The Winds of War

million Germans to ask to be allowed to till in peace eight hundred thousand kilometers of soil that are their own.” He was talking about his new order in central Europe, and the expanded Third Reich. The British and the French could have peace simply by accepting things as they now were, he said, adding a hint that it might be well if they also gave Germany back her old colonies. The Fuhrer at the end fell into his old style, howling and sneering, shaking both fists in front of his face, pointing a fist and a finger straight upward, snapping his hands to his hips, as he pictured the horrors of a full-scale war, which he said he dreaded and which nobody could really win.

That night Pug Henry wrote in his intelligence report:

…Hitler looks very well. He obviously has first-rate powers of recuperation. Maybe licking Poland toned up his system a bit. Anyway the haggardness is gone, his color is excellent, he isn’t stooping, his voice is clear, not harsh, and — at least in this speech — very pleasant, and his walk is springy and quick. It would be a grave mistake to hope for a physical breakdown in this man.

The speech was a lot of the same old stuff, with some remarkable whoppers, even for the Fuhrer, about who started the Polish war and about the sterling conduct of the Germans toward civilians. This tommyrot was certainly for internal consumption. His German listeners appeared to be swallowing it, though it’s very hard to discern what Germans really think.

The radio tonight is making a great to-do about the “outstretched hand” peace proposal. We’ll evidently be hearing “outstretched hand” from now on, possibly to the end of the war, even if it’s ten years hence. The offer may have been authentic. If the Allies accept, Germany gets her half of Poland for the price of a quick cheap campaign, and also her pre-World War colonies, no doubt as a reward for the faultless chivalry of her armed forces. Hitler has never been bashful about making the most outrageous proposals. They’ve been accepted too. So why not try another one?

Ai the very least, if he gets the truce and the conference he suggests, the British and French publics will undoubtedly relax and slack off. The Germans can use the breather to get their half-hearted industrial effort rolling for the showdown. On every count this was a clever speech by a leader who is riding high and seems to have the magic touch. The only fault I can find is a dull and boring delivery, but that too may have been calculated. Hitler today was the judicious European politician, not the roaring Aryan firebrand. Among his other talents he is a gifted vaudevillian.

Pug told Byron to write down his impressions of the speech. Byron handed him half a typewritten page:

My outstanding impression was the way Adolf Hitler follows out what he wrote in Mein Kampf. He says there, in his section on war propaganda, that the masses are “feminine,” acting on feeling and sentiment, and that whatever you tell them must be addressed to the dullest ignoramus among them, in order to reach and convince the broadest possible audience.

This speech was full of lies that ought to annoy a half-educated German boy of ten, and the peace proposals amounted to a total German grab. Maybe Hitler judges other countries by his own; otherwise I can’t understand the speech. I realized only today what utter contempt Hitler has for the Germans. He regards them as bottomlessly naive and stupid. They follow him and love him. Who am I to say he’s wrong?

His father thought this was not bad, and included it in quotation marks as the comment of a youthful American spectator.

The din of the German radio and press in the next days was terrific. Italy and Japan had hailed the Fuhrer as the greatest peacemaker of all time. A mighty popular surge for peace was sweeping the West and the United States. But “Churchillian” warmongers were trying to stamp out this warm response of the people to the Fuhrer’s outstretched hand. If they succeeded, the most ghastly bloodbath of all time would follow, and history would know whom to blame. Pug gathered from neutral intelligence in Berlin that some Frenchmen wanted to make a deal and call off the war, but not because they took seriously anything Hitler had said. It was just a question of yielding to the facts or fighting on.

Into this confusing noise came an electric shock of news. A U-boat had sneaked into the British fleet anchorage in Scapa Flow at the northern tip of Scotland, had sunk the battleship Royal Oak, and had returned home safe!

News pictures showed the solemn fat-faced Fuhrer shaking the hand of Lieutenant-Commander Prien, a nervous stiff young man with receding hair. The Nazi propaganda ministry foamed with ecstasy over the British Admiralty’s report that sadly praised Prien’s skill and daring. The writer was Churchill himself. Goebbels’s broadcasters said the sinking of the Royal Oak would prove a great boon to peace, since the Fuhrer’s “outstretched hand” proposal would now receive more serious consideration.

A small reception was laid on for neutral military attaches to meet Prien. Victor Henry put his son’s name on the list, with the rank Ensign, USNR, and Byron received a card. The Henrys dined before the reception at the apartment of Commander Grobke, a small dark walk-up flat on the fourth floor of an old house with bay windows. Heavy thick furniture so cluttered the rooms that there was hardly space to move. The meal was salt fish and potatoes, but it was well cooked and Byron enjoyed it. He found the Grobkes disconcertingly normal, though he was prepared to detest them. When the talk got around to Byron’s experiences in Poland the woman listened with an unhappy, motherly look. “One never knows what to believe any more. Thank God it’s over, at least. Let there only be peace, real peace. We don’t want war. The last war ruined Germany. Another war will be the absolute end of our country.”

Rhoda said, “It’s so awful. Nobody in the world wants war, yet here we are in this mess.”

Grobke said to Victor Henry, “What do you think? Are the Allies going to discuss the Fuhrer’s very reasonable offer?”

“Do you want me to be polite, or are you asking for information?”

“Don’t be polite, Henry. Not with me.”

“Okay. Germany can have peace if she gets rid of Hitler and his regime. You could even hang onto a lot of your gains. That gang has got to go.”

Grobke and his wife looked at each other in the candlelight. “Then it’s hopeless,” he said, playing with his empty wineglass. “If your people won’t understand one thing about Germany, we have to fight it out. You don’t know what this country was like in the 1920’s. I do. If the system had gone on another few years there would have been no navy, no economy, nothing. Germany would have fallen apart. This man stood up and put Germany back on the map. You have Roosevelt, we have him. Listen, Henry, I sat in a fancy club in New York and heard people call Roosevelt an insane socialist cripple. There are millions who hate him. Right? Now I’m not a Nazi, I’ve never said the Fuhrer is a thousand percent right. But he’s a winner, damn it all. He gets things done, like Roosevelt. And you want us to get rid of him? First of all it isn’t possible. You know what the regime is. And if it were possible we wouldn’t do it. And yet there can be peace. It depends on one man, and he isn’t our Fuhrer.”

“Who then?”

“Your President. The British and the French are beaten right now. Otherwise they’d have attacked in September. When will they ever have such a chance again? They’re holding out for only one reason — they feel America’s behind them. If your President says one word to them tomorrow — ‘I’m not helping you against Germany’ — this world war will be over before it starts, and we’ll all have a hundred years of prosperity. And I’ll tell you one more thing. That’s the only way your President can make sure Japan won’t jump on your back.”

It occurred to Victor Henry, not for the first time, that his meeting with Grobke on the Bremen had probably not been accidental. “I guess we’d better get on to that reception,” he said.

Lieutenant Commander Prien looked surprised and interested when Byron’s turn came in the reception line of floridly uniformed attaches. “You are young,” he said in German, scrutinizing Byron’s face and well-cut dark suit as they shook hands. “Are you a submariner?”

“No. Maybe I should be.”

Prien said with a charming grin, and sudden wholehearted warmth, “Ach, it’s the only service. But you have to be tough.”

Blue-uniformed sailors lined up the chairs for a lecture. Pug Henry was flabbergasted by the candor of the