Here’s another of my dad’s editorials.
John Whitaker reported in The Daily News the other day that Nazi newspapermen in Geneva were busy urging upon neutrals that the war in the west be called off, so that Germany, Britain and France could turn upon Russia. Such talk is highly significant. Nazi newspapermen are government agents. They speak and write as they are told. They would not dare do otherwise. And it is safe to assume that what they want is what Hitler wants.
We have never doubted that Hitler’s main ambition is now what it has always been-expansion to the east, at Russia’s expense. The fact that he has a pact with Russia proves nothing. Before he reoccupied the Rhineland, he made deals with Italy and Austria. Before he took Austria, he made deals with Italy and Czechoslovakia. Before he took Czechoslovakia, he reaffirmed his deal with Poland. And it was before he took Poland that he made his deal with Russia. By this logic, it seems clear that he had intended Russia to be his next victim.
Hitler never wanted to fight France and Britain. He was advised that they would not really declare war for Poland, or that, if they did, they would quickly call off the war. That they have twice refused his peace offers must anger him mightily. Can they not see that his real object, in destroying Poland and making a deal with Stalin, was to open the way for an attack on Russia?
Hitler was never really afraid of Russia. His anti-Communist outcries were mere propaganda to cloak his aims of conquest. German officers for years trained the Red Army, or tried to, in the days of the RussoGerman alliance. These same officers must have known well, what Finland has now revealed to all the world, that this famous Red Army could not compare for a moment with any well-trained, well-disciplined and well-equipped European troops. Hitler, informed of this, felt sure, no doubt, that he could do about as he liked, when he liked, with the Russians. Indeed, it seems entirely possible that his main purpose, in giving Stalin a free hand, and allowing the Russians’ to advance on the Baltic and in the Balkans, was to frighten the timid capitalists of Paris and London, so that they would make peace with him from fear of Russia. He could then keep all his present conquests, and add to them, eventually; part of what is now Russia.
But the French and British are not much afraid of Russia, either-not since Finland has so courageously pricked the Russian bubble. They, too, are quite satisfied to see Russia expand a little westward, confident that this expansion, sooner or later, will bring Hitler and Stalin into direct conflict. What the French and British fear is note Russia, but Germany. And unless there, is some major change in the general military situation, they will continue to insist, we assume, on the restoration of Austria, Bohemia and Poland as a necessary prerequisite to peace negotiations.
Meanwhile, the broad hints from the Nazis in Geneva that what his friend Hitler desires is peace in the west, in order to attack in the east, must make interesting reading for the tyrant in the Kremlin.
