s situation, while annoying, was in no way perilous. He took up the same plans with patience. He placed a division of 1,500 German dive bombers around the Straits of Sicily. He moved two panzer divisions to Libya. The planes took a toll of British ships; the panzer divisions reconquered Cyrenaica and re-established the Nazi prong for the ultimate pincer movement.

Then Hitler went to work on the Balkan pincers. After Romania and Hungary, then Bulgaria went into the Nazi camp. Hitler turned the pressure on the Yugoslavs and their statesmen traveled to Berlin. Turkey had to come into the German system, or, badly armed as she was, face a two-week blitz war.

Time pressed, however, because Hitler had to get through Turkey and organize a drive through Syria and Palestine to Egypt before the weather turned in Libya and Cyrenaica. In a few weeks, the eastern desert would be too hot. Men in tanks would fry like eggs on a griddle.

Slavs upset timetable

It was in this moment that Yugoslavia upset Hitler’s timetable. Col. William J. Donovan, a special emissary of President Roosevelt; Arthur Bliss Lane, the American Minister, and Col. Fortier, the American military attaché, talked with Yugoslav politicians. They could promise virtually nothing.

The Yugoslavs made their own decision. They preferred to die on their feet as free men rather than to live on their knees as Nazi serfs. They gambled that ultimately America, not Germany, would win the war. They gambled that, in the event of American victory, Yugoslavia would be resurrected.

Yugoslavia was destroyed and the Germans were particularly ruthless, bombing town after town and turning machine guns on peasant men, women and children.

But the Yugoslavs upset Hitler’s timetable. Turkey stiffened and Hitler could not take that country, Syria and Palestine before the weather changed in Libya. Hitler had a fling at Crete, but that operation, even while it was in progress, became an effort to secure his flank as he invaded Russia, not a stepping stone toward Syria.

Thanks to American diplomacy and Yugoslav heroism, the Middle East is still secure. American tanks are landing there today. American planes are being flown there.

If American aircraft carriers and pilots can aid the British in the coming moment of crisis, Suez may prove the ulcer which saps the strength from Hitler.

NEXT – Facts behind Rudolf Hess’ flight.

7

The Pittsburgh Press (September 6, 1941)

jwhitaker

John T. Whitaker says –
HESS LED PURGE AND FLED ANGER OF ‘BIG SHOTS’
…
Nazi deputy feared being ‘put on spot’ by Göring, Himmler
…

This is the fifth of six articles by a correspondent who spent more than two years in close touch with inner circles in Nazi-dominated Rome and then, after being expelled from Italy, was in Lisbon for five months.

By John T. Whitaker

Faced by a long war, will German or American morale break first? If Americans are not pondering and studying this vital question, the Germans are.

That is why such a large proportion of available German gold is being poured into this country and South America. That is why their best agents have flooded the United States. That is why they have taken such far-reaching measures within Germany to tighten discipline.

A wave of defeatism swept Germany in May and June. Cabinet ministers trembled before the consequences of the Lend-Lease Bill and the threat of America’s immediate entry into war. Simple men and women feared the increasing punch of British bombers as they comprehended that marching to England was a song and nothing more for the moment. In preparation for the invasion of Russia, Hitler and his generals “cracked down.”

In a few weeks, Hitler shot 1,000 and imprisoned an equal number of Nazi Party members. I have no figures for arrests among non-Nazis; they go on all the time. These men weren’t big shots, but sergeant majors in the party organization. They were arrested for lack of discipline, too obvious corruption or defeatism.

A typical arrest

The arrest of Dr. Karl Bömer is typical. One of Goebbels’ right-hand men, Bömer was sent to the United States to study in one of our best schools of journalism. He combined the soul of a gangster, a first-rate brain and an encyclopedic knowledge of the weaknesses of Americans.

For some years now, he has been virtually the “chaperon” of American correspondents in Berlin. To fools, Bömer used to explain patiently how Hitler loved America and how the two countries could live together as joint masters of the world. To realists, he used to explain what Hitler would do when he had conquered America.

Bömer got drunk at a reception in the Bulgarian legation in Berlin. He talked. A Gestapo agent among the agents overheard him. In mid-May, Bömer said that Hitler was going to invade Russia in June, that Alfred Rosenberg would become Gaulteriter for the Ukraine and that he, Bömer, would go out as Rosenberg’s secretary.

Purge made by Hess

Bömer said that he and Rosenberg expected to be in Kiev, capital of the Ukraine, July 25, which is interesting incidentally as revealing how the Russians subsequently upset the German timetable. Bömer was placed in a concentration camp for this indiscretion. Less fortunate Nazis were shot in this period for scarcely more.

This minor purge was carried through by Rudolf Hess in his role as Deputy Führer. Though the individuals purged were small fry and not important in themselves, each of them belonged to the gang of some important Nazi. In arresting or shooting these men, Hess touched loyal henchmen of Göring, Ribbentrop, Himmler and other “big-shot” Nazis. My information from Germany indicates that Hess feared for his own life because of his part in this purge.

