The Great Commentator

One of the best of all war commentators spoke to the world last week. In the Berlin Sportspalast, before 10,000 wounded Nazis and Field Marshal Erwin Rommel on leave from Egypt (see p. 31), Adolf Hitler used the ponderous sledge hammer of his sarcasm to score on the Allied optimists who have refused to admit United Nations' defeats. Said he:

"If we advance to the Don and down that stream and finally reach the Volga, if we continuously storm Stalingrad-- which we shall also take, you may depend on it--then all that means nothing!

"If we advance to the Caucasus, then that also means nothing. If we occupy the Ukraine, if we take into our possession the Soviet coal, all that again means nothing. If we take 65 or 70% of all Russian iron, that means absolutely nothing. Nothing at all.

"If we get the greatest grain country of the world, that is again absolutely nothing. If we secure for ourselves the gasoline sources there, that again is nothing. Altogether all that is nothing.

"But when Canadian advance units and English troops come to Dieppe, and when they are able to maintain themselves for nine hours, only to be annihilated completely, then that is an encouraging and most astonishing sign of the inexhaustible victorious strength of the British Empire."

Expected Scorn. But Hitler needed his sarcasm, too, to cover up the weak points in the German record. He paid a scornful tribute to the astounding fighters who were giving him his greatest opposition. "The blessed land of the totalitarians and of the peasants," he said, "unfortunately has no roads or only fragments of roads. Thus we have to build roads. Some said: 'Well, the Russians get through it.' The Russian is some kind of swamp-human, that we must admit. He is no European. It is a bit more difficult for us to get ahead in that morass than it is for the people who were born for a life in that mire."

But, as usual, Adolf Hitler's chief scorn was directed at Britain and the U.S. He offered an opinion on the second front question: "If Churchill says: 'We shall leave it to the Germans to worry about where and when we shall open a second front,' then I can only say: 'Mr. Churchill, you have never yet caused me to fear. But regarding the fact that we must worry and think, you are right.' Because if I had an opponent of adequate scope--of real military size--then I could actually calculate approximately where he would attack. But if one has before one military idiots, in such a case one cannot even guess where they will attack."

On President Roosevelt's war aims, Adolf Hitler delivered these tortuous sentences: "It is also a very witty thing if, for instance, a President says: 'We want that in the future everybody shall have the right to suffer no further want,' or something similar. One can only say to that that it would have been much easier, in all likelihood, if that President, instead of having jumped into war, had used the entire labor energy of his country in caring for his own people and in order to build up useful production of his nation, which, in spite of the fact that only ten persons live there per square kilometer, suffers want and misery."

Unexpected Softness. But, strangely, scorn and loud defiance vanished from Hitler's speech when he spoke of his future intentions. Then his tone was quiet, defensive. Said he: "For this year we have prepared for ourselves a very simple program. In the first place, under all circumstances, we must hold whatever must be held. That is to say, we must let the others attack as much as they wish wherever we have no intention of advancing. We must hold everything and must wait to see who tires soonest. In the second place, we must attack under all circumstances where attack is necessary."

There was no reason to believe that Hitler was necessarily being honest. He might talk just as mildly to cover some great new offensive plan. But it was noteworthy that Adolf Hitler, within hearing of all the German people, had admitted even the possibility of German exhaustion. Only at one point during Hitler's speech was there overwhelming applause. That was when, speaking of the Allied bombing of Germany, he promised: "The hour shall come when we will reply."

Hitler, the great war commentator, was exceedingly pungent on the subject of the war to date. His remarks regarding the future prompted the Stockholm Svenska Dagbladet to say: "In 1940 Germany considered she was victorious. In 1941 she considered she would be victorious. In 1942 she considers she must be victorious."

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