Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions on the Battle of Mankind

2. Russia 88

What is the best way for the United States to help the Russians? How can the Russian resistance to the German attack be explained? What do the Russians fight for? Is it true that the Soviet government has restored freedom of worship? Are we running a risk if we support the Russians? Can Stalin be trusted? Under what circumstances would Stalin make a separate peace? What would be the effect of such a compromise peace on Great Britain and the United States? What is the NKVD? Are the peasants better off on collective farms? How about the Soviet elections of which we hear? Why do you give so much importance to the Soviet Terror? How do you explain Russian inefficiency and wastefulness? How has the Red Army been able to stand up so well? Could Stalin carry on with the resources of the Urals?

3. England 139

What place will Churchill have in history? Is Churchill really backed by the English people? Can Churchill be trusted? What does Churchill think of the United States? What are Churchill’s characteristics as a person? Would the British Navy survive the fall of the British Isles? How can the flight of Hess be explained? What is the secret of Churchill’s success? What are Churchill’s principal interests?

4. War Aims 184

What are Britain’s war aims? What was the meaning of the Churchill-Roosevelt meeting? How can the gains of victory be consolidated? Will the United States come out of the war in a better economic condition than others? What will the peace conference be like? In what sense will the conquered peoples be slaves? How could we compete with Hitler after a German victory? Can’t American labor produce better and cheaper than slave labor? What are Hitler’s plans for Europe? What kind of negotiated peace would be acceptable to the Axis? What is the text of Hitler’s terms? What chance has Communism in a defeated Germany? Is there any way to render Germany impotent? Is the problem of the Germans insoluble? Will England come out of the war with a socialist system? What is to be done with all the former nations of Europe?

5. France 234

Why did France fall? Were there traitors on the French General Staff? How did treason manifest itself in the operations of the army? Who gave the orders? What is the opinion of informed Frenchmen? Is Pétain a patriot or traitor, or misguided? Is Pétain moved by personal ambition? What would Hitler do if he finally tired of fooling with Vichy? What about Darlan? And Laval? Has Laval a chance to seize power? In what way are we Americans very much like the French? Are there any encouraging differences between ourselves and the unfortunate French? Is there any hope that the French may come back? Will Hitler’s treatment of France be different later? How was the French indemnity fixed? How does this compare with the reparations paid by Germany after the World War? What is Hitler doing with French industry? Should we continue diplomatic relations with Vichy?

6. the United States 293

What is the greatest danger we face as a nation today? Is our morale very bad? What is the state of our armament? If we have nothing to fight with, how can we go to war? Could Hitler succeed in invading the British Isles? Why doesn’t Ireland allow Britain to take over naval bases? Is it true that Hitler wants to destroy the United States? Haven’t we plenty to do at home without getting into a foreign war? Why do you think we ought to go to war with Germany today? Why would a declaration of war be worth so much immediately? What effect would a declaration of war have on the morale of the Army? But weren’t we suckers in the last war? Would an American declaration of war have any effect on the morale of the Germans? Would another A.E.F. be required? Might a new League of Nations be successful?

7. Fifth Columnists 339

What makes Lindbergh the way he is? Are we fair in calling Lindbergh a Copperhead? What is the reason for the divorce between Lindbergh and the American people? Why did Lindbergh attack the Jews? What is to be the fate of the Jews? What are Lindbergh’s arguments against our entering the war? What is the answer to America’s Fifth Columnists?

I met H. R. Knickerbocker way back in 1927 or thereabouts. Those were the good old days. They were the days of the Long Armistice. No one had ever heard of the Rome-Berlin Axis, Stuka dive bombers, or the Haushofer Plan. Mr. Roosevelt was out of politics, Mr. Churchill was a chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Lindbergh had just flown the Atlantic. We talked of such neolithic creatures as Pilsudski of Poland and Alexander of Jugoslavia, and most of us thought that Hitler was a bad Austrian joke, more or less. Those were the good old days. Even so, thunderheads were gathering.

I first met Mr. Knickerbocker in Berlin. This was fitting, since Berlin was his bailiwick. We all had bailiwicks in those days. Duranty was in Moscow, Raymond Swing was in London, and Dorothy Thompson had just left Berlin. I was bouncing all over the place. I didn’t have my bailiwick yet. We were all very good friends. We formed a kind of fluid international community. We were buzzards in every foreign office, and kings on every wagon-lit.

