One Way to Lose a War

Adolf Hitler last week was face to face with an old European tradition: that a good way to lose a war is to attack Russia. In 3,000 carefully chosen, sense-making words, appearing last week in the Man chester Guardian, sagacious old Eduard Benes, President of the Czecho-Slovak Government-in-Exile, told why:

In my view, the attack on the Soviet Union was a mad action--the action of a criminal who is driven by fate always to make good the effects of his first crime by a second crime and then by further crimes until the final catastrophe. . . .

A year ago last week, flushed with an impressive string of whirlwind victories, Adolf Hitler trumpeted that "the year . . . will bring completion of the greatest victory in our history."

Adolf Hitler last week gave a New Year promise that was hedged with conditions, panic and piety:

"We can ask of the Almighty that He give to the German people and to its soldiers the strength to resist with valiant hearts for the maintenance of our liberties and our future. . . . The year 1942--and we pray to God, all of us, that it may--should bring the decision which will save our people and with them our allied nations."

Last week German forces were in full retreat along the entire Russian front (see p. 25). In London, a British military commentator, declaring that "the German Air Force is literally worn out," estimated Luftwaffe strength as 35% less than it was when London was first attacked with fire bombs a year ago. Credit for that claimed destruction is shared by the R.A.F. and Russia. From Sweden, for whatever reason, came increasingly pessimistic reports about Germany.

I am now inclined to expect from Hitler desperate, nervous, furious and fanatical, and thus ill-advised military and political actions, and therefore it is necessary to be on our guard in every way, in both the political and military spheres. . . .

Last week, Stockholm reported Adolf Hitler had quit his Berchtesgaden hide away for the Moscow front, there to take personal command and starch the spines of his very weary warriors with an inspiring personal appearance. The obvious question--what can Germany do now?--had its usual gossip-born answers: a German turn to the south in an all-out effort to rid the Mediterranean of British power and avenge the Libyan defeats ; a German move against Turkey; German occupation of Spain, Portugal, an attack against Gibraltar; German assumption of the French Fleet, occupation of Dakar.

Field Marshal von Brauchitsch admitted in a military consultation at the end of November, that Germany must realize in both the military and political fields that she could no longer win the war; it was possible, he said, that she might not entirely and necessarily lose the peace, if the Germans were helped by the political and diplomatic errors of the Anglo-Saxons.

Where Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch was last week neither Eduard Benes nor any other Allied strategist knew for sure, but they pondered reports that many another German general was in disgrace.

But most of all the Allied strategists pondered the intriguing possibility offered by Field Marshal von Brauchitsch: what mistakes must the Allies make to save the German Reich from disaster?

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