HITLER HAS “MISSED THE BUS.” Prime Minister Chamberlain is speaking more confidently than ever about the prospects of Nazi defeat, and his latest words on the subject were the big story in Friday’s papers.
Edward Angly’s account in the New York Herald Tribune quotes Chamberlain as saying he now feels “ten times as confident of victory as I did at the beginning.” He told a Conservative Party meeting in London that Hitler had “missed the bus” by giving Britain and France seven months of relative calm in which to marshal their armaments and economic resources. If the Germans had attacked immediately following their triumph in Poland, they would have done with a wide margin of superior strength. But “those seven months that we have had enabled us to make good and remove our weaknesses, to consolidate and tune up every arm, offensive and defensive, and so enormously to add to our fighting strength that we can face the future with a calm and steady mind, whatever it brings.”
The new British “line” was also trumpeted Friday by Britain’s commander in chief, General Edmund Ironside. He told Frazier Hunt of the International News Service -- “Our army has turned the corner. A fortnight ago I , for the first time, became sure of this. We started with very little. The Germans gave us these months wherein to build before the first fight of great force. If they had launched a full attack at the very start, when we were unprepared, they might possibly have got us. But it is too late now. We are ready for anything they may start. As a matter of fact, we would welcome a go at them.”
A REASON FOR OPTIMISM? Chamberlain’s and Ironside’s remarks offer reason for hope we won’t see a big German offensive this year after all. They follow recent reports in the Chicago Tribune and the New Republic, among others, that Hitler realizes he cannot launch a major attack in the West this year. Could it be that British intelligence men are telling Chamberlain much the same thing? Could it be the government is so confident about this information that they’re crowing a little about it? Chamberlain has generally been the epitome of caution -- it doesn’t seem likely he would be talk this optimistically without good reason.
On the other hand, General Ironside did mention that Hitler is keeping “a million of his finest troops” opposite the Belgian and Dutch frontiers, and that “the Germans may try” an attack. And Chamberlain warned that prior to Germany’s defeat the Allies might face either “an intensified warfare, with whatever checks and disappointments might come to set off against our triumphs, or...a long-drawn-out and wearisome war in which for many months it might seem impossible for either side to win a decisive victory.” But the bravado of the Hitler-missed-the-bus message implies they no longer believe that a crushing German attack is coming.
“AN END OF STATIC WAR?” Barnet Nover warns in his Washington Post column Friday not to discount the possibility that Hitler will gamble everything soon on a “lightning blow” in the West --
“If Germany waits too long, the capacity to take the initiative may pass from her hands, never perhaps to be regained. When that moment has come and the Germans realize that it has come, the possibility of defeat will loom ever larger. Despite Premier Chamberlain’s boast that he is ‘ten times as confident’ of victory now as he was when the war began, it cannot yet be said that this is already the case. But it may be the case three months from now or six months from now or a year from now. It was precisely such calculations which in the past led Hitler to launch one lightning blow before either Germany or the world had had time become adjusted to the results of the previous stroke. And the same dynamic urge may be operating today. To assume that Hitler will stand still indefinitely, even behind the impregnable Siegfried Line, is to imagine a Hitler who does not exist.”
ALLIED BLOCKADE MIGHT NOT BE ENOUGH. David Darrah reports in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune on comments in the French press suggesting that Britain’s low-cost war strategy might be deficient -- “Some French critics seem to think a blockade cannot be relied on to end Fuehrer Adolf Hitler and that the war eventually will have to be won on the battlefield. They point out that the issue probably will be decided only by a combination of the blockade and combat.” Mr. Darrah writes that an editorial in L’Order “concludes that Germany is too large and has too many adjacent neighbors to be brought down by a blockade, particularly as stocks have been stored for years....only after big military offensives have forced the reich to exhaust material and munitions which cannot be replaced...will the blockade have any direct effect.”
Maybe there’s some truth to this, but what would these critics have the Allies do? Assault the Siegfried Line? Out of the question. Launch an air offensive? Premature. Bomb Baku, or seize the Rumanian oil fields? The complications of such daring moves are endless -- and the initial drive would not kill a single German soldier. If it’s true that Hitler is stymied this year from launching a land attack, the Allies are all the more so. But Barner Nover is right in one respect. Within a few short months, that could change.
NEW WAR TENSIONS IN SCANDINAVIA. Robert P. Post writes in Saturday’s New York Times that the Allies have given Norway and Sweden a “clarification” of the Anglo-French view on Scandinavian neutrality -- and it amounts to a stern warning to the Russians. The statement says that the Allies are ready to resist any new Soviet aggression against Finland or her neighbors, even if Norway and Sweden do nothing to oppose it. Further, the Allies are warning anew that shipments of iron ore to Germany down Norway’s territorial waters must be stopped. As Mr. Post explains, “The British feel that German threats against weak neighbors cannot be allowed to feed German strength.”
Another Saturday Times story, by Otto D. Tolischus, describes how Norway’s leftist “all Labor” government has been forced by events to retreat from its “communistically tinted and anti-military platform.” Mr. Tolischus adds, “it is still proceeding cautiously and reluctantly, and lags, even proportionately to population and resources, far behind Sweden...[but] it has been forced to...adopt the hated military methods and fighting slogans hitherto attributed only to the ‘predatory capitalists.’” In contrast to her past pacifism, Norway is now “searching the world market for arms and airplanes which are difficult to get and have become very expensive. She is filling up her skeleton army with recruits and she is building new naval vessels in her own yards and has been buying armed speed boats from abroad.”
The Norwegians had better hurry -- according to the International News Service, the Russians are emphatically demanding the resignation of the president of Norway’s parliament, Carl J. Hambro, on the grounds that he gave an “anti-Soviet speech” recently. This is akin to the arrogant approach that Stalin took with Finland and the Baltic States. And so far, it’s worked fine from the Soviet point of view.
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