We didn’t meet often, since we lived in different cities, and it took something of a catastrophe to bring us all together. When we did meet, the vault of heaven shook. I remember days--and nights--in Geneva, Bucharest, Cairo, Helsingfors. I think of Sheean, the Mowrers, Webb Miller, Shirer, Jay Allen, Fodor, Whitaker, and many more. Don’t let me sound nostalgic. I am thinking merely that we have all grown up. We are not cameras any longer.

This foreword is not about Mr. Knickerbocker’s book. Let that speak for itself. Knick is the most pertinacious, plausible, and inquisitive question-asker I ever met. In this book he answers questions instead of asking them. I like to see the tables turned. I don’t know that I agree with all his answers. But let him answer them.

This foreword is about Mr. Knickerbocker himself. His flaming red hair, his flaming red personality (I mean “red” chromatically, not politically) are famous on four continents. He needs no introduction. But certain nuggets of memory stay fixed in mind. I remember the time he fed me caviar inside a baked potato, at Horcher’s in Berlin, and I remember the time I fed him a dinner in London that, deliberately, we planned so that it would cost exactly five pounds. I remember the time that he took me to hear Putzi Hanfstaengl hammer out a tornado of Wagner in the Hotel Kaiserhof, and I remember the time I took him across the freezing Danube, on the way to Sofia, in what was supposed to be a rowboat. I remember week-ends on the Semmering, bad oysters in Madrid, evenings in the Café Royal, drinks in Rome, Budapest, and points beyond.

Knick’s career has been spectacular in more than one dimension. He once set out to fly the Atlantic, as a passenger in a German plane, long before the Lindbergh flight; he was the only correspondent during the Ethiopian war to glimpse the front from the air; he has had more interviews with European heads of state, I imagine, than any other newspaper man alive.

Mr. Knickerbocker was born in Texas in 1898. He went to Europe in 1923, and, a student of psychiatry at the University of Munich, walked straight into Hitler’s Beerhall Putsch. He studied briefly in Vienna, and then got a job in Berlin on the New York Evening Post-Philadelphia Public Ledger foreign service. Since then his career has been a calendar of most of the great events of our time. He spent two years in Moscow as correspondent for the International News Service (this was in 1924-26, when Trotsky was declining and the N.E.P. expanding), and in 1928 took over Dorothy Thompson’s job as chief correspondent in Berlin for the Public Ledger. He won a Pulitzer prize for distinguished foreign correspondence--a series of articles on Russia’s Five Year Plan, but for almost ten years Berlin was the blazing focus of his life.

Meantime there were trips to take. In 1933 he travelled all over Europe for a series, “Will War Come in Europe?” for I.N.S. He saw the death of Dollfuss in Vienna, and the burial of Hindenburg in Germany. He met Mussolini, Masaryk, King Alexander, King Boris, Otto Habsburg, and hosts of others. He did one series of articles on Russia and the Baltic states, comparing living standards under communism and capitalism, and another surveying economic aspects of the Europe that was crumbling. Came the war in Ethiopia in 1935, which he covered on Haile Selassie’s side. I will never forget the agitated days in London when Knick was accumulating the vast equipment he took along. In 1936 came the Spanish civil war, and the next year the war in China. He saw bombings all the way from Toledo to Nanking. He returned to Europe to cover the Anschluss crisis and the Munich disaster; then he dipped briefly into South America, and reached Peru. Then Europe called again; he saw the beginning of World War II in London and France, and in 1940 accompanied the French armies till they collapsed, and then saw the battle of Britain at its fiercest climax, in September.

But let me go back to those days in Berlin. The main point I want to make has to do with Knickerbocker in Berlin. During the turbulent 1930’s he was much more than a journalist covering Germany; he was a definite public character in German political life. After Hindenburg and Hitler, he was practically the best known man in the country. His réclame was fabulous, personally and politically. Everyone knew the lithe, active, red-haired Herr Knickerbocker (pronounce the K, please). Once a musical comedy was named for him--supreme tribute!

Partly this was because he published half a dozen books in German, compiled from the long newspaper articles he wrote, which appeared serially in the Vossische Zeitung or the Berliner Tageblatt. The books were extraordinarily successful in Germany; they introduced German readers to a new type of American journalism. Among them were Der Rote Handel Droht!, Der Rote Handel Lockt!, Kommt Europe Wieder Hoch?, Rote Wirtschaft und Weisse Wohlstand!, England’s Wirtschaft und Schwarzhemden!, Deutschland So oder So!, and Kommt Krieg in Europa?