Nazi Victory in Low Lands Useless if Allies Hold Lines Through 1940
SCHLAMM, WILLI
Nazi Victory in Low Lands Useless if Allies Hold Lines Through 1940 By WILLI SCHLAMM The secret weapon with which Hitler works on this side of the world is not at all secret: the nerve gas of...
...Unless the army is revamped, aircraft provided, guns built, and pilots trained, the best this country can do to stop the green-gray Nazi lade pouring through western Europe's civilization is to provide credits for materials and food...
...in one way or another, joined the Fifth Column...
...Reich CP Leader Urges Allegiance To "Der Fuehrer" Exports from Sweden that the Soviet Union would, shortly declare for the Allies caused surprise here among* political and diplomatic dreles which just had learned that a delegation &8m the Moscow air bureaus had arrived in late last week to exchange information all.discuss methods by which production might be speeded in both countries through an extknge of Nazi technicians for Soviet raw Bterials...
...There are 53,361 airplane mechanics, technicians, and ground crew workers here, in comparison to the Reich's 300,000...
...a Strachey: whole tenor of the Daily Worker dur7» the past weeks has expressed the above view —of The exclusive guilt of Britain and France...
...The casualties are heavy, although they certainly deserve less sympathy than the Dutch and Belgian children Stalin's ally machine-gunned on the roads to a distressed refuge...
...Confront this feature with the twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours German munitions workers have been forced to sweat for years—and you will understand at once the dreadful difference in) the .preparedness of the two sides...
...the New Italy Edmond Rossoni Club, 186 Wilson Avenue, Brooklyn...
...propaganda in France and Eag&jjd to the effect that the British press is wrjing on a campaign of provocation against activity has caused a number of promi"St-British "popular frontists" to break with 4* "line...
...The conference enthusiastically hailed the report of Harold J. Laski which demanded a Socialist program for the reconstruction of Britain when the war ends...
...Although Congress authorized the expenditure of $100,000,000 for this purpose, only $15,000,000 has been used...
...For Inferior to Reich U.S...
...We are at peace, Germany at war on four fronts...
...If present schedules are maintained, the United States will have 5,500 planes in the army and 3,125 in the navy by June, 1941...
...T8« Comintern, in anticipation of an Italian iansion of Switzerland and southern France, is Mm spreading the...
...Only the navy, with its 303 ships and 3,200 planes, is in any shape for action...
...Now it is clear for everyone who has not...
...While the last Week has somehow increased Hitler's chances of ending the war in 1940 through military victory, at the same moment his chances of frightening the Allies into a voluntary capitulation have vanished...
...Leon Blum, head of the French Socialist Party, addressing the parley the next day, Hid: "I do not know what would happen to capitalism if we lose the war, but I do know what would happen to Socialism if the Nazis win...
...Should the Allies' succeed in continuing destruction of air and naval bases in the Nazi-occupied Low Lands during the summer months, the military value pf/the occupation would - remain entirely HfuestkfcJBfle ^as^ fa...
...Nazi Victory in Low Lands Useless if Allies Hold Lines Through 1940 By WILLI SCHLAMM The secret weapon with which Hitler works on this side of the world is not at all secret: the nerve gas of confusion, the bacilli of lazy stupidity, the parachute landing of faked information, the artillery barrage of hysteria, the Fifth Column of Gestapo Communists...
...British Labor Parley Approves Cabinet Entry LONDON.—Meeting at Bournemouth thia week,' the executive committee of the British Labor Party, by a card vote of over 2,000,000 to a little more than 100,000, endorsed the entrance of the party leaders into the cabinet...
...There are 90 mm...
...Examples of the apologetics for the German Imperialists into which the Daily Worker has fallen could be multiplied...
...This was revealed by the editors of II Mondo, an Italian-English anti-fascist magazine published monthly in New York City...
...army to-defend its hundreds of open cities and its thousands of coastline miles...
...Planes, not infantry, are the new vertebrae of an army machine...
...The new British cabinet is far more a change of regimes than a government shake-up...
...Wherever this mechanized attack • has passed, every workers' movement and institution has been destroyed...
...Watch the people who are now fully convinced that France and England have already lost the war...
...unpreparedness is graphically illustrated by the fact that we have 300 anti-aircraft guns to the Germans' 2400...
...for centuries past, and per definitionem, the only answer to an offensive has been an organized retreat—until the proper moment for a counter-offensive...
