World or Ruin

German People!

National Socialists!

Weighted down with heavy cares, condemned to months-long silence, the hour has now come when at last I can speak frankly. . . .

Thus did Adolf Hitler, on the Sunday morning of June 22, 1941, begin a proclamation that ended with a declaration of war against the largest country and the largest army in the world.

The opening sentence, with its dangling participle, was an offense against grammar. As he continued, Hitler committed many an offense against logic and the world's credulity. He ended with an offense against the God in whom he does not believe: "May God help us especially in this fight!"

But Adolf Hitler did one supreme service to the world: he made clear his intentions to all who might still doubt them. He was declaring war upon the world.

With Russia's Armies defeated, Germany could turn all her power against the British Isles. With Russia conquered, Turkey would be gobbled up (and last week's attack on Russia was preceded by a Non-Aggression Pact between Germany and Turkey); the entire Middle East and India would be opened to German attack; not only Suez, but Africa, would be flanked; China would be surrounded; the seas would be opened (assuming the fall of Suez and Gibraltar) to combined Axis Fleets greater than the combined U.S. and British Navies; the Western Hemisphere would be encircled by enemies.

The irony of the new attack was that smart Joseph Stalin had outsmarted himself. Russia, whose pact with Germany enabled Hitler to start the war, now felt the full fury of the war. Adolf Hitler's proclamation was full of accusation of Russian double-dealing and Russia's Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov retorted in kind. The accusations were unimportant. In the charges of neither side was there even a tone of surprise. They had never trusted each other. In the timetable of German-Russian relations since the Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939 (see col. 3) could be read the progressive failure of Stalin's political marriage of convenience. Now Hitler had turned on him.

Why? There were many reasons, many calculations, behind the decision to attack Russia at this time. Some were clear, others still obscure. In his proclamation Hitler said his General Staff did not dare to reach a "radical conclusion of the war in the West" with Russia at Germany's back. For a month Germany had been pressing demands on Russia that Stalin had evidently decided he could not meet and survive.

German spokesmen, big and little, accused Russia of espionage and sabotage in Germany. Germany was restive, weary of war (see p. 32). Were spoils of war necessary to keep the people from revolt? Few thought that revolution was a possibility in Germany yet, but who could be sure?

That the General Staff wanted war with Russia was indicated by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel's list of military grievances, which included many alleged frontier violations. With the power now held by the Army in Germany, the suddenness with which war was declared showed that Germany could be satisfied with nothing less than destruction of Russia as a power.

Silent Dictators. Where Hitler was, no one outside of Germany knew. He usually goes to the front when a campaign begins. But lately Hitler has been reported increasingly nervous, irritable, difficult. His Sunday proclamation was read by Propaganda Chief Paul Joseph Goebbels. Yet even if Hitler were as mad as a March Hare, the General Staff would not have begun a war it did not expect to win. The German timetable was said to give Russia three weeks.

Joseph Stalin did not even issue a proclamation; he was as silent as the grave. The talking was taken over by those two good friends, Foreign Commissar Molotov and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. Molotov exhorted the Russian people to fight against "the clique of bloodthirsty Fascist rulers." Ribbentrop: "Bolshevist Moscow is about to stab National Socialist Germany in the back while she is engaged in a struggle for her existence." Before this war ended, either Stalin or Hitler would no longer be a great dictator.

Decisive Gamble. Only one thing in Hitler's move indicated that his plans had been upset: he had felt it necessary to retrace his steps and attack Russia before his aims in the West had been achieved. Only some weakness--mental, moral, or material--could account for his taking that otherwise unnecessary risk. For what Adolf Hitler did this week, and what he hopes to do in the future, had been told to Hermann Rauschning in 1934 and published by him in 1939.

Said Hitler then:

Perhaps I shall not be able to avoid an alliance with Russia. I shall keep that as a trump card. Perhaps it will be the decisive gamble of my life. . . . But it will never stop me from firmly retracing my steps and attacking Russia when my aims in the West have been achieved. . . . We must win the victory of German race-consciousness over the masses eternally fated to serve and obey. We alone can conquer the great continental space, and it will be done by us alone, not through a pact with Moscow. We shall take this struggle upon us. It will open to us the door to permanent mastery of the world.

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