Renner's Balloon

A geopolitician showed his head in the U.S. last week, and no sooner was the head in sight than unfriendly tomatoes began to fly. His name is George T. Renner, he is a professor of geography at Columbia. The main merit of his plan for the postwar map of the world was the fact that he had a plan. If the Renner plan were ever taken seriously, the Axis powers could advantageously lose the war in order to win the peace.

George Renner's maps, published in Collier's, have two main geopolitical principles: 1) states should be large, 2) each should be given a fair share of this world's shores and jewels.

Renner's Europe consists of nine great states: a commonwealth of Great Britain and Holland, a Fennoscandic Union (Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Esthonia), Czecho-Polska ("already being planned by the Czech and Polish Governments-in-exile" and including Lithuania), a Balkan Union ("Some trouble may be expected from the Bulgars"), Italy (plus Dalmatia, Tunisia, Corsica, Nice), France (minus Alsace-Lorraine, plus the Spanish Basque provinces and parts of Switzerland), an Iberian Union (Spain and Portugal), Russia (with Latvia, and a corridor to the Dardanelles), a German-Magyar State (Germany, Austria, Alsace, part of Switzerland, Hungary).

Renner's Asia gives to Japan all the shores of the Japan Sea and the Mandated Islands, to Russia a Manchurian warm-water outlet and Outer Mongolia, to China a piece of Indo-China, to Thailand all the rest of Indo-China and a piece of Burma. All the Indies are lumped into an International Zone. India is arbitrarily divided into a Moslem state (west) and a Hindu state (east).

Renner's Africa has four independent nations: tiny Liberia, Egypt, South Africa, Ethiopia ("should be protected by being completely surrounded by British territory"). The rest of the continent is divided among Germany. France and Britain--with Germany getting France's Gabon, Belgium's Congo, Portugal's Angola.

Renner's Americas have no colonies, nor are there any foreign possessions in the Western Hemisphere (Canada and Greenland are independent).

The Baltic States have been a specific point of issue in Russian discussions with the Allies. Renner's plan served as a trial balloon on this issue, and the howl that went up against Renner, especially on the part of small governments-in-exile, served warning that, if the large-state idea prevails after World War II, the green table of peace will rock.

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