Gestapo moves in

My sources believe that Hess fled only to save his own life and that any peace plan he may have carried he took on his own in an effort to ingratiate himself in England, where he mistakenly thought there were still individuals who believed in appeasement. The Duke of Hamilton, poor man, never had any conversations whatsoever with Hess and he is anything but an appeaser.

Simultaneously with this disciplinary purge the Nazis tightened their organizations in every key city. In Berlin, for instance, all the tenants were suddenly routed out of large apartment houses scattered throughout the city. Gestapo and SS agents moved in and began a careful twice-daily check on every household within the area. Similarly the Germans began to build new and deep concrete air-raid shelters all over the country.

But the Germans are not being beaten while America is non-belligerent and every German knows that. They are winning now and about no one throws in the sponge until he is beaten. The Germans will attempt a peace offensive once they stabilize the Russian front and push through to Baku oil. Everyone knows that.

But the peace offensive will have nothing to do with peace. It will be designed to lull America into a false sense of security until Germany can organize revolution in America.

Afraid only of U.S. in war

Hitler has ordered his fifth columnist agents in America, according to German agents in Spain and Portugal, to start a monster campaign to persuade America to force Britain to make peace. Hitler is only afraid of America if the country goes to war. Totalitarian countries are organized on a permanent war footing. It is only when a democracy has gone to war that it can approach the military effectiveness of a totalitarian state.

It is well to analyze Hitler’s rearmament against what he has gained from the conquest of Europe. Under the pen name of Thomas Revelle, one of the best financial analysts in the world has made a careful study of this in “The Spoils of Europe.” This expert says Germany’s total collections add up to at least DM 90 million, or $36 billion.

The full meaning of this much loot is not immediately appreciated. This is the figure mentioned by Hitler in September 1939, as the sum of expenditures on German armaments since he came to power in 1933. In short, Germany has built the greatest military machine in history, conquered virtually the whole of Europe, sunk half the world’s shipping and made a bid for the conquest of Russia’s resources and made it pay.

NEXT – How Hitler hopes to stop U.S. aid.

8

The Pittsburgh Press (September 7, 1941)

jwhitaker

John T. Whitaker says –
ENTRY OF U.S. WOULD BLAST NAZIS’ DREAM
…
Hitler’s days would be numbered if America entered conflict
…

This is the last article of a series by a correspondent who spent more than two years in close touch with inner circles in Nazi-dominated Rome and then, after being expelled, was in Lisbon for five months.

By John T. Whitaker

If the United States were in the war today, Hitler’s days would be numbered. Russia would turn as bleak for him as it became for Napoleon. Our two fully prepared panzer divisions would bring French Morocco with 200,000 crack French soldiers into the democratic camp and that would steady France, Spain and Portugal.

The British, with the support of American aircraft carriers and pilots could sweep through the Mediterranean, take Sicily as a bomber base against Italy – a pushover when hit – and establish sufficient strength in the Middle East to bring Turkey into the war. Hitler would flounder between two fronts, his air force caught in an inferior position for the first time and his communication lines overextended.

Such a move calls for boldness – our army, like all armies, is never ready – and it also means that the democracies at last would wrest the initiative from the Nazis.

Britain could spare men

Backed by America in an all-out offensive, Britain could ship overseas trained troops who must be kept immobilized today in the British Isles. They must be kept there because Britain must be constantly on her guard against invasion.

Too costly already for Hitler to undertake in this phase, the invasion of Britain would become impossible if Germany were losing planes in an unsought Mediterranean struggle while Russia still remains intact.

Japan’s bluff would be called in all probability, and if it were not, America could take a defensive position in the Pacific with absolute safety. Once Hitler is crushed, Uncle Sam and John Bull can take care of Japan between cocktails.

Victory in 12 months

In this way, the war could be won within 12 months, in the opinion of military experts of half a dozen nationalities – including Germans with whom I talked, who were frightened half out of their wits when they feared America might do just this.

The war is not going to be won that way and there is only one reason why. A large body of American opinion is isolationist. These men sincerely believe in the main that this is Britain’s war, not ours.

Without realizing it, they are saying to the American people exactly what Hitler has ordered his ubiquitous fifth column to say. As a result, the American Congress, in the opinion of political experts, is unwilling to declare war.

Future course black

Consequently, the future course of the war is as black as it is plain. Left alone while he fights Russia, Hitler will take Leningrad and Odessa and push on to Baku for the oil he needs in a long struggle against America.

With luck, the Russians will be able to maintain a front and, equaling the Chinese in patient heroism, the plodding Russian peasantry should keep open a front that will prove costly to the Nazis. But Hitler ought to be able to consolidate his position in Russia and be free to turn his attention directly to Britain and America.

Hitler has studied the innumerable German generals who went before him, but like every military-minded man, he has also studied the campaigns of General Ulysses S. Grant. Vicksburg proving tough, Grant surrounded its approaches and choked the city to death in a classic operation.

Too tough to invade

Britain is too tough to invade. Hitler is going to surround and choke off the approaches to Britain once he has come back from Russia with the oil and raw materials he needs for the showdown with America.

Hitler will try to take Africa in order to use U-boats and long-range bombers down the whole African littoral to sink all American and British shipping in the South Atlantic.