on the sidewalk outside, beautiful German children surrounded a one-legged man on a crutch, who was selling paper dolls that danced on strings. Victor Henry walked several blocks at a pace that made his heart pound. The first new thought that came to him was that, with his grossly insulting words and acts, he might have murdered Ted Gallard.
Chapter 36 — The Garden Rose
(from WORLD EMPIRE LOST)
The Falling Crown
The winter and spring between the Battle of Britain and our attack on the Soviet Union stand in popular history as a breathing spell. Actually, in these eight months the axis of the war changed, for the British Empire as a reality left the stage of history.
In 1939, this momentous event lay shrouded in the future. A proper name for this war might well be “The War of the British Succession,” for the real question that was fought out was this: after the collapse of the British Empire, which would drag with it all European colonialism, what shape was the new world order to take, and under whose rule?
This historic turn, and this momentous issue, Adolf Hitler foresaw. He inspired and mobilized Germany to rise and dare all to seize the falling crown. The feats that our nation performed against odds will someday be justly treated in history when passions die and the slain of certain minor excesses con be seen in perspective. Meantime historians write as though only the struggles of the Allies were heroic, as though we Germans were a species of metal monster incapable of bleeding, freezing, or hungering, and therefore deserving of no credit for our vast victories. As Hitler said, the winning side writes the history. Yet, in their praise of their own arduous successes, the Allies despite themselves honor us, the nation that almost won the British succession, against a combination of all the industrial nations in the world except feeble Italy and far-off impoverished Japan.
For all of Hitler’s military mistakes, and they were many and serious, my professional judgment remains that the German armed forces would have won the war, and world empire, but for one historical accident. His real opponent, and more ruthless political genius, with more sober military judgment and greater material means for industrialized warfare: Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The nation this man led was in no way comparable to the German people in military valor, as test after test in the field eventually showed. But that did not matter. This great manipulator so managed the war that other nations bled themselves almost to death, so as to hand his country the rule of the earth on a silver platter.
The United States of America, today the troubled master of the world, lost fewer men in the entire war than Germany expended in any one of half a dozen campaigns. Almost twenty million soldiers, sailors, and airmen perished in the Second World War. Of these, America in four years of global war lost about three hundred thousand on all fronts including her war with Japan! For this almost bloodless conquest of the earth, which has no parallel in all history, the American people can thank that enigmatic, still shrouded future, the Augustus of the industrial age, the Dutch-descended millionaire cripple, Roosevelt.
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s world conquest still goes unrecognized. In the present historical writings on the war, he is granted nothing like the stature he will one day have. There is little doubt that he wanted it that way. The Augustan ruler, a recurring figure in history, seizes the realities of power under a mask of the humble, benign, humanitarian citizen. Nobody since the emperor Augustus ever managed this as Franklin Roosevelt did. Even Augustus was not as sanctimonious, for in those days the Christian vocabulary of humility and humaneness was not in vogue to lend such depths to hypocrisy.
Roosevelt’s Feat
In his successful waging of the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt made no major military mistakes. That is a record not matched by any world conqueror since Julius Caesar. His slogan of “unconditional surrender” was widely called a blunder, by commentators as diverse as Goebbels and Eisenhower. I do not agree, and in its place, I will take up that stricture and challenge it.
Our propaganda office called him a tool of the Jews, but of course that was the silliest bosh. Roosevelt did nothing to save the Jews. He knows that any such action would annoy Congress and interfere with winning the war. Under his clever facade of a Christian humanitarian liberal, he was one of the coldest, most ruthless calculators in history. He sensed that the Americans liked the Jews no more than we did; and they amply confirmed this all through the war in their immigration policies, and at the Evian and Bermuda conferences, where they simply abandoned the Jews to their fate.
This author is no admirer of Roosevelt as a person, but the aim of my work is to set down the facts as military history should view them. On such a valuation, Franklin Roosevelt was the mastermind of the war. Even such a powerful, energetic, and brilliant figure as Adolf Hitler was in the end no more than a foil for him. Adventuristic conquerors often pave the way, in the fashion, for the dominion of their enemies. The adventurer sees the opportunity, and with meager means tries to capture it. He does the destroying and the bulldozing. His ice- blooded successor then crushes him and builds on the ruins. Napoleon in the last analysis merely put Wellington’s England in the saddle for a century. Charles XII hardly has a place in history, except as a foil for Peter the Great. And the German people under Adolf Hitler accomplished nothing in the long run except to hand the British succession to the United States under Roosevelt.
Roosevelt’s Difficulty
Franklin Roosevelt’s problem was that at this great turning point in history he did not lead a warlike nation, whereas Adolf Hitler did. The American people are not cowardly. But, living in prosperous isolation, they have been the spoiled children of modern history. Spoiled children do not bear well the rigors of the field. Once they entered the war, the Americans fought with a logistic train of luxury and self-protection that to the warriors of Germany, the Soviet Union, and even England, was laughable. Nevertheless, they had the riches and the will for this. The strong can fight any kind of fight they please.
The Americans have a tradition of militia-like fighting. Presented with a threat, they drop their pleasures, take up arms, and fight amateurishly but bravely to get the thing over with. They formed this pattern in their revolution, and confirmed it in their civil war and the First World War. Roosevelt could present the chance for world conquest to his people in the guise of a threat to their safety. This, with a masterly exhibition of patient, spider-like waiting, he did. Meantime, he robbed Germany of two certain victories — over Great Britain and over the Soviet Union — by an inspired instrument of indirect war-making, a genuine new thing in military history, the so-called Lend-Lease Act.
A Cunning Trick
By the end of 1940, despite her narrow escapes at Dunkirk and in the air battle, Britain was sinking to her knees. She had only one recourse left on the planet to save her: the United States. But the Neutrality Act threatened to cut the English off from the American farms and factories that were keeping them alive. They were running out of dollars to pay even for grain and oil, let alone the ships, planes, guns, and bullets which they could no