...But there is no use...
...and now the playboys of the intelligentsia assert that the first stroke was deadly...
...and nothing but a miracle it would have been if the Allies had succeeded in' stopping a Nazi juggernaut within the Low Lands, crushing into the virtually empty space at the moment of its own choice...
...Mere possession of the Low Lands is in no sense tantamount to having won the war, as much as the control over Belgium's and the Netherlands' coast line may become useful in a future drive against the British isles...
...This fundamental fact prescribes the strategy on both sides...
...Attacks on Mr...
...In some cases, fascist clubs in America hare openly acted as collection agencies for the dispatching of funds to Rome...
...Targets of the Nazi war are not the Low Lands but France and England...
...Just as the Bund led byFritz Kuhn has failed to make inroads among the great bulk of German-Americans, so have the agents of Mussolini been shunned by most Italian-Americans...
...We are fighting this war to safeguard our liberty and our labor movement," Laski declared, "but we are,-not willipg to let this system, which breeds poverty and social flit, remain...
...27 a major proportion are ineffective because of lack of equipment...
...This periodical has for many months revealed the extensiveness of II Duce's organization in the United States, but no action has yet been taken by government authorities...
...but when the Belgian government proposed just such a natural cooperation, the Dutch turned it down to avoid awakening Hitler's anger...
...I should be very glad," Gangemi wrote, "to see rallied around II Grido Delia Stirpe, united and solid as massed platoons, the veterans of the Great War and the Imperial Legionnaires, in order to give more life to, and defend and strengthen the newspaper of our fascist faith in the United States...
...The only slight chance of defending the Netherlands war, at least, full military cooperation between them and Belgium, so that the vital southwestern part of the Netherlands could become a link within a common defense line, instead of being the open gate into both of the Low Lands...
...And the continued retreat of the Allied forces, sent into Belgium as a pitiful improvisation, is not a breakdown...
...JcPrance leaflets are being distributed By i'CP urging sabotage in munition factories, ¦ft upon the workers to unite "so that jlm capitalism shall be wiped out"'—not 9n capitalism, or British and German capiIjlPa—and saying that the British Empire is fi$Eal enemy and the Fuehrer has stretched (it* loyal hand to Frenchmen...
...While Hitler invests the maximum of means Germany has at her disposition in order to achieve Western Europe's complete breakdown this year, the Allies, whose maximum strength cannot $e developed before 1941 or perhaps 1942, have only one essential task: to coine through 1940 alive...
...Now the fields of Belgium and the Netherlands, two of the most beautiful flowers of Western civilization, are covered "'with bloody pieces of human flesh...
...But the campaign in the Low Lands, so far, is no evidence of such superiority...
...How effective this organization has been may not be discovered until Italy declares war on the Allies and its apparatus begins functioning in the United States...
...of anti-British, propaganda, through key Igjctsjn France...
...if England loses her really last battle, the world will be a jail—but if she wins, she will not be Chamberlain's England any longer...
...At the first affair of the committee, held in Manhattan Center Sunday, April 21, to award "honor certificates" to those who had "well deserved of the Italian government for their help in promoting the diffusion of the Italian language, several priests and nuns attended, in addition to other noted Italians...
...U.S...
...Incapable of Protecting Any City Or Putting Seven Divisions in Field By EDWARD LORING Special to Tax New Leader WASHINGTON, D. C—Whether or not this country will declare war on Germany is still in the realm of clairvoyancy, but any good military reporter will tell you that this nation is less prepared for its defense than was Norway...
...Hitler's air armada is about three times as great as the U.S...
...The struggle is the same...
...But it is this: drive which must be carried out in 1940 if Hitler is to be the winner within the^ narrow space of time...
...These guns will first come off the production belt six months hence...
...Antonio Locatelli Club, 276 East 150th Street, Bronx, and Dopolavoro Dux, Manhattan...
...In addition, Trombetta has openly boast of II Grido Delia Stirpe as "the most faithful voice, of fascism...
...There are fewer anti-aircraft guns in the entire nation than now guard one of the lesser open cities...
...Trombetta, in a recent visit to Rome, conferred with Gangemi...
...The seemingly overwhelming attack was no quicker or more successful than the initial drive in 1914...
...Gov't Plane Factories Urged There is no reserve of strategic war materials...
...General Giovanni Gangemi, Mussolini's inspector of Italian fascist clubs abroad, the fascist nature of the Alighieri Society newspaper was recently very clearly indicated...
...The adult nations: of Western Europe, in love with life's sweetness, have just begun to understand it...
...They are the same cynics who, only a few days ago, were making their tastefully sophisticated remarks about the phony war fought with leaflets...
...The other side...
...And even that is insufficient to win the war with Germany...
...But a wide fascist structure with direction from Rome operates in this country...
...To end the war in 1940 victoriously, Hitler must either crush the two big democracies militarily or must break their .will to resist until Fall...
...Alt of these groups conduct active propaganda work designed to impress Italian immigrants and their American-born children with a sense of duty to Mussolini...
...only slight ' chance for Belgium to survive the inevitable Nazi onslaught was full cooperation with France's military machine, established and carried out in advance...
...If he cannot break France and England this year while he enjoys the maximum of strength because of the Allies' slowly vanishing handicap of preparedness, then the war can end in his favor only through an internal collapse of the Allied nations...
...he can start from there the.deadly, the final blow against France and England during the next months...
...Getting almost all essential means of commanding and reorganizing England's economic life— production as well as distribution—British Labor now has the great opportunity to prove that totalitarian "collectivism" can be defeated by the gigantic power of democratic labor to work creatively and sacrifice voluntarily...
...overlooking that the Allied military machine has not at all proved to be equal to Nazi Germany's...
...the attitude of a mad pacifism, preferring serfdom to the risks /•fc„__i,;il of death, but finally losing cflnrcDiii Kfe as welI M liberty It -was this attitude that caused Scandinavia'3 and the Netherlands' inferno, The...
...Now in maneuvers, these soldiers ^represent about all of the army in continental United States...
...Of the necessary 1,200 varieties of critical items needed now in quantity, American industry can produce fewer than 100...
...This is a war, if you don't mind...
...Army estimates reveal that filling requirements for manganese chrome, tin, and tungsten would cost at least $22,000,000...
...Jt.'the same time, French underground' ComBiist sources have intensified the broadcastis...
...in 1918 she had lost the war because all that was not enough to crash militarily through France and England...
...That is why he is anxious to show utmost barbarism in the Low Lands, why he puts every bit of pow#r into this battle...
...German Communist leader Tier Ulbricht recently set the line in an arfihen he wrote "Great Britain is thr most MBnary force in the world...
...This treatment of the German invasion of Scandinavia is no more than a culminating revelation of an attitude on the part of the Daily Worker, which has caused many of its readers to characterize it as not so much anti-war as simply pro-German...
...their purpose is not, and cannot be, to defend at any cost single positions, but to prevent Hitler from, winning in 1940...
...For example, on April 10, the Diplomatic Correspondent began his article: 'In a single day and night British and French Government wrecking of Norwegian neutrality has extended the war by nearly 1,000 miles . . . Sweden is directly threatened...
...bis letter to The New Statesman he excoriated the London Daily Worker y^gnoring Germany's responsibility for the ^"¦d world war...
...At the head of the Borne front groups in America is the Italian Consul General here, Commends tore Gaetano Vacchiotti...
...But the army hasn't any in its armories...
...On a platform of resistance to the end, real national unity is at last achieved in England as well as in France...
...There is no other way...
...And the curious observers, who ask rhetorically how could it happen that England and Prance were unfit to rescue the Low Lands, may blame for that unhappy fact the suicidal spirit they have helped to create, the mad fetishism of respecting reltics of dead neutrality conceptions in the face of a crime machine using these relics as its most powerful weapon...
...The society's official organ in the U. S. is II Grido Delia Stirpe, an anti-Semitic fascist weekly edited by Domenico Trombetta, who is the Italian Fascist Party's official representative in this country...
...It cannot be repeated too often in these days of hysterical confusion: if the Allies can survive 1940, every further month injereases their chances for victory and decreases Hitler's...
...Led to victory by the British people themselves, who in the hour of gravest danger have overthrown the wavering clan of Chamberlain and Montague Norman, as the Jacobins did 150 years ago, England will become the center of mankind's progressive and constructive adventureAshamed .of our undeserved security while over there, once again, the, German Apocalyptic horses trample to death Europe's flower, we should at least live up to the one and only task we can fulfil: not to spread the Nazi germs of panic...
...Set to Sabotage If Italy Fights for Reich Although the American people think of a Fifth Column led only by Nazi and Communist forces, there is a strong section of the Trojan Horse front in this country composed of Italian-American leaders who have been creating a wide network for propaganda and other pro-fascist activities among the many millions of Italians here...
...Such is war...
...Of the No...
...This nation under its present industrial structure cannot hope to catch up with the Nazis since they have a plane productive capacity six times that of American plane factories...
...they tram thousands...
...There is an immediate possibility of a British and French attempt to invade the country.' "Neither in this article, nor (except by inference from an agency report that Oslo had surrendered) anywhere else on the front page of this issue of the Daily Worker, is it possible to discover that the German Government had taken the slightest part in any attack on Scandinavia...
...What is phony, enigmatic, surprising about it ? Seven whole years Germany has concentrated her immense industrial potential, one hundred per cent of her resources and all the daily 24 hours of all her citizens exclusively for this stroke...
...America could help the Allies only by a Herculean production effort which would make this country a military power...
...If Hitler cannot overrun France and England militarily in 1940, his only alternative hope is the breakdown of the Allies' will to resist...
...This committee works under the alleged aim of conducting merely "non-political" undertakings...
...two days after Hitler went into the Low Lands, the Labor Party, through its most forceful personalities, has been placed virtually in control of England and her warfare...
...Plane production is so vital that it is being urged the administration step in and take it over as it did in 1917 with the railroads...
...Just t6 give an example of the whole phenomenon in -a nutshell: Future generations will refuse to believe it, but it has happened that London's bus drivers went on strike in the ninth month of this war because they did not like the one additional working hour caused by the summertime regulation...
...Wide Network of Clubs The Vecchiotti committee consists of the representatives of several fascist clubs, operating as "cultural" organizations...
...but the misconception of neutrality has prevented that one and only possibility from saving not just the Belgians' neutrality but their lives...
...Our price of participation must mean the adoption of a process of socialization...
...A lawful strike it was, and they have won...
...1 I • ¦ Again and again: Hitler will have won the war only if he wins it in 1940, Not the possession of the Low Lands matters...
...fleet, having about 12,000 front line fighting planes to this country's 4,165...
...And as much as almost all other elements are different this time—the essential fact is unchanged: Thanks to unchangeable geographic and material conditions, Germany has to smash England and France militarily in order to win the war—but England and France, in order to win, have merely to prevent Germany from smashing them...
...Included in the fascist network here are the Italian-language press, the Dante Alighieri Society, a chain of "Italian-language clubs," and such reactionary institutions as II Dopolavoro...
...Ikese statements have been made repeatedly i England, where the Communist Press is unMfckted...
...Vecchiotti operates through the Committee pro-Italian Language, an organization which coordinates all "cultural" pro-fascist activities of the numerous clubs, schools, and committees operated in America by II Duce's apparatus...
...Among these clubs is the Mario Sonzini Other fascist clubs in New York, all of Which are decorated with portraits of Mussolini and which boast of themselves as "temples of Italianism," are the Italian Pioneers' Cultural Club, 28 Bay 49th Street, Brooklyn...
...Vinzo Comito, fascist radio commentator recently barred from Station WHOM because of the openly pro-Mussolini character of his speeches, and Count Giovanni Billi, one of the major functionaries of the "Order of Sona of Italy in America...
...Imperial Rome Club...
...A week ago there was reason to fear that Chamberlain was going to abuse Churchill's, popularity...
...If you don't want to be drawn into the poisoned ocean of news details, keep this basic issue in your mind at every single moment: In 1940 Hitler must win the war, but the Allies merely must win time...
...Even these figures give a more optimistic picture than can really be drawn from a study of the army...
...John Strachey Accuses British Communists Of Being Not Anti-War But Pro-Hitler ^_John Strachey, who for years has been identified with the British Communist *W$nent, recently repudiated that Party's war position, accused the London Daily *tl™ of being pro-Hitler, and disavowed all association with*the English Stalinites...
...In a message to Trombetta by...
...There is not a single complete mechanized division among them...
...So long as that remains the case I, and, it seems, almost everybody else in the country, can have nothing to ilb with them...
...every line written in the Daily Worker ' drives me to the conviction that those controlling the Daily Worker are prepared, for the sake of what they consider to be the interests of the Soviet Union, to give way to Hitler, to any extent, and that they are utterly irresponsible as to the consequences to the British people of such unlimited giving way...
...These airships could be built by the thousands under government supervision in government factories in a short time...
...guns—with a 30,000foot range — in production...
...Strachey are expected soon in the American Communist press despite Wednesday's issue of the New York Daily Worker wherein Strachey is praised for "maintaining a sane attitude towards the war...
...The Dante Alighieri Society, which maintains schools in American Italian communities and which has branches in many U. S. high schools and colleges, has its headquarters in Rome...
...as the one and only essential issue is concerned: whether or not the Allies will get the time to develop their resources, so dreadfully far behind...
...On April 6, 1940, the Drama and Musical Society Benito Mussolini, of 120 Broadway, held a festival at which money was raised and donated to two organizations in Italy: Opera Nazionale Balilla (fascist children national organization), and the Gioventu Italiana del Littoria (Fascist Youth National Organization...
...It is this identification of the interests of the Soviet Union with the success of the German Imperialists which has, in the main, driven those responsible for the conduct of the Daily Worker to take their present line...
...The army, reserve, and National Guard, numbering 310,000 poorly trained men—the southern maneuvers notwithstanding—is inefficiently led, insufficiently supplied, and completely undertrained...
...We train about 260 a month...
...i ri6' au*^or to°k tkis action in a statement appearing in the April 27, 1940, =wion of the British magazine, The New Statesman and Nation, which has just Wived here...
...Even if President Roosevelt gets the $500,000,000 he will ask of Congress for armaments, it will take more than a year to approach a degree of preparation which would enable the U.S...
...It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Germany's military machine is this time superior enough to invade France and England as long as the Reich has the advantage of the lightning start...
...With all due dislike of the habit of drawing parallels— shortly after the outbreak of the last World War, the Kaiser's Germany was in possession of Belgium, a huge part of France, of all Central Europe, of a gigantic portion of European Russia, of almost the entire Balkans, of Turkey, and a proper slice of the -Near East...
...Nioolo Boaservizi Club, 224 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn...
...s Also in attendance as honored guests at affairs run in New York City by the Consul General have been such fascists as Trombetta...
...Strachey "Way'Was forced to return to England...
...Leon Blum, speaking before the Wrriemouth Labor Congress, last week made ¦jBBBjprted charges that the French CP was pnltj\of treason...
...Do not forget it when reading the extras, and do not forget that your nervous strain is somewhat less than that of Beligum's machinegunned children...
...If they only will have enough time, they will overthrow the lovers of death precisely because they have needed so long to realize the rottenness of j the foe and, of course, because their resources are virtually the entire world...
...Plans call for 37 anti-aircraft regiments, but only 27 actually exist...
...That is of no less importance than the military operations in the Low Lands and along the French border...
...actually it spreads propaganda extolling the Italian fascist government and army...
...the mad misconception of democracy not as a way of life, but as a way of suicide...
...They are doubtlessly in retreat...
...But no attempt, even, has been made to answer the obvious retort that, if we are to play the not very profitable game of asking *who began it?', why should we fail to mention the far more violent breach of international law which the German Imperialists have been committing, in respect of Norway, since the beginning of the war, in the form of sinking 50 Norwegian ships and drowning over .1,000 Norwegian sailors...
...tbnferences are in progress...
...They lie again...
...j'-' j Under such conditions, even a most powerful Allied military machine could not have created miracles...
...We produce about 500 planes a month while Goering's factories turn out about 2,600...
...This alone is the issue and not whether and when the Reich will get the whole of Belgium and the Netherlands and this or that slice of French border territory...
...important is merely whether or not...
...It is directed by a central committee situated in Italy's capital and guided by Felice Felicioni, II Duce's personal appointee...
...the others are merely on paper...
...ti tw ^trac^ey was the center of much controversy and publicity last year when •^Department of Labor Immigration Division, because of his Communist views, T^ffd to permit him entry into the United States for a lecture trip...
...They haven't been refuted...
...Duce's 5th Column in U.S...
...There are 8,000 American pilots to the Nazis' 30,008...
...It is literally true that some one who on April 10th took no other newspaper but the Daily Worker would have been unable to discover that on the previous day the German army had invaded Denmark and Norway...
...Most recent of these is Victor Golone of the leading liberal publishers in ^S»jn and owner of the press which publishes Wife Left Book Club, a veteran transmission belt...
...This country can put into the field only 68,000 well-trained, well-equipped soldiers...
Vol. 23 • May 1940 • No. 